Indiana Tech Law School had great expectations. Two years ago, before the fateful opening of its doors, it confidently charged a $50 application fee, which it generously reduced to $25 for those single-minded centurions who signed up for its binding "early admissions" scheme. In the sugar-plum visions of soon-to-be-former founding dean Alexander, that glorious Harvard on the Wabash would open with a hundred students and a median LSAT score placing it third among the Hoosier State's five law schools.
Alas! not even thirty students showed up, and their median LSAT score came in ten calamitous points lower than Alexander's pie-in-the-sky prognostication. Changes were in order. Out went the application fee. In came numbers-based "scholarships" advertised by spam. Out went the dean. In came a series of specialties, among them "global leadership", for the best damn law students in Allen County.
In year 2, under the masterly interim leadership of André Douglas Pond Cummings (who during a Mormon mission reportedly rechristened himself "Dougie Fresh", with or without the capital letters), Indiana Tech drew roughly the same number of incoming students. It nonetheless soldiered on, confident of getting accreditation.
But, woe! this time the ABA withheld its seal (rubber stamp?) of approval. Now those intrepid centurions of Indiana Tech's inaugural class, resplendent in their rented orange-yellow polyester caps and gowns, may not even be allowed to write the bar exams in Indiana, never mind any other jurisdiction. And who is going to pay $30k per year in tuition for a school that couldn't even get provisional accreditation?
Desperate times call for desperate measures. And the raffling off of a "scholarship" to someone who had not even applied was not nearly desperate enough. With a new scam-dean to open year 3, Indiana Tech proved its vaunted innovative spirit by eliminating tuition. Yes, this year anyone enterprising enough to attend Indiana Tech won't spend a sou for the intellectual fellowship of such godlike figures as Dougie Fresh and Lamparello!
Indiana Tech was hoping to draw in twenty first-year students this year. How many people actually enrolled?
Fifteen.
http://www.theindianalawyer.com/indiana-tech-law-school-restarts-accreditation-process-welcomes-zoeller/PARAMS/article/38054
Ladies and gentlemen, you may have the dubious honor of beholding the first stillborn law school of our time. Indiana Tech can't even give itself away. Even if the ABA gives in and accredits Indiana Tech (as it may well do), the toilet's reputation will be indelibly tarnished. Accreditation at this point would be a damp squib. The jilted, passed-over back number of Fort Wayne will never recover.
And, yes, Indiana Tech, we told you so.
Maybe they should have thrown in a set of steak knives.
ReplyDeleteNot a bad idea, actually. Or a free yellow-orange shoulder bag. Or a free laptop computer, a free mountain bike, maybe two months of free rent.
DeleteOr Beats by 'Dre headphones.
DeleteOh, wait...
15 students. 15 braincells (1 per student). Well over a million dollars of government cheese spent on this prudent national investment in our future.
ReplyDeleteThe lizard brain knows things our cortex has long since forgotten. We need to listen more carefully.
DeleteFifteen is a pathetic number. It would be interesting to know what the total enrollment at the school is since some of the 2L's and 3L's must have dropped out or transferred. Also, I was surprised that the median LSAT for the incoming class was a 151. That's nothing to brag about, but I would have guessed it to be much lower. I wonder if IT actually imposed some admission standards in the hope that it will help with accreditation.
ReplyDeleteA few students of moderate intelligence may have been attracted by the free tuition. Not that they necessarily want to stay for 3 years of Adam and Andre. They may have seen it as a free, one-year version of those quickie degrees for non-lawyers that the other schools are offering for $100K.
DeleteIndiana Tech is one of the few law schools whose median LSAT score has risen in the past year or two. Last year Indiana Tech reported a median LSAT score of 148. Thus this year it went up three whole points, from the 36th percentile to the 48th on the LSAT.
DeleteWhen the class falls to 15 students, however, comparisons of medians lose much of their significance.
And I too suspect that Indiana Tech turned "selective" this year in a bid for accreditation. Being "selective" costs nothing when no student is paying a plug nickel anyway. We shall know the truth when we see how many applicants Indiana Tech rejected.
What if you opened a law school and nobody came?
ReplyDeleteThen the towering intellects of the law faculty are free to do their world-changing RESEARCH!!!
DeleteImagine taking six hours a week, every damn week, to coax a bunch of gullible proles into spotting legal issues you never bothered to tell them about. What a waste of precious reflective time. A real scholar would never put up with that.
Just like the big banks at the height of the 2008/2009 financial crisis: "No one saw it coming...!"
ReplyDeleteGood work. A good summary of events to date that only a madman could have imagined back in 2011.
ReplyDeleteA minor quibble: Pondscum may have appended "Andre" to his name well after his mission. It looks to me like part of his bogus hip-hop identity.
I didn't know that the name André was associated with hip-hop. Please forgive Old Guy his ignorance: when he was a boy, Palestrina made the hit parade.
DeleteDoes the "Fresh" in "Dougie Fresh" mean 'new' or 'impertinent'?
Incidentally, the course "Hip-Hop and the American Constitution" has been cancelled this year. A school with only 60 or 70 students in all cannot afford to offer many electives. Especially when it offers four "concentrations". Er, wait a minute—those have quietly disappeared, just a year after they were created. So much for global leadership in Fort Wayne.
And what happened to the curated art collection? Did the paintings disappear, or only the curator?
DeleteEven at this late date, I'd still visit Fort Wayne to see that legal art collection.
See it? You may get the chance to buy parts of it at auction.
Delete"Harvard on the Wabash" lol
ReplyDeleteSo Valpo must be Stanford.
It seems some good advice to anyone would be that is you want to do invest in something (like a law school) and bunch of people (the internet) who have absolutely no vested interest in whether you succeed or fail are all telling you that this is a terrible idea, you might want to listen to them.
