The incredible shrinking law school

One of the things that jumped out at me in my analysis on legal employment outcomes was the shrinking graduating class size. That started me to examine what's happening on a school-by-school basis.

I started with a quick qualitative look and saw wildly divergent stability. Thomas M. Cooley dropped from 1143 graduates in its Class of 2013 to 462 for the Class of 2016, a 60% decline. Florida Coastal saw its graduating class drop from 562 to 299. Two large, elite schools saw little change--Georgetown rose from 645 to 652; Harvard from 578 to 598.

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But the decline has been largely across the board. I calculated the median graduating class size over the last four years. In 2013, it was 206--meaning half of law schools had graduating classes larger and half had smaller. Last year, however, it was down to 161. The decline is not isolated but quite widespread--probably not too much of a surprise given the market, but worth considering from the data.

Additionally, I thought I'd divide up schools into categories based on size--100 or fewer graduates, 101 to 200 graduates, and more than 200 graduates. The Class of 2013 had mostly large graduating classes--no surprise given the median of 206. 107 law schools saw graduating classes larger than 200, and another 80 were between 101 and 200. Just 11 schools were 100 or fewer--four of them flagship schools in rural states (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming).

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The Class of 2016, however, saw the number of schools with 100 or fewer graduates rise to 36. (The 36th-smallest graduating class in 2013 had 135 students.) And the number of schools with more than 200 grads dropped to just 67.

Law school downsizing comes with it all of the turbulence we've seen in media reports--faculty buyouts, closures, mergers, and the like--but this offers a display about why such pressure exists at the school-specific level.

We should expect at least some stability over the next few years: incoming class sizes have been very stable for the last three years, and early reports are that we'll see some such stability this cycle, too. (The quality of the class, and the resulting changes to bar pas rate as a result, are another matter.)

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in DC-Maryland-Virginia in 2016

This is the eighth and last in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following posts on outcomes in Texas, New York, Illinois, California, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Pennsylvania law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

Total jobs in unfunded bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions increased slightly, counter to much of the rest of the country: there were 2765 positions, up from 2735 last year. 455 J.D.-advantage jobs is more than most markets have, and, as you can see from the chart, can vary fairly significant from school to school. Graduates declined from 3740 to 3602, yielding a fairly strong 79% employment rate. 90 school-funded positions came mostly from two schools, Georgetown (44) and Virginia (19). That leads to some variance in the visualization (sorted by unfunded job placement), and the table below (displaying overall placement, including school-funded positions).

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.4	University of Virginia	96.1%	0.7	293	5	19	95.4%	311	9	30
4.1	Georgetown University	87.1%	6.9	486	38	44	80.2%	456	50	38
2.7	George Mason University	86.5%	-0.3	86	25	4	86.8%	94	34	4
3.1	Washington & Lee University	84.2%	2.0	73	7	0	82.2%	131	11	1
3.0	University of Maryland	83.6%	8.3	126	51	1	75.3%	156	47	1
3.2	William & Mary Law School	81.3%	5.5	162	21	0	75.8%	118	17	0
3.4	George Washington University	79.8%	1.5	373	61	9	78.3%	301	55	8
2.5	University of Richmond	77.0%	2.8	95	19	0	74.2%	97	21	0
2.1	University of Baltimore	76.2%	2.0	142	69	0	74.2%	142	56	0
1.2	Regent University	70.5%	5.2	57	5	0	65.3%	67	10	0
2.8	American University	66.3%	4.9	219	56	0	61.4%	205	76	4
1.5	District of Columbia	66.0%	14.5	33	30	1	51.5%	15	19	1
2.2	Catholic University of America	65.2%	-5.2	53	37	0	70.4%	63	37	0
1.2	Liberty University	63.8%	9.7	32	4	1	54.1%	31	1	1
2.4	Howard University	63.2%	3.7	65	20	1	59.5%	57	12	0
1.2	Appalachian School of Law	52.4%	-10.9	15	7	0	63.3%	32	4	2

Perspective on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016

The American Bar Association has finally released the employment statistics for the Class of 2016.

