The mood was tense Thursday night as Dean Philip McConnaughay detailed the university’s proposed plan to place first-year law students in the University Park campus and increase specialty programs at the Carlisle campus.
Penn State Dickinson School of Law’s board of directors ought to find an alternative to its proposal to end first-year classes in Carlisle. Its scheme to force students to start their law-school education at State College instead of Carlisle would be bad for the local economy and bad for law students who want to get a full education here. It’s ironic that an institution that teaches students about contract law would so eagerly seek to breach a contract of its own.
Last week, law school’s board of directors said financial pressure will force the college to end first-year classes in Carlisle. Instead, students would be required to begin at State College and then opt to complete their second and third years here. Just seven years ago, that same board signed a deal with the Cumberland County Redevelopment Authority where they promised, in exchange for a $25 million grant to redesign Trickett Hall, to maintain a full three-year law-degree program in Carlisle until at least 2025. The college’s board said the market for legal services has dried up, hence its proposal to cut and run.
While our understanding of contract law is limited, it defies logic that the law school could just arbitrarily decide to ignore its agreement to maintain three-year classes here simply because the economy fell out. It’s not like the $25 million grant didn’t come through, or that the work at Trickett Hall didn’t get completed. Local officials held up their end of the bargain; shouldn’t the law school? This obviously is a ploy to shut down the law school. How many students who start at State College will arbitrarily decide to transfer to Carlisle for their second and/or third years?
Times are tough for all sectors, and law schools are no exception. But it’s important for the law school to set a model for its students and honor its agreement, no matter how onerous it may be seven years into it. Carlisle needs a full three-year law-degree program available to students. Offering only second- and third-year education is cutting the community and its potential law students short."
The school is attempting to address a combined deficit and place both of its locations on a path to sustained economic self-sufficiency by dramatically cutting costs and increasing non-J.D. tuition revenues, while simultaneously preserving the excellence of our academic program and not raising J.D. tuition appreciably, McConnaughay said.
The school still needs the consent of the Dickinson Law Association, the county Redevelopment Authority.
Under the proposal by Dean Philip McConnaughay, all Penn State law students would start in State College, perhaps beginning as early as 2013. The Carlisle campus would continue to hold classes for second- and third-year students, including both in-person instruction and access to University Park classes through distance-learning technology.
The (Harrisburg) Patriot-News says the program would result in a student body significantly smaller than the 250 students once planned there.
The paper says the plan has drawn opposition from members of the Dickinson Law Association, a vestige of the independent school that merged with Penn State in 1997, the board of which retains review authority over some aspects of the dual campus agreement.Really? Opposition?
