Ugh! The Deeper I Dig . . .

I begin to realize that these schools are businesses, and the policies they implement aren't there to help anyone but themselves.

IT'S ALL COMING TOGETHER

Back in 2016, Moody's came along and downgraded CWSL's surety bonds from a Baa1 rating to a Baa3 rating. Huh? WTF does that mean!? I'll start from the beginning...

MOODY'S INVESTOR'S SERVICE is a credit rating service. But, unlike Experian, which is a credit reporting service that deals with individuals, Moody's deals with banks, corporations, countries for God sake! You may recall a year or so ago, 10 U.S. banks had their credit rating lowered, much to their chagrin. That was Moody's. Think of them like Experian on a steroid/human growth hormone/Compound V cocktail.Yeah, like that.

Digressing....

You all know what bonds are, right? Don't lie, no you don't. That's fine. A bond is basically like an IOU, a promissory note, of a dollar amount, to be paid back on a fixed date with an additional amount of fixed interest. Now, a surety bond involves 3 parties. Party #2 (usually a government entity) tells Party #1, "Yeah you can conduct your business here, but, we're gonna need you to get an $X bond from this 3rd party, in case, you know - tuitions stop coming in and you default, or you get sued cuz you're doing something shady, etc." It's kinda like malpractice insurance. And 8 years ago, Moody's comes along and is like, we're lowering the credit worthiness of CWSL's bonds cuz we think there's a good chance you won't be able to back them up if you need to. That Baa3 rating is only one step above junk bonds. It's the same rating they give Colombia. That can't feel good.

CWSL'S SAVIOUR

Lest you think Moody's a wham, bam, thank you ma'am kinda credit rating type of company, they did not just leave CWSL high and dry. The offered them some pointers as to what might raise that shitty credit rating of theirs:

" Sustained improvement to student demand including growth in net tuition revenue"

In essence, bring in more cash. As a tier 4 law school, you certainly just can't raise tuitions and expect to draw more students. A plan was needed.

A good place to start is the good ol' American way and exploit minorities. CWSL hands out these P-H-A-T scholarships worth 25%, 50%, 75%, and students gobble them up like Eric Cartman on Halloween. And it worked. Get

you some students from traditionally poorer backgrounds, give them the chance of a lifetime to attend law school then brag how you have the best diversity of any law school there ever was! I am pleased to report that 45.4% of CWSL's student body consists of "racially or ethnically minoritized" students. (33.4% is the national average). Bravo, Indeed!

This chart is data taken from the ABA 509a Required Disclosures.

It shows the number of incoming 1L's for the year, then how many conditional scholarships were given to students, then the percentage of those students who lost their scholarship after the first year. Moody's credit rating drop occurred in 2016 It was probably too late to adjust anything for the incoming 2017 1L's, but you can see the dramatic increase in the percentage of students who lost their scholarships in 2018.

YES, THAT'S RIGHT, CWSL FUCKS OVER THEIR STUDENTS TO IMPROVE THEIR CREDIT RATING!!

I try to put it all together here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWN9NGDh1DE

To recap, Cal Western got a major credit ranking dip in 2016. Instead of enhancing its operational performance, the school decided to exploit its students for more money instead. So they lowered the curve to ensure the majority of its students received a 2.0-2.79 GPA and that only 20% of the students would be able to attain the GPA necessary to hold on to their huge scholarship (the deciding factor for many of them to attend), and the remainder being forced to pay full tuition. This process gets them an extra $4 million dollars per year per class.

And you know what their argument is? "It's not illegal." Wow. Nice,