I say finally deliberately. Last year, the ABA released them around May 2. The ABA here disclosed them May 11.

In 2013, the ABA approved a change to reporting employment statistics. It used to be "employment outcomes 9 months after graduation," or an employment date of February 15. The ABA moved it back to 10 months for the Class of 2015, or an employment date of March 15. Deans of law schools in New York and California in particular objected that due to late bar exam results (often in November), followed by a holiday season, it was difficult for some students to secure employment by February 15. That artificially depressed employment figures in these jurisdictions compared to the rest of the country.

That pushed back the deadline for schools to report employment outcomes from March 15 to April 15. April is a significant season for prospective law school matriculants. Schools typically have "deposit deadlines" in April, requiring a few hundred dollars' nonrefundable deposit to secure a seat in the class. (I Googled a few: Washington & Lee requires $250 by April 15; Cornell requires $300 by May 1; Georgia requires $150 by April 15; New Mexico requires $200 by April 15.)

It's worth noting that if these employment disclosures are supposed to advance a "consumer protection" rationale (although I'm not sure much has been studied about students' reliance on these disclosures), the decision to move from 9 months to 10 months has undermined some of the "consumer protection" rationale. While most schools have put these results on their websites, several (I'll leave them nameless) have not; the ABA disclosures would be the first release of this information.

Additionally, the putative reason for moving the reporting deadline back a month does not appear to have been borne out. Consider New York & California employment outcomes in the last few years: it's not obvious that the employment situation materially improved after the date change. Granted, some of this is likely attributable to other causes, the peril of isolating one factor among many possible factors. But it would be worth the ABA considering evidence from these law schools that the change did materially improve outcomes in those jurisdictions--evidence we just don't have.

It's also a time to discuss recent predictions about this class. Professor Ted Seto in 2014 offered an optimistic prediction for the Class of 2016: "If the new BLS projections are accurate, we should see demand and supply in relative equilibrium in 2015 and a significant excess of demand over supply beginning in 2016."

Perhaps the BLS data wasn't quite accurate, or perhaps it was an overly-rosy view of what employment might look like. In what's surely a disappointment, nationwide employment in unfunded full-time, long-term, bar passage-required positions has been steadily declining. Placement in such positions was just 22,874, down from 25,787 three years ago. (UPDATE: please note that I excluded Puerto Rico's three law schools from this analysis.)

	Graduates	FTLT BPR	Placement	FTLT JDA
Class of 2012	45,751	25,503	55.7%	4,218
Class of 2013	46,112	25,787	55.9%	4,550
Class of 2014	43,195	25,348	58.7%	4,774
Class of 2015	40,205	23,895	59.4%	4,416
Class of 2016	36,654	22,874	62.4%	3,948

The good outcome is that the percentage of graduates placed has improved as the number of law school graduates has declined sharply. So why a decline in raw jobs? There are many possible reasons, and I only offer a few to speculate here for future investigation.

Some of this is likely attributable to declines in bar passage scores. But perhaps more troubling has been the decline in J.D. advantage positions, too. For years, the versatility and flexibility of J.D. has been a common point of defense among law schools, not without some controversy. But those positions--which not only highlight the versatility of the J.D., but aren't contingent on passing the bar--have been declining, too.

It may be that law schools have too readily assumed the fungibility of a law degree. That is, even if the total number of law school graduates have declined, it may be that employers still prefer individuals who graduate in the top X% of the class, from a top-Y law school. It may be that they have been reluctant to dip lower into classes or to lower-ranked schools. That is, they're not just looking for any law school graduates; they're still looking for a certain quality of graduate, and they may not be convinced that they should move off their previous expectations. Or it may be that BLS or other labor data has simply been too optimistic about the new lawyer market.

Last year, I noted the sharp decline in law school-funded positions. The same is true for this year. Through a combination of changes to reporting requirements (schools must pay at least $40,000 a year), the requirement under the Affordable Care Act that they provide health insurance if they are working more than 30 hours a week, and the USNWR decision to cut the weight of such positions in its methodology, we likely won't see a resurgence in this category anytime soon.

