The American Bar Association sets standards for law schools that it approves. Approval is a huge deal because it means that graduates of a school can sit for the bar in any state, as opposed to one's home state and a limited number of others for graduates of non-approved school. One of the requirements for approval is a good rate of bar passage; the ABA likes to see 75% of graduates pass the bar or have the passage rate be no more than 15 points below the average of the state's ABA approved schools.
Tamara Tabo recently noted that three of the five law schools associated with Historical Black Colleges are presently not meeting its standards in terms of bar passage rates. Tabo thinks this is a problem with no easy decision.
According to Tabo, the problem is, basically, that the HBCUs need to choose between raising their bar passage rates and loosing their ABA approval. Both of these are problematic.
For HBCUs to raise their bar passage rate, Tabo suggests that the HBCUs would need to be more discriminating in the students they take on. For many schools, this might not be an issue, but HBCUs see themselves as having a traditional responsibility to enroll and educate black Americans, including those black Americans that do not have the academic chops to get into non-HBCUs of the same caliber. If HBCU law schools decide to raise their admissions requirements and doing away with preferential treatment for blacks then they run the risk of basically no longer being black institutions and no longer serving the population that HBCUs were established to serve.
Alternatively, the HBCUs could retain their traditional character and lose ABA approval, but that can have terrible consequences for the schools and their students as their future graduates will have second class degrees with limited utility. Attempting to regain approval after it is lost is a Herculean endeavor. Prospective students of the schools may think twice about attending after a lose of approval. In the end, the HBCUs may tack true to their traditional service to the black community, but fail to serve that community by not graduating law students with degrees as useful as their ABA-approved peers.
Tabo has framed these options as being undesirable and ultimately racist consequences that cannot be avoided, a sword of Damocles hanging by a hair.
Tabo suggests a third way; that the HBCUs could apply for a waiver from the ABA standards for a limited time by showing that they serve to broaden the availability of legal education. Which they certainly do, but such a waiver may only postpone the inevitable. If the schools don't get their acts together then they'll still be on the chopping block once the waiver runs down.
What do you think?
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Note: I suspect that some posters may have a problem with the idea of HBCUs at all. While I would welcome your comments on the limited topic laid out above, I might suggest that discussing the broader topic of whether or not HBCUs should exist at all in the first place is something that probably deserves its own thread.
Tamara Tabo recently noted that three of the five law schools associated with Historical Black Colleges are presently not meeting its standards in terms of bar passage rates. Tabo thinks this is a problem with no easy decision.
According to Tabo, the problem is, basically, that the HBCUs need to choose between raising their bar passage rates and loosing their ABA approval. Both of these are problematic.
For HBCUs to raise their bar passage rate, Tabo suggests that the HBCUs would need to be more discriminating in the students they take on. For many schools, this might not be an issue, but HBCUs see themselves as having a traditional responsibility to enroll and educate black Americans, including those black Americans that do not have the academic chops to get into non-HBCUs of the same caliber. If HBCU law schools decide to raise their admissions requirements and doing away with preferential treatment for blacks then they run the risk of basically no longer being black institutions and no longer serving the population that HBCUs were established to serve.
Alternatively, the HBCUs could retain their traditional character and lose ABA approval, but that can have terrible consequences for the schools and their students as their future graduates will have second class degrees with limited utility. Attempting to regain approval after it is lost is a Herculean endeavor. Prospective students of the schools may think twice about attending after a lose of approval. In the end, the HBCUs may tack true to their traditional service to the black community, but fail to serve that community by not graduating law students with degrees as useful as their ABA-approved peers.
Tabo has framed these options as being undesirable and ultimately racist consequences that cannot be avoided, a sword of Damocles hanging by a hair.
Tabo suggests a third way; that the HBCUs could apply for a waiver from the ABA standards for a limited time by showing that they serve to broaden the availability of legal education. Which they certainly do, but such a waiver may only postpone the inevitable. If the schools don't get their acts together then they'll still be on the chopping block once the waiver runs down.
What do you think?
--
Note: I suspect that some posters may have a problem with the idea of HBCUs at all. While I would welcome your comments on the limited topic laid out above, I might suggest that discussing the broader topic of whether or not HBCUs should exist at all in the first place is something that probably deserves its own thread.