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So we’ve heard a lot about how deplorable the market is for lawyers nowadays, about how some students are suing their law school alma maters for not warning them they would be unable to pay their six-figure student loans, and naturally enough this is hitting some schools pretty hard. What does this actually mean for these law schools? Standard & Poor’s bond rating agency took a look at one school, Albany Law School, to get an idea of what all this means for the schools who are attracting fewer students. It seems this school’s enrollment dropped 14 percent in two years, down to 617 students from 720 in the 2010-2011 school year. This represents a national trend.
What their report found was that this puts incredible pressure on the school’s system, with significantly less tuition coming in. And Standard & Poor thinks the school’s enrollment will continue to dip before they stabilize.
As Timesunion reported, Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Emily Avila said, “We believe that over the outlook’s two-year period, Albany Law School will likely maintain its financial resources at current levels, continue to generate surpluses on a full-accrual basis, and stabilize student enrollment.”
Schools like Albany suffer more than other schools that are connected to a larger university, because the larger schools are able to buffer the losses against the other schools within the university, and are able to offer larger financial aid packages. Nevertheless, everybody is suffering in their own way with the depressing law market at the moment, and we are still uncertain when and how we should have hope.
