Last week, Purdue announced that it had purchased Kaplan University, an online college. It is unclear what that means on many fronts, and the Purdue administration and faculty are still hammering that out. You (probably) already know how I feel about online classes, and Purdue's faculty shares many of my misgivings, so this should be interesting.
Lost in all the local news of the wrangling (and if you haven't been following the local news of the wrangling, you should be!) is the fact that Kaplan has a law school. Yep. A law school. Kaplan's law school is called Concord Law School. Why isn't it called Kaplan Law School? I have no idea. Okay, I have an idea, but I don't know.
So now Purdue owns a law school. Yet another first for Purdue.
Concord Law School, being entirely online, is not accredited. The American Bar Association will not accredit online degrees. I am obviously not the only lawyer suspicious of such things. Nonetheless, one can get a law degree from Concord. However, only one state will allow someone with an unaccredited degree to sit for the bar exam, and it's not Indiana. It's California.
But I'll bet they pass the California bar exam in droves, since they can obviously just focus on that, right? Don't make that bet. Concord's overall bar pass rate is 16 percent. Yes, after you spend an estimated $50,000 for a Concord bar degree, you only stand a 16 percent chance of actually becoming a lawyer. In California. Concord points out that $50,000 is pretty darned inexpensive for a law degree.
Um, it should be.
So Purdue, an Indiana public university, owns a law school which is not accredited and whose graduates are not eligible to sit for the Indiana bar or to, in any way, obtain an Indiana law license. Because, why not?
While you're catching up on the wrangling, be sure to take in how the Indiana legislature passed a special law exempting Purdue/Kaplan/Concord from open records laws.
Does this smell funny to anyone else?
http://abovethelaw.com/2017/05/big-ten-university-purchases-online-law-school-with-abysmal-bar-passage-rates/
Just because a law school is not ABA accredited, it doesn't mean it's not a good school. Nashville School of Law is not ABA accredited and many good lawyers and some judges have completed this school. Also a lot of area police officers use this school because of the convenience it offers to finish law school in the evenings.
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