Marx famously said that the major events and personages of history appear twice: first as tragedy, then as farce. With Indiana Tech, however, the farce seemed to come first. The second time around will be scarcely better—and now it is taking place at Golden Gate University.
In a desperate but ill-fated attempt to save itself, Indiana Tech one year reduced tuition to zero and slashed enrollment to 15 students. Über-toilet Golden Gate—maybe Rusty Gate would be more like it—has taken a leaf from Indiana Tech's book by doing the same: only 21 full-time and 24 part-time students enrolled, so this year's class is a third of the size of last year's. And all of the little full-time dolts, and about half of their part-time analogues, who were ass enough to sign up at this dump are getting zero tuition for all three years.
Why would a moribund über-toilet suddenly whore itself out free of charge? Obviously not in a spirit of generosity or public service. No, Golden Gate did this for the sake of its survival: the ABA threatened last year to pull the plug because Golden Gate fell short of a standard by which at least 75% of those graduates who take a bar exam pass one within two years of graduation. In theory, Golden Gate could lose its ABA accreditation next year by failing once more to meet the standard. In practice, we know damn well—from ample experience—that the ABA doesn't seriously enforce its "standards": it instead readily makes excuses for the underperforming über-toilet and offers extensions and other dispensations as often as it pleases. Thus Golden Gate isn't really in danger, even though last year only 38% of those who took the bar exam in California passed it. None of the 17 other ABA-accredited law schools in California did so poorly.
Anyway, by offering free tuition, Golden Gate hopes to draw in slightly better students. And it has succeeded: the median LSAT this year went up to 153 from last year's 151. Two lousy points, however, can hardly suffice to bridge the immense gap in bar passage so as to propel Golden Gate barely over the line this year. In any event, cheap stunts such as this are unsustainable. Perhaps for a couple of years this über-toilet will draw money from an endowment or otherwise keep the lights on for its handful of charges and its similarly large faculty (many of whom are being reassigned to bar-review courses in support of that desperate attempt to meet the 75% threshold). Once the gimmick of free tuition has expired, however, whatever appeal this thing may have will predictably dry up and the median LSAT score will sink like a stone.
Two new ventures—a useless master's degree and a "Bachelor of Arts in Law"—will throw a few shekels into the coffers. But these recent stunts in the JD program presage the law school's death in the next, say, four years. Old Guy reminds everyone that Golden Gate is not worth attending even on free tuition.
Even if you are not a knuckle-dragging cretin, it's still not worth it for the 3 years of lost income and the 3 years cost of living in San Francisco.
ReplyDeletePerhaps they could also start paying students to attend as well. Would 40 hours a week at minimum wage be enough? $100,000 a year? Inquiring minds want to know!!!
ReplyDeleteThat has been happening for years. A number of toilet law schools award discounts of "more than full tuition"—outright bribes. We have discussed this here many times.
DeleteIndeed, and in this game of limbo such "negative tuition" would be the one place lower they could still go. They just need to come into bar pass rate compliance for one year and can then fall right back out of it again; starts over a multiyear process that can thus never reach its conclusion (revocation of accreditation) if your endowment can handle it.
DeleteWhat the ABA should do is require the abolition of merit aid for schools that want to be accredited, or at least abolish it for schools that are on probation or whatever. Discounts/scholarships should be awardable based only on need and audited accordingly, so that schools can only attract the caliber of students they deserve to attract and go out of business if they can't pass the bar.
The ABA could have done that ages ago if it had wanted to. What it wants is to perpetuate—and even expand—the law-school scam. Over the past six years, it has taken minor measures against a couple of law schools that were already on the verge of collapse (and that did indeed collapse almost immediately).
DeleteAny responsible accrediting body would disallow the practice of buying LSAT scores with "scholarships". The key word there is responsible.
Incidentally, there's also a class aspect to "merit aid": it preys upon people who don't have money. A little rich kid wouldn't pass Michigan up for Notre Dame, but a nobody like Old Guy might—if Notre Dame offered free tuition and Michigan only a modest discount. Notre Dame
in turn finds itself losing students to other schools for the same reason.
Absolutely. A few years back the ABA started requiring disclosure of the percentage of grads considered "employed" only because of "school funded positions" and pretty soon almost all the schools stopped using that trick to conceal the low employment numbers. Even the dumbest prospective applicants were apparently smart enough to figure out that those jobs were fake and would disappear as soon as that student was successfully counted amongst the employed for ranking/disclosure purposes.
DeleteSame thing with scholarships. Easy enough to distinguish between the school-funded ones (which are really just discounts) and the ones that come from outside donors (which are true scholarships). The former should be allowable based only on need, not merit, or the other disclosures simply won't be accurate in terms of what kind of students would normally enroll.
The seeds of Indiana Tech’s destruction were sown when only three persons (out of 12) passed the bar from the first eligible class. Actually, only two passed outright; a successful appeal brought by the son of the Allen County Circuit Court judge (sitting in Ft Wayne) resulted in a third passage.
DeleteAgainst the background of such a disgraceful performance, the school’s chance of securing full accreditation sank to minimal at best. Prospective students also concluded that this project wasn’t long for the world and stayed away in droves.
The faculty’s desire to maintain high admission standards notwithstanding, no student with a modicum of talent would want to attend a school with a 25% bar pass rate. Even Cooley’s rate never sunk that low.
Actually, the law school's bar passage rate was over 70% for the second class and would have continued increasing with each class given the increased admissions standards. The problem wasn't the bar pass rate of the first class (nearly all unqualified students). It was a president and Board of Trustees who wanted an open admissions policy.
DeleteAlso, what would you expect? The law school (due to the president's insistence and the idiots on the Board of Trustees) admitted morons to the first class. Everyone on the faculty knew that they would flunk the bar. But they fought for increased admissions standards and the bar pass rate rose to over 70% in the second year (not good, but better) and would have kept increasing given the commitment to higher admissions standards. You can lay the blame squarely on that idiot of a president and a Board of Trustees with a collective IQ under 100.
DeleteYes, the "school-funded jobs" thing was a scam, it's easy to claim that nearly 100 percent of your grads are swiftly employed post-graduation if you, the law school, employ them yourself in bogus short-term low paid fake jobs. Law school is pretty much one big scam these days, from the application process through post-graduation. It is a shame, there was a time, long ago, when lawyers were compared to doctors, and when law schools only admitted truly deserving applicants and charged reasonable tuition for a degree that was actually worth something on the job market. Everything has changed radically for the worse in US law schools. The heck of it is that some of the students themselves are in on the scam, and just see law school as a way to spend 3 more years out of the workforce, living large on student loans they will never repay.
DeleteActually, only one graduate in Indiana Tech's first class passed the bar exam outright; two others later brought appeals and slipped in just under the wire. We mocked Indiana Tech back then by suggesting that it erect a monument to the one graduate who kept it from having a 0% rate of success at the bar exam.
DeleteAnd, yes, the scion of that local judge was a golden boy at Indiana Tech. They featured on their Web site his grinning face above an awful-looking necktie in Indiana Tech's color, orange-yellow (déclassé on anything below the level of Veuve Clicquot). He was quoted as saying that a school recommended by a local judge was certainly worthy of attending—without mentioning the fact that "a local judge" in that instance was his own father.
DeleteDaddy's clout should have been able to get that little darling into something better, at least Ohio Northern. Then again, he didn't pass the bar exam (except perhaps on appeal), so maybe he was just the sort of moron that the former employee of Indiana Tech here is describing.
Here's what happened at Indiana Tech. The dean and faculty (all of them except for one) at the law school demanded that admissions standards be increased, and that the laughable feasibility study (drafted by the Board and first dean) be scrapped in favor one that emphasized high admission standards, low tuition, and smaller class sizes. The university, consisting of a clueless, narcissistic, profit-driven president and an absolutely moronic Board of Trustees, finally relented after accreditation was predictably denied. Then, the law school increased standards (and revised the curriculum) and, ultimately, the ABA granted provisional accreditation by a unanimous vote. After the accreditation, applications increased by over 400% and the next incoming class would have had an incoming profile of approximately 3.3 and 155, and about 60 students. But the president and moronic Board of Trustees only cared about numbers and profit and, because the law school refused to have an open admissions policy, they shut the law school. Thus, although your criticism of the law school is valid but your criticism of a few of the professors is inaccurate. They tried, believe me, and they stood up to that university/diploma mill repeatedly. And the school paid millions to the faculty for what they did.
ReplyDeleteThe ABA would accredit damn near anything. We weren't a bit surprised when the ABA gave Indiana Tech its rubber stamp of (provisional) approval.
DeleteThe Board of Trustees was stupid to pour so much money into the über-toilet Indiana Tech. Hell, it even acquired an art collection and hired a curator before the über-toilet had opened its doors. Of course, the board did have to focus on "numbers and profit", because it had lost some $40 million on this stupid venture and couldn't afford to subsidize it forever.
I find it hard to believe that Indiana Tech suddenly achieved a class of 60 and a median LSAT score of 155. Was that predicated on bribing the entire class with free tuition again? If so, it's small wonder that the board flushed the toilet once and for all.