ReplyDeleteHow on earth can you have a law school operate without being certified by the ABA ??
ReplyDeleteWell, only a law school that has been operating for a few years is eligible for the ABA's accreditation. So every new law school will have to start out unaccredited.
DeleteBut there's no need for new law schools today, so indeed none of these toilets should be operating.
Don't forget all that cutting-edge RESEARCH we will all be missing out on should schools close...!!! This has nothing to do with and is completely separate and apart form the well-understood need for Deans and LawProfs to have vacation homes while duped students simultaneously drown in student loan debt, but let's not confuse the issues...
DeleteSo here's an interesting question:
ReplyDeleteAre those 15 students being cheated even at zero tuition? Or are they getting a great deal now because the Indy Tech poseurs are hoping to cheat other students in the future?
At least a few students must be receiving "more than full tuition" discounts, but I doubt the amount is enough to cover COL. Really, it's a scam now and in the future. This law school simply should not exist.
DeleteThey are obtaining a degree that probably has negative value on the job market. They'd be getting screwed over if they were getting paid to study there.
DeleteI promised myself that I would reply with more nuance than 7:49 and 12:20. Upon reflection, however, I just don't see many ways in which Indiana Tech could make sense even at zero tuition.
ReplyDeleteTo a person with a guaranteed job or a truly abiding desire to practice law (hint: lemming, this almost certainly is not you), Indiana Tech may appear to offer cheap access to the profession. But it won't offer any access to the profession at all unless it achieves accreditation or its graduates obtain a statutory exemption from that requirement.
Forget about attending Indiana Tech with the intention of transferring next year to a better institution. For that to work, you would need to move up to a Michigan at least—and no Michigan is going to smile upon a high performer in a tiny cohort that was bought with zero tuition.
And don't forget the high opportunity cost of attending Indiana Tech.
Who, then, might reasonably sign up for a year with Dougie Fresh and Lamparello? Maybe a drifter with a lot of money, one who will be able to drop out after a year and pass the experience off as "finding myself" on the way to something better. Or maybe someone of independent means who has no intention to practice law but just wants to attend law school out of curiosity. Everyone else should steer clear of Indiana Tech.
These blogs do little to mention IBR or the other safety programs that exist. Look at Brooklyn Law, which now offers a partial refund for those who do not do as well and find jobs after graduation. I graduated with almost $300,000 of law school debt and decided law was not for me. I took a low paying job. Was law school a mistake? Sometimes I think so, but other times I realize it did teach me a lot. Would I be here if I did not go to law school? I don’t think so – but I doubt it. And, had I not gone to law school and moved to the east coast, I would have never had my daughter, so I have to consider that.
ReplyDelete"I don’t think so – but I doubt it"
DeleteIt's like poetry.
Is this an infinite jest?
DeleteI graduated with almost $300,000 of law school debt and decided law was not for me.
DeleteYou flunked the bar and were never offered a decent law job. I'd say the legal profession decided that law was not for you.
Here's another reason transferring won't work. Neither Michigan nor any lesser school will accept any transfer credits from an unaccredited school. You could conceivably impress an admissions committee with good grades from Indy Tech, simply as one soft factor among many. But the Indy Tech name could be another soft factor working against you.
ReplyDeleteThe market for entry level law professors “has constricted dramatically” since 2011, and legal educators don’t see a likely full recovery in the near future, the National Law Journal (sub. req.) reports
ReplyDeletehttp://www.abajournal.com/news/article/aspiring_law_profs_face_tough_job_market/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=site_rss_feeds
Beautiful.
DeleteThe Brian Leiters and Stephen Diamonds of the future will have to work 60 hours a week practicing law. A personality disorder doesn't automatically qualify you for a 10-hour work week and a 3-month paid vacation any more.
I somehow doubt this will stop Leiter from continuing to spout his drivel about educating future law professors or whatever.
DeleteI feel that many a "top law school" grad's anal sphincter will be contracting at this news too; you know the type, the Nancy Leong or Beian Leiter of the future whose sole goal in attending law school is to become a professor, never a mere lawyer. Half the core faculty at each law school - shITLS excepted - are "career professors" who went from K-12-Ivy undergrad-JD from Yale/Harvard/Stanford. Never once did any of them actually want to be lawyers; they merely want the professor perks and prestige without having to work for a PhD.
DeletePathetic specimens, the least interesting folks at parties (despite their proclamations of how interesting and prestigious they really are), and less is definitely more when it comes to law school faculty size.
Oh, Jesus. Imagine running into Leong or Pond Scum at a party. What would they want to discuss, other than themselves?
DeleteI think Leiter needs a prestige enhancement. His viciousness flows from feelings of inadequacy about attending Michigan, of all places. Not attending an HYS school has arguably ruined his life.
DeleteFrom what I understand, Nancy Leong might very well compare student loans at a party. She did pretty well as an undergrad, for which I commend her. Didn't she play violin or something? Another point in her favor. But she couldn't accept a full-tuition scholarship because HYS don't offer them. She went for the prestige along with the debt, which is entirely her fault, not ours. It all seems faintly ridiculous to me.
Delete"...the toilet's reputation will be indelibly tarnished."
ReplyDeleteThat happened a long time ago, well before the desperate gamble on free tuition to gain accreditation.
This comment:
ReplyDelete"Half the core faculty at each law school - shITLS excepted - are "career professors" who went from K-12-Ivy undergrad-JD from Yale/Harvard/Stanford. Never once did any of them actually want to be lawyers; they merely want the professor perks and prestige without having to work for a PhD."
hits the nail right on the head. I think you can even go further and say that many professors affirmatively look down on lawyers and the practice of law (perhaps with some exceptions, like elite appellate work).