Loyola Law School boosts grades, provokes debate

Students at Loyola Law School in downtown Los Angeles just had their grades adjusted a bit upward without even having to study any harder.

The 1,300-student school recently changed its grading curve formula for current students and the last three years of graduates by a third of a grade to match the scales of other schools in California. But the move also provoked criticism and concerns about artificial grade inflation.

The change was intended to ensure that its students are able to compete for jobs on an equal footing with other law school graduates and are not hurt by what had been a slightly tougher grading system, said Loyola’s law school dean, Victor Gold.

"We were putting our students unfairly at a competitive disadvantage in an extremely competitive job market," he said in an interview Friday. "We are trying to have a level playing field with other students in the state."

By changing the letter grade assigned to numeric scores, the change raised the average GPA of its first-year students from a B-minus to a B.

The dean said the faculty vigorously debated the plan, knowing that the school risked bad publicity and accusations of grade inflation. But to do nothing, Gold said, would be worse.

Sure enough, criticism arrived quickly.

Elie Mystal, co-editor of the legal affairs website Above the Law, blasted the Loyola change.

"I’m happy — I’m thrilled, even — that law school administrations are noticing their graduates cannot get jobs in this economy," Mystal, a Harvard Law School graduate, wrote in a posting. "Admitting you have a problem is the first step towards correcting the problem. But of all the things a school might do to help students get jobs, artificially inflating grades retroactively seems like the most shallow and cosmetic ‘solution’ possible."

In an e-mail response to questions from The Times, Mystal said he found it particularly unusual that Loyola is retroactively changing the grades for classes back to 2007.

"All Loyola has done is make sure all the area employers know that those transcripts are artificially inflated. Maybe in a couple of years, employers will forget," he wrote.

However, Scott Altman, vice dean at USC’s law school, defended changes in grading curves.

USC’s law school changed its grading system in various ways in the past decade, most recently in 2008 with a small rise in the mean grades for first-year students from 3.2 to 3.3. That was done in part to match changes at UCLA, he said.

"We didn’t want local or national employers to mistakenly think our students had lower grades than students at comparable schools," he said.

Altman said he was not familiar with details of Loyola’s plan, but said he assumes it took the steps "in good faith." 

"It’s not in their interest to have rampant grade inflation," he said.

--Larry Gordon

Comments

[ltfd]

Playing to the lowest common denominator? America slouches on toward mediocrity.

[Harold P. Happenstance]

So... if there is such a surfeit of lawyers, how come we don't see a massive fall in the cost of lawyering? Either the "free market" model is wrong, or some peoples might be colluding... no?

[E]

"[T]o match the scales of other schools in California." Loyola is now just bringing its grading in line with other law schools. If there's a problem here, it's with law school grade inflation in general. I don't see why Loyola should be criticized for being last to effect this change. The situation would be more provocative if Loyola was implementing an A- curve.

[Paul]

Has anyone considered the fact that perhaps Loyola Law students simply perform at a lower level compared to the students at other law schools? The professors at Loyola obviously come from all over, and I'm sure many are well aware of what the national standard is, so perhaps the grades the students received are simply reflective of their abilities. The idea that the Law School needs to raise grades in order to match averages elsewhere is a joke and does not help the students push themselves harder toward success.

[M]

For employers that focused on class rank all along, this doesn't make any difference. For those employers that continued to focus on GPA in spite of the widely-known variances between schools, this corrects a serious disadvantage.

Loyola's administration isn't setting a new standard, it's only finally catching up to what other local schools have been doing for quite some time.

My question is: why doesn't the ABA set a standard that all accredited schools have subscribe to?

[Norrie Hoyt]

Harvard Law Graduate Elie Mystal condemns Loyola Law School for retroactively raising its graduates' grades.

He should be aware that his alma mater did the same thing in the 1970s.

I graduated HLS in 1961. In the 1970s the School wrote that my grades were being retroactively increased to keep pace with grade inflation.

I'm sure that nobody benefitted from that action, but it was a nice gesture, something that HLS was not known for making.