I do, however, believe that some professors there were unhappy with the management of the place and wanted changes, including "high admission standards, low tuition, and smaller class sizes". They, too, however, were being unrealistic. Smaller class sizes implies higher cost, which doesn't sit well with low tuition. And high admission standards can't be achieved just because one wants them. Indiana Tech was never going to admit classes of high quality: even mediocre students (say, 155 on the LSAT) could do much better elsewhere, and they knew it. Sorry, but there was no way to make a success of this vanity project, which never would have been more than a rung above Cooley.
The problem was the narcissistic president and moronic Board of Trustees. They wanted an open admissions policy and were alarmingly ignorant about accreditation standards and the basic fact that, to produce competent lawyers, you need smart students. The faculty at the law school fought extremely hard to raise standards (except for one), developed a first-rate curriculum in the last year (eschewing social justice nonsense), and produced an extraordinary amount of scholarship, some of which was actually good (Lamparello and MacLean, perhaps the only conservative law profs that exist, repeatedly took heat for publishing articles praising Scalia and originalism). But after they received accreditation, the president went back to demanding an open admissions policy. Cercone resisted and, yes, they had a talented (or minimally competent) class coming in, but the president went nuts and shut the law school. It wasn't about money, as they had anticipated losses through 2025. It was about ego and, sadly, the law school was closed because that moron and the "yes" men Board of Trustees had the power to do it.
DeleteI wouldn't call social justice "nonsense", though I do agree that the hackademic crapola perpetrated in the name of social justice is indeed nonsense.
DeleteIndiana Tech had bad material. It was never going to be Harvard; it was never even going to be Indiana University. Anyone with a 155 and a desire to work in the general area of Indiana would have done better to go to the U of Cincinnati than to sign up at Fort Wayne's provisionally accredited, unstable, downright ridiculous flash in the pan. Obviously marketing is not Old Guy's long suit, but, really, tell me how you would sell Indiana Tech to any student with at least half a brain. "We have great professors and great courses and …"? Everyone says that. It rings hollow alongside the reality of an established toilet that at least has stable accreditation, a reputation, and an alumni network. Something like the U of Cincinnati would be a far better place for a mediocre applicant (say, 155) keen on Indiana.
Apparently the curriculum that you call first-rate included bar review. As I recall, there was even a position with a title along the lines of Dean of Bar Review and Accreditation—and it was filled by someone poached from Cooley (of all über-toilets). And wasn't "Hip-Hop and the US Constitution", Dougie Fresh's favorite vanity project (other than himself), on offer right to the bitter end? How about those four certificates in Global Leadership™?
The trustees were stupid to approve this pig of a law school in the first place. We told them that it was going to fail, and we were right. The "feasibility study" was obviously an exercise in justifying the unjustifiable. They deluded themselves.
You suggest that Indiana Tech was shut down right when it had a chance of making it. I find that to be unlikely: even a class of 60 was scarcely over half of the anticipated size, and it would appear that quite a few people in that class were bribed with "scholarships". (Indiana Tech once raffled off a "scholarship" to people who hadn't even expressed an interest in applying. Would it stay out of the ubiquitous discounts-for-LSAT-scores game?) That was a recipe for red ink. Losses through 2025? Really? That was eight years beyond Indiana Tech's lifespan. How were they going to sustain the thing through year after year of substantial losses?
And if the trustees were vain, so were some of the faculty, notably André Douglas "Dougie Fresh" Pond Cummings and Lamparello.
Well, yes, and your criticisms of Indiana Tech are legitimate. But they are not entirely accurate. Like I said, the problem all along was the president and Board of Trustees, who should have never opened a law school. But when they did, they made every wrong and ignorant move possible when creating the law school, such as by drafting a ridiculous feasibility study, having an open admissions policy, and charging tuition of approximately $30,000. UC Irvine, on the other hand, did it right -- recruiting a small, qualified first class and charging no tuition, which established itself as a quality school to potential applicants.
DeleteAfter provisional accreditation, the sustainability of the law school was based on a few factors. First, the administration and faculty finally got the moronic president and Board, after the first accreditation attempt was predictably denied, to have admissions standards, give full scholarships, and accept that losses would be upwards of five million annually until 2020 (with 2025 being the time when it anticipated it would break even). Second, they knew that Valpo would be closing, that Ohio Northern was struggling, and that several schools in close proximity had very low entering profiles. Thus, in 2017, with an anticipated entering class of 60 with a median of 155 (achieved through massive tuition discounts and a post-accreditation surge in applications), the law school finally began to do what it should have done at the outset: prioritize quality and low tuition. But the president and Board absolutely hated the idea that we wouldn't have an open admissions policy -- not because of money (they agreed to fund losses through 2025) -- but because they said that it went against the university's "mission" of giving "access" to those who couldn't get admitted anywhere else. I cannot stress enough that the president was the reason that the law school closed. He reneged on every promise he had made, including funding the law school through 2025.
Oh, and I wouldn't put Cummings and Lamparello in the same sentence lol. They couldn't be more different (the former could be called vain, but not the latter), and Cummings (and several other profs) absolutely hated that Lamparello and MacLean championed originalism and Scalia, and trashed Roe v. Wade. In any event, the faculty were, with a few exceptions, very decent people trying to do the right thing, but they faced a president who, to put it mildly, was a very bad human being.
UC Irvine's experience was never going to be replicated in Fort Wayne. First of all, UC Irvine was part of the prestigious (whether deservedly or not) UC system. Indiana Tech is a vocational school that somehow has cast itself as a university. Second, UC Irvine is in southern California, attractive to many (though not to Old Guy); Indiana Tech is in gritty Fort Wayne. Third, UC Irvine started out with a mountain of money, enough to bribe the first three classes (the first one with free tuition, the second and third with greatly reduced tuition). Indiana Tech could not and did not; it even had the gall to charge a ridiculous application fee (dropped after the first year) and set up an "early admission" scheme (as if anyone had been clamoring to go to Indiana Tech). There are other important distinctions, but those suffice to make the point.
DeleteIrvine's so-called leadership announced up front the goal of starting out in the top 20 on the idiotic "rankings" published by You Ass News. It still has not ranked so high. Indiana Tech—both the board and its puppet Peter Alexander, jilted after less than a year—did something similar: it proclaimed that it would leapfrog into third position by "ranking" among Indiana's five law schools. (Just because they themselves had opened it? Conceited bastards!) Indiana Tech and Irvine have one thing in common: both made the shopworn claim of being "a new kind of law school" while nonetheless playing the rankings game like all others.
How do you know that there was an entering class with those characteristics for 2017? It was in October 2016 that Indiana Tech announced its closure. Applications for the entering class of 2017 wouldn't be due for months to come, and there would have been no point in prolonging the admissions process when the school was going tits up.
And I'm astonished that the board would fund losses of more than $5M per year for four more years, then apparently still substantial losses for five years after that. The endowment had already been badly depleted by this stupid venture. How exactly was the board going to come up with the money for nine years until projected profitability? What would it have done if the forecast had not panned out?
I agree with your overall assessment (except that FW is not "gritty"; it's a miserable place with very few intelligent citizens). My point was that, if the law school had any chance of succeeding (after those morons, including Alexander, decided to open a law school when applications nationally had plummeted and there was no justification for a fifth law school in Indiana), they should have, like Irvine, prioritized quality and low tuition. Those idiots did the opposite and admitted anyone with a pulse and produced a feasibility study that was about as credible as a Friday the 13th movie. They had no idea what they were doing and, like I said, were led by a moron president and a Board of Trustees that would make Forrest Gump look intelligent. Having said that, the university had an endowment of nearly 200 million (due in large part to admitting moronic undergrads by the thousands, as evidenced by its less than one-third retention rate) and pledged to the ABA (with financial statements and on-the-record testimony) that it would fund losses of five million annually through 2020 and break even in 2025. It turned out that it was all a lie. I know this because I worked there and I saw first-hand what the faculty, who were very decent people, went through. I do take some solace in the fact that the faculty sued the university, and they paid over seven million to settle the lawsuits. The president even threatened the faculty if they were to sue the school and they told him to fuck off; he caved soon thereafter. As for the 2017 class, by October of 2016, due to a fairly significant uptick in applications after accreditation, they had about 60 committed admits with a median LSAT of 155. But then Snyder closed the school because Cercone wouldn't agree to an open admissions policy. And the moronic Board went along like puppets. That's the story.
DeleteIndiana Tech is basically a scam school. Check their College Scorecard if you doubt me; a 36 percent graduation rate - measured in an 8-year window no less - and barely half the graduates earning more than an HS graduate. I completely buy that the admin are likely corrupt and care only about getting fat paychecks for themselves, and the law school was just supposed to be another cash cow. Those professors "who cared" were taken for a ride.
DeleteCrazy that even with free tuition, the best they could get for a median was 155. UC Irvine started out at 167, and is still there today even though they charge about 30k. (Sticker price is around 50, but 99.4% receive discounts and the median discount is 20k per LST).
