Long-time readers of OTLSS will remember andré douglas pond cummings, the ever-so-humble scholar of law & hip-hop who insists on writing all four of his names at all times, solely in lower-case letters. He reportedly christened himself Dougie Fresh, for what reason I know not, as a young Mormon on his obligatory mission to win converts, but he seems to have tired of that moniker. (We often call him Dougie Fresh here, or Pond Scum.) His greatest moment in the sun was a stint as second in command at Indiana Tech Law School, a four-year-long flash in the pan whose greatest contribution to the world was an almost inexhaustible wellspring of material for witty mockery here at OTLSS. Those who are late to the party may occupy a merry afternoon by searching for
site:outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com "indiana tech"
and laughing their asses off at every article.
Well, as I said, Indiana Tech went tits up after four years. Dougie Fresh apparently got a job teaching legal writing at the toilet law school of the U of Arkansas at Little Rock, thereby faring rather better than most of his colleagues at the finest failed law school ever to disgrace Allen County, Indiana. I had nearly forgotten about him when our dear founder, Dybbuk, shared the following piece of news with me: Dougie Fresh is going to become the dean of Widener University Commonwealth Law School on the first of June.
Widener waxes dithyrambic about Dougie Fresh Pond Scum:
- an accomplished leader, scholar, and award-winning professor
- an inclusive leader with an array of legal expertise
- a student-centered leader who stands out as a strong proponent of inclusion and belonging
For "a strong proponent of inclusion and belonging", read "a whore who will draw sorely needed student-loan-bearing racialized students into our stinky über-toilet". At Indiana Tech, Pond Scum told a prospective applicant that 143 was a "serviceable" LSAT score, apparently meaning that it was good enough for Indiana Tech. It is in fact a dreadful LSAT score, one so bad that anyone entering law school with it is unlikely to graduate and less likely still to pass a bar exam ever. Widener preys on racialized students: they make up more than a quarter of the student body and a clear majority of those who fail out. Unfortunately, gullible people who have suffered a lifetime of undeserved disadvantage on account of white supremacy may heed the siren song of white scamsters who tell them that they can have a career in law despite demonstrably poor ability that renders them inadmissible to any respectable law school. At least 25% of the class got no better than 146 on the LSAT; only two ABA-accredited law schools have lower scores (145 and 144).
Conspicuously absent from this puff piece by über-toilet Widener is any mention of Dougie Fresh's four years just shy of the helm of HMS Indiana Tech. Why is that, pray tell? Could it be that Indiana Tech, whose entire brief and shameful existence is amply and amusingly documented at OTLSS, is a grievous embarrassment, blotting a career of allegedly brilliant achievement in the burgeoning field of law & hip-hop?
We at OTLSS predict that the students and staff of über-toilet Widener will quickly tire of this pretentious buffoon and his four lower-case names. We recommend that they call him Pond Scum and ask why he insisted on being called Dougie Fresh by his fellow latter-day saints.
Ok, anywhere else this would be beyond comprehension but this is the law school scam, after all. So it's business as usual.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting if students/alum start asking about his background; even within the very loose standards of the scam employment at Indiana Tech law school would be looked askance.
Don’t forget Adam Lamparello Oldguy! After sucking the lemmings dry at Indiana, he went to some school in Georgia, where I have to assume he’s pulling the same scam.
ReplyDeleteDidn't I read that he was somewhere in Alabama, pursuing a degree in criminology or some such thing? Sorry, I haven't kept track of the scamsters of yesteryear.
DeleteIsn't scamming students for a worthless degree something that should be taught in criminology?
DeleteTwo of my former Cooley Law School professors were at Indiana Tech. Professors Nasbaummer and Cercone. I think Nasbaummer was the dean of Indiana Tech. I guess they jumped ship from Cooley like rats jump a sinking ship thinking Indiana Tech was a better prospect than Cooley. From the frying pan into the fire.
ReplyDeleteNussbaumer was poached from Cooley to act as Indiana Tech's "Associate Dean for ABA Accreditation and Bar Preparation":
Deletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2015/12/indiana-tech-tries-to-appear-selective_23.html
Less than a year later, Indiana Tech announced that it was closing its doors.
Nussbaumer had 31 years at Cooley. I'd bet that Indiana Tech had to shell out a lot to get him—all for nothing.
