Arizona Summit, Charlotte and Florida Coastal downsize their full-time faculties by 39%

Earlier this week I was told that in January the Charlotte School of Law had bought out the contracts of a dozen faculty and 15 staff members, and that last month Arizona Summit had bought out an unspecified number of faculty. I was also told students at Charlotte were upset about the sudden faculty departures.

I contacted Jay Conison and Shirley Mays, the deans at Charlotte and Arizona Summit, and they responded as follows:

Dear Professor Campos—

Thank you for seeking information on the January voluntary separation program for faculty and staff.

In December, the Charlotte leadership developed a program to enable faculty and staff to voluntarily take separation packages, should anyone wish to retire, pursue other career opportunities, return to school, or leave for any other reason. This program was part of a larger project to improve various admissions and academic programs and processes in order to more effectively deliver value and strong outcomes to students. Many of those improvements have been implemented or will be implemented before the next academic year.

The voluntary separation program for faculty had eleven participants, from all levels of years of service. Substantially all the agreements with these faculty members were entered into before the start of the spring semester, and the Academic Dean and her team managed a very smooth transition in faculty teaching assignments and student class assignments before classes began. Most faculty members who chose to leave communicated with their students to say farewell. Most of the faculty who have left remain in touch with us and many are either still engaged or have expressed a desire to teach as adjuncts in the future.

The voluntary separation program for staff had twelve participants from across the departments. Substantially all of the separation agreements were entered into before January 31, and substantially all departing staff made January 31 their last day of service. There has been no interruption in service to students and following the departures we effected department and service reorganizations to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Of course, the January departures initially caused some unsettlement for students. We communicated to students what was taking place. This included in-person meetings between me and students leaders and small student groups. The Associate Dean for Student Engagement and other school leaders also had multiple meetings with students and student groups to answer questions. We have not seen or heard of any significant student concern over the departures in many weeks.

I hope this provides answers to your questions.

Jay Conison

Professor Campos,

Thanks for your patience. It’s been a busy day of travel, and I appreciate the chance to sit down and respond to your message.

Yes, we have offered a voluntary separation option for faculty at Arizona Summit. The voluntary separation option was presented in a general meeting to all faculty, who were invited to meet with me individually if they expressed interest. At this time, seven employees have accepted the voluntary separation package. Also at this time, the voluntary separation package has not been offered to staff.

While we cannot discuss the specifics of our separation package, it includes a blend of financial compensation, health benefits and outplacement services, to ensure that our departing employees are not only financially secure for the near future, but have an opportunity to find gainful employment suited to their individual experience and skills. While each faculty member’s reasons for choosing to participate in the separation package have differed based on their individual personal circumstances, the experience has been positive and productive. For some of our faculty, the voluntary separation comes at a time when they are transitioning to a new chapter in their lives, growing their families, or reaching retirement. Without question, those who have accepted the package will be missed; they have been extraordinary colleagues.

As you are aware, law schools across the country have faced an enrollment decline over the last few years, and Arizona Summit is no exception. For many institutions, the decline has resulted in mandatory furloughs, layoffs, and salary reduction. We’ve been fortunate to have avoided those options.

Most importantly, we have had our students’ best interests at the forefront of this decision. Our faculty are more than professors, they are mentors. While I have anticipated some disappointment from students who will be sad to see favorite professors depart, the majority of the feedback I’ve received from students thus far has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive.

The departing faculty have been working with both their fellow faculty members and staff to ensure a seamless transition process for students. In our planning process, we agreed that we could not in good conscience offer a voluntary separation package unless we could guarantee that it would not inhibit our students’ progress or disrupt their law school experience in any long-term way. I’m confident we have achieved this goal. Our remaining faculty are a diverse group with significant practical and instructional experience and academic credentials.

If you have additional questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,

Shirley Mays

These recent faculty buyouts at Charlotte and Arizona Summit were preceded by a series of major force reductions at Florida Coastal, the other of the three Infilaw-owned law schools, in the summers of 2013 and 2014.