DeleteOG is clearly right. Indiana Tech and UC Irvine is an apples to oranges comparison. Free tuition in the first years may be very key, but it's not enough by itself. A prestigious parent university system, bribing celeb faculty like chemerinsky to attach their names to the place, and a highly desirable location all were probably vital things that Indiana Tech could never do or have.
Clearly, when starting a new law school, the "cost per median LSAT point gained" varies wildly depending on what university is starting it up.
When I called Fort Wayne gritty, I was being kind. I happen to have spent a bit of time there, and I certainly agree that it's a white-trash dump. Perhaps seventy or eighty years ago it had more to offer.
DeleteAs I recall, the law skule quickly burned through $40M of that $200M endowment. Twenty percent of the endowment is a lot to throw away. But that doesn't mean that good money should have been thrown after bad. And it seems that the law skule was proposing to waste at least $20M more over the following four years and more money still in the five years after that. Thanks also for the information that settlements of litigation stung the parent institution for more than $7M more.
All in all, it adds up to a big mess, and I don't blame the board for pulling the plug. You're absolutely right to say that the thing never should have been launched in the first place. But I don't agree that it should have been subsidized so lavishly for nine more years. If it managed to reel in a few people with scores around 155, it did so with bribery—something that is not sustainable. As soon as the bribes dried up, the better people (and note that Old Guy doesn't regard 155 as a good score) would have looked elsewhere.
Indeed, Fort Wayne sucks. Actually, the law school had lost $20 million up to 2016 on the law school, but it was experiencing a significant increase in increase in enrollment on the undergrad level and was actually increasing its endowment despite the losses.
DeleteNow, as to your second point. Here's what happened. The president and moronic Board promised to fund the law school through 2025 at a loss of an additional twenty-five million, with the expectation that it would break even in 2025. They (the president and Board) even created financial statements detailing in depth the losses and certifying to the ABA that they were prepared to fund the school until that time and beyond. But it was all a lie. They defrauded the students and the faculty. So, when the law school closed, the faculty were furious (and quite naive folks too), and Snyder literally threatened them that if they sued, he would ruin their careers. Then Lamparello who, along with Cercone and MacLean, had practically spent every waking hour trying to right the ship, went to the local ABC affiliate with the fraudulent financial statements and it was exposed. He, along with several faculty members, then retained Chris Mackaronis from DC to represent them, and the Board quickly caved to the tune of seven million. Sadly, Chris died two years ago.
Bottom line: The law school should never have opened, and the feasibility study (along with Alexander and Cummings) was a joke. But when it did open, the president and Board did everything wrong with their open admissions policy and ridiculous tuition. I actually quit six months before it closed because I knew that the university was a scam and that they would never do what they needed to create a sustainable law school. I am happy, however, that they exposed Snyder and the Board and took seven million from them. The faculty were good people and, along with the students and staff, totally scammed. And Alexander is also to blame for recruiting the faculty based on the ridiculous notion that it would have an entering profile of 3.5 and 156 in 2013.
Interesting that Lamparello was the one who lifted the lid on the fraud. I always thought poorly of him, mainly because of those self-indulgent look-at-me memoirs. And glorifying originalism was never going to win him favor in Old Guy's book.
DeleteOpening a new law school nowadays is just foolish. Even institutions such as Valpo that go back to the nineteenth century cannot keep themselves afloat. Why on earth should an upstart work out? It has no reputation, no alumni base, not even accreditation. People with good or even mediocre LSAT scores will not be interested, unless perhaps they are unwilling to leave Fort Wayne even to go to an established law school just two hours away (of which there are several). Apparently Alexander, Dougie Fresh Pond Scum, and a complicit board supposed that their involvement alone would elevate Indiana Tech above the generality. That's typical of their supreme arrogance.
I can't agree with you on Lamparello. He was a great prof, a very bright and prolific scholar, and a very good person. He had his struggles and he regretted writing the memoir (trust me, he took a lot of heat for it from various people, deservedly so). But he overcame it and almost singlehandedly turned the law school around. However, he was very naive and didn't realize, like you did, that the school had no chance of succeeding. But yes, when Snyder shut it down, he exposed it because he had dedicated practically his entire life to the law school. His brother and dad died in the last two years too and I feel for him. Also, MacLean, Swann, McAlister, and Cercone were good people and profs. The others, not so much.
DeleteRegardless, the law school was doomed from the start for the reasons I have stated. I quit six months before it was closed down and I'm glad I did. Indiana Tech is a terrible school and the administration is really corrupt. They care only about money, not quality.
In any
Also, you are right about the arrogance of Cummings, Alexander, and the Board. They had no idea what they were doing but somehow thought they would create a "different" kind of law school. And they misled the faculty about the credentials of the incoming class and the viability of the school. The lawyers in FW thought it was ridiculous, except for one judge who was equally as clueless. I feel bad for most of the faculty, though, who were good people, but again, they were quire naive to believe this thing could work.
DeleteEvery toilet law school calls itself "a different kind of law school". None admits that it is just another bottom-feeding dump with nothing special to offer. A course on hip-hop and four certificates in "global leadership" do not a "different" law school make.
DeleteInvariably we find that each "different" law school whores after rankings and LSAT scores just like all the others. Thus UC Irvine promised to make the top 20 on the idiotic "rankings" of You Ass News, and Indiana Tech said that it would leapfrog over two of Indiana's law schools in median LSAT score from its first day. (Neither Irvine nor Indiana Tech ever fulfilled its promise.)
I actually do have some ideas for a different kind of law school—but they depend on students of genuinely high calibre, not the crap that ends up at shit pits like Indiana Tech.
Cummings apparently preached high standards to the public while conducting admissions quite differently. He told one applicant that 143 was a "serviceable" LSAT score. Serviceable, my ass! Well, if he considered it so, that was his business. But then why was he touting scores in the mid-150s?
Yes indeed, he did say that it was serviceable, but that's not the worst of it. He, along with the clueless admissions committee, admitted students in the 130's and one with a 127. It was disgraceful. Then, to make matters worse, they would get angry at the faculty when the faculty flunked these students and predicted, rightly so, that almost no one in the first class would pass the bar. Your assessment of Indiana Tech, with a few exceptions, was right on.
DeleteHe wasn't touting scores in the mid 150's. It was Alexander who foolishly predicted a first class with a 156 median and 3.5 GPA. But after Alexander was fired and the faculty ousted Cummings, Cercone came in and, having been disgusted about Cooley's decline into nearly open admissions, increased standards and gave almost full tuition discounts. And Lamparello, along with Chuck MacLean, revamped the entire curriculum and begun hiring legit profs from great schools. In so doing, they eliminated the Global Law and Leadership nonsense and made it a more traditional curriculum. Additionally, they created more clinics, a mandatory legal writing course in each semester, and implemented a real-world litigation problem, in which the students, throughout all three years of law school, actually litigated the case (involving issues from their required courses) from the initial client interview to the appellate brief. But that curriculum never saw the light of day because the law school closed. Regardless, I found them to be very naive because there was no way that the students, who were hopelessly unqualified, could ever succeed in a such a curriculum. Some of the students could barely write a coherent sentence and it was absolutely miserable having to deal with them.
DeleteOh, 143 must indeed be "serviceable" when even 127 is good enough. Random guessing could yield 127 on a somewhat lucky day. (The expected score from random guessing is 125.) Incidentally, years ago the pseudo-prestigious Univershitty of Texas also admitted two or three people with scores of 127 or 128.
DeleteAnd I'm not a bit surprised that the faculty were expected to pass the hopeless "students" that had been dumped on them by a plutocratic administration.
A few days after Indiana Tech opened its doors, Alexander mentioned that a late application had just arrived. "We'll take him", he cheerfully announced. He hadn't even seen the application; its existence was good enough for admission.
Anyone who would like to review our old articles on Indiana Tech may find them all quite easily by running this search:
site:outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com "indiana tech"
These articles show that we accurately predicted just about everything that happened to Indiana Tech.
Yes, the faculty was mortified that they had to attempt to teach these students. It was hopeless. Lol MacLean and Lamparello were removed from the admissions committee early in the first year because they refused to admit students with low LSAT scores. Snyder forced Alexander to admit morons and when Alexander finally said no, Snyder sent in security guards to remove him, and he was gone. Also, one faculty member artificially inflated grades based on race and got caught (take a guess who). Like I said, the faculty were generally good people, but there were some bad apples, and the university itself is a pure diploma mill.
DeleteOh, and by the way, one of the 127 LSAT morons who flunked out drove by the law school and fired a shot at a window in the dean's office. Poor Cercone. This is what happens when you admit absolute morons to a law school. You can place the blame squarely on Snyder and that absolutely moronic Board.
DeleteWhy the hell would a good professor from a great school want to move to dreary Fort Wayne and teach at horrible Indiana Tech after its first three abysmal years? Because Lamparello promised that it would draw in a better cohort of students? That sounds awfully risky to me. Were these professors paid handsomely?