Just because someone is black or Hispanic doesn’t mean they aren’t culpable for buying into the scam. There is no moral difference between Cooley recruiting them and TJ recruiting white surfer bros with sub 150 LSATs. It is also well documented how little minorities study.
ReplyDeleteIt is absurd to tar tens of millions of people ("minorities") with the same brush. This site is no venue for white chauvinism.
DeleteSome of the recent discussion here has mentioned a general lack of studying at universities nowadays.
Anyway, however hard anyone at some über-toilet may study, the result is likely to be catastrophic.
I never said that people who go to über-toilets such as Cooley aren't culpable. Certainly they have to bear responsibility for their decisions. But talk about the "opportunity" that law school allegedly affords to Black and other racialized people can be awfully deceptive, and white kids who can afford to spend their time surfing enjoy racial and other privileges that many low-performing racialized applicants to über-toilets do not. In any event, white kids can't be fed the same line about "opportunity" for members of oppressed racial groups.
Posters here just mad that black lawyers would Skool them in court. They have to stop Cooley from getting them licensed.
DeleteCooley doesn't do that: it has a terrible track record, having been out of compliance with the ABA's rule about passing bar exams for many years. The ABA, of course, does nothing about the scam that is Cooley, which continues to prey upon Black people and others. Thousands upon thousands of people with far more hope than potential take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-dischargeable student loans bearing high interest only to find themselves either failing out, failing to pass a bar exam even after many attempts, or finding no decent job in law if they do manage to graduate and pass.
DeleteI doubt Old Guy would have a problem with Cooley if the tuition was like $5k a term instead of $60k a year.
DeleteYea but what is Cooley's record in court? How many cases do they win against Michigan alums, Yale alums etc.? Their record is very strong by all accounts.
DeleteSeriously 8:19 you've embraced the fall back of every law school scamster, claiming they-the Cooleyites-have a "record [that] is very strong by all accounts[against those know-nothing Michigan and Yale attorneys].
DeletePray tell, what accounts are those, and who keeps those accounts?
Never mind, we both know this isn't MLB, with a published won/loss record for attorneys. You're simply making things up for the sake of defending the scam.
Hmmm, would I think better of Cooley if it charged $5k per term instead of $60k per year?
DeleteCooley at that price might attract students of higher quality, and then it could afford to avoid the 130s and the low 140s. On the other hand, it would still be Cooley, and good applicants can already get free or very low tuition at vastly better law schools. It's also not clear that Cooley wouldn't just open another campus or two and go right on delving into the 130s as before.
So I tend to think that I would still disapprove of Cooley, even if it charged only $5k per term. After all, I disapproved of Indiana Tech when it slashed its fees to $0.
Cooleyites don't belong in law school at any price, even $0. Sorry, but there's a point below which quality just isn't there and the person should be kept out. Nobody would hesitate to tell Old Guy not to pursue a career as quarterback or ballet dancer, yet we're supposed to approve when a knuckle-dragging semiliterate wants to be a lawyer.
Why, the account of Cooley, 7:07! Aren't you familiar with that noble publication "Judging the Law Schools", put out by Cooley itself a dozen years ago? It showed that Cooley was second only to Harvard among ABA-accredited law schools.
DeleteHow did Cooley attain so lofty a distinction? I don't remember the exact criteria, and Cooley's current president recently admitted that he destroys any copy of this publication that comes to his attention. But there were forty criteria, equally weighted, and all but three or four of them were proxies for size. Since Cooley back then was far and away the largest law school by enrollment (with some 4000 students), it won handily in most categories other than such trifling ones as LSAT score.
For a jolly laugh, see whether you can dig up a copy of this unintentionally hilarious piece of Cooleyite propaganda on the Internet.
You can dig it up. Cooley served me just fine. And yes, we beat Michigan and even Yale alums in court all the time. Just log onto social media and see for yourself.
DeleteYes, social media the source of the most accurate information available.
DeleteGood for you, 8:15. But make no mistake; you succeeded DESPITE Cooley, not because of it. Give yourself the credit you deserve, not them. They gave you a credential that enabled you to sit for the bar exam, nothing more or less. Everything else is your own credit unless you had family connections or something.
DeleteAnd that's really the best way to think of it, frankly. The low-ranked law schools will enable you to sit for the bar, and that's IT. What makes them crappy schools is that they promise so much more, when in reality, again, the only thing they really give you is the ability to sit the bar exam.
