Indiana Tech Law School is advertising for a new dean. Their ad is riddled with errors though, so I took the liberty of correcting it for them:
At best, one would expect applications from a handful of non-accredited California law school deans who are looking to move "up" the ladder, or insiders - andre? - who have already tossed away their academic credibility and have nothing else to lose.
Or I suppose it would be attractive to anyone who cares for nothing except a bigger paycheck no matter what the harm caused to others in the process. I guess that would include the majority of law professors at schools outside the top ten, most of whom know full well they are nothing more than Pied Pipers leading children to lives of debt and depression, most of whom have already silently acquiesced to the existence of this horrendous new establishment, and many of whom could well be dusting off their resumes at this very moment.
Why on earth any legitimate law professor or school administrator (and I use the term "legitimate" very, very loosely indeed) would seek this job is beyond me. It is without a doubt a career-killer and a reputation-destroyer. This school will fail; I don't understand why anyone would risk being the one left holding the bag when the doors finally close.Indiana Tech is searching for anew deanreceiver forthe law schoolits bankrupt vanity project, located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is a short-term temporary position. Theideal candidateunfortunate soul will have substantial experience inlegal education and the legal professionsales (used car preferably, snake oil strongly preferred); possessa visiona weak spine and a delusion for an Indiana Tech Law School thatdifferentiates itself by preparing law students for effective and rewarding careers through providing theoretical training infused with experiential exercises and real-life exposure to lawyers, judges and collaborative opportunitieswill be, in reality, no more than a feeble replica of every other law school in the United States if it hasn't closed by this time next year. Responsibilities of the dean includedeveloping a sound and innovative curriculumusing the same tired curriculum as everywhere else,recruitingdupingstudentssimpletons,facultyhas-been (or never-were) professors, professional cast-offs, and retirement double-dippers, andstaffassorted spongers who add zero value, monitoring and continuously improvingperformanceprofits, and creatingan atmosphere conducive tothe illusion of outstanding teaching and learning. The dean will also be responsible fordeveloping and maintaining law school relationships withbegging for handouts (including more "art") from the legal profession, legal education and state and local communities; and misleading the school to provisional and full approval by the American Bar Association in the minimum time required by the Standards for Approval of Law Schools. The dean is expected to bea creativean unimaginative andcondestructiveteam buildernarcissist working effectivelyacrossto funnel law school profits to all campus departments and into the pockets of faculty and staff via grossly-inflated, unjustifiable compensation packages. The dean willreport tobe subject to the whims of the President of the university and be amemberpuppet of the President's Cabinet.
At best, one would expect applications from a handful of non-accredited California law school deans who are looking to move "up" the ladder, or insiders - andre? - who have already tossed away their academic credibility and have nothing else to lose.
Or I suppose it would be attractive to anyone who cares for nothing except a bigger paycheck no matter what the harm caused to others in the process. I guess that would include the majority of law professors at schools outside the top ten, most of whom know full well they are nothing more than Pied Pipers leading children to lives of debt and depression, most of whom have already silently acquiesced to the existence of this horrendous new establishment, and many of whom could well be dusting off their resumes at this very moment.
Do they think a dynamic dean will turn shit into gold? The dean cannot create jobs out of thin air so no matter how good the new dean is, the students will be unemployed. They could employ a $75,000 project manager in that role or a $750,000 super Chemerisnky dean and the student outcomes will be identical.
ReplyDeleteThe new dean must boast a basic understanding of alchemy, its properties, but most of all, its application. The Hostess Pie Magician waves his pixie wand and poof, a delicious fruit pie appears and so will the prospective dean do the same, only it will be a ticket to be redeemed at any of the nation's top law firms.
DeleteWal-Mart sells much better pies than Hostess for only 68 cents. (wtf, my keyboard doesn't have a cents sign any more!) So that magician can't count on getting paid very much. I wonder what acting dean andre douglas pond cummings is currently getting paid? Probably not very much.