DeleteIt remains true that you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. We don't even let just everyone join a high-school football team, yet somehow "law school is for everybody", as scam-dean Frank Wu put it years ago. Not even functional illiteracy keeps people out. Well, if one really has to run a law school full of dolts like those that peopled Indiana Tech (and I consider that a grave disservice to the public), the best that one can do is to run a three-year bar-review course. Forget about drafting appellate briefs, which are for advanced litigators (most lawyers won't go near appeals). Forget about anything else that presumes a modicum of ability and potential.
Teaching those dolts must indeed have been a miserable experience. Over the years, we have commented several times on the sad fate of professors stuck with the impossible task of teaching students of über-toilet quality. I once taught legal writing at an élite institution; even there, the quality of the students was not uniformly high.
The incoming profs were paid $96,000/year and many were attracted to the law school because they wanted to be a part of building a new law school from the ground up. This was especially true after they received provisional accreditation. Actually, Lamparello and MacLean were the ones who hired the profs (much to the chagrin of Cummings and Guadalupe Luna), such as Swann (Georgetown) McAllister (Notre Dame), and Lindgren (Berkeley). They were trying desperately to build a high-quality school and they thought that, with Valpo closing and a higher incoming profile, they could attract better students and be sustainable. As much as I liked them, they were very naive and they worked way too hard, at the expense of their health (I was there and it wasn't pretty), to make something work that really had no chance because Snyder and the Board would never accept having high admissions standards. Indeed, during this time, one of them had a heart attack (take a guess) and one student committed suicide. It was a horrible experience to see good people fighting a futile battle against a corrupt diploma mill.
DeleteInteresting stories that you have. I remember when Alexander left: it was a couple of weeks after the end of the first year, and Indiana Tech announced that he had decided to explore other opportunities because he had achieved all of his goals at Indiana Tech. Did anyone fall for that explanation? It was obvious that he had been pushed out. He would hardly have left both of his positions—as dean and as professor—all of a sudden, with nothing lined up. And he clearly had not achieved his goals. I didn't know, however, that he was hauled out by guards.
DeleteFunny that professors were being told to pass everyone but someone (perhaps with four names, all in lower case?) was taken to task for inflating grades on the basis of race.
How the hell did I miss the news that someone had shot a gun at the dean's office? A couple of decades ago, a disgruntled student (or ex-student) at the Appalachian School of Law took a gun to campus and killed a few people. I hadn't heard that anyone had tried the same stunt at Indiana Tech. I can't find any report on that in the media, either.
Oh, my, that's terrible. But you're right: they were awfully naïve to think that they could build a good school out of nothing. The closure of Valpo was a bad sign, not a good one, for Indiana Tech: it probably meant that some of the erstwhile Valponian clientele would seek redemption in Fort Wayne, and we all know that Valpo did not draw from the top of the LSAT pool.
DeleteEven 156, if it could be achieved and sustained, was no great LSAT score. Teaching appellate practice or even legal writing to people at that level and below would not have been easy or enjoyable. And that if is a big if. When the primary attraction is artificially low tuition, students of better quality will lose interest as soon as the bribery of steep discounts disappears—as it must, if only because the parent institution cannot keep the law school running at a loss forever.
A classic mistake for someone starting a business venture is to begin by spending money. Of course, one does have to spend some money, but expenditures should be kept to a minimum until there is enough profit to justify spending more (and even then I would not advise extravagance). Indiana Tech, before it had even opened its doors, had acquired an art collection and hired a curator for it. That was inexcusably stupid, yet Alexander and others never stopped boasting about the feat.
Indiana Tech seems to have been primarily about show, not about substance. There was that stupid theatrical matter of taking an oath of professionalism (apparently the students spent about six weeks writing the damn thing) and getting a little pin for it. There were all those frivolous, if not downright facetious, courses that the knuckle-dragging students could ill afford. There was the costly new building. There was the endless propaganda about excellence, which was belied by reality.
I know because I was on the staff there until August of 2016 and going to law school part-time (no, not Indiana Tech). Everyone knew that Alexander was fired. And anyone who believed otherwise was delusional. Yes, your guess as to the person who was inflating grades is correct.
DeleteThere aren't any media reports about the gun shot at Cercone because they covered it up. It was horrible. The dean at Appalachian was killed in a similar manner. But again, this is the problem when you admit moronic and unstable students, and then they fail out after being promised that they would be great lawyers with their "serviceable" LSAT scores.
You are right -- it was terrible. One of the IL's committed suicide and then one of the founding faculty members had a heart attack. Then, in late 2016, after they announced the closure, there was another one (take a guess) and from what the staff told me, it was sickening to see him collapse at the law school the way he did. Snyder literally terrorized the law school's administration and faculty.
You're also right that Indiana Tech made every mistake in the book when they opened the law school -- they had open admissions and charged ridiculous tuition, which ensured that even mediocre applicants would avoid this place. And Alexander's absurd statement about this being a different kind of law school was met with ridicule by the FW community. The art collection was donated by Parkview Hospital.
The "pin ceremony" you are referring to -- the (grammatically flawed) oath of professionalism -- was scrapped after the first year because the faculty refused to participate in that nonsense. And the initial curriculum, riddled with dumb concentrations, a required "ethics" course, and a global law certificate, was laughable. The faculty knew nothing of this when they were hired. When they arrived, they were, to say the least, upset.
As far as excellence, the faculty (namely MacLean, Lamparello, Swann, McAllister, and Cercone) tried to right the ship, and they did at the end, but it was futile. Once they got accreditation, Snyder went back to his open admissions demand (also, he used to have his minions follow the faculty home to spy on them and learn what they did after work. I am not kidding. It was that bad.) He also threatened them. And after he shut the law school, Lamparello went to the local ABC affiliate and exposed it.
Ther building was $15 million, which they paid for in cash, but they could have purchased a building downtown for a fraction of the price, but Snyder, with his unimpeded arrogance, refused. In addition, he didn't even want accreditation and fought with the law school, claiming that they could be profitable as an unaccredited school. This is what the faculty had to deal with, and the Board went along like a bunch of sheep.
So, yes, your assessment is correct, but there were good people at the law school trying to do the right thing. The university, in my opinion, should be shut down.
Also, as naive as they were, you should know the backstory. MacLean had achieved tenure at Lincoln Memorial Law School (Duncan) in Knoxville and was lured away because of Alexander's promises that the law school would attract quality students and be supported financially by the university. Lamparello had been hired to teach at the University of Maryland, but he was literally hit by a car when he was jogging months before he was supposed to start, so he had to give up the job because of very serious and life-threatening injurious. It was almost a year later that Indiana Tech recruited him. I think, well, I know, that MacLean and Lamparello (and later, Cercone, Swann, and McAllister) thought that this was a chance to build a law school and finally settle down. But they were fighting a losing battle and hopelessly naive.
DeleteHey Old Guy, this Annon should be invited to do a full write-up about Indiana Tech and publish it. I don't buy that the Profs were such innocent victims, but the University itself is a pure degree-mill operation and the admin are corrupt beyond belief. The full story would be a good read.
DeleteSome, and I stress, some of the profs were innocent victims, in that they weren't told in 2013 about the true nature of the university or its leadership when they were hired. Those professors left jobs and relocated to Indiana for nothing. And yes, the administration was horribly corrupt (the Board is a bunch of morons). The School of Education lost its accreditation a few years ago and the university should be investigated.
DeleteYes, indeed, the anonymous poster is welcome to submit a full article on Indiana Tech for publication. Post it here as a series of comments, and I'll publish it.
DeleteDecaying Fort Wayne is full of vacant buildings. There was no need to drop $15 million on a new one. That expenditure again stands as a monument to the vanity and arrogance of the people behind this failed über-toilet.
DeleteNo accreditation? How the hell was that supposed to work? The graduates would not even have been eligible for admission to the bar. California does have a number of utterly horrible unaccredited "law schools" that have been the subject of exposés in the media. Graduates of these are eligible to become lawyers in California only, although few succeed. (Hell, many if not most students of unaccredited shit pits don't even graduate.) But Indiana Tech was not in California, and Indiana doesn't recognize unaccredited law schools.
Indiana Tech only ever got provisional accreditation. The ABA, usually appallingly free and easy with full accreditation, might well have denied it to Indiana Tech. Regarding accreditation as being in the bag was another foolish mistake. As I recall, however, Indiana Tech poached someone from Cooley and named him something like Dean of Accreditation and Bar Review. So it never seemed to me that the so-called leadership of Indiana Tech felt assured of achieving accreditation.
On the infamous "pin ceremony", see this nine-year-old piece by Dybbuk:
Deletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/10/oathiness-of-professionalism-at-indiana.html
I fully agree that the "oath" was not an oath at all, just a pretentious display in the trappings of an oath.
Most interesting is the insistence of Peter Alexander (dean for less than a year) that this "pin ceremony" was one of Indiana Tech's most important innovations. Recall that it—ho, hum—posed as "a different kind of law school". What is one of the most important innovations that set it apart from the generality? A goddamn "pin ceremony". Really?
