Academics & Dismissal

The clock

Where are you in this?

What is still open to you depends less on what you are called than on how far the process has already gone. Find the last thing that happened.

  1. 01A letter, an email, a request to meetNothing formal yet. The most room you will ever have, and the stage where an off-the-record conversation does the most damage.What to do first →
  2. 02A charge, or a hearing dateThe allegation is written down and a process is running on the school’s calendar. Everything you do now goes into a record someone reads later.Find the matter that matches →
  3. 03A decision, and an appeal windowThe shortest clock on this site. Appeal windows are commonly five to ten business days, and they are rarely extended.Appeals and reinstatement →
  4. 04The appeal is decidedThe campus process is finished. What is left sits outside it — an OCR complaint, a demand, an injunction, a suit.What is left after the appeal →
  5. 05It is over, and it is on your recordA transcript notation, a dean’s letter, a disclosure you will have to make for years. Some of it can still be corrected long after the fact.Records, and what follows you →

Not sure which one you are in? Send me the last thing the school sent you — zachary@astudentslawyer.com

Academic cases are quieter than conduct cases and often more consequential. A dismissal for academic performance, an honor code finding, or a failed remediation can end a degree that is nearly complete — and courts give schools considerably more deference over academic judgments than over disciplinary ones.

Why academic cases are different

The Supreme Court has instructed reviewing courts to show great respect for faculty professional judgment on genuinely academic decisions, and not to override them unless the decision is such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms as to show that no professional judgment was actually exercised. See Regents v. Ewing.

That sounds like a wall, and it has one important door in it. Deference is conditional on process. An institution that can show it deliberated — that it considered the alternatives, weighed them, and reached a defensible conclusion — is very hard to challenge. An institution that announced a conclusion is not. See Wynne v. Tufts.

So academic challenges rarely succeed on the argument that the faculty were wrong. They succeed on:

  • The school departed from its own published standards or procedure.
  • The decision was administrative rather than academic, and is dressed as academic.
  • No one with relevant expertise actually evaluated the question.
  • A disability was disclosed and never addressed, or an accommodation was approved and never delivered.
  • The reasons shifted between the decision and the appeal.

The matters covered here

Dismissal and standing

Integrity

Graduate and professional programs

The disability overlap

A large share of academic dismissals involve a student who was unwell, undiagnosed, or accommodated on paper and not in practice. The timing of when a disability was raised is frequently decisive: a request made before the failure is an accommodation, and the same request made after it is a plea for retroactive relief, which is a much weaker position.

If that describes your situation, start with accommodations by type and clinical placements and technical standards.

First steps

  1. Find the deadline. Academic appeal windows are often shorter than disciplinary ones and are enforced strictly.
  2. Get the decision in writing, with reasons. A decision without reasons is itself a problem.
  3. Get the governing policy as it existed when you matriculated.
  4. Assemble the record — every email, every accommodation letter, every medical note, every warning you did or did not receive.
  5. Do not resign or withdraw before understanding what that does to your record and your ability to return.

Get in touch before the appeal is filed. The appeal is usually the only bite you get.

General information, not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this page.

Osteopathic students: Osteopathic medical school dismissal — the rules every DO program runs on covers the COCA accreditation elements a college of osteopathic medicine must publish and follow, the COMLEX-USA attempt limits and how school caps differ from the NBOME’s, the six-year completion clock, how student progress committees are structured, and what the law gives a dismissed DO student at a public school and at a private one.