Brooklyn Dean Campaigns for Graduate Employment

Nicholas Allard
Rick Kopstein/NYLJ

For Nicholas Allard, his transition from Washington, D.C., attorney and lobbyist to Brooklyn Law School dean is not as abrupt as one might think.

"The number one thing I did was problem solving and that's what I have to do right here," Allard said in an interview at his office, which has a view overlooking Brooklyn's state and federal courts with Manhattan in the distance.

Allard, 60, took up his new position in July after seven years at Patton Boggs, where he co-chaired the firm's public policy department and co-chaired its government advocacy practice.

Allard lauds Brooklyn Law's faculty, alumni and student body and says the school is "financially sound." But he still must confront deeper problems faced by all law schools: What changes should be made to curriculum, where will graduates find employment and how to attract the best students from smaller applicant pools? For example, applications to Brooklyn Law plummeted to about 4,600 this year from more than 6,000 in 2011.

Board members and faculty say Allard -- who was in private practice for more than 20 years but also has taught and wrote on subjects such as lobbying, communications and Internet law -- is up for the challenge.

The new dean is "the right person at the right time," said faculty member Claire Kelly, a member of the search committee.

"I wanted somebody who was nimble enough to operate in both worlds and understand what strategies might succeed, and be open to new ideas, but also see value in tested methodologies and ways of doing things," she said.

Eastern District of New York Judge Edward Korman, a member of Brooklyn Law's board who also served on the search committee, noted that the school recognized the advantages of selecting a private attorney.

"The 'outside-the-box' appointment was good for the law school and what we needed now," he said, adding that those needs include fundraising and securing employment for students. "There was a feeling among trustees and faculty that someone from the 'employer segment' of the legal economy could be extremely helpful."

Stuart Subotnick, chairman of the school's board and its search committee, said students' future employment is the school's "most important responsibility."

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New Enrollment Drops Again in U.S. Graduate Schools

New enrollment in graduate schools fell last year for the second consecutive year, according to a report from the Council of Graduate Schools.

The declines followed surges in enrollment in 2008 and 2009 as many unemployed workers sought a haven during the recession. Financial considerations probably played a role in the shift. Students may be dissuaded from continuing their education in part because of the increasing debt burden from their undergraduate years.

Additionally, state budget cuts are forcing public institutions to reduce aid for graduate students, who in some disciplines have traditionally been paid to attend postgraduate programs.

The number of students enrolled in master’s and doctoral programs (excluding law and certain other first professional degrees like M.D.’s) declined by 1.7 percent from the fall of 2010 to fall 2011.

Among American citizens and permanent residents, matriculation fell by 2.3 percent. In contrast, temporary residents increased their enrollment by 7.8 percent.

Temporary residents made up 16.9 percent of all students in American graduate schools, and that figure has been growing as foreign governments pay for more of their citizens to obtain education in the United States, particularly in technical areas. Temporary residents represented 45.5 percent of all students enrolled in engineering graduate programs in the United States, and 42.4 percent of those in American mathematics and computer science graduate programs.

The changes in 2011 varied by discipline, with education having the biggest drop-off in new graduate enrollment at 8.8 percent.

“The states are in financial stress,” said Debra Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. “The school systems especially are in financial stress. Teachers are no longer being provided time off to get graduate degrees, and schools are no longer funding principals to go back and get principal certificates.”

The next sharpest decline was in programs for arts and humanities, where new graduate enrollment fell by 5.4 percent, perhaps reflecting that career prospects for such graduates are becoming more limited as colleges lay off even tenured faculty members in these areas.

Health sciences, on the other hand, experienced a big increase in enrollment. The health care industry has been hiring consistently and robustly during the recession and the weak recovery.

The number of new graduate students studying health care rose by 6.4 percent, which was slightly slower growth than the average in the last decade. The average annual change in new graduate enrollment in health sciences from 2001 to 2011 was 9.8 percent.

Enrollment showed more tepid growth in business, which was up by 2.6 percent, and in mathematics and computer sciences, up by 1.6 percent.

While overall enrollment for graduate school declined, the number of applications rose by 4.3 percent. It was the sixth consecutive increase in application volume.

The Council of Graduate Schools did not have data on how many schools the typical applicant applies to, so it was unclear if there were more people applying in 2011 than in the previous year. But there was an increase in the number of people taking the Graduate Record Examinations (G.R.E.), a test that many graduate schools require as part of student applications.

As the number of grad school applications has risen, the share of those applications leading to offers of admission has been falling. In 2007, the acceptance rate across all master’s and doctoral programs was 44.6 percent, whereas in 2011 it was 40.8 percent.

Women continued to outnumber men in the nation’s postgraduate programs, 58 percent to 42 percent, in the 2011 report.

The Council of Graduate Schools, a membership organization for institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada, based its findings on an annual survey of American graduate schools. The latest report reflected the responses from 655 institutions, which collectively award 81 percent of the master’s degrees and 92 percent of the doctorates each year.