Anna Johnson, the registrar, was about as colorful as Dougie Fresh or Lamparello:
Deletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/12/toilet-paper.html
Her favourite food was a fried bologna sandwich with mayonnaise (just typing that makes me want to vomit), and, believe me, it showed. Her main hobby was snooping in houses that were listed for sale even though she had no intention to buy one. She boasted that she didn't read books, only trashy magazines. Sounds like just the right addition to the faculty, doesn't she?
Where the hell did they get these people?
Indiana Tech, the so-called university, long ago grew too big for its breeches. At bottom it is a vo-tech. Read it, scam-board: a vo-tech. It should cut the crap and stop playing at being a university. There's a need for decent vo-techs. Stop giving yourselves airs with such absurd offerings as a PhD in "global leadership". Go back to hairdressing and welding and HVAC stuff and whatever else you might be able to pull off with reasonable aplomb.
DeleteI saw this disaster unfold first-hand. As I stated, the President and Board -- who had a collective IQ of under 100 and who were very corrupt, bad human beings -- should have never opened the school and the feasibility study was laughable. And they made material misrepresentations to the incoming faculty about the school's mission, its entering class, and its viability. Once the faculty realized what was going on, it was too late. They (most of them) tried to make it work at great expense to their health and were very decent people. However, they were in a horrible situation that could never work because the President and Board were too corrupt and stupid to even begin to understand how a law school should operate.
DeleteThe university should be investigated. Its Board is very corrupt, and they care only about taking students' money and promoting their sports programs. The president after Snyder (Einolf) tried to increase standards and was rebuffed immediately and categorically by the moronic Board. The accept people with as low as an 11 on the ACT and a 700 on the SAT. In additionally, only about a third graduate within six years, and nearly half leave after the first year. Yet they keep making millions by admitting mindless fools and taking advantage of a far-too-generous federal loan program. Indiana Tech used to be a fairly respectable engineering school, but when Snyder got there and installed a Board full of morons, they cared only about profit and nothing about standards. It's a diploma mill now.
Anna Johnson was just one of many people at the law school who had no idea what they were doing. Include among them Alexander, Cummings, Duke, Marcus, and the entre admissions team. And regarding the Associate Dean of Accreditation and Bar Review, you are referring to John Nussbaumer, who was a prof at Cooley for 30 years before he came. He, along with Cercone, came because they were disgusted that Cooley became an open admissions shitshow. Little did they know that there were coming into something far worse.
The pin ceremony, and other gimmicks such as the Global Law and Leadership Certificate, and Concentrations, were neither innovative nor impressive. They were fucking ridiculous and, believe me, the faculty was embarrassed (well, most of them).
They didn't have the sense to even realize the Fort Wayne would not attract any students, especially if they were setting up a law school that admitting anything with a pulse. Fort Wayne is a miserable city, consisting mostly of churches, strip clubs, strip malls, and abandoned building. The winters are horrible. It does have Parkview Field and a few decent restaurants (Club Soda), but nothing more. Who would want to live there?
I read all of your postings about the law school as they came out and I, along with some on the faculty, ironically, agreed with you (Snyder and Alexander used to monitor this blog every day). And I applaud that you exposed this and other crap law schools (Florida Coastal, Charlotte, Arizona Summit), and hope you keep any eye on the new school in Jacksonville, which, sure enough, has that idiot Nick Allard as dean. However, I do take issue with a couple of pieces written about Lamparello (Cummings, not so much). I worked with him nearly every day for three years. You guys were wrong about him. He was a good person. He regretted that he wrote the memoirs, and he overcame some very difficult obstacles. He was also the smartest and most valued person at the school (apart from being very naive and loving Scalia and originalism, which pissed me off). And your posting about his brother, who later committed suicide, wasn't cool. Regardless, you were right about Indiana Tech and I'm glad that someone called them out. That whole fucking university should be shut down, as should these low tier law schools that saddle students with horrible debt and that lead them into poverty.
An SAT score of 700 is at the THIRD percentile. Why bother to administer the test at all if even that score is acceptable? Small wonder that most of the people enrolling in this pig of a "university" fail to finish a Mickey Mouse degree.
DeleteI'm not a bit surprised to learn that sports take priority at Indiana Tech. The US is practically the only place in the world where sports have any role at universities—and the only one where they can displace academic functions.
Sorry to burst Nussbaumer's bubble, but Cooley did not become an open-admissions shitshow overnight: it had been one for many a long year.
I fully agree that Fort Wayne is a dreadful place. There's a pretty park near the center of town (I don't remember what it's called); it seems to be a relic of a brighter era many decades past, for the city would never build anything like that today (and it's probably going to pot from neglect). The public library happens to have one of the largest collections of genealogical information. There's also a bit of a park outside town along the Wabash. Other than that, as you say, it's mostly a scattering of churches, strip malls, and other shittiness. At least the cost of living is low: one can buy quite a house for less than $100k. But that's because the place is desolate and awful.
I did recently publish on Jacksonville, and I've mentioned a couple of proposed bullshit law schools in North Carolina and West Virginia.
Lamparello came up because of his memoirs, and I consider Dybbuk's article on that subject to have been fair, even gentle. Sorry, but Lamparello came across as a self-absorbed, overprivileged jackass with a sense of entitlement the size of Jupiter. I'm not surprised to read that he regrets writing those horrible memoirs. My piece about his brother was certainly tangential to the law-school scam; I posted it more for general interest, and I didn't follow up on it when news came of the brother's suicide.
Over the years, we have hit a number of über-toilets hard: Indiana Tech, Vermont, Appalachian, all three InfiLaw institutions (now defunct), various others. And, yes, we know that some scamsters monitor what we publish. They're welcome to do so. We strive to write responsibly, citing our sources. If they don't like what we write, most likely it is the truth that pains them.
Well, Lamparello isn't even remotely as you perceived him. I understand why you would think that based on his memoirs, but he was a good man who overcame his struggles and was actually a legitimate law professor. However, I could never understand his support for originalism and love for Scalia, and we argued (nicely) about it on many occasions after I started law school in Chicago. But he was respectful of different views and, unlike some, held his students to high standards. Aside from compromising his health at Indiana Tech, his brother jumped off the Verrazano Bridge in NY and his dad died of the coronavirus. Regardless, you might be talking about Foster or Lakeside Park in Fort Wayne, which were quite nice. Otherwise, besides the cost of living, it was a terrible city. It's cloudy and rainy in the fall, freezing in the winter, and the Maumee River is probably one of the most contaminated in the country. And the people are not educated; they are fucking idiots and quite racist, frankly. Parkview Field was nice, as was Lake Wawasee. The city is just economically and socially depressed.
DeleteLMAO the Anna Johnson story was published in the first "newsletter" at the law school, and the faculty was disgusted. That was only the tip of the iceberg. One of the profs had a heart attack two months after the school opened (another in 2016), another wacko prof had a nervous breakdown and was crawled up in the corner of a classroom crying after she was chastised for blaming the faculty for a IL student's suicide (the student failed out of Cooley and Alexander foolishly accepted her, where she failed again), one student came to class in drag every day before flunking out, one student had brain damage, and one student was offering sexual favors to the male students in the library during the first year (she got caught and was expelled). Not to mention the shot at Cercone, and the students going crazy when they received D's and F's (the dumb ones are always the most clueless about their abilities). And Snyder literally wanted to admit anyone off the street. When the faculty (the good ones) finally righted the ship and got accreditation, Snyder went back to his old ways and when they resisted, he closed it. I guess there weren't enough fried bologna sandwiches to go around.
DeleteGod, you're a wealth of stories! I couldn't make that shit up.
DeleteYes, Anna Johnson showed herself to be a pig, a dolt, and a vulgarian all in one. As I recall, she not only acted as registrar but also taught legal writing—as if she knew a thing about it. She exemplified the shittiness of Indiana Tech.
Those students who went crazy over their D's and F's probably exhibited the Dunning–Kruger effect, but the law skule had also induced them to imagine themselves as hot shit when really only the second half of that was true. Once in the first year of law school a classmate told me that he had received a D on the final exam; he wanted to read my paper, which I had only just picked up (I got an A, one of only two in the cohort). Having read it, he said that he could see that he had gone about the exam in the wrong way. I never saw his paper, but he realized that the grade was fair. Especially nowadays, however, lots of people expect a good grade whether they deserve one or not.
The approach of admitting everything with a pulse is precisely what drew in that lot of ne'er-do-wells. It could have led to liability. Anyway, a "university" with open admissions is nothing but a diploma mill, and Indiana Tech deserves the reputational consequences of its own conduct.
Failing out of Cooley should have been a warning sign, but obviously it wasn't. Similarly, when Indiana Tech's über-toilet law skule went tits up, Valpo announced that it had taken in a "student" from Indiana Tech on the condition that he repeat the entire first year—meaning that that student was admitted without any credit for courses completed. There may be exceptional circumstances (illness comes to mind), but I tend to think that anyone who fails out of one über-toilet is likely to fail out of another.
