One California law school is ending its practice of discount pricing in hopes of getting away from a confusing “high tuition, high discount” model.

Inside Higher Ed’s Ry Rivard files this report:

The University of La Verne College of Law is the latest institution, and perhaps the first law school, to stop offering discounts to the top students it wants to attract.

Instead, the Southern California law school will charge all students a flat price of $25,000 a year. Before, its sticker price was $39,000, but many students didn’t pay anywhere near that much. Its 127 students actually paid an average of about $25,000 a year, but the students with the highest test scores paid less. Overall, its discount rate — the share of tuition charges the college forgoes in the form of scholarships — was 46 percent.

La Verne’s dean, Gilbert Holmes, said discount pricing, which colleges use to reward both low-income students and high-achieving students, can widen gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students because the students who are most likely to succeed and make more money after law school graduate with the least debt. Often, students with that preparation have more advantages in their background than lower-scoring students who attend law school.

“You end up creating this gap that gets widened in part, not completely, by the discount model,” he said.

Kyle McEntee, the executive director of Law School Transparency, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group for law school students, said how much students pay too often depends on their ability to negotiate. He said other law schools should think about following La Verne’s lead.

“This flat-based tuition — I think it allows people to just have a better idea up front, before they even apply, about what the costs are,” McEntee said. “So they can do this analysis before wasting an application.”

La Verne’s law school, which saw a huge drop in its enrollment after the American Bar Association’s accreditors denied it full approval in 2011, is betting that it can distinguish itself in the market by ending the pricing games law schools and other colleges play. The school, which started in 2001, now has provisional ABA accreditation. Holmes, who became dean last summer, hopes to raise enrollment to 350 students within several years. He expects the number of students with lower LSAT scores will increase, but he doesn’t expect the average score to drop.

Over the years, some private undergraduate colleges in particular have begun cutting their sticker price and moving away from the “high tuition, high discount” model, which can lead to confusion among applicants who believe the price a college says it charges is what it actually costs. The price cuts – which, for some students, may be more on paper than actual reductions in out-of-pocket expenses – are not a new phenomenon, but the rate at which small colleges are adopting the maneuver, as well as tuition freezes, appears to be picking up speed.