In short, the good news of the employment picture is almost exclusively a result of law school graduating classes shrinking significantly. Raw job placement has grown slightly and steadily worse over the last few years, while the placement rate has ticked up somewhat--7 points of improvement in the last few years.

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Pennsylvania in 2016

This is the seventh in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following posts on outcomes in Texas, New York, Illinois, California, Florida, and Ohio, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Pennsylvania law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

Pennsylvania is new to my series of visualizations. Total jobs in these unfunded bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions declined somewhat, from 1077 to 1036. There were about 250 fewer graduates, from 1414 to 1260. As a result of the significant decline in enrollment, overall prospects for graduates improved: the overall employment rate was 82.7% (including all funded positions), up from 76.2% last year.

It's worth noting that some of these schools are quite small: Penn State Dickinson had just 34 graduates; Penn State Law (in State College) had 95; Widener had just 53. The visualization below can look somewhat deceiving. Ideally, the width of the bars would be variable based on the total number of graduates, (larger classes would have thicker bars to display the total grads they placed), but that apparently is not readily available in Excel. I'll look into improving the display for next year. Blogging is constantly a work in progress!

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.3	University of Pennsylvania	97.3%	0.9	230	17	4	96.3%	221	10	6
2.0	Pennsylvania State University - Dickinson Law	88.2%	18.1	28	2	0	70.2%	34	6	0
2.1	Drexel University	83.7%	4.8	111	12	0	78.9%	83	18	0
2.7	Temple University	83.2%	7.7	135	32	1	75.5%	149	42	0
2.4	Villanova University	82.0%	5.9	119	21	1	76.1%	132	29	1
2.3	Penn State Law	74.7%	6.4	63	8	0	68.4%	52	15	0
2.6	University of Pittsburgh	74.3%	6.4	108	22	0	67.9%	105	28	0
1.8	Duquesne University	74.2%	8.7	76	16	0	65.5%	77	18	0
1.6	Widener Commonwealth	67.9%	2.5	26	10	0	65.4%	40	11	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Ohio in 2016

This is the sixth in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following posts on outcomes in Texas, New York, Illinois, California, and Florida, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Ohio law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

The total placement rate among the 983 statewide graduates was 69.6%. That's up slightly over last year's 68.5% rate, but gradates dropped significantly from last year's 1089. Total raw placement into unfunded bar passage-required jobs dropped from 594 last year to 539 this year.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
3.3	Ohio State University	89.4%	2.5	137	20	3	86.9%	132	19	2
2.4	University of Cincinnati	83.7%	2.9	74	13	0	80.7%	67	21	0
1.7	University of Dayton	72.8%	9.4	40	19	0	63.4%	48	11	0
1.8	Cleveland-Marshall College of Law	67.5%	1.5	62	17	0	66.1%	57	15	0
2.6	Case Western Reserve University	64.6%	-6.2	56	8	0	70.8%	86	16	0
1.8	University of Akron	62.9%	-0.5	58	20	0	63.4%	73	17	0
1.5	Ohio Northern University	62.5%	11.7	35	10	0	50.8%	26	6	0
1.8	University of Toledo	60.2%	-6.4	32	21	0	66.7%	48	21	1
1.5	Capital University	49.6%	-4.5	45	14	0	54.1%	57	23	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Florida in 2016

This is the fifth in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following posts on outcomes in Texas, New York, Illinois, and California, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Florida law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