If that's all you need because you're gonna hang a shingle or whatever, and you're good with the price, then more power to you. Just don't expect anything more than that from a low ranked law school, and don't give it credit that belongs to you when you make a successful go of it!
From time to time, someone happens along to report a brilliant and lucrative legal career that all started with a JD from Cooley or Thomas Jefferson or some other stinky über-toilet law school.
DeleteMaybe it's true for a few people. What we know is that many über-toileteers never graduate, and that many of those who do graduate never pass a bar exam. Not a single person in those categories becomes a lawyer at all, still less one with a glorious career.
We also know that über-toileteers are almost invariably weak at such skills as reading, writing, and thinking. If they do become lawyers, they are likely to be shitty lawyers.
Old Guy is right. All a Cooley degree does is let you sit for the bar. Nothing else. I graduated Cooley and sat for the bar and passed the first time. When looking for legal employment that is when I realized there is a problem with the degree. I never even got a call back so I just let my law license lapse and realized there never will be a legal career. It's virtually impossible. Paying for required legal education to keep your law license is a waste of money and time. I even worked at a car dealership selling cars after my law license lapsed and my law degree was put in my basement. That was years ago and I forgot most of the law since I never used it. No different than if you were asked to retake a high school algebra or calculus exam. You forgot the formulas. I shudder to think what my classmates are experiencing
DeleteI'm sorry that that happened to you even though you did pass the bar exam on the first try. Unfortunately, that's part of the taint of the Cooley name: people know of it as a magnet for bottom-end law students, and even the more promising students will necessarily suffer from its bad reputation.
DeleteOld Guy would still pass math exams with flying colors, though.
Here are some real Cooley numbers: per ATL:
Delete"Cooley's two-year bar passage rate for 2021 law grads was 55.87%"....in other words, about 46% of Cooley grads who took the bar failed, some several times.
Well, 44%. But the standard is that 75% of those who take a bar exam must pass one within two years. Cooley isn't close to that; it has even been retrogressing. Yet the scam-enabling ABA keeps giving extensions to Cooley on the basis of a "Reliable Plan" to get its shit into a pile. Cooley, however, will never get its shit into a pile, except to the extent that it itself is a pile of shit.
DeleteThe sad thing is this scam artist is making a ton of money off these institutions doing literally nothing. The scam will continue because the ABA doesn’t care and the federal government will continue to fund these trash pits.
ReplyDeleteIronic that the ABA has standard 508 which states a law school should provide "basic" career services and these career services offices have dismal employment outcomes. Isn't that in itself proof the law schools are out of compliance with standard 508? Unless basic career services just means parrot the same cliche to students to go out and network and look for jobs on Craigslist.
Delete"Basic" services means a finger pointed at an old copy of the Yellow Pages.
DeleteFor a first-hand account of Cooley's culture, read below. Well worth it. Stories of drugs, alcohol, promiscuity.
Deletehttps://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=211466
The moderators are censoring comments here. I made one about how the politics of certain posters are dissuading potential allies from joining the anti-scam movement and it has not been posted.
ReplyDeleteWe don't recall seeing that. If it contained anti-Black bigotry, personal attacks, or similar inappropriate material, that probably accounts for its exclusion. If it was reasonable, it should have been posted.
DeleteIt contained none of that. It said that advocating liberal causes so often on this forum turns off A LOT of potential allies, some of which are influential and could help out. When you make wild claims like all demographics study the same amount or that it is worse when black students are scammed than white surfers, people tune out.
DeleteNo one said any of that. It is you who made the unsubstantiated allegations about entire racial groups.
DeleteI'm not going to buy into white supremacy just because it might win "allies" whom I would not even want.
All education is worthless, and has a negative return.
ReplyDeleteNope. Go to a private secondary school and an Ivy. The network you’ll gain will give you a substantial shot at tens of millions of dollars. Everyone her fetishizes plumbers and electricians, you’ll be injured and broke without a 401k by 45.
DeletePrivate schools are expensive and inaccessible to most people.
DeleteIn Old Guy's experience, someone not of the moneyed élite who manages to go to an Ivy doesn't stand a great chance of breaking into the élite.
"Go to a private secondary school and an Ivy." As if it were that simple; besides the massive cost-starting with the private secondary school-there's the small matter of beating the alumni preference, the guy who's father built a gym, etc etc. This is an option only available to the monied.
