BLS Freezes Salaries to Avert Tuition Increase

Brooklyn Law School has announced it will freeze faculty salaries, in order to keep 2009 tuition increases low. Dean Joan G. Wexler discussed the issue in a letter to students:

… I am writing to let you know that when the School sets tuition for the next academic year, we will be mindful of the current difficult economic times and the financial pressures that you face.

Over the past five years, annual tuition increases have been approximately 6.2% for entering students and 5% for upperclass students. I anticipate that any increase for the 2009-10 academic year will be substantially lower…

… All departmental budgets will be carefully reviewed, but we will be able to keep our tuition increase to a minimum by foregoing salary increases for deans and almost all administrators, faculty, and staff in the coming year. The savings will be passed on to you.

… We are imposing this limit on our tuition increase not because we have to, but because we are able to, and because we know it will help you deal with these challenging economic times.

Brooklyn Law School’s faculty includes 68 full-time professors and five emeriti faculty as well as adjunct faculty consisting of practitioners, public officials and judges who teach specialized courses. BLS is not the only law school feeling the economic pinch. Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog provides a list of other law schools responding to the economic downturn. But none of them has tied budgetary cutbacks to student tuition as clearly as BLS.