Florida Coastal disclosed data this year, and Western Michigan University-Cooley's Tampa campus did not disclose campus-specific data, so it's hard to make year-over-year comparisons in the aggregate. But the total placement rate among the 2479 statewide graduates was 65.4%, without a single school-funded job. (That's down slightly over last year, but Florida Coastal has far more graduates than Cooley's Tampa campus.) The University of Florida, Florida State, and Florida International have almost identical placement, very similar to last year.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
3.1	University of Florida	82.4%	0.9	230	36	0	81.5%	232	15	0
1.8	Florida International University	81.7%	0.7	108	17	0	81.0%	97	22	0
3.0	Florida State University	80.4%	-1.3	136	16	0	81.7%	183	23	0
2.7	University of Miami	78.6%	7.4	209	45	0	71.2%	257	40	0
2.1	Stetson University	76.5%	-3.2	166	59	0	79.7%	171	49	0
1.2	Ave Maria School of Law	60.3%	10.3	36	2	0	50.0%	31	11	1
1.6	Nova Southeastern University	57.7%	-6.3	117	21	0	64.0%	173	10	0
1.4	St. Thomas University	52.0%	1.1	97	8	0	50.9%	71	13	0
1.4	Florida A&M University	50.3%	0.0	56	18	0	50.3%	56	18	0
1.2	Barry University	49.8%	1.1	83	40	0	48.7%	80	33	0
1.2	Florida Coastal School of Law	40.5%	n/a	108	13	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in California in 2016

This is the fourth in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following posts on outcomes in Texas, New York, and Illinois, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of California law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

Outcomes generally improved with some important caveats. Total graduates declined nearly 10% year over year, from 4403 in the Class of 2015 to 4081 in the Class of 2016. That resulted in marginal improvements in employment outcomes: 64.3% in unfunded full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions, up from 63.8%. But total jobs in these positions declined, from 2807 to 2624, likely attributable in part to challenging bar passage rates (and perhaps because of conditions relating to California's job market).

Law school-funded positions experienced a small resurgence, from 107 positions last year (2.4% of graduates) to 118 positions (2.9% of graduates). (Please recall from the methodology that the bar chart is sorted by full-weight positions, which excludes school-funded positions, while the table below that is sorted by total employment as USNWR prints, which includes school-funded positions.)

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.4	University of California-Berkeley	94.5%	3.5	278	11	23	91.0%	237	5	11
4.8	Stanford University	94.0%	1.7	164	4	4	92.3%	166	8	6
3.9	University of California-Los Angeles	90.8%	-0.5	239	18	30	91.3%	247	25	34
3.3	University of California-Irvine	85.6%	1.0	84	3	14	84.5%	71	2	20
3.5	University of Southern California	85.5%	5.2	140	9	22	80.3%	155	9	7
3.4	University of California-Davis	81.2%	3.9	87	11	14	77.3%	125	9	9
2.6	Loyola Law School-Los Angeles	73.6%	-0.7	221	36	5	74.3%	227	42	3
3.1	University of California-Hastings	67.0%	0.1	154	46	1	66.9%	174	28	4
2.6	Pepperdine University	65.7%	1.8	98	19	2	64.0%	104	21	1
1.6	California Western School of Law	63.1%	4.6	82	29	0	58.5%	90	41	0
2.4	Santa Clara University	61.4%	7.5	102	30	0	53.9%	86	32	0
1.9	Chapman University	60.8%	-3.6	78	18	0	64.4%	62	23	0
2.7	University of San Diego	57.8%	-4.6	102	24	0	62.3%	138	16	0
1.9	McGeorge School of Law	56.8%	-2.8	56	23	0	59.6%	105	31	0
1.9	Southwestern Law School	54.5%	6.3	125	48	2	48.2%	115	35	0
2.0	University of San Francisco	47.1%	-4.1	46	20	0	51.2%	60	22	3
1.1	Western State College of Law	45.1%	-5.9	29	12	0	50.9%	46	10	0
1.6	Golden Gate University	41.1%	-0.1	30	15	1	41.1%	58	7	0
1.4	Whittier Law School	39.1%	-9.9	38	12	0	48.9%	30	30	9
1.3	Thomas Jefferson School of Law	31.9%	-7.5	46	21	0	39.4%	59	36	0
1.2	University of La Verne	31.4%	-19.9	7	9	0	51.3%	16	4	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Illinois in 2016

