I’ve received some concerned email from friends, after the Washington Post published an article about how D.C.-area law schools are struggling to get students. In particular the article stated that our class size has shrunk from 303 in 2010 to 151 today, suggesting that we have lost half of our tuition revenue.
The article is factually correct, but misleading. The 303 students who matriculated a few years back were an anomaly, caused by a much-higher than expected “yield” of admitted students for unknown reasons. Our typical entering class size before the recent plunge in law school applicants was more like 210 students. Going down to 150 students obviously hurts (a lot!), but I understand that the university has taken some steps to cushion the blow (only fair, given that the university had previously been using the law school as a cash cow after imposing massive tuition increases on us).
Anyway, I want to reassure GMUSL’s friends (and, for that matter, potential applicants), that we have not in fact decreased our standard class size by 50%, and are not in the sort of crisis mode that such a drop would imply.