DeletePond Scum is being paid more than he deserves, and more than he would get outside hackademia.
DeleteAnonymous @5:55:
DeleteThe mistake you make is thinking that they even give a damn about outcomes. That is the graduates' responsibility. They get their paychecks regardless of their graduates' outcomes (or so they think), so what do they care if the outcome is the same? The only important thing for them at the end of the day is the amount they have in the bank account. It's the graduates' responsibility to worry about job outcomes.
Campos should apply and put into practice every single one of the common sense solutions to the problems of legal education. Tuition slashed, a real new curriculum from scratch (and no Socratic BS) that focuses entirely on practical skills with archaic theory taught as a two-credit course each semester and 16 credits of writing and editing contracts, court filings, not being a douchebag on the phone or in emails, dealing with dummy clients, basic finance and accounting etc, cap class size at 50, all courses taught by well-paid adjuncts (which would slash operating costs if all tenured professors were dumped), burn the library and use online tools only, etc.
ReplyDeleteThat is the ONLY way I see shITLS surviving. Turn it into a proper radical law school experiment, not a TTTTT.
And *if* he could do that, which is a real long-shot, and *if* the new grads from a new (no network) school were *so* impressive that they made an *immediate* splash, it would still take a decade? or so to make a difference.
DeleteLike the Titanic advertising for a new captain after the iceberg hit.
DeleteCampos should, of course, stay right where he is. He has a cushy sinecure that he would never get again if he left it. Why throw that away for a gig at the U of La Toilette at Fort Wayne that may not even last a year?
DeleteThat will solve the cost issue but there will still be about twice as many graduates as jobs until everyone gets on board.
DeleteCharles, that was an epic editing job! I don't see how this commode will attract any quality candidates. They may be stuck with Pond Scummings for a while.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I was going to suggest that you would be another ideal candidate - you'd have the pleasure of personally being the one who tells the faculty that they are all fired but you'd be happy to write them LORs for Skadden, before turning the lights out and cracking open a celebratory beer for a job well done.
DeleteNow this law school is going to destroy the credibility of Indiana Tech's business school. Who wants to get a business degree from an institution that made such a lousy investment in a law school project?
Delete"Why on earth any legitimate law professor or school administrator (and I use the term 'legitimate' very, very loosely indeed) would seek this job is beyond me."
ReplyDeleteYes--I've wondered the same thing. I suppose if you're an academic who is looking at getting laid off soon and who has no real job prospects, this might seem like a life-preserver worth grabbing.
I'll bet the entire faculty of Vermont Law School applies for this job.
DeleteWho would take the job? Are you kidding? I'd take it in a trice! Yes, I know full well that it won't last much more than a year. But I can't get work of any kind with my law degree. What do I have to lose?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure this is a well paid gig, probably paying three or four times what an average $40K new lawyer gets paid. I'd take it too were it not for the fact that the compensation is stained with the exploitation of the students.
DeleteCharles, I'm so goddamn desperate that I have to take what I can get, however tainted it may be.
DeleteI guess it's survival of the fittest. Sacrificing the futures of five people who actually chose to attend ITLS might well be worth it to save one blameless victim of the scam. Submit that resume guilt-free!
DeleteThe lemmings are going to apply to Indiana Shit Tech whether I become dean or not. At least as dean I'd have a bully pulpit from which to tell them all to leave—right before I fired Pond Scum.
DeleteThe one error that I see in your revised version is the reference to profits. This toilet won't ever see any profits. Just breaking even is out of reach. So much red ink will gush from Indiana Tech Law Skule that the Maumee River will change color.
ReplyDeleteGood catch. This school is an accountant's nightmare. It's almost as if there's something like the plot of The Producers going on, as nobody in their right mind can ever have expected ITLS to ever turn a profit.
DeleteI accidentally blew some coffee up my nose as I read this post! I would love to be the one who personally boots these leeches and snake oil salesmen out of this establishment.
