There is an ongoing debate over whether academic scholarships and grants should be primarily need-based or merit-based. The former may be harmful where the scholarship award still does not justify the recipient’s costs and risks. The latter may reinforce the class structure rather than reward real aptitude, especially where merit is measured in substantial part by flawed or teachable standardized testing.
Unaccredited Indiana Tech Law School, ever the innovator, may have hit upon a third way: the raffle-based scholarship. If you sign up for illustrious law Prof. Adam Lamparello’s upcoming two-hour student recruitment event, described for some reason as a boot camp, you will be eligible to win a $5,000 scholarship to Indiana Tech Law. A set of Beats by Dre headphones will be raffled off as well. Not only that, but all attendees get a free LSAT registration (certain conditions may apply), and a light lunch. So everyone leaves a winner-- well fed, but hungry for justice.
April 18 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Please join us on Saturday, April 18, 2015 for a workshop designed to show you how to be prepared for your first year of law school. The workshop will be held from 10:00am to 11:00am, followed by a "What do lawyers do?" panel from 11:00am to 12:00pm, in the Courtroom of Indiana Tech Law School, with a light lunch to follow. Assistant Professor of Law, Adam Lamparello will discuss topics such as how to succeed in your law school courses and which skills are most important to become a successful lawyer. He will also provide mini-outlines for some first year courses.
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Attend for a chance to win a $5,000 scholarship!
At this workshop, one person will be awarded a $5,000 scholarship in addition to any other scholarships or financial aid received. One raffle per event, you must be present to win, and scholarship must be used for matriculating in Fall 2015. Other raffles include a Beats by Dre headphone.
I worry that the faculty and staff of Indiana Tech Law School might be alone out there in their efforts to reconfigure legal academia’s approach to student recruitment and scholarship disbursement in a way that enhances the dignity of our profession, so here are a few more suggestions:
1: A tent revival, featuring enthusiastic testimonials from persons who were saved from the torments of low-income career malaise by blind faith in unaccredited legal education, followed by a call from a charismatic law preacher for believers to step up to the stage and receive unto themselves their personal law school scholarship.
2. Ads on the inside of match book covers. ("If you can draw or copy this crude picture of a blithering fool wearing a dunce cap, you are eligible for scholarship money at Indiana Tech Law School.")
3. A spam email. ("Greetings, good Sir or Madam. I am the Prince Regent of an important third world kleptocracy, and I require a small amount of undemanding legal work by an Indiana Tech trained legal mind, upon completion of which, compensation of one million dollars will be most gladly deposited in your account by my Minister of Econometrics. As a token of My royal goodwill and respect, I have attached an Indiana Tech Law School scholarship voucher.")
4. An astrological hotline, where the psychic foresees an Indiana Tech Law School scholarship and great wealth in your future, but only if you act soon.
5. Fake online dating profiles featuring impossibly attractive persons of both genders who declare their red-hot passion for justice, and state that what they most desire in a romantic partner is an Indiana Tech law degree.
6. Suggest to the rising generation that quality professional legal education, both globally and in Fort Wayne, involves dance music, sports law, and the overthrow of oppressive grammatical conventions, such as capitalizing the first letter of one’s many names.
Okay, maybe the last one is too far-fetched.
Judge to inept lawyer: "How did you ever get a law degree?"
ReplyDeleteInept Indiana Tech grad: "Errmm . . . won it in a raffle, Your Honor.
First prize: $5,000 scholarship to Indiana Tech Law School
ReplyDeleteSecond prize: Two $5,000 scholarships to Indiana Tech Law School
You know what dybbuk, if I lived near Ft. Wayne and was free that day, I would sign up for this “boot camp” in a minute. I’m sure it would be 10 times funnier than any comedy club that you could attend with the added bonus of a free lunch. Only question is, if you win the 5K scholarship raffle, can you opt for the headphones instead?
ReplyDeleteAccording to their ABA 509, Indiana Tech had less than 100 applicants last year. If that is any indication of the number of people attending these events, your chances to win would be quite high.
DeleteYour expected value for attendance would be about $5000/100 or about $50, but only if you were already planning on going $200,000 in debt to attend Indiana Tech.
DeleteWell, if you actually do (for some unaccountable and almost certainly cretinous reason) want to go to Indiana Tech Law Skule 'n' Biker Bar, at least you can use this raffle to your advantage. If they're willing to give a $5000 "scholarship" to a random person who hasn't even applied, surely they should come up with a discount at least as great for someone whom they've admitted.
DeleteRegistration is limited to 75 people—approximately the number of people who applied last year. So the expected value of attendance is at least $67, plus something for the light lunch, the chance to win the headphones, the fee waiver for the LSAT, and whatever laughs can be had at Lamparello's expense.
DeleteI'd sign up myself and drive the many hours to Fort Wayne to report on this thing as OTLSS's unofficial correspondent for Indiana and outlying territories. Sadly enough, I have another commitment that day.
It's a common error, Old Guy, to think of a scholarship as free money. It isn't. It's only a discount off the exorbitant cost of an Indy Tech law degree. I'm sure you know that, but it always bears repeating for the benefit of any young people who might come here.
DeleteSuppose you win the raffle. You'll never see that money. And any young student who won would have to spend or borrow a huge amount before the $5000 would ever be credited. So you might want to include the negligible value and enormous cost of a TTTT law degree in your calculations.
True. I should have been more careful: the "scholarship" is actually worth nothing—or perhaps it is worth a negative amount, since it might get some gullible person to sign up for a mountain of debt in order to go to Indiana Tech.
DeleteHoly...shiatsu. I hadn't heard about Indiana Tech in a while, but boy, when you do, they never fail to "disappoint."
