Money Quote: The tuition paid by new students — tuition they’re often paying with federal loans — includes the cost of covering the previous students’ loan payments.
ABA Changes Graduate Data Collection Timeline
Law schools now get a whole extra month to
Law School Professors Face Less Job Security
Money Quote: "I understand the need for academic freedom…. But as an industry we have a need for flexibility that we just don't have right now."
What honorable and ethical "public servants," huh?!?!
ReplyDeleteNando, I have a piece going up on Wednesday that will drive you insane.
Delete"The tuition paid by new students — tuition they’re often paying with federal loans — includes the cost of covering the previous students’ loan payments."
ReplyDeleteAnd to think I balked when people used to call law school a Ponzi scheme.
That's what I was thinking too. Boosting the tuition of incoming students to pay for the tuition of previous students? Has some aspects of a Ponzi scheme.
DeleteBut what was the government thinking not putting any limits on how much they would guarantee with GradPlus? Essentially allowing grad schools to set whatever price they feel they can get away with.
I don't know - perhaps a naïve trust that graduate colleges would behave honourably? Or a belief that the loan issuers would set limits (but why should they when the government is guaranteeing everything?)
When student loans became non-dischargable, law schools in particular, and higher education in general, should have not raised their tuition more than the rate of inflation, if that.
DeleteBut instead, the evil pigs raised it way past the rate of inflation.
Their endowments should be seized and used to pay off the non-dischargable loans they benefited from.
I think the joke here will be on Georgetown eventually. They've committed themselves to funding this LRAP regardless of whether the feds will allow them to go on raising tuition BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY regardless of whether they can keep warm bodies coming in the door. Tuition only keeps flowing IF students keep flowing.
DeleteIf Georgetown has actually committed itself to paying for the full ten years, they could suddenly find themselves holding the bag with the music having stopped...
From the comments at the WSJ article:
ReplyDelete"A couple of dirty secrets from the legal education field...
* The third year of law school is pretty-much a waste of time, and the alleged need for that year is largely a function of the need for schools to pay the bills.
* A substantial number of law students are never going to earn a payback from their investment in a legal education, and their presence is grudgingly tolerated by faculty because they understand the financial implications of weeding-out those who probably shouldn't be there.
* Unlike prospective medical students, who get the message of whether they're worthy of becoming a doctor during the admissions process, law school students aren't told until they hit a) the bar exam or b) the job market that they weren't cut out for the legal field.
* Everything necessary to pass the bar exam can be learned in a review class (and the need for such classes calls into question what's being taught in law schools in the first place)."
"Put the law courses on-line and students pay access to them, with the fee going directly to the one teaching them. The ABA eventually certifies them as qualified after they have undertaken a certain # of courses, interned at a law firm and taken the Bar exam. Embrace the future!"
Exactly. Law school is a complete waste of time. It doesn't teach you how to pass the bar or how to practice law. What are the students even paying for?
DeleteYou mean to tell me my Law School lied to me? That all that money, time, and effort won't by me a job... let alone happiness?!? That I'll be indebted for decades, under-employed for the rest of my entire life, and unhappy to boot? And that the skills and prestige of my shiny new JD are worthless outside law?!? That the public despises lawyers, and most people delight in my plight or at least thinks it serves the greater economic good?!?
ReplyDeleteWas it all just lies??
And to think, my law school didn't even have the Goddamned common courtesy to give me a reach-around.
can anyone repost the WSJ article? its behind a pay wall
ReplyDeleteYou can get past paywalls by typing the article name into Google News.
DeleteDidn't work for me.
DeleteI don't know about the WSJ article, but there's a must-read article entitled, "Layoffs At Big Firm In Connecticut May Be Sign Of Things To Come," by Jay Stapleton in The Connecticut Law Tribune for Aug. 13, 2013. It's not behind a pay wall, and it's an excellent read.
ReplyDeleteOne of several Money Quotes:
"In what may be a sign of continued weakness in the commercial litigation market, one of Connecticut's largest grossing law firms confirmed last week that it is laying off as many as 40 people, including support staffers and attorneys."
Unquote.
Income based repayment. What income?
Several recent grads should publicly burn their now worthless law degrees in front of a selected TTT on the upcoming first day of classes, 2013. Sidewalk counselors should approach class-bound lemmings and make impassioned pleas in an attempt to talk them out of cruelly taking an innocent life-- THIER OWN.
The Operation Rescue model! Brilliant! Hand them case studies of people like the ones getting whacked at Day Pitney and what became of them after biglaw cast them out. Some of those lawyers are "counsel" - essentially permanent associates who were supposed to be off the up-or-out track - so nothing is sacred save a massive book of business. The CT Law Tribune Article mentions Day Pitney factoring a decreasing demand for legal services into its decision.
Delete