ReplyDeleteA JDU poster pointed out this about Indiana Tech. They have no second year courses offered as of this date.
ReplyDeletehttp://law.indianatech.edu/academics/curriculum/courses/
Isn't that kind of weird?
Worth keeping an eye on. Good catch. Hopefully it stays that way.
DeleteThe description of the course on contracts refers to "the parole [sic] evidence rule". Are they expecting their contract with the student-lemmings to land them in prison?
DeleteThat reminds me of those situations where a child goes missing and the cops notice that mom is already referring to the kid in the past tense.
DeleteTheer will be plenty of candidates who will be in the last phase of their career, and they will negotiate a 3 year minimum contract with plenty of incentives if they connect one additional ass to a chair.
ReplyDelete"The dean is expected to be an unimaginative and destructive narcissist..." lol
ReplyDeleteIs there any current law professor who wouldn't qualify?
I wouldn't focus too much on the formal qualifications listed in the job announcement. The whole process is apparently a ruse, probably required by ABA accreditation standards but never intended to attract a viable outside candidate. The obvious intention is to legitimize the hiring of Andre Cummings as permanent dean. Permanent, that is, until the law school closes next year.
ReplyDeleteWhat an unabashed farce that law school has been, from start to finish.
I hope you're right. I just can't see how anyone connected with that university is still thinking, "Hey, let's give it a couple more years..."
DeleteIf Pond Scum becomes permanent (!) dean, they'll have to hire another profe$$or to teach his courses on civil procedure and (good god) ethics.
DeleteIf I were andre etc etc cummings I'd be a bit disappointed I weren't being given the position. I mean he's doing the job now.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering whether andre douglas pond cummings will do better than Peter Alexander at bringing in minority students. In spite of andre's pretensions, Peter just looked better suited to the task. I'm not sure why.
DeleteThat's a huge part of andre's job, but he most likely won't do it very well.
Why, you don't think that prospective racialized candidates will just lap up those four lower-case names and that scholarshit on law & hip-hop?
DeleteI think Nando should apply for it.
ReplyDeleteOr I suppose it would be attractive to anyone who cares for nothing except a bigger paycheck no matter what the harm caused to others in the process. I guess that would include the majority of law professors at schools outside the top ten, most of whom know full well they are nothing more than Pied Pipers leading children to lives of debt and depression, most of whom have already silently acquiesced to the existence of this horrendous new establishment, and many of whom could well be dusting off their resumes at this very moment.
ReplyDeleteNaw. It's obvious to most law professors that some institutions are going to go under, and law profs are too risk averse to trade a temporarily high salary with a tenure offer that means jack shit for their current tenured position at an institution that they're telling themselves is certain to survive.
These guys are going to hang on until the last federally-insured student loan dollar is spent.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely right. The last wave of the incoming tide has broken and reached the highest point on the beach the high tide will reach. The tide will now start rolling back. There will be no more new law schools. Schools will start to close. From the perspective of law profs and deans they must wait and try, through open admissions or whatever else it takes, to get a big enough share of a shrinking pool of lemmings to keep their toilet open while others sink until things stabilize, which at some point they will. Even if their toilet sinks they have no place else to go as they are worthless to firms or corporations, so as you say they will stay on board until the end comes.
DeleteThis. With Indiana Tech, it's only a question of how long the university wants to continue bankrolling them. The scum-of-the-earth staff will gladly take their cushy jobs for as long as that lasts. Be assured that there are insider connections who know with a high degree of certainty how long the money will be kept flowing. Thus, the faculty there knows how long their jobs are safe for and can plan their exit strategies with some measure of leisure and cushioning.
DeleteIt's all about the money.
The school will close. It's only a question of when. We do not know that. But rest assured someone / some group does. And the faculty have inroads to that knowledge. The students are simply along for the ride, as always.
