McGeorge plans to reduce law faculty, use money to recruit better students

The McGeorge School of Law plans to reduce its full-time faculty by 25 percent through voluntary buyouts to free up funds for recruiting students with higher test scores.

Michael Hunter Schwartz, McGeorge’s dean, said the initiative is part of a multi-pronged effort to help the University of the Pacific’s law school in Sacramento attract applicants with higher LSAT scores and GPAs. Funds derived from downsizing the faculty will be used to provide tuition discounts to students.

“We will have the largest budget the school has ever had for recruiting strong students,” said Schwartz, whose school’s tuition was $49,720 this year.

The planned faculty reductions come as McGeorge has seen its first-year enrollment decline from 346 in fall 2010 to 152 last fall, a drop of 56 percent. The median LSAT score for entering students declined from 158 to 151 during that time.

The school wants to maintain its current enrollment, Schwartz said.

He said he is hopeful that 10 or 11 faculty members will voluntarily decide to depart, resulting in a full-time faculty of less than 30. Professors have until mid-April to decide whether to seek a buyout.

They will need to indicate whether they desire to step down at the end of this year, after next academic year, or after working part-time for a few years. There are no plans for layoffs.

Schwartz noted that some full-time faculty members have not been teaching the standard load for professors of 12 credit hours a year. The dean, who took his post last July, stressed the decision to decrease the faculty size was a collaborative one.

McGeorge’s other efforts to attract higher-quality students include an accelerated honors degree program that can be completed in 2.5 years and handwritten notes from Schwartz to every accepted student.

The dean said the school became the sixth in the nation to require students to complete a combination of two clinics and externships. In addition, McGeorge launched an experiential mentoring program that will feature students shadowing alumni.

“There really is an effort by the faculty to think broadly about where legal education needs to be and aim us in that direction,” Schwartz said.

So far, in the current application cycle, McGeorge has seen a 14 percent increase in applications, including a 20 percent bump from students with higher credentials, according to the dean.

Rachel Van Cleave, a law professor and former dean at Golden Gate University School of Law, said McGeorge is not alone in plowing more funds into tuition discounts while also reducing faculty. She said a number of schools did that in recent years to combat declining enrollment and try to maintain student credentials, though some deans are skeptical about the sustainability of the approach.

“We readily acknowledge it is a short-term solution, not a long-term one,” Van Cleave said.

Christopher J. Ryan Jr., a doctoral fellow at the American Bar Foundation, has said his research demonstrates that greater financial aid can lead to slight increases in enrollment at Tier 1 and Tier 2 schools.

The same impact does not appear to take place at the “marginal law school,” Ryan said during a panel discussion at the American Bar Association midyear meeting last month in Vancouver, Canada. Schwartz said while ABA-accredited McGeorge is first tier in some categories, it is in the third tier overall.

McGeorge is in the midst of evaluating other ways to reduce costs, the dean said, in hopes of providing more funding for its bar preparation efforts and career services work.