Westcliff last month finalized its acquisition of Western State, paving the way for the law school to rebuild its student population, while the privately held owner continues to pursue its own growth initiatives in Irvine.
“Western State has the richest history in law in Orange County,” Anthony Lee, president and chief executive of Westcliff, told the Business Journal.
“It’s the county’s oldest law school with more than 11,000 graduates, the majority of whom work and live in Southern California. Its footprint is instilled in the fabric of the community.”
Western State has produced more than 150 California judges and about 15% of Orange County’s public defenders and district attorneys, according to its website. Notable alumni include Erick Larsh, the incoming presiding judge of the Orange County Superior Court and George Gascón, the newly elected district attorney of Los Angeles.
“Working alongside an institution like Westcliff that genuinely values education and is committed to the quality experience students receive is a privilege,” Western State Dean Allen Easley said.
“We look forward to continuing to serve students and the community with the integrity for which both schools are recognized.”
Western State’s Long Road
Westcliff said it would purchase the law school for a dollar in mid-2019, after Western State’s previous owner, Dream Center Education Holdings LLC, was placed under a federal receivership and the campus lost its eligibility for federal loans.
After meeting Western State’s leadership team and attending a touching graduation ceremony, where a faculty member celebrated his own son’s graduation, “we were blown away,” Lee said.
“We could see that we shared similar values. We both have a family-like supportive culture, where we support our students from beginning to end. We care about community, quality education and the employment outcomes of our students.”
Westcliff University received approval last year from the American Bar Association (ABA) to acquire Western State, which allowed Western State to retain its ABA approval, giving graduates the right to sit for the bar exam in any state. Western State consistently produces high employment outcomes—for example, 73% of its 2019 class is employed in the legal field—among ABA law schools, Lee added.
Western State is now tasked with the challenge of recruitment; it was unable to enroll new students in 2019 and received three second-year transfer students. It enrolled an additional 90 first-year students in 2020, for a total of 205 current students. By comparison, it had about 415 students in 2019.
Western State’s revival is also a good sign for Southern California’s waning legal education market. California Southern University’s School of Law and Whittier Law School, both in Costa Mesa, closed last year, while Ontario-based University of LaVerne’s College of Law and Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego opted to drop their ABA accreditations.
Building Back With Digital
Western State is optimistic about its future, given that more students are likely to seek a law degree during a recession—particularly at schools that have demonstrated an ability to successfully transition to remote learning—Lee said.
“We’ve been doing online learning for more than 10 years,” Lee said, noting Westcliff used the beta version of Zoom long before video conferencing tools became a mainstay of online education.
“We’ve used our expertise in distance learning to help support Western State, which has been beneficial given that remote instruction is not as popular in the field of law.”
Both Western State and Westcliff transitioned to live online instruction last March, and the law school said it plans to continue to offer remote options in the future. It’s also allowing alumni to take the bar exam in quiet classrooms with secure Internet connections on campus, and expects to continue these efforts if the bar remains online throughout 2021.
Among its efforts to boost digital awareness, Westcliff shifted its Academic Resource Center (ARC) online, including time management and peer collaboration tools for students. It has seen student engagement on its ARC platform more than triple since last March.
It also enhanced its Learning, Innovation and Teaching Excellence Center with a focus on tech-savvy learning styles, it said. The platform offers webinars on how to use educational games and incorporate the flipped classroom model—in which students read lecture materials on their own and attend collaborative online sessions to evaluate, analyze and apply their learnings.
Footprint Shuffle
As part of the acquisition, Western State relocated its headquarters to Westcliff’s campus at 16715 Von Karman Ave. The law school previously leased space at 1 Banting in the Irvine Spectrum, where California State University, Fullerton, maintained a satellite campus.
Cal State Fullerton, which purchased 1 and 3 Banting for about $30.5 million in 2013, said earlier this year it is selling the two buildings and plans to lease back space at 3 Banting until the end of its semester in June.
Westcliff announced a move of its own in August; its main campus is now about a mile down the road from Western State at 17877 Von Karman Ave. Part of the Intersect office park near John Wayne Airport, the new facilities include about 20 classrooms, computer labs, meeting rooms, as well as administrative offices and a staff lounge.
The office space will facilitate growth plans in arts, technology and engineering, entrepreneurship, with state-of-the-art audio and visual equipment, as well as dedicated space for an innovation center that recently accepted its first cohort of startup companies to its incubator, Lee said.
Additional real estate purchases are likely in Westcliff’s future; the university plans to open its STEAM Preparatory Academy for high school students in the spring of 2021. It will begin online and later have onsite and boarding facilities.
Westcliff’s Bright Future
The addition of Western State to Westcliff was one of several signs of growth for the institution, which has expanded its student population from about 300 in 2015 to over 3,000 today.
“It’s a blessing to be able to lead such a fast-growing university,” Lee said. “We want to serve students in an innovative and creative way with practical, relevant education that prepares them for careers.”
Westcliff, which is best known for its MBA program, has focused on education and business certificates and degrees since its founding in 1993. Despite its growth, the institution has continued to prioritize small classrooms and maintains a student to teacher ratio of 8 to 1 on average.
The university launched a College of Technology and Engineering last summer, answering student demand for education and career preparedness in a rapidly growing field. The programs “complement existing business offerings” and “make our students more competitive,” Lee said, noting that technology and engineering jobs are growing at a rapid rate with more than 300,000 jobs available at present.
While the new college features bachelor’s and master’s degrees in information technology, computer science and engineering management, it also includes a coding bootcamp that launches students into web development careers.
“We’re continuing to find ways to offer credentials for our students to help get them jobs earlier on,” Lee said, noting Westcliff wants all of its students to communicate and collaborate well as well as understand how to analyze situations and think critically.
Westcliff is also boosting its business offerings with a new SMART Capstone Project that allows MBA students to work directly with startup companies and gain real-world experience.