This is the third in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following posts on outcomes in Texas and New York, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Illinois law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

Outcomes improved everywhere, highlighted by Chicago's 100% placement rate, and Illinois's nearly double-digit rise accompanied by its drop in law school-funded jobs. Total graduates declined from 2041 in 2015 to 1816 in 2016. That accompanied a rise in placement, from 73.8% to 78.1%, even as total jobs fell slightly.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.6	University of Chicago	100.0%	6.1	201	4	10	93.9%	178	0	6
4.2	Northwestern University (Pritzker)	92.4%	1.1	203	19	8	91.3%	234	21	8
3.3	University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign	87.3%	8.9	131	13	1	78.5%	118	14	10
1.7	Northern Illinois University	76.1%	0.9	52	14	1	75.2%	60	15	1
2.5	Loyola University Chicago	72.7%	7.6	119	32	1	65.1%	133	36	1
2.4	Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago-Kent)	70.7%	4.2	136	35	0	66.4%	144	40	0
2.3	DePaul University	70.1%	1.2	126	38	0	68.9%	142	35	0
1.7	Southern Illinois University-Carbondale	69.2%	4.6	67	14	0	64.6%	56	8	0
1.7	The John Marshall Law School	65.5%	1.0	153	41	0	64.6%	194	52	0

UPDATE: This post erroneously included data from Atlanta's John Marshall. It has been corrected.

Examining Whittier

Last week, the Whittier College officials announced that it planned on closing Whittier Law School. Some recent events, such as the school's first-time California bar pass rate of around 22%, and the decision to sell the land the school sits on for $35 million (and lease it back), suggested there was some instability. And while emotions are still raw and much remains uncertain, I thought I'd dig into a few publicly-accessible details to examine what's happened at Whittier in the last decade or so. I'll try to be mostly descriptive. Whether one believes the best decision is to close the school, or to address the school's challenges in a different way, is far beyond the scope of this blog (and beyond the available information we have).

This story starts in 2005, when the American Bar Association ("ABA") placed Whittier on probation. The incoming class in 2005 (which would graduate in 2008) would set the tone for decisions that could improve the school's standing. Indeed, by 2008, things looked much better: the graduating class had a bar passage rate of 83% (in the July 2008 bar, it was 84.3% for first-time test-takers), the incoming class in 2007 had a dip in credentials remedied in 2008, and the school was taken off probation.

I thought I'd evaluate a few of the things that have happened over the years and attempt to visualize them. I'll start with the LSAT quartiles of the classes over the years (excluding the three most recent admissions cycles for now).

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LSAT scores, of course, don't tell the whole story; UGPAs coupled with LSAT scores in an index score do a better job, but this is a first rough take. It's also worth noting a few things about these LSAT scores: a 155 is roughly around the 64rd percentile; a 150 is 44th percentile; and a 145 is the 24th percentile. Despite nominally small changes in scores, small changes in these areas can reflect a big change in the student quality. Additionally, a student with an LSAT score of 150 typically averages a 143 on the MBE; the passing score in California is a 144, so we should expect pretty serious degradation in bar passage rates among those with LSAT scores below 150.

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Adding a second axis of percentages, I've included the first-time California bar passage rates; the results are from the administrations of the two exams after the class has graduated. (It's worth noting that Whittier has a robust part-time program, so students I identified as a part of the Class of 2008 may well have graduated in 2009. Additionally, some of the data is inconsistent over February administrations in particular across LSAC/ABA reporting forms, so I apologize for some small errors in this portion.) The peaks and valleys roughly correspond with the overall LSAT--but not perfectly. And we would expect the score to decline more rapidly as scores of the incoming classes dip well below 150.

But a couple of major points can change a class's profile from the incoming admission statistics. The first is academic dismissal rates.

