HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Rutgers-Camden Dean: Law School Faces ‘Existential Threat’ From 59% Decline in Enrollment.

UPDATE: A response from Rutgers’ Associate Dean Adam Scales:

The TaxProf item you link to itself links to a story that – while literally accurate – conflates causes and timing of enrollment decline if read without context.

The Law School did suffer a 59% drop in the 2012 entering class, and that did pose an “existential threat” to the school. But the severity of that drop was caused primarily by the planned takeover of the entire Rutgers-Camden campus by another school last year. In January 2012, when plans for that takeover were announced, our applications dried up. By the time the takeover effort was finally defeated in the state legislature in late June, the application season was largely over. Many students had withdrawn during the preceding months because they could not be certain – nor could we – that they would be receiving the Rutgers Law education they had sought.

While it is true that all this unfolded against a backdrop of declining law school enrollment, the article and particularly, the headline, tend to conflate these events, obscuring the unique and now-receded difficulties Rutgers faced last year. Our enrollment so far this year is roughly where we would expect it to be, given national trends, had there been no takeover threat. In other words, we’re doing about the same as everyone else now. The picture isn’t great for law schools generally, but the immediate “existential threat” described in the piece has passed. That will not be clear from the headline, or even a cursory read of the linked article.

Noted.