Well, I was there from 2012 (a year before they opened) through 2016, and this shit and more actually happened. It was surreal and almost comical. You should have seen when Alexander was led out by security like he was a criminal. And the entire admissions committee quit after the first year, only to be replaced by a bunch of Snyder sycophants. No, Anna did not teach legal writing (the law librarian, Phoebe Poydras, taught the research portion of legal writing). MacLean, Lamparello, and Duke taught legal writing in the first year, although MacLean and Lamparello moved on to teach criminal law, con law, and the U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Project and later become two of the Associate Deans under Cercone.
DeleteYes exactly. These morons, a substantial number of whom scored in the 130s or low 140s on the LSAT (after multiple attempts), were wined and dined by Alexander (because of Snyder, who demanded that we admit anyone or anything) in 2012 before the faculty even arrived and actually believed they were the shit. The entering profile of the first class had a median LSAT of 146 (with a 142 at the 25th percentile) and the second a 148 (again 142 at the 25th percentile). Imagine trying to teach entitled students who lacked even a modicum of self-awareness to realize that they don't belong within 100 miles of a law school. Lol how are you going to build a sustainable law school - the fifth in Indiana at the time -- with such pathetic credentials?
This is why MacLean, Lamparello, and the rest of the legit law profs, one of whom was a federal judge, were so naive to think this could work. They may have righted the ship in 2016 (with at least a minimally qualified incoming class for fall 2017 and a traditional (and more rigorous) curriculum), but it was never going to succeed with Snyder, the corrupt Board, its location in FW, and money they were losing. And it was horrible to see two profs go down to heart attacks, one of whom required open heart surgery, and to literally see them age about twenty years and have health issues as the nightmare progressed. It was very sad. The university should be shut down.
Ultimately, the administration and faculty were literally terrified of Snyder, even after the law school closed. But Lamparello wasn't and exposed it very publicly. And, to put it nicely, he made it known that he was going after Snyder and the Board. That's what led the other faculty and students to join a lawsuit that quickly settled for seven million. It was one of the most satisfying things to see them buckle like the degenerates that there were.
There just was no way to right that ship, which never should have been built. And that's why a couple of people ended up having heart attacks and lots of others aged two decades in a few years. Lamparello and some of the others may have thought that they could have a tiny-ass, heavily subsidized class with a lot of people in the low to mid-150s, but that just wasn't viable. The university did need to see profit, or at least an absence of losses, PDQ; it just couldn't afford to go on subsidizing a money-losing law school indefinitely. And a tiny clutch of mediocre students who were prepared to spend three years in unprepossessing Fort Wayne and who had to be sponsored with huge discounts just wasn't going to bring in much revenue. That was especially true at a time when other schools were shrinking.
DeleteI actually thought that Anna Johnson might have been one of the ones to have a heart attack, since those nasty sandwiches of hers contained enough fat to choke a walrus.
Don't ask me to teach morons or lazybones, and don't ask me to mollycoddle anyone. I'm a demanding teacher. I'll happily help people, but those who won't or can't learn will just have to fall by the wayside. It isn't true that "law is for everyone". Law schools in other parts of the world cheerfully get rid of a third of the class after one year, then more students still in subsequent waves. In the US, however, everyone who can fog a mirror is entitled to go to law school and is entitled to pass. I say bullshit.
People who are too afraid to stand up for themselves are unlikely to make decent law professors. No law school is going to work out well with a faculty peopled by milquetoasts.
Part of the problem was that Snyder, and the Board, promised the faculty and the ABA's Council on Accreditation (through bullshit financial statements), that they would fund losses to the tune of $6 million per year until 2020, and then absorb $25 more million in losses through 2025, at which time they anticipated breaking even. They could say that because the university was making millions each year and increasing its endowment by admitting moronic undergrads to its online programs and satellite campuses (the main campus also increased). But they never intended to follow through on it. It was a fraud.
DeleteLamparello, MacLean, Cercone, and a few others bought into it and thought that, if they re-branded Indiana Tech as a quality law school with higher LSAT scores and GPA, highly qualified professors, and lower tuition than most in the region (ONU, UIC, etc.), they could become sustainable by 2025, particularly given that Valpo was closing and many of the schools in the region were fourth-tier shitholes. And when they got 60 with a median of 155, most of whom were from other states, they thought they had a shot.
They were naive in believing so, and I told Lamparello and MacLean that repeatedly because I had worked at the university before I started at the law school. But, having worked with them, I could tell that they felt stuck. They, along with Cercone, Swann, and McAllister, came into a bad situation that they didn't know about when they were hired and were trying desperately to make it work. But they were naive in thinking as they did, and they did so at great costs to their health. Part of why Lamparello aged so much is that he had to deal with scores of students going crazy because, unlike some less-than-ethical profs, he wouldn't give bullshit grades and rightfully flunked a number of those idiots. MacLean and the others did the same. And he had to deal with Snyder, who was very abusive. But when they closed the school suddenly, Lamparello exposed it despite threats from Snyder and was great. No, it wasn't Anna Johnson. It was Lamparello.
I could tell that it was Lamparello. Then again, his behavior as reported in his memoirs suggests that he had been rough on his body, so perhaps there was a good deal more to the heart attack than the stress of Indiana Tech in its last months.
DeleteThe purpose of Indiana Tech was never made clear. That's what I meant when I said that Indiana Tech tried to be everything to everybody. Conflicting goals caused major problems:
* Profitability
* Quality
* Private interests (such as that hip-hop crap)
Thus Dougie Fresh was praising the 143 while others were trying to do far better than that, and Alexander would talk about outperforming established law schools in the LSAT department while admitting people without even glancing at their applications. Had there been unity, the thing could have been managed more easily, and people wanting to act against the plan could have been stopped. Indiana Tech still would have collapsed, but at least people might not have ended up with heart attacks.
In 2012, before the faculty got there, the moronic Board, Snyder, and Alexander had a clear purpose that was an obvious recipe for catastrophic failure (high tuition, no standards, unqualified "students"). They totally misrepresented this purpose to the incoming faculty (mouthing off that they had a class of 100 with a median of 156 and 3.5 GPA) and when they got there, they soon found out, as the class had about 27 students with a median of 146. The purpose changed when Alexander was fired, and Cummings was ousted in favor of Cercone. Then it was about low tuition, high standards, a traditional and skills-based curriculum, and hiring legit profs. But it was too late, and Snyder and the Board only agreed to it (and conned the faculty with fraudulent financial statements) to get provisional accreditation. Then they reverted back to their nonsense and Snyder shut the school when Cercone and the faculty resisted.
DeleteBerles had a heart attack in the first year, a few months before the 1L committed suicide. Another prof got very ill and had to have open heart surgery. Then Lamparello, about a week or so after the closure was announced. When he came to the law school in 2013, he was dangerously, and I mean dangerously, thin. They decided to give him a chance and thank God they did because he was the most talented guy there did all he could to save the school. But the stress over those three miserable years got to him, and he aged. And like you said, his past behavior, particularly the eating disorder, probably played a role.
Practically every law school, given the choice, would take good students over bad. But law schools don't necessarily get the choice, especially if they are bullshit upstarts like Indiana Tech that had to be justified through an absurd "feasibility study".
DeleteLow tuition was just a way to buy a class of better quality. During its third year, Indiana Tech let all of the new students attend free of charge, obviously by way of buying a better class.
This one is circling the drain.
ReplyDelete100% admission rate-for last year's class.....sounds about right.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2022/10/05/northeastern-law-school-mistakenly-sends-acceptance-letters/
https://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195434
ReplyDeleteIn this thread, the founding Dean argued with anonymous internet posters calling him out on his nonsense.
Old Guy, you perform a great service in updating this website and advising everyone to stay away from law school. There are only two routes to hurt the scam. One is to convince students not to go. Dumber students have wised up and driven numbers down at the dumpster fires. What is more painful to watch are the Ivy League undergrads going back to law school with the "Trump Bump" where everyone aspires to be a sexy lawfare expert. They have so much talent, time, energy, and youth squandered. The second route is to cut off all student loans and/or make the universities financially responsible for defaults. No politician or political party of any relevance would ever advocate for this and pass these reforms. The money spigot will only stop in a massive economic collapse that would make '08 look rosy.
The Ivy League undergrads probably end up at a Harvard or a Yale. I've warned them about the real risks of going to one of those schools. If they don't listen, well, they shouldn't come crying to Old Guy about their misfortunes.
DeleteIndiana Tech tried to be everything to everyone. It offered programs that only an élite, or near-élite, law school could afford—courses like "Hip-Hop and the US Constitution", four (yes, FOUR!) certificates in "global leadership". Yet it drew its students from the mid-140s at best. Sorry to burst the bubbles of the faculty, but shitty students shouldn't be given anything but a three-year bar-review course; they're never going to be "global leaders", or leaders of any stripe, and they cannot afford the luxury of indulging Dougie Fresh Pond Scum's favorite vanity project.
ReplyDeleteOnly one graduate, Brooks Ledger, passed at first:
ReplyDeletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2016/09/indiana-tech-law-school-charter-class.html
By the way, the second and last graduating class snubbed Snyder by holding its graduation ceremony privately at the public library. Only 5 of the 21 graduates attended the ceremony put on by the university.
