Western Michigan University Cooley Law School Lansing campus. Courtesy photo.

The Thomas M. Cooley Law School was once the largest in the country, with more than 4,000 students spread across its four Michigan campuses in 2010.

Today, what's now called Western Michigan University Cooley Law School (it affiliated with the Kalamazoo university in 2014) has a student body that's about a quarter of that size and is retrenching in a bid to stay viable in a very different legal education market. Law school officials announced this week that they are seeking to close a satellite campus in Auburn Hills, Michigan, while slashing tuition by 21%. They also plan to consolidate the school's main campus in Lansing.

Cooley is among the growing number of lower-tiered law schools that have struggled with enrollment declines, bar passage rates, and postgraduate employment—a handful of which have closed in recent years.

The tuition reduction, which takes effect next fall, will lower the cost of a credit hour from $1,750 to $1,375. That will cut annual tuition by about $10,600, from approximately $52,000 to about $40,000.

James McGrath

Cooley president and dean James McGrath said in an interview Friday that the purpose of the tuition cut is not necessarily to increase the size of the student body; rather, it's meant to attract a stronger pool of applicants. Administrators were concerned that the school would not meet the tougher bar passage standard adopted by the American Bar Association this year, he said. (That new standard mandates that at least 75% of a law school's graduates pass the bar exam within two years.) Moreover, the current tuition is significantly higher than at the schools with which Cooley competes for students, he said.

"Having the highest price in the group of schools from which we compete really doesn't make us look like the access school we are," said McGrath, noting that Cooley has one of the most diverse law student bodies in the country. "It really helps realign our focus and mission. And the closing of the [Auburn Hills] campus will help us more efficiently run the school."

Cooley is seeking permission from the ABA to close its Auburn Hills campus, where 231 students now attend. The plan calls for that campus to remain open through December 2020 and for current students to receive individualized counseling on where to complete their degrees.

Cooley is just one law school struggling recently. Valparaiso University School of Law is in the process of closing, while Thomas Jefferson School of Law did not admit any new students this fall as it fights for survival. Worse still, Indiana Tech Law School, Charlotte School of Law, Arizona Summit Law School and Whittier Law School all have closed since 2016. Many of those schools enrolled relatively high percentages of minority and nontraditional students, as does Cooley.

Current students at Cooley's Auburn Hills campus could potentially finish their degrees through online classes or externships, so they wouldn't have to relocate, McGrath said. Auburn Hills is outside of Detroit, and about a 90-minute drive from Cooley's main campus in Lansing. The school's board has not yet reached any decision about resulting faculty reductions.

It's not the first time the school has shut down one of its satellite campuses. It closed a campus in Ann Arbor in 2014 due to low attendance. Meanwhile, the school opened a satellite campus in Tampa Bay in 2012 and began offering classes at the Western Michigan University campus in Kalamazoo following the 2014 affiliation.

The growth of programming in Kalamazoo prompted Cooley to experiment with the offerings at its Grand Rapids campus this year. That campus is not holding any first-year courses this semester as a test to see if more new students would enroll at Kalamazoo as a result. But eliminating Grand Rapids as an option for new students had little impact on enrollment at Kalamazoo, McGrath said, and no resulting changes are planned in Grand Rapids as a result. It will once again offer first-year courses in the spring and there are no plans to close the Grand Rapids campus, he said.

Plans for consolidating the main Lansing campus are still being worked out, but that location has excess capacity given the decline in enrollment over the past decade, according to McGrath.