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(Because of some inconsistencies in how schools report academic dismissal rates, I attributed all academic dismissals in a subsequent year to the previous year's entering class. This should roughly even out across classes. Additionally, the annual data should align, but the ABA/LSAC data is not reported in the most accessible fashion.) It's worth noting that in 2006, the year after Whittier was placed on probation, it academically dismissed a whopping 37% of its first-year class. That undoubtedly had a major impact in improving its bar passage rates in 2008. Only once since then have academic dismissal rates even come close. Expectedly, we see bar passage rates drop as LSAT predictors drop and as academic dismissals remain relatively low.

But why some of the other fluctuation? Why did bar pass rates improve between the Class of 2011 and the Class of 2012, despite a decline in predictors and an essentially identical academic dismissal rate? One more variable to consider: net transfers. Presumably, schools take the very best students in transfer--specifically, from Whittier, the students most likely to pass the bar. High net transfer losses should result in a bigger decline in bar passage rates.

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This visualization has almost too much information to be helpful, but consider the loss for the Class of 2011 (in 2009) compared to the loss for the Class of 2012 (in 2010). Whittier had far fewer academic transfers in its Class of 2012; and in the subsequent year, a much better bar passage rate. Higher academic dismissal rates and lower transfer rates should generally yield better bar passage rates. (It also isn't a perfect science; there's some randomness built into bar pass rates that could fluctuate around a few percentage points each year.)

It's worth noting that even as its incoming predictors worsened for the Classes of 2015 and 2016 (both in LSAT scores and confirmed by the bar passage rates), net transfers out actually increased. Many law schools in 2013 and 2014, feeling the crunch of the downturn in applicants, turned to smaller incoming classes to hold their median LSAT for USNWR purposes, then backfilled with transfers. Even though Whittier's incoming classes deteriorated, it became a more popular place to take transfers--further complicating efforts to improve bar passage rates.

Recent incoming class sizes and class LSAT profiles also display this balance of trying to improve class quality without reducing the class size so much that the school was unable to operate at a financially viable level. (I'll add in the three most recent years now; please note the change in Y-axis.)

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A decision in the 2007-2008 academic cycle to shrink the incoming class size dramatically yielded its intended benefit: the median LSAT rose 3 points. But it wasn't designed to be a structural change; the incoming class size more than doubled the following year and returned to levels more in line with recent history.

This chart also includes the last three years of incoming classes. The LSAT profile for the Class of 2017 was worse than the Class of 2016 (which had a bar pass rate last July of 22%), with 22% academic dismissal rate and -10% net transfers. For the Class of 2018, however, the class size shrunk dramatically, around 40%, to improve the LSAT of the median and the bottom quartiles. That, like the decision in 2007-2008 for the Class of 2011, comes at a significant financial cost. Last year, the total enrollment at the school was 456, down from 700 in 2011. It was exacerbated by a 23% academic dismissal rate and a -19% net transfer rate.

The incoming class last fall was even smaller still, just 132 students, but the LSAT profile dropped again. These declines were on the heels of not simply significant attrition rates in academic dismissals and transfers (and "others," such as drop-outs), but also a trying job market.

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It turns out job placement has been difficult even for a fairly small class size. The figures in the chart above are the 9- and 10-month employment rates in full-time, long-term bar passage required (FTLT BPR) and J.D. advantage (FTLT JDA) positions, along with all "other grad outcomes," and the gray bar on top the matriculating class three years earlier.

To restate how I began this post, the optimal solution for a school in Whittier's position is hardly obvious to me, absent far more data and evidence--in particular, absent far more specific evidence about the overall financial picture. That said, the decline in incoming class size and total enrollment suggests a fairly challenging financial picture.

But I hope a few data points present some of the complicated and longer history of decisionmaking, along with some perspective of what's happened at Whittier in the last few years. For schools facing their own challenges, data points like these, and the far more granular internal data schools have, are useful starting points for this discussion.

Please note any errors or corrections in the data, particularly if I mistakenly assigned outcomes from a particular year to the wrong year from the ABA/LSAC data. Some Y-axes or multiple axes do not start at zero to provide relative values. Multiple Y-axes are aligned primarily to provide ease of reading a chart.

UPDATE: This post has been updated slightly for clarity.