UP Law Bar Performance and QPI

Some time in the 90’s (don’t know when but it was after I graduated in ‘93), UP Law implemented a new rule which said that only students with grades higher than 2.75 (cumulative GPA) will graduate.  If at the end of each year, a student’s GPA falls below that rate, then he or she will be dismissed.  For freshmen, the cut-off was slightly lower (2.85, I think) to account for the inevitable culture shock everyone gets in the first year of law school. This whole program was called QPI which stands for Quantitative Point Index (at least that’s what I believe; it doesn’t really matter).  The objective of the QPI was to increase the percentage of UP Law Bar examinees. 

Well, did it work?

Let’s look at the following table which shows UP Bar performance in the last 10 years.

  Year         First Time         Retakers       OverAll

  2007         80.19%             55.00%         76.19%

  2006         85.84%             58.62%         80.28%

  2005         75.63%             50.00%         73.28%

  2004         89.36%             70.83%         85.59%

  2003         81.44%             52.17%         75.83%

  2002         85.85%             38.46%         80.67%

  2001         97.70%             50.00%         88.07%

  2000         80.58%             44.00%         73.44%

  1999         75.27%             23.08%         68.87%

  1998         95.33%             83.87%         92.75%

  AVE          84.72%             52.60%         79.50%

Do you see a trend?  I don’t.  Although maybe it would be possible to check our performance vis-a-vis other schools to see if, relative to them, UP Law performed better during the same period.  Some the fluctuation you see such as the 97.7% stat for the 2001 Bar reflects a higher-than-average performance by all law schools.  

Either way, I don’t think there’s been appreciable increase in the Bar performance for the period during which QPI was in place.  Maybe there was an improvement for Retakers (which would mean QPI makes for better retakers).   But if QPI was designed to improve Bar performance, there’s nothing yet to indicate that the impact is positive.

On the other hand, look at this: 

  Year         No. of cum laude         GPA >2.0
 

  2007            5*                      26

  2006            4                       36

  2005            5                       27

  2004            4                       22 

  2003            3                       20

  2002            1                        9

  2001            3                       15

  2000            0                       12

  1999            0                       16

  1998            4                       14

*In 2007, there was 1 Magna Cum Laude

The corect data point to use would be the average GPA of all graduates but I don’t have the time to do the math.  So I just counted the number of honor students and those who received a GPA greater than 2.0.   

Do you see a trend?

It’s upward.  More cum laudes; more grads with a GPA greater than 2.0 since QPI.  It’s possible though that the upward trend can be explained by an increase in the number of graduating students and a more accurate number to use would be the percentage of students with grades greater than 2.0.  Again, I don’t have the time. So, I’m using the above information as a proxy.  

With all the previos disclaimers . . .  

It seems that in the past 10 years, our students have become smarter.  Maybe some of them even believe that. In that sense QPI seems to work.  But if they’re getting smarter, why aren’t more of them passing the Bar? 

The short answer is: grade inflation.  When the QPI was set to 2.75, a 3.0 was no longer considered a passing grade (at least psychologically).  I imagine that faculty members were less inclined to give a 3.0.  This meant that the lowest grade one could give without making the student come near QPI would be 2.75.  If that’s the lowest grade, then the highest grade one would be willing to give goes up. Back in my time at the College, it was not unusual for a professor to give only 1 or 2 people in a class a 1.75.  Nowadays, it’s common.

There might also be a less-obvious negative impact to grade inflation on students.  Two successive Law Student Government Presidents didn’t pass the Bar.  Neither did one student who was an active (and successful) debater in international moot court competitions.  My point is that relatively higher GPAs might convince students they have more time to engage in extra-curricular activities when in fact, they’ve not adequately prepared for the Bar. 

So while a professor thinks he’s doing students a favor by giving them higher grades, he might be setting them up for a bigger fall.  Students who graduate from the College might be led to beleive that a career in the profession is in their future when in fact, a large percentage won’t enjoy that privilege.  Ever. 

On the whole, I think it’s obvious that we need to take a closer look at QPI and determine with more convincing data if it works.  One could argue that there have been implementation problems that have plagued the program in the past 10 years.  Maybe new measures can be taken to improve the program.  Maybe we can adopt a new one. 

Whatever happens,  I believe that acheiving a higher (or even a perfect) Bar performance is possible within the next 4 or 5 years.  It will take more than fixing QPI. It will take the combined efforts of the Law School community — even the alumni.  I know the current administration is studying the matter and in time, we can build a consensus on how to deal with this issue. I just hope this happens sooner rather than later.