USC Delays Tax LLM Program

Legal Blog Watch reports that the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law has delayed the launch date of its new Tax LLM program. In an interview, the dean of the law school stated that the program was delayed after failing to find a satisfactory director. Dean Robert K. Rasmussen made the following statement to the TaxProf Blog,

“The basic problem is that our search to find the appropriate director for the program took longer than I had anticipated. We view having the right leadership as essential to launching the program, and we are still in the process of finding our founding director. Without a director, we were concerned that we could not offer the high quality program that was the reason that we decided to launch the Tax LLM in the first instance. We simply will not offer any program that does not meet USC’s standards for excellence. That said, I an optimistic that we will have a director in place this fall, and that person will then have ample time to ensure that we will offer an excellent and innovative Tax LLM beginning in the Fall of 2011.”

Dean Rasmussen originally announced the launch of the program in September 2009. The program has been accepting applications since last October.