The best part is that very few new professors will be hired for the next 10 years or so. So those who learn the "continental philosophy" or "high school term paper" approaches to law will have to find real jobs, either as practicing lawyers or in the burgeoning service economy. This will spell the end of whatever influence individuals like Brian Leiter or Nancy Leong ever had over their students. If the debt-enslaved students can't get a job by copying what you're doing, they're likely to ignore everything you have to say.
DeleteNo more new law schools? Isn't there a Northern Texas or some such thing that is about to open?
Delete1:48 PM - you are absolutely right.
DeleteUNT Dallas College of Law is slated to open this fall.
I wonder if it chose its name knowing that it would be receiving plenty of attention from us. At least ITLS made its detractors work a little to find an insulting (yet apt) name (shITLS). UNT Dallas is handing it to us on a plate. No prizes for guessing which letter should be tacked onto the front.
More to come on this school...
hUNT? rUNT?
Delete1:48 again: That reminds me of a joke from Australia. A teacher asked a boy to write on the blackboard the name of his favorite television show. He wrote "CUNT". When asked what he had had in mind to write, he said "Sea 'Unt".
DeleteI hope this isn't too far off topic. fwiw, I hate and deplore the destructive effects of the law school scam. I'm making this comment as a social experiment.
ReplyDeleteIt's been over 24 hours since a new comment was added to this blog. Is that because no one bothered to comment, or is it because no one bothered to approve the comments?
All this talk about Indiana Tech. It's hard to keep up with the sewage flows these days.
ReplyDeleteCan we get a list going? Can we get an OTLSS post going? How many law schools are on the likely-to-die-by-the-end-of-next- academic-year-list?
Is the following complete? If not, please add.
Vermont
Brooklyn
Appalachian
Albany
Wiedener
Florida Coastal
Indiana Tech
New York Law
Cooley
Thomas Jefferson
UC Irvine (very small class and not permanently accredited)
La Verne
Regent
Nova Southeastern
Pace
Western New England
Suffolk
University of Saint Thomas
Infilaw, generally.
Any school with tens of millions in bond debt that is also a stand-alone law school.
Any school that had tiny classes before the steep enrollment declines.
Any school in a state with a lot of law schools that is not the top law school in the state.
Any law school with a class of tenured do-nothings getting paid 3-4 times the "competitive" salary in a price-fixed, pampered, bubble, out-of-touch-and-gunna-crash system.
Any law school with rated debt downgraded two notches or more since 2010.
Any law school with a greater than 1:1 of annual revenue : debt.
Any law school with a real employment at 9-months of 50% or lower.
There's way more trash that could be tacked onto the list of trash schools above.
Vermont is toast because it does not have a population base from which to draw commuter students.
DeleteBeyond that, however, we must remember that there is a cohort of lemmings who could't get in anywhere. As the situation continues to deteriorate places like the ones you listed will move to open admissions and suck up that cohort until it is gone. And be mindful that it won't be just one year's worth. There is no doubt a backlog of people who have wanted to go to law school for years and years and had given up applying. How may of them will come out of the woodwork when the word gets out they will take anyone who applies? It's a point Prof. Campos made about ITLS. The first year's class took up all the slack of non-trads in the Fort Wayne area who wanted to go to law school before but couldn't relocate due to life circumstances and had no school within commuting range. With the slack taken up, how big will the second class be?
VLS and ITLS? Yes, near the end. But I think that any school in or near a major urban area has got a few years left before the well runs completely dry. And make no mistake, the people running these pits know that there is an adjustment coming that will see many closures. It is now a game of "last man standing" with each school trying to do whatever it can to be one of the survivors.
"Any law school with a class of tenured do-nothings getting paid 3-4 times the "competitive" salary in a price-fixed, pampered, bubble, out-of-touch-and-gunna-crash system."
DeleteThat would be every goddamn one of them.
More schools for the law school intensive care and imminent closure list:
DeleteSt. Louis, Hamline, Hofstra, Valparaiso, possibly Golden Gate.
