NCCU has taken 'concrete steps' toward admissions standards compliance, ABA says
North Carolina Central University School of Law. Photo by RDUpedia, via Wikimedia Commons.
North Carolina Central University School of Law, which in January was found to be out of compliance with an ABA accreditation standard regarding admissions, has now demonstrated compliance, according to a decision the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar posted to its website Monday.
A January 2018 letter stated that the accreditation committee of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar found the law school to be out of compliance with Standard 501(b) and Interpretation 501-1. The standard requires that law schools should only admit students capable of completing a legal education program and passing a bar, and the interpretation states that factors to consider in determining compliance with the standard include academic and admission test credentials, the school’s academic attrition rate and recent graduates’ bar passage rates.
According to the June 2018 decision, the accreditation committee has found that the law school has taken “concrete steps” regarding its admissions policy and practices that demonstrate compliance with the standard and the interpretation. The finding does not list what those steps were.
Johnson O. Akinleye, the unversity’s chancellor, was not available for comment at press time. In an NCCU news release about the development, he said that university officials appeared before the accreditation committee in June and “presented documentation and evidence of our commitment to ensuring the successful admission, matriculation, graduation and bar passage of our law school students.”
Judge Elaine Mercia O’Neal
In February, the law school announced that it would no longer admit students with LSAT scores below 142. Also, in June NCCU announced that Judge Elaine Mercia O’Neal, who sat in the North Carolina Superior Court, would be serving as the law school’s interim dean starting July 16. Phyliss Craig-Taylor, the law school’s former dean, is on extended leave, according to an out-of-office email response.
Previously, Akinleye has said that NCCU Law sees itself as an opportunity school, and they will continue giving chances to applicants who don’t have top LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs. Its median LSAT score for 2017 was 145, and the median undergraduate GPA was 3.22, according to the school’s Standard 509 Information Report for 2017. Its nontransfer attrition rate for first-year students was 37.7 percent. For the 2017 calendar year, the law school had a first-time bar passage rate of 57.14 percent, according to its ABA ultimate bar passage rate report.
