Stats like this are so unfortunate to hear. When people shell out 6 figure sums of money and still don't receive a 6 figure education, it makes me wonder what exactly that money is going to. Has this place taken no steps to improve their professorial staff?

TommyB: Yes, Jefferson students, like law students almost everywhere, are laden with debt. When they graduate, they may not be able to get jobs in the legal profession. In its current financial squeeze, Jefferson has a difficult time attracting top-flight faculty. Best, Don Bauder

Rex Heftmann: Stocks of for-profit colleges have been rising since right after the election. The market thinks the Trump administration will be easier on the for-profits than Obama was. Best, Don Bauder

While those admission tests can be properly criticized for being biased in favor of certain social classes and those with intense prep-school work, they do function as a weeding device. Stanford with its long history and high standing can fill its law school classes with those who, based on test scores, will succeed in school and in the profession. There's a pecking order in this state, and any student who cannot secure admission to one of the "better" schools will want to try for whatever school will accept him or her. And so it is that Jefferson along with Golden Gate, La Verne and Whittier end up with the lowest scoring students on the LSAT. To a large extent, those schools just had students who were less prepared, were more distracted, and just plain harder to educate. And as a result they didn't get enough out of the school to pass the bar exam. Success breeds success, and failure gets more failure.

The veiled comments about the pass rate have me wondering. In recent years the California bar exam, once considered a real killer, was seemingly becoming easier to pass. The success rate for first-time takers was increasing steadily. Was that "shocking?" It may have been, but nobody seemed dismayed by that. Now the trend is going down, based on a single year's results, and they are shocked to see that outside the top ranked schools, fewer passed. Maybe that's just a reflection of someone deciding that the pass rate was too high, reflecting the exam having been dumbed down. If the standards have been tightened, that may be good for the profession and for the public. It isn't as if there's a shortage of lawyers at all.

Visduh: There is no question that the better law schools get the pick of the litter, and the smaller, poorly financed schools get the mediocre students, or worse. That's GENERALLY speaking. Some top lawyers have come out of poor law schools. Some who had so-so grades in top-ranked or low-ranked schools may surprise people as they become top lawyers Best, Don Bauder

Law Schools, MBA schools, Business schools have become a "for profit racket. Some of the best lawyers in our country's history never even attended law school. They read books on their own and served legal apprenticeships working for experienced lawyers...Names that come to mind include Abraham Lincoln(a very fine lawyer...you can still read cases that he worked on and his very brilliant writing and incisive logic). Read that former famous lawyer Melvin Belli graduated last in his class, Clarence Darrow and many more.Darrow attended law school for one year and quit. List of Lawyers who did not attend law school includes: Patrick Henry (1736-1799), member of the Continental Congress, governor of Virginia 2. John Jay (1745-1829), first chief justice of the Supreme Court 3. John Marshall (1755-1835), chief justice of the Supreme Court 4. William Wirt (1772-1834), attorney general 5. Roger B. Taney (1777-1864), secretary of the treasury, chief justice of the Supreme Court 6. Daniel Webster (1782-1852), secretary of state 7. Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873), senator, chief justice of the Supreme Court 8. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), president 9. Stephen Douglas (1813-1861), representative, senator from Illinois 10. Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), defense attorney in Scopes trial of 1925. [While Clarence Darrow attended a law school for one year, he did not distinguish himself and preferred to study law on his own. He received the greater part of his education in a law office in Youngstown, Ohio.] 11. Robert Storey (b. 1893), president of the American Bar Association (1952-1953) 12. J. Strom Thurmond (b. 1902), senator, governor of South Carolina 13. James O. Eastland (b. 1904), senator from Mississippi Wallechinsky, David, "The Book of Lists," 1977

Law schools have turned into "money factories" that do not necessarily train students to actually practice and succeed at the law. Even the so called "non profit lawschools" enrich the faculty, administrators and act as "cash cows" for universities that they are attached to. Have read that the Bar Exam is an exclusionary device and a crafty way to "price fix" keep legal prices high and exclude certain numbers of lawyers from the legal profession. It certainly does a very poor job of screening out criminals, rip off artists, thiefs and con artists if the monthly attorney disciplinary reports are any indication of the character and quality of lawyers being spit out of law schools these days.

As far as Thomas Jefferson law goes, it appears to have had some financial management problems relating to building its new building in downtown San Diego by Petco Park. And, Thomas Jefferson's timing building its new building couldn't have been worse...the market crash, real estate recession etc... My read is that Thomas Jefferson used to be called Western State University San Diego. It became a Non Profit law school and its name was changed to Thomas Jefferson law at least 10-15 years ago. The Dean at Thomas Jefferson for over 10 years was a honors graduate of Harvard Law School. I looked at Thomas Jefferson's list of faculty and most of their faculty are graduates of big name ABA law schools. I read that Thomas Jefferson has produced many successful Alumni including Duncan Hunter Sr., Bonnie Dumanis and more. The problems at Thomas Jefferson may be related to its attracting many poor and middle class working fulltime students who go to law school part time and at nights in an attempt to create new careers for themselves. Thomas Jefferson students, for the most part, are not "trust fund kids" who can sit around and study all day and drink beer all night like at traditional law schools. Thomas Jefferson students' problems with the Bar Exam could be that the Bar Exam has its own "institutional biases" against those kinds of students......and not that those students are any less deserving than students at more traditional, better funded law schools.. Just my take from research, reading and talking to people who know...

I imagine the enrollment contract is written by experienced lawyers and is air tight though.