Ave Maria School of Law may have been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The American Bar Association’s accrediting team visited the Naples, Florida law school this summer, as part of its regular seven-year tour.
Unfortunately for the private school, the ABA didn’t like what it saw. It said the school was out of compliance with accreditation standards, notably regarding law school admissions policies and practices, primarily due to a low bar passage rate. The school has to take remedial actions to maintain accreditation.
Days earlier, the ABA had also recommended against approving the University at North Texas Dallas College of Law, because it wanted a heavier focus on incoming LSAT scores in the admissions process.Â
Why the sudden measures to tighten standards?Â
This summer, the ABA had itself gotten a warning that it could lose its authority as an accrediting agency, a role granted by the U.S. Department of Education. A federal panel that oversees higher education accreditors warned that it would strip the ABA’s accrediting power unless is got serious about accountability.
Ave Maria’s bar passage rate fell from 62.5 percent for the class of 2014 to 59.1 percent for the class of 2015. While not a good pass rate, it was higher than the 54.8 percent the school posted for the class of 2012 and the 53.57 percent for the class of 2011.Â
But the ABA said these low figures could be because the school is accepting students who don’t have the capacity to pass the exam. For its 2015 entering class, the median GPA was 3.00 and the median LSAT was 148, while the bottom quartile figures were 2.71 and 142.
The ABA’s accreditation standards state, “A law school shall not admit an applicant who does not appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.”
The law school submitted additional information and a written plan for how it would come into full compliance. It said that the bottom quartile figures have improved considerably in the past two years, data the ABA did not have at the time it made its decision.Â
“The finding of noncompliance with the standard on admissions is a disappointment but not a cause for alarm,” Dean Kevin Cieply said. “We are confident that when the committee reviews the additional information we will be submitting, including the credentials of our 1L class, we will be found in full compliance. Ave Maria is on a strong upward trajectory, and we are confident that all of our students are capable of success.”
Should the ABA decide that Ave Maria School of Law should lose its accreditation status, it would mark the first accreditation withdrawal in five years. The last school to lose accreditation, University of Law Verne College of Law, regained it within a year.
But more so than anything, the ABA’s warning to Ave Maria was a warning to several other law schools. Thirteen schools reported lower bar pass rates than Ave Maria for the class of 2015. However, the ABA looks at the percent of students who pass the bar exam within two years, data which is not publicly available.Â