I'm almost certain that New England School of Law will expire before Suffolk. Then Suffolk will have less competition in a shrinking market, and could last a few more years.
Irvine is not going to shut down in the coming year. Nor is Cooley (it could last quite a while simply by shutting its campuses down one by one).
DeleteVermont and Indiana Tech, however, are indeed circling the drain. And add Hamline to your list.
@ 1:52
DeleteIt is not clear to me that Irvine is going to meet all its requirements for full accreditation, which it must do in 2015 or lose accreditation. If Irvine loses its accreditation, I say, it dies. It's only running classes under 50 people now.
It's also not clear what obligations the law school has to the undergrad - the undergrad having come up with the cash to start the law school.
Cooley's 2012 990 filing shows it has, *minimally*, 80 million dollars in bond debt rated BBB or maybe lower now ( that is "junk"). If Cooley goes to a CCC rating ("default imminent"), are you still going to tell me they won't close for years? They got dinged two or three notches on the credit rating last year...sure looks like the situation is rapidly deteriorating. S&P called them out as likely to fail.
Then...are there acceleration clauses in these hundreds of millions in bonds that law school owe?
Vermont has bond debt and unrated, private debt. An acceleration clause was triggered by a downgrade in its credit rating. Its bank lender can call several mill in debt at anytime.
The lender is letting Vermont live to try and get a pass-through bailout from the student lending system, because Vermont doesn't have enough assets to cover the debt.
Notice how the ABA is all over this...and the feds too. Making sure kids don't drop hundreds of thousands in borrowed public funds just to have those funds pass through the school to a bank. A bank that should bear the risk on the bad loan it made to an institution that could close at anytime leaving kids with unfinished degrees, and the federal government holding the bag on the loans through the Closed School Discharge.
Yeah, I don't agree. Some of these shit holes are going down hard and soon, and the most likely candidates are those with bond debt.
To 804, the accreditation issue for UC Irvine has been resolved. They were fully accredited about 12 days ago. That was never seriously in doubt in their case, unlike Indiana Tech.
DeleteWhich requirements for full accreditation might Irvine realistically fail to meet by 2015?
DeleteCooley's Form 990 from 2011 lists more than $200M in assets. Whether those assets would bring that much upon liquidation or not is another matter. In any event, I agree that Cooley is in dire financial (and other!) straits. Whether it could survive for a few years by closing some of its five campuses would depend in part on how much it could realize by selling those campuses off.
A pass-through bailout would indeed be yet another fucking rip-off.
What percentage of the assets is in the form of accounts receivable from students who have enrolled for the fall 2014 semester?
DeleteI put in "law graduates depression" on Google, and up popped an advertisement for a master's of law at Vermont Law Skule. This gives a new meaning to ambulance-chasing.
ReplyDeleteI can confirm that Indiana Tech is still recruiting students. They are not shutting their doors this year.
ReplyDeleteHow many students have registered for this year's entering class? I suspect that they won't get more than 15.
DeleteI'm not sure that factoid one necessarily insures that factoid two will come to pass.
DeleteThey'll be recruiting students until the day they announce they're closing, and probably after that as well.
DeletePersonally, I can hardly wait to find out how many students enroll at Indiana Tech this fall. When does that info come out? Isn't it sometime in October?
DeleteShould I apply to Law School: Very interesting exchange on College Confidential:
ReplyDeletehttp://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/1659625-should-i-apply-for-law-school.html
I went there and found it very interesting myself. A great thread overall.
DeleteThat BigLaw partner introduced some interesting facts, but as far as argument goes he was totally outclassed by the other commenters.
The only winner here is going to be the local Chapter 7 Trustee's office.
ReplyDeleteThat should lead to more legal jobs in Fort Wayne, and many bankruptcy cases last for years.. Maybe Indiana Tech could use its own approaching bankruptcy as part of its recruiting pitch.
Delete