Kansas Sees Huge Drop in Applicants: But Is the Quality Improving?

From the Lawrence Journal-World:

KU [law school] extended its deadline by one month, to April 15. Even with that extension, [interim dean] Mazza said the school expects a drop from 15 to 20 percent from last year’s group of about 1,100 applicants.
...
Mazza said he didn’t anticipate significant negative consequences for the school because of the lower number of people interested in applying to KU.

“What we are finding is that the quality of our applications is steady to slightly improving,” he said.

Right. So you decided to extend the deadline because _____ ? If there's no negative consequences, why are you so desperate for more applicants?

KU is a state flagship school that essentially has a monopoly over high-level legal studies in Kansas (no one with an honest choice would go to Washburn or cross the river and go to UMKC). It's fairly cheap, too. If it's seeing a steep drop, that's a major indicator that people are figuring out that not even the main state flagships are worth going to.

But this "quality" argument thrown out by Interim Dean Mazza seems to be the latest and greatest in law school administrator rationalization. For it to be true that a 20% decline would prompt an increase in the quality of the pool, the type of people who applied last year but didn't apply this year would have to be disproportionately lower-qualified (lower LSATs, lower GPAs). That would suggest that there's some sort of significant correlation between desire to practice law and undergraduate academic performance. Somehow, I doubt that. And it seems to me higher-qualified applicants are more likely to pass on schools Kansas and go for T15s like Texas or Michigan, given how crucial prestige is.

Absent concrete evidence, I just don't buy that the quality has anything to do with the seriousness of the applicant. And I'd like to remind the dean that a 20% drop in his applicant pool means they have to broaden their admissions criteria slightly, which will almost certainly lead to a drop in the matriculation pool. That conclusion is almost inescapable unless the 150 LSATs were all apathetic and the 175 LSATs are all gung-ho. If anything, though, it's backwards.

But overall, this is very good evidence that the law school bubble has burst and students are no longer buying into this ridiculous system. Of course, that doesn't mean they can identify what changed:

An article in the New York Times in January seemed to start the conversation, [student Tonda Hill] said. (Mazza said the person profiled in the article didn’t do enough research into law school before beginning his journey.) Other students have blogged about their difficulties in finding jobs.

That article wasn't about a "person profiled." Furthermore, as I've previously pointed out, it's a false conclusion to assume the New York Times article is what caused this. At the time that article came out, almost everyone in the 2011 applicant pool had already taken the LSAT, secured fee waivers and letters of recommendation, and had likely set their mind on applying to law school. Those "other students" [graduates, for the most part] have been blogging for two years in some cases, and they should be given credit for many of those who never started on the "journey" in the first place, not to mention that those blogs are a but-for cause of the New York Times article.