A tipster writes:
So WMU-Cooley reduces tuition by 21% and it’s reported everywhere but you clowns don’t even mention it?
Sorry, we cover law schools, not profit centers. While we’re at it, the headline should probably have some air quotes in there.
But, yes, as the ABA Journal pointed out yesterday, the program known as Thomas M. Cooley Law School before hitching up with Western Michigan University for branding purposes — despite the affiliation with a public institution, Cooley remains a private school — just announced that they will slash tuition 21 percent and close one of its four campuses. It’s the latest in the sad tale of Cooley’s sagging reputation — seriously, when Michael Cohen went there it was a perfectly fine school — and rather than being welcome news of a tuition reduction, only highlights how wildly out of hand its tuition had gotten.
Closing a campus is part of the natural ebb and flow for Cooley, which closed its Ann Arbor campus five years ago. The tuition cut is more “newsworthy” given that the school had hitherto exhibited the gall to charge a non-discounted price tag of $267,747 for the “honor” of graduating from a school with only 32.4 percent of grads in jobs requiring bar passage and a bar passage rate that sunk to 43.7 percent last year. This was, of course, after the ABA backed off of its accreditation challenge after Cooley filed an intimidating lawsuit against the organization for daring to adhere to its standards.
So dropping the tuition portion of that down makes it, what, $220K? This puts the school back to where it was in the early years of this decade when it was still overpriced and underperforming. It’s been “Rank Not Published” by USNWR for so long it’s forgotten what numbers even mean.
But the school will always be second to Harvard in our hearts.
In any event, yes, Cooley is lowering its tuition to a still absurd level despite no obvious change in the school’s performance. And so, we shall dutifully clown them.
Cooley Law School cuts tuition and seeks to close satellite campus [ABA Journal]
Earlier: Yet Another Subpar Law School Sues The ABA In ‘Accreditation-By-Lawsuit’ Strategy
Cooley Law School To ‘Cease Operations’ At One Of Its Campuses
Latest Cooley Law School Rankings Achieve New Heights of Intellectual Dishonesty
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.