ReplyDeleteAs for the first graduation ceremony, read this for a laugh:
https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2016/05/gee-wally-thats-swell-indiana-tech.html
Yes, indeed they did. They not only snubbed Snyder, but they went after him and the Board with a vengeance. The lawyer for Swann and Lamparello (Chris Mackaronis, who has since died of cancer), actually broke the news of the law school's closure before the university did, and at the same time Lamparello, who had aged about fifteen years fighting this diploma mill, exposed the fraud on the news. When it aired, they caved. And when they did, the rest of the faculty and all of the students sued. They ultimately took 7 million from the university.
DeleteIt's funny that the lawyer (sorry about his death) was the first to announce the closure of the über-toilet law school. And it seems that criminal charges could have been preferred as well, what with all that stalking of professors and threatening of various people.
DeleteThanks. He died of cancer not long after the lawsuit was settled. Mackaronis was from a D.C. firm and the school's firm, Carson Boxberger, settled as soon as the fraud was exposed. They couldn't pursue criminal charges. Two of the Board members were a prosecutor and judge, respectively, in Allen County. They were as corrupt as you can imagine.
DeleteThese erstwhile Indiana Tech worthies don't strike me as the cream of the professorial crop:
ReplyDeleteJames Berles earned his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University-Bloomington and his law degree from South Texas College of Law. He currently serves as a law clerk to senior U.S. District Judge William Lee in Fort Wayne, Ind., and he was formerly a magazine editor for the oil and gas industry.
Adam Lamparello earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California, his law degree from The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law, and a Master of Laws degree from New York University. He currently teaches criminal law at Morris County College in Randolph, N.J., and has taught legal research and writing at the Loyola University, New Orleans College of Law, and Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Ga.
Charles MacLean is a former county attorney in Minnesota who currently teaches legal research and writing at the Duncan School of Law at Lincoln Memorial University in Knoxville, Tenn. MacLean earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota and his law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.
Applications are re-collapsing:
ReplyDeletehttps://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/10/14-of-the-way-through-the-fall-2023-law-school-admissions-cycle-applicants-are-down-14-percent.html
Thanks for the good news. Looks like regression to the mean.
DeleteThe sharpest declines are among those scoring 160 or higher on the LSAT.
As always, I'm off-topic here because, fortunately, I never darkened the door of a law school. But I have just become aware of a disturbing trend emerging in medical education, which, along with maybe engineering and natural sciences, is one of the last bastions of anything resembling integrity within higher education.
ReplyDeleteI am on the medical staff at a state-funded academic medical center that in a few months will be integrated into a newly-established medical school. Several weeks ago the suits running the place called most of us in individually and told us that, henceforth, we would no longer receive salaries--that our compensation would depend entirely on clinical productivity. When we got together and had our department leadership ask how we would be compensated for time spent on scholarship and teaching activities, we got a condescending response about how that was "baked in" the productivity plan and that we should teach because we "enjoy it." I thought about telling them to go fuck themselves with very large caduceus. But as they were blabbering on about how this was a great deal for me I did some mental calculations: They won't put any teaching duties in my contract so they can justify not paying for that time. So I figured I can pull out that document any time I'm asked to do any educational, administrative, or scholarly work and refuse to do anything other than direct clinical care, keep the same hours I have now, and increase my annual income by $40-50K per year without breaking a sweat.
The medical school, well... The continuing education activities they've offered in the past year have been peppered with unscientific and clinically useless talks on "diversity/inclusion/bias" and social issues such as disparities in access to healthcare, and how half of the population is somehow being "trafficked". And we're constantly told that the most important part of our "mission" is to meet an unmet need by increasing access to healthcare in the region.
I've polled a few other colleagues in other parts of the country and this type of faculty compensation and social mindset seems to be growing among medical schools.
I work with a junior colleague who is knowledgeable about the situation with residency training programs, and he showed me data that indicate there will soon be many more medical school graduates than residency spots.
Hmm...blabber about "unmet needs," and diversity? Spending time teaching learners about social issues instead of actual professional/clinical skills? More graduates than there are available entry-level jobs? Six-figure student debt? Sound familiar?
I used to regard medical education as the gold standard, one little relic of seriousness in what is otherwise an ejookayshunnal racket. Classics was another hold-out until it marginalized Latin and Greek in favor of cotton-candy courses on "classical civilization" or whatever the popular buzzword is nowadays. (At Princeton, an undergraduate can now major in classics without learning any Latin or Greek.)
DeleteBut years ago I concluded that medical education is not what it used to be. Physicians often lack rudimentary knowledge of their own field, such as the (main) cause of warts. A surgeon of my acquaintance complains that residents don't enough anatomy to identify, say, the superior vena cava—something that I could certainly identify despite never having studied anatomy or examined cadavers. Once a student who attended a medical appointment of mine as part of his rotations (I am happy to support medical education by allowing students to observe) wasn't able to answer any of the physician's questions. For instance, when asked for a non-sedating antihistamine, the student fumbled before coming up with Benadryl, which, of course, is an incorrect answer (even laypeople are often aware that diphenhydramine/Benadryl causes drowsiness). I could think of two correct answers immediately and probably could have come up with a third, maybe a fourth.
Social issues are part of medicine, and it would be wrong for a physician not to understand such basic social facts as disparities in access to health care, differences in dietary practices, and factors that contribute to non-compliance with treatment. On a more practical level, medical students at one school years ago forced the use of dark skin in examples of dermatological conditions, not primarily for reasons of diversity but rather because they needed to learn to identify those conditions in anyone's skin and the exclusive use of white skin kept them from doing so. That said, it does appear that social issues are getting too much stress, probably because they are convenient distractions from the hard work of learning medical theory and practice.
In law, too, students and lawyers alike are commonly told to increase access to justice—but how? The social issue of access to justice is being put onto the shoulders of individual lawyers when it is much too big for any of them to take on. In practice, some lawyers do offer free services or otherwise foster access to justice; most do not. Just telling people to do their part doesn't mean that they will. And of course nobody seems to be offering funds for this endeavor.
Your medical center has told you that only clinical work matters. You can quite properly comply by doing nothing but clinical work. Something tells me that those bean-counting bureaucrats are not being told to do a major part of their jobs for nothing on the grounds that they "enjoy it"…
I know this issue well. "Social Determinants of Health" are being pushed hard from a PR perspective, and everyone is talking about "value based payment" and "alternative payment models" but guess what? Those APMs always end up being trivial token amounts, basically little "bonuses" the hospital gets by having things like low "readmission rates," that really depend more on patient behavior you can't control anyway. How do we measure those readmission rates? Well from traditional good old fashioned claims of course!
DeleteSo the point is, the system pays a whole lotta lip service to all that other social stuff, but at the end of the day it is still volume, not value, of services rendered that generates the cash, and probably always will be.
In this respect, a hospital or big clinic is like a large law firm. Every lawyer in such a place knows the phenomenon of various meetings and trainings and CLE and whatever which isn't billable time, and the dread of how every hour you spend on such things essentially has to be made up with something billable if you are to hit your targets for the year.
Happens in many professions. Nonbillable work is expected but no real allowance is made for the billable time it takes away; it's on you to make that up. Basically, you need to serve both what the organization REALLY cares about, and what it PRETENDS to care about for PR purposes. I feel your pain.
A couple of things. It is a long and hallowed tradition among physicians, especially those in academia, that the new breed are lazy and stupid. Notwithstanding OG's lamentable experience, this just isn't accurate. By any objective standard, they are high achievers, having taken the toughest classes most universities offer and then perform very well on an objective test before even being considered for admission. Ok, they could be lazy-that's more of a subjective call-but that's not likely. Unpleasant people-perhaps, but that's another discussion.
ReplyDeleteAnd medicine, especially academic medicine, is subject to the whims of business types. All Dr Coe need do is quit and go into private practice. If he and his colleagues did so, there would be significant changes.
Finally, there is a huge shortage of physicians, especially primary care docs:
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/sustainability/doctor-shortages-are-here-and-they-ll-get-worse-if-we-don-t-act
Which has nothing to do with residency slots, which are pretty much fully funded by the federal government-and the feds haven't ponied up the $$$ needed to fund the additional slots needed.
The status of the medical profession is nothing, at all, like the legal profession. There is a genuine shortage, all physicians in training are poorly paid, to get board certification takes a least three years after graduation(at the poor pay rate), almost all need to pass a certification exam in their specialty(there are a few very small exceptions), and most have to "re-certify" in their specialty every decade or so-can anyone imagine taking the bar again, ten years in?
I don't see why lawyers should not have to take the bar exam again from time to time. Keep us honest by requiring regular proof of basic competence.
DeleteBetween the cap on residency slots (which is a de facto cap on med school seats) and the onerous undergrad prereqs that keep a lot of people out who could do just fine (especially would-be career changers who simply can't afford to go back and do undergrad all over again) medicine definitely has a shortage.
