Considering the tough legal market, it’s no surprise that fewer students are taking the LSAT or applying to law school. But with tuition down nearly 20 percent at the University of Iowa College of Law, they resorted to drastic measures to “boost applications and restore class size to precession levels,” as the university said, and as DesMoinesRegister.com reported: they are cutting their tuition by nearly $8,000, the largest cut that any of Iowa’s public universities have ever seen.
The cut pertains to non-Iowan students seeking the JD, bringing their tuition down from $47,252 to $39,500. Tuition, meanwhile, will increase by $474, or 1.8 percent, for Iowan students.
Advanced law degrees will see an even steeper cut, with their doctorate and masters of law students having their tuition nearly halved to $24,000, while Iowans pay $20,000.
If these proposed tuition cuts pass the Board of Regents, which is scheduled for Oct. 23, the new tuition levels would start to apply to the 2014-2015 school year.
With 40 percent decrease in applicants, and 20 percent decrease in enrollment, such measures may be called for to boost enrollment. But one has to wonder if it will cost the quality of the program or affect their legal ranking. How they manage those matters remains to be seen.