Texas Southern University may be about to receive another black mark; this time, firing a president and putting her on trial isn’t going to fix it. This issue goes deeper into TSU’s ongoing failure to perform its duty adequately: preparing graduates (and post-graduates) for the real world.
In Los Angeles, later this week, the ABA is expected to approve an objective criterion for law school accreditation, for the first time. Nationally, thirty law schools will not make the cut, which is defined as a graduate performance no worse than 15 percentage points below the state average for passing the bar exam on the first try, with a minimum of 75% passing. While an individual gets three tries to pass the bar exam, for the school, only the first one will count. Results are averaged over five years, so one bad year would not doom a school to lose accreditation.
Nationally, seven law schools are well below the limit (albeit based solely on 2007 results, not an average) and could be in danger of losing their accreditation. Whether the five years is retroactive, or starts counting with next year may make a huge difference to another 23 that fail one or the other of the two requirements, but not both. Of the seven schools failing both requirements, it is likely a small comfort to TSU that it is the closest to the mark, at 63.1%, compared to a statewide 80% first-time pass rate. This leaves it almost 17 points below the state average (two points under requirement), and nearly 12 points below the 75% minimum.
Of the total of thirty schools in danger, only one has a larger minority enrollment than Texas Southern. Given that TSU’s history and mission are minority-oriented, that is no surprise. Incoming President Rudley is right when he says in the Chronicle:
“I can’t wait 21 days,” Rudley said recently, a few days after regents named the tough-minded, bottom-line administrator as the only finalist for the presidency at the state’s largest historically black university.
What’s the rush? The high stakes are one reason. His personality is another.
TSU is at risk of losing accreditation because of its poor financial picture. Enrollment is at a five-year low. The graduation rate ranks among the nation’s lowest.
Nationwide, the greatest resistance to the imposition of objective criteria is coming from minority schools, but the imposition of a more stringent standard is a foregone conclusion, what with the Department of Education set to review its delegation of accreditation authority to the ABA. That the institutions in question are fighting the standards, rather than seeking to meet them, is all too typical. Nor is this behavior limited to only minority institutions, even if that is where the majority of the resistance is coming from in this case. As a whole, academia is uncomfortable with the idea of being judged by real-world criteria.
Given the very real gaps in wealth and income that still plague our society, the African-American community is not being served well by institutions that fail to prepare tomorrow’s professionals and leaders. It will be up to President Rudley and his team at TSU to avoid the pitfalls of politics and reverse this trend by bringing TSU into line with the expected criteria. If it’s just more of the same old, same old, then no one will be served well, neither the taxpayers, nor especially the students who should be put first.