DeleteBut define "genuine." If genuine means it's real, then it absolutely is. But if genuine means "for legitimate reasons" (not enough people who are smart enough and motivated enough to be docs) I don't think so. A lot of the shortage is artificially manufactured to keep doc pay high and not really justifiable for reasons of patient safety or quality of care.
Take hospitals for example. State legislatures have expanded the scope of practice of NPs and PAs to try and address the shortage and by all accounts, they do just fine in their practices. But hospitals are required by federal law to have their "medical staff" (docs with privileges at the hospital) be an independent and self-governing group that is majority physician-controlled. They behave as you'd expect, i.e. like a union. And so they pass "medical staff bylaws" that exclude or severely limit NPs and PAs from getting hospital privileges, even where state law would expressly allow it. Clearly, the CMS "independent medical staff" requirement is used not so much as intended (to protect clinical judgment from greedy hospital admins) as it is for economic protectionism.
There have been lots of antitrust suits against medical staffs discriminating against things like docs with outside competing practices, but none that I know of alleging that colluding to keep NPs and PAs from practicing at the tops of their licenses (and thus competing with docs) is anticompetitive. But I think it very much is, and is illustrative of the broader phenomenon that much of this shortage is artificial and manufactured.
One does not have "to go back and do undergrad all over again" in order to attend medical school. The required courses might take one year or so.
DeleteLaw school doesn't require a single undergraduate course of any kind. The freewheeling approach to admissions encourages many people who really do not belong in law school. I've suggested requirements such as exam in the integral calculus, or in Latin, just to separate the sheep from the goats.
You might be able to squeeze it all in if you do 12 consecutive months full time, but working adults generally can't do that, especially since these are some of the hardest undergrad courses available and merely surviving them won't be enough. (About 50% of GMAT takers don't get in anywhere).
DeleteAnd the other wrinkle is this: Remember that there is no "financial aid" (loans) for just taking classes. You have to be in a "degree granting program" or else you need to pay out of pocket, and most community colleges don't offer all the stuff you need or even if they do, the med schools frown on prereqs taken at CCs. So tuition won't be cheap.
So unless you can pay full tuition out of pocket, you need to enroll in a second bachelors or a degree-granting postbacc premed program. It is pretty much undergrad all over again, just minus the gen eds. Sure if you go the second BS route you can drop out once you get what you need, but you gotta be in something that leads to a degree if you need aid.
And Lord help you if you've already exhausted your lifetime Stafford cap. Even if you are in a degree-granting premed program, there's no gradPLUS for undergrad, meaning no more federal lending for life for anything that isn't a graduate program. Even if you pay it off before starting, doesn't matter. Once you've ever borrowed a grand total of $57,500 for undergrad, you can never borrow again for an undergraduate level program.
As a hard science undergrad, I concur that it's impossible to knock those things out in one year. It takes about 3 years, and that's relatively fast. One of the major sticking points is the labs, labs take several hours on lab day itself but also another day or two to write a report. A lab report is significantly more time consuming and rigorous than anything in law school, and it's every week. All labs are not offered every semester, and require prerequisite and/or concurrent lecture courses, it is not physically possible to do all of them in one year.
DeleteI made a tremendous error going to law school over medical school, in large part because of the tremendous rigor and time investment of science courses. At the time I was rather resentful of losing out on much of the college experience---there's a reason hard science/pre-med students are considered "nerds" or boring or what not---if you're not putting the work in, you will not pass the classes, let alone excel as you need to in order to make a medical school. Remember, medical school in the US is highly restricted, unlike law which does not care about employment prospects, US medical schools are tied to residency slots. It's a very small pool, that honestly does need to be increased, as more doctors would create more access to healthcare (the specious argument the law school cartel makes to pump out endless law graduates, yet for healthcare, which is imo inarguably more important for most people's quality of life, it's heavily restricted by wealth).
I disagree with the original poster's claim of poor pay. Lawyers, bankers, CPAs all make worse money and work similar hours early in their careers for the most part. Physician salaries explode afterwards is all, on average, whereas for these other professions the higher salaries are restricted to the few. In terms of average, physicians are the best profession in the US, the worst medical doctor is still firmly in the upper middle class. That is not the case for any other profession.
A lot of states don't even require continuing education let alone mandate retaking a bar exam, outside the MPRE for disciplinary reasons. The reasons are obvious. The state bar agencies are dependent on the fees of licensed attorney. Since so many 'attorneys' do not practice, mandating costly and time consuming requirements to retain a license that is monetarily sterile to the holder will result in a deluge leaving the profession and crippling the budgets of the bar agencies.
DeleteRight on, 11:24/ And even with your hard science major, I bet you couldn't go back and go to med school now either, since most med schools will disregard "stale" prerequisite credits that weren't earned within the last X years. And even the ones that don't formally disregard them are still gonna look on them less favorably even if you excelled.
DeleteEveryone pays lip service to access to care, but anything that'd actually address the shortage the doc lobbies will oppose on the grounds that it'd jeopardize quality of care. Actions speak louder than words.
@8:37 In looking at my state bar's financials, it looks like they collect about $15m/yr. Roughly 66% dues, 26% CLE, and 8% fines they levy against disciplined lawyers (They don't have authority over the bar exam so they don't get anything from that, maybe why they helped make sure we have very liberal reciprocity lol). They spend it all and don't earn profit, so it all ultimately works out to a total cost of regulating the profession of roughly $1000 per attorney per year.
DeleteMy dues are about $500 and I spend about the same on CLE, so it feels to me like we truly are a self-regulating profession with the cost of that regulation being split amongst our own membership pretty darn evenly. And if you're not practicing, you can cut the dues to $250/yr and eliminate the CLE obligation by going on inactive status.
In exchange, we get a magazine and periodic emails about big new developments, a free legal research service, an online subpoena generating service, and a member assistance program to answer ethics questions and which if you're all stressed out also functions kinda like an EAP. They also negotiate discounts on a variety of business services like answering services and health insurance and office supplies and rental cars and whatnot.
And the discipline process is far from aggressive. They even screen out the ridiculous crazy ones so that you don't even have to go through the trouble of filing a response. The people who do get disciplined pretty darn clearly deserve it, in my experience.
Honestly it's a pretty good value. Definitely cheaper and easier to comply with than it'd be if we were regulated by an administrative agency like other licensed professions, which the state supreme court has made sure to prevent on separation of powers grounds.
The state bar in my state is one of the few aspects of the legal profession I actually don't have any gripe with. They can't really do much about the lawyer glut, but they do good work, they charge reasonably, and it's really easy to feel heard with them because their Board of Governors is elected by the membership and although they are of course ultimately accountable to the state supreme court, the court is pretty deferential to them when they recommend stuff.
I like my state bar, I'm glad they're around, and I'm glad it's a mandatory bar.
Yeah you physicians did a great job with your disgraceful covid protocols in hospitals, which literally killed people (e.g., covid didn't kill them - remdesivir and ventilators did). And you inflated the death count to make covid seem more deadly than it was. Any physician who spoke out against these pathetic and deadly protocols was blackballed. The medical profession and evidence based medicine is a joke.
ReplyDeleteLet's return to the topic. A discussion of what physicians did about COVID-19 should be conducted elsewhere.
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DeleteExactly. (((They))) run the medical profession too.
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ReplyDeleteYeah, Groucho Marx was a wise fellow...
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping the same fate awaits Golden Gate. But with the proliferation of literally worthless bachelor's and master's degrees in legal studies or similar, the scam has simply taken on a different form. The degrees are worthless; none allow the recipient to take the bar anywhere, but still thousands are signing up.
ReplyDeleteAnd on a different note, even with the surplus of lawyers, the march of "legal technicians" continues. Colorado is seeking to join Washington(there may be other states) in allowing non-lawyers to practice. The Washington experience has been all over the place in terms of results, but a Washington attorney would be better able to address that.
Never heard of an LLM that doesn't require you to already have a JD or its foreign equivalent/LLB. Maybe there is or long has been, don't know, just never heard of it.
DeleteBut what is new is those MLS degrees which are basically just the 1L year. Some schools are using it to get people to enroll by saying that if they don't like the JD or come in really low in the class, they can drop out after 1L and walk away with an MLS consolation prize. And others are using it to goose enrollment another way, by using it in lieu of standardized tests. ABA allows this because they only require a "valid and reliable" method, and that it be prior to admission. So they just use 1L grades as the test and since they haven't technically admitted you to the JD but rather to the MLS and will just transfer the MLS credits if you get admitted to the JD, this is permissible.
Longest and most expensive admissions test ever, and at the end of it they can just admit the people ranking highly enough in the class that they're unlikely to tank bar passage rates.
That stuff is new. And nefarious as it is, I can't help but give 'em points for creativity.
I was just reading through this post and my comments again for whatever reason, probably because I drove by the law school (or whatever they call it now) yesterday. Indiana Tech was a disaster, and I do feel for some of the profs. Lol you should contact Lamparello and interview him for an expose on this blog because, knowing him, he'd probably do it and you'd learn shit that would be downright shocking. The others profs might welcome an opportunity to further expose Tech too.
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