Cooley law dean offers explanation for enrollment decline, sees possible turnaround
Enrollment at Western Michigan University’s Cooley Law School has dropped 52 percent from its peak in 2010, but things are looking up, according to its dean.
Cooley had 1,880 students in the 2014-15 academic year, compared to more than 3,900 students in 2010, the Lansing State Journal reports. The drop was nearly three times that of law school enrollment nationwide. In response, Cooley laid off faculty members while others opted to retire. The school had 49 full-time faculty members in the fall of 2014, down from 119 in the spring.
Cooley law dean Don LeDuc tells the Lansing State Journal that enrollment is up since December, and he believes the increase in students taking the Law School Admission Test signals that enrollment will eventually reach pre-recession levels.
LeDuc said other law schools have been reaching further into the applicant pool, admitting students who once would have gone to Cooley. As a result, he said, Cooley’s enrollment losses were larger than those of other schools. “They’re taking our students,” LeDuc said, “and we’re adversely affected by that.”
LeDuc says Cooley is less selective because it has a commitment to providing a legal education to nontraditional students.
University of Chicago law school professor Brian Leiter offers another reason Cooley has been hard hit by the recession: weak employment outcomes for its students. Out of 871 Cooley grads last year, only 263 had found full-time work requiring bar passage as of April 2015.
Updated to change fourth paragraph for clarity and to substitute “pool” for “school.”