All told, it appears that the number of full-time faculty at the three schools has fallen from 197 in the spring of 2013, to 120 as of now: a 39% reduction. (I don’t know how many staff have left at the three schools, although its clear there has been significant staff attrition at both Charlotte, per Dean Conison’s message above, and Florida Coastal, per earlier reports). This 39% figure is based on the schools’ ABA Form 509 disclosures.

According to its 509, Florida Coastal had 81 full-time faculty in the spring of 2013, and 46 last fall. Charlotte had 71 full-time faculty in the spring of 2013, and 72 this fall, so the buyouts earlier this semester bring the school’s current full-time faculty total to 61. Arizona Summit’s 509s list it as having 45 full-time faculty in the spring of 2013 and 21 this past fall, so this would indicate that, if all seven of the buyouts to which Dean Mays refers took place since then, the school’s current full-time faculty is down to 14 members.

A couple of notes:

(1) Per their 509s, the combined JD enrollment of the three schools declined by 13.1% between the 2012-13 and 2014-15 academic years, so it appears that Infilaw is downsizing the schools’ full-time faculties at about three times the rate of the downsizing of the student bodies.

On the one hand, this can be interpreted as simple profit-maximizing behavior. Last summer, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which regulates the accreditation of law schools (Dean Conison chaired the Accreditation Committee), dropped its previous rules regarding student-faculty ratio, which had stipulated that a law school with a ratio higher than 30 to 1 was presumptively out of compliance with the accreditation requirements. So there’s no longer any regulatory barrier to schools downsizing full-time faculty (This rule was probably the only thing keeping a number of schools from following in the footsteps of the rest of higher education, and having a majority of their classes taught by low-paid adjuncts as opposed to tenure-track faculty).

On the other, the Infilaw schools have managed to avoid major enrollment declines only because they’ve dropped their previously low admissions standards to the floor, and this is already beginning to have a very bad effect on their graduates’ bar passage rates, which do remain relevant, at least in theory, to the schools’ accreditation status (In practice, the regulatory capture of the ABA accreditation committee by deans and faculty from low-ranked law schools means it’s extremely unlikely any ABA school will ever have its accreditation revoked). So perhaps Infilaw has concluded that further reductions in the schools’ enrollment are unavoidable.

In short, it’s hard to say whether Infilaw is using the sharp decline in law school applicants as an excuse for offloading expensive faculty in order to fatten the bottom line at Sterling Partners, or whether management has concluded that the schools’ student bodies have to be reduced significantly in order to avoid a bar exam catastrophe, or some combination of these motives ( my guess is the latter).

(2) These developments suggest how little protection tenure provides against economically-motivated force reductions (there’s a parallel here with union contracts that provide real protection against individual ad hoc firing but very little against structural layoffs). The Infilaw schools are free-standing operations, so management has a freer hand, perhaps, than the typical central administration has in regard to the faculty at a law school inside a university (90% of ABA law schools are in this latter category). Nevertheless, similar buyouts are taking place all over legal academia, although not, as far as I know, on the scale seen at the Infilaw schools.

(3) The previous two points indicate that, as long as the current federal educational loan system stays in place — this system allows any graduate or professional school to charge anything it wants to anyone it chooses to admit, and then requires the government to loan the full cost of attendance to the program’s admits — very few law schools are actually going to go out of business. It’s of course perfectly possible to carry out a traditional legal education program with a student-faculty ratio of 30 to 1 or higher (indeed 35 years ago the majority of law schools had such ratios), and, as the current hyper-competitive and utterly saturated market for entry-level legal academics makes clear, it’s also going to be very easy for law schools that are inclined to do so to both cut compensation levels and raise teaching loads for entry-level hires going forward.

When you combine these factors, it ought to be possible for almost any law school to avoid losing money, as long as the relevant administrators, either at the law school or university level, are sufficiently ruthless in regard to “restructuring” the size of their faculties, along with their compensation packages and other terms of employment. I’m pretty sure they’re going to be up to the challenge.