Friday, April 26, 2013

Here’s a Great Idea Students – Spends Years and Hundreds of Thousands to Attend an Unaccredited Law School

Then Wonder Why You Cannot Get a Job

The idea that there are a large number of law schools in the United States that are not accredited by the American Bar Association is incomprehensible, meaning no one could believe that anyone would go to an unaccredited law school.  But it turns out there are a large number of these schools.

A handful of schools in Alabama, Tennessee and Massachusetts aren't ABA-approved but have state approval.

California has more than 40 law schools operating without ABA accreditation; 18 of those are state-accredited.

And what happens to law graduates of these schools?  Why they fail the bar exam of course.

Schools without ABA accreditation tend to have lower bar-passage rates. For instance, about 69% of students from California ABA-approved schools passed the July 2012 state bar examination, compared with 19% from state-accredited schools and 15% from unaccredited schools in the state.


But graduates of these schools are similar to graduates of accredited law schools in one important aspect.  They leave school with a massive amount of debt.  In their case, there is just no way to pay it off since they cannot pass the bar or get employment.

The logical thing to do here is to eliminate student loans for students attending unaccredited schools or for-profit schools.  That is really the source of the problem.  But given the lobbying power of these institutions don't expect that to happen.  So the exploitation of American college youth will continue.

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