BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 834
Page 1
CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 834 (Williams)
As Amended May 12, 2014
2/3 vote. Urgency
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|ASSEMBLY: | |(May 24, 2013) |SENATE: |34-0 |(June 19, |
| | | | | |2014) |
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(vote not relevant)
COMMITTEE VOTE : 13-0 (June 24, 2014) RECOMMENDATION :
concur
(Higher Ed.)
Original Committee Reference: JUD.
SUMMARY : Authorizes a law school accredited by the American Bar
Association (ABA), and owned by an institution operating under the
Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) within the
Department of Consumer Affairs, to satisfy the disclosure
requirements of the School Performance Fact Sheet (SPFS) through
alternative means.
The Senate amendments delete the Assembly version of this bill, and
instead:
1)Authorize a law school to satisfy the SPFS disclosure through
alternative means if the law school meets all of the following
requirements:
a) Accredited by the Council of the Section of Legal Education
and Admissions to the Bar of the ABA;
b) Owned by an institution authorized to operate by the BPPE;
c) Reports graduate salary information and other information
to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP); and,
d) Approved to operate by the BPPE.
2)Require disclosures per the alternative SPFS to students pursuant
to all of the following:
a) The law school must comply with disclosure requirements of
AB 834
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Standard 509 of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for
Approval of Law Schools;
b) The law school must provide completion rates, placement
rates, bar passage rates, and salary and wage information of
graduates to prospective students prior to enrollment through
the law school application process administered by the Law
School Admission Council (LSAC);
c) The law school must provide to prospective students any
additional information required to be reported on the SPFS
that is not reported pursuant to the aforementioned,
including, but not limited to, the most recent three-year
cohort default rate (disaggregated) reported by the United
States Department of Education (USDE) for the law school and
the percentage of enrolled students receiving federal student
loans; and
d) The law school must provide the information to prospective
students by clearly posting the information in a conspicuous
location on the law school's Internet Web site; and must
annually provide the information to the BPPE.
EXISTING LAW requires institutions approved by the BPPE to provide
prospective students a SPFS that contains specified information,
including: completion rates; placement rates; license examination
passage rates; salary and wage information; a description of how
this information is calculated; a statement as to where a reader
can obtain a list of employment positions and salary sources;
specified statements; and, if the institution participates in
federal financial aid programs, the institutions cohort default
rate and percentage of enrolled students receiving federal loans.
AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY , this bill would have expanded the
California Energy Commission's administrative civil penalty
enforcement authority to include energy efficiency and water
efficiency standards for buildings.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations Committee,
pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible state costs.
COMMENTS : The USDE requirement that an institution have "state
authorization" in order to be eligible for Title IV federal student
financial aid is prompting at least one law school in California,
currently exempt from BPPE approval, to seek BPPE approval to
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maintain Title IV eligibility. As a result, that school will be
subject to the SPFS requirements. The SPFS was designed to ensure
that prospective students could make informed decisions when
enrolling in an institution; by requiring every BPPE-approved
institution to provide similarly calculated data in an established
format, students would be able to make apples-to-apples comparisons
of educational program outcomes.
This bill is designed to address an unanticipated problem for
Western State College of Law at Argosy University, owned by the
Education Management Corporation, and ensure that students
attending this institution do not receive duplicative and
potentially conflicting data regarding enrollment and outcomes,
simply because the institution is no longer exempt like all other
law schools. According to the author, the SPFS requirements would
require different calculations than those established by the ABA
and NALP and would ultimately provide less data to students than
they are already provided through the LSAC application process.
Under ABA Standard 509, ABA accredited law schools are required to
provide detailed student enrollment and graduate outcome
information to prospective students and to the general public. Law
schools also report employment and salary outcomes for graduates to
NALP. Prospective students access this data through the law school
application process administered by the LSAC. Through the LSAC Web
site, students are provided a single point of entry to access this
data in order to make comparative analysis of the law schools to
which they are considering applying. According to the author, if
Western State College of Law becomes the only law school to seek
BPPE approval, the school would be the only law school providing
students with a fact sheet, potentially undermining a primary
purpose of the SPFS which is to allow students to make
apples-to-apples comparisons of institutional outcomes prior to
enrollment.
Analysis Prepared by : Laura Metune / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960FN: 0004109