The Legal Foundation of Student Dismissal in Professional Education Programs

Professional education programs are bound to ensuring that their graduates meet both academic and professional standards of performance. These standards are often set through disciplinary expectations, professional associations, accrediting bodies, and/or licensure. Due to the association of post-graduate sanctions of licensed providers with professional conduct issues at the pre-licensure or pre-graduate level, academic programs should be concerned with modeling, monitoring, and assessing these standards of their students. However, literature suggests that professional programs are not always acting on their concerns of student performance in these domains due to concern of legal action. Therefore, the purpose of this commentary is to offer a synopsis of the legal foundations and guiding principles that support the decision-making of professional education programs and its faculty. With proper structure and guidance though interpretation of existing case law, professional education programs are best positioned to not only evaluate cognitive ability, but also non-cognitive behaviors and professional expectations of students in their professional education programs.