What’s a for-profit law school that’s down on its luck to do when all of its sister schools have already been forced to close? If you guessed that this law school would attempt to become a nonprofit university or find one to align itself with, you’d be right.
Florida Coastal School of Law, the last InfiLaw school left standing, recently announced its plans to convert to a nonprofit institution, and has already submitted an application to the American Bar Association for the change. For what it’s worth, Coastal is currently out of compliance with with the ABA’s accreditation standards pertaining to its admissions practices, and must change or risk facing similar consequences as its defunct sister schools. The Daily Business Review has more information:
Florida Coastal has been rocked by accreditation problems and declining enrollment in recent years, and DeVito said the school is in active talks with a nonprofit university with which to affiliate. He told the Jacksonville Daily Record that the potential affiliate is not in Florida but is a university located in the Southeast. The school is already working to improve its bar pass rates, graduate employment rates, and academic credentials and affiliating with a university is the next step in that strategic plan, he added.
Florida Coastal hopes to avoid the fate of its sister schools, the Charlotte School of Law and Arizona Summit Law School, also owned by InfiLaw. Charlotte shuttered in 2017 after the U.S. Department of Education barred it from the federal loan program, while Arizona Summit is soon to close. Each saw enrollments dwindle as their bar pass rates plummeted and the ABA cracked down on their admissions practices.
If you recall, both Charlotte and Arizona Summit had plans to affiliate with nonprofit schools (Charlotte with an unknown “university in the northeast,” and Summit with Bethune-Cookman University), but these plans didn’t exactly work out. As Professor David Frakt, once a dean candidate at Florida Coastal, previously pondered, is InfiLaw trying to sell off its law schools at the behest of Sterling Partners, its owners?
In the meantime, Dean Scott DeVito said, “Moving to nonprofit is the right thing for our students, alumni and our community. It will also strengthen the institution and open the door to our becoming affiliated with a nonprofit university. We are extremely fortunate in having the support of all of our stakeholders as we transition to nonprofit.” Dean DeVito also said that he’d like to double or triple the size of the school — Coastal currently has 200 students — over the next three to four years.
Can Coastal do that without sacrificing the credentials of incoming students and their bar passage and employment prospects? Is that the right thing for the school’s students, alumni, and community? Yes, the school’s bar passage rates are climbing, but according to the school’s most recent employment statistics, just 40.8 percent of the class of 2017 found full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required.
Let’s see what happens when Florida Coastal School of Law announces who its proposed nonprofit partner is, aside from it being a “regional institution that is more than 100-years-old.” This seems to be a noble aspiration, but past is precedent with InfiLaw schools, which leaves room to take this news with a shaker of salt.
Updated: Florida Coastal School of Law to abandon for-profit status [Jacksonville Business Journal]
Florida Coastal Law School Aims to Ditch InfiLaw and Become Nonprofit [Daily Business Review]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Struggling Law School Vows To Change Its Ways, Triple In Size curated from Above the Law
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