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those raffles where second prize is way, way better than first prize. And it's not like Beats are even good headphones.
ReplyDeleteI don't even know what Beats by Dre means. Is it something to do with hip-hop?
DeleteOld Guy, they are headphones them youngsters are wearing these days for the extra bass.
DeleteBeats by Dre put the fresh in Dougie Fresh. What more could anyone ask for?
DeleteThey are wildly-overpriced licensed headphones.
DeleteJust the thing to go with a wildly overpriced law skule.
DeleteHurry, hurry, step right up, spin the wheel and win a prize.
ReplyDeleteOr, from Mad Max, - 'bust a deal, face the wheel'.
Delete-Barry
Could legal education sink any lower? Do these vile scammer have ANY shame at all? Even if they don't feel guilty about financially destroying young people whose only crime was being young and foolish, surely these scammers must feel a TINY bit bad about what they are doing to the legal profession -- the profession to which they ostensibly belong, after all. The comparison to medical school is made frequently on blogs like this, but I'll make it again....can you imagine ANY medical school in the United States engaging in these kind of peurile, absurd gimmicks? Of course not. Medical education is a highly selective, serious, demanding endeavor, and its goal is to produce high quality physicians. Legal education is basically non-selective beyond the top schools, and its goal is to rake in the taxpayer cash for the benefit of deans and law "professors."
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, medicine used to be in as pathetic shape as law is in now. Dental school also.
DeleteAlthough admittedly, the debt was never this bad.
Law will have to do the same thing dental and medical schools did, restrict entry to the field severely and then wait it out several decades. But fundamentally, I'm not sure if legal services will ever be as valued as dental and medical. Accounting and compliance, as well as real estate agencies/title companies all bit into a lawyer's job duties. I know noctors and hygienists are seeking to do the same, but it's going to be a slower go for them, as physicians really are not giving up much ground.
Thanks for the recitation of "noctors". I hadn't heard it before (thought perhaps a typo) so I googled it and learned something new today. So, thanks!
DeleteAlso, one wonders when we'll begin seeing television commercials with, "I'm not a noctor, but I play one on TV".
Memo to Indiana Tech Lemmings (and regular students): Where do you think this "scholarship" is coming from? Some Trust Fund? No. It is coming from YOU. You are cross subsidizing some random student.
ReplyDeleteThink.
As I understand it, Indiana Tech did find some big donors to get the law school started. Whether they'll continue to give after witnessing such abject foolishness as this is an open question.
DeleteThis place always struck me as a Boomer-investor/board-of-trustees-vanity project, trying to cash in on the latest craze before the bottom fell out. I've got to believe even they have to be asking themselves "what the hell is going on?" while watching the dollars evaporate.
DeleteTheir
If investors are involved, maybe they can cash out by merging with Valpo.
DeleteWell, there are only so many places to invest money. Someone somewhere was going to get the idea of opening a goddamn toilet of a law skule in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Delete"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last have you left no sense of decency?"
ReplyDeleteJoseph Nye Welch, Esq. June 9, 1954.
In principle, the LSAT is an attempt to preserve some notion of academic competence in legal academia. We wouldn't know how bad some of these diploma mills were if it weren't for their abysmal LSAT scores.
ReplyDeleteExcellent research as usual, Dybbuk. Isn't it ironic that you're able to publish consistently even with a responsible legal job and without a summer research stipend?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Indiana Tech has hired a clown to appear at this carnival.
ReplyDeleteIf you're wondering whether andre douglas pond scummings will be there, then, yes, it is very likely to happen...
Deletehttp://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=203606
Yes: Lamparello. You must not have read carefully, 1:47.
DeleteThis is unpossible!
ReplyDeleteSo I guess no smart kids are applying to Indiana Dreck...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/the-smartest-people-are-opting-out-of-law-school
Will Lamparello finally wash his hair in preparation for this event? Will he regale the assembled Indiana Tech geniuses-to-be with anecdotes from his tell-all biography?
ReplyDeleteI wish I could make it. Sounds like the greatest performance art ever.
DeleteIt's mid-April, and the "scholarship" is for this year's entering class. They're also giving every participant a fee waiver for the LSAT. So it seems that they contemplate that the "lucky" winner will register for June's administration of the LSAT, get the scores in mid-July, apply to Indiana Tech at that point, and matriculate a month and a half later.
ReplyDeleteWhat's second prize, a set of steak knives?!
ReplyDeleteTaking that and then refusing to attend is easily worth more than the "scholarship."
DeleteAlec Baldwin approves!
DeleteOther ideas:
ReplyDelete7. Slip offers of "scholarships" inside fortune cookies.
8. Bribe the guidance counselors of Allen County's high schools to direct their charges to Indiana Tech. "With your D+ in English, you should consider a career in law."
9. Set up a pyramid scheme. Make each student recruit others or else pay extra. The most successful Indiana Tech touts can get a pink Cadillac with their name written on the side all in lower-case letters.
10. Join forces with Lyndon LaRouche.
11. Openly embrace 9/11 Truther style conspiracies as part of your marketing. Claim that "The Economy Can't Melt Your Dreams", or blame any troubling employment statistics on the Freemasons/Jews/Illuminati.
Delete12. Oprah distributes 50% scholarships to her entire audience.
13. Have Maury Povich randomly select alcoholic bums as the next members of the Indiana Tech class. "Jimmy, you ARE the law student!"
14. Take all of your students Social Security numbers and file fraudulent tax returns so you can collect their refunds (Don't forget EITC. They are TTTT students, after all).
Oh my God! Lyndon LaRouche was right!
DeleteHow does this place stay open?
ReplyDeleteWe are no longer a profession. We are a clown show. Thanks ABA.
ReplyDelete