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Welcome Message from the President
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Student Teacher Ratios
The team of visitors selected to reinspect Cooley in 1977, chaired by Tulsa Dean Frank T. "Tom" Read, did a good job. Their comprehensive 31 page inspection report revealed that the visitors understood Cooley's unique tri-semester system. We expected their report to influence the accreditation committee favorably. We were disappointed. When Lou Smith and I went to South Bend to attend the accreditation committee meeting, we found an atmosphere of skepticism pervading the room.
How was it possible, they asked, for Cooley to teach 888 students with only 12 full time faculty members?
Tom Read and his colleagues had spelled out our teaching assignments. They demonstrated that our full time faculty were teaching all of the required subjects which consumed more than two-thirds of the entire curriculum. They confirmed that our teachers were assigned no more than six hours of class time each week, well below the eight hour ABA maximum. They acknowledged that our faculty were primarily responsible for establishing the academic program, and recognized that our faculty were indeed engaging in legal scholarship to enhance their teaching skills.
Still the raw numbers kept the committee clucking about what they conceived to be our inadequate faculty. Eight hundred eighty-eight students! Only twelve professors! How was it possible?
Back in the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, when the American Bar Association's control over law school accreditation was taking hold, the Council adopted a minimum standard for student-teacher ratios. They said that an approved law school must have at least one full time professor for every seventy-five students. By 1977, they had repealed that clear line standard, and replaced it with a fuzzy requirement that a school should have "a sufficient number of full time teachers to fulfill the requirements [of the ABA standards], and meet the needs of its academic program."
On August 6, 1977, the accreditation committee met and resolved to send Notre Dame Law Professor Thomas L. Shaffer to see me and convey the sense of the committee that Cooley needed to hire more teachers. His message was that the ABA wanted us to meet a 35 to 1 student teacher ratio.
Once again we were confronted with a requirement that was nowhere to be found in the standards or the interpretations of the standards. I wrote to Judge George Leighton, Chairman of the ABA's Council on Legal Education, and asked for an explanation. Two weeks later, I received a three page reply from Jim White. Without telling me what ratio was satisfactory, he pointed out that student teacher ratios of 40:1, 39:1, and 38:1 had been found not in compliance with the standards.
Lou Smith was a practical lawyer, skilled in resolving disputes, particularly between management and labor. He asked the crucial question: Could we afford to hire enough teachers to meet the ABA's demands? I conceded that it was possible, especially if we could convince the ABA that our students were almost all 'part time' students within the ABA's definition. For student-teacher ratios, they counted a part time student as only two-thirds of a full time student.
Thus our enrollment of 888 would equate to only 591 full time students, requiring just 17 professors to meet a 35:1 ratio.
Because of our unique, year-round program, our students typically took ten credit hours a term, all of which were offered in a specific four hour period, either morning, afternoon or evening. By matriculating in nine consecutive terms, they were in residence for more than the 120 hours required of part time students. And they had large blocks of time each day to permit them to be gainfully employed.
Of course there were always a few students at Cooley who accelerated their schedules, pushing to graduate in as little as twenty-four months intensive study. They had to be identified and required to sign affidavits affirming that they were not employed more than 20 hours a week.
Professor Shaffer reported to the accreditation committee in November that we would have 20 full time teachers by January, 1978, bringing the ratio below 35:1.
The accreditation committee would meet in San Antonio on November 11; the Council would meet in Miami in mid December.
Professor Shaffer didn't think it was wise for us to go to San Antonio. We weren't invited. The committee's agenda was full. Still, we were nervous about letting the committee meet and discuss Cooley without at least making ourselves available to set the record straight. Bob Krinock and I flew to San Antonio.
We were completely shut out. All we got for our trouble was a belated apology from Jim White for having failed to see our messages or find a moment to see us.
On December 12, 1977, President Louis A. Smith reported to the Cooley Board of Directors that we had attended the Council meeting in Miami, that we were closing in on accreditation, but that we faced another, "mini" inspection before the February 1978 ABA meeting.
The long saga was playing itself out. All we could do was wait and hope.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/22/2005