HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Tougher Bar-Passage Standard For Law Schools Sparks Objections.

Bar-exam passage rates and racial diversity are two flashpoints in the legal industry. The two are now bumping against each other as the legal establishment weighs a proposal to tighten law school accrediting standards. …

The ABA is considering a plan that would require 75% of a law school’s graduates who sit for a bar exam to pass the test within two years. The proposal has been floated amid a perplexing trend of declining bar exam scores nationwide and increasing attention on the racial make-up of the profession.

A number of law school deans and the largest nationwide black law student association are objecting to the proposed standard, expressing concern about its potential impact on schools with larger minority student populations.

Related: Raising The Stakes In The Fight Over The LSAT:

The LSAT may not be the rite of passage all lawyers share much longer, but LSAC, the organization that administers the exam, is not going to take that lying down.

You may recall Arizona Law has decided to accept the GRE in lieu of the LSAT. They claim it is a move designed to increase diversity, but some see increasing the school’s applicants as another nifty benefit. While most schools aren’t ready to make the move to the GRE just yet, the LSAT’s dominance may be in jeopardy. The first move LSAC made to stem the tide was to threaten to take away Arizona Law’s membership (and the application data that comes with it), but that move was wildly unpopular with law school deans, and LSAC backed off.

Now LSAC has announced another ramification of moving away from the LSAT.

In a letter sent to admissions professionals at all law schools yesterday, LSAC announced it intends to stop certifying matriculant admissions data. Amid concerns about the accuracy of law school admissions data, beginning in 2011, LSAC began certifying the accuracy of the data (i.e., average LSAT scores). Now LSAC intends to stop that.

What law schools want is to be able to accept warm, tuition-paying bodies without taking too much of a hit in accreditation or U.S. News rankings. That’s all this is about.