DeleteSounds like an old joke:
How to get a million dollars and not pay a penny in taxes.
First, get the million dollars...
And regarding the trades; yes it's tough work but it beats being unemployed with a worthless BA and a mountain of debt(and if that liberal artist gets a worthless JD, you're looking at a cool quarter-million dollars in debt).
Nobody said working the trades was easy; it is, however, at least an option to those who want to work.
Be a part of the 1 % and you'll do fine.
DeleteGet good grades in a good major and you’ll be fine at an Ivy.
DeleteOften overlooked, 11:10, is the fact that non-élites who somehow make it into Harvard or Yale remain non-élites. However good their grades may be, they are not highly coveted for jobs. Old Guy is the poster child of that, too.
DeleteAs for going to a private high school, Old Guy at that age had never heard of one. Choate? Exeter? Deerfield? Only later in life did Old Guy learn of them. Apparently these charge $70k or more per year, so they're quite unaffordable to most. Deerfield boasts that 39% of its students get some financial aid, but that just means that 61% of them get Mommy or Daddy to write a check for $70k+ per year. A non-aristocrat who gets into one of these places is unlikely to fit in.
Ivy supporter here. Most of the CEOs, ambassadors, and journalists you read about who went to an Ivy come from middle class backgrounds or lower. You all complain endlessly about hard work. Anyone who studies like a machine to get into an Ivy and then works hard there will have a good career. The trades are an awful path to recommend a young person with smarts. The options aren’t worthless BA with debt v. back breaking, mindless labor
Delete8:15-Selective reading is a skill in some situations, but not here as you've completely missed the point. The terrible law schools thrive not on hard working intelligent applicants, but on lazy marginal applicants who ought not to attend law school, period. Evidence of that is the lousy LSAT scores; further evidence is the terrible bar passage rate. These folks don't have "smarts" and aren't ever going to get accepted at an Ivy.
DeleteAnd nobody here is recommending the trades to "a young person with smarts". If you get into an Ivy, great; here's hoping the future is so bright you've got to wear shades. But your statement:
"Most of the CEOs, ambassadors, and journalists you read about...come from middle class backgrounds or lower."
What evidence do you have to support this? Or are the Harrimans, Kennedys, etc etc now middle or lower class?
And the trades are hard work, no question. Do you want to enter a field where there are jobs, or get that worthless BA/JD combo, with the mountain of debt so you can work retail?
@ 8:15 I thought this website existed in part to provide some practical advice to a larger demographic than the very thin slice that will be able to attend an Ivy league school or equivalent. And don't come back and say that anyone can get into the Ivy league through 'hard work' alone.
Delete8:15 here. I am pushing back against the numerous posters here saying higher ed is a scam. For many, it provides incredible careers and opportunities. Going to an Ivy, a NESCAC, or a flagship state school and studying economics is a good decision 19 out of 20 times.
DeleteI would not even recommend many trades to a HS dropout. It is not discussed how much being an electrician or plumber will destroy your body by 45 and you don't have the 401k, employer provided insurance, or other benefits you need for retirement. There are easier paths for a HS dropout, working retail and becoming a manager at Abercrombie is a better bet.
Kennedys and Harrimans don't become CEOs, you would know this with Google or socializing with any. They go into "philanthropy" or "manage real estate investments" or other obfuscatory answers. Next thing you know you all will be talking about Rothschilds and other elite theory nonsense.
No point in going back and forth with you. Everything is a "everybody knows" with zero facts to back it up-as in it's a good decision 19 out of 20 times. Who says-other than you? And majoring in economics takes actual effort, which isn't the sort of thing most applicants to trash law schools want to invest in.
DeleteAnd where's the evidence for this whopper?:
"Most of the CEOs, ambassadors, and journalists you read about...come from middle class backgrounds or lower."
If someone gets into an Ivy, great. If it is affordable, go. Same with Big Law; sure work the sweatshop hours but it will pay off that law school debt.
But in those two scenarios, we're talking about a tiny fraction of people. And let's stick to law schools; if you attend Cooley, you'll have Harvard-sized debt but not Harvard-sized opportunities. In fact, close to 50% of your classmates will fail the bar.
And yes, you're down on the trades. It's tough work, but it's an actual job and it pays better than retail. Per BLS, retail manager pays $53k; electrician $67k.
So no, your average trash law school applicant isn't an economics major; they're a communications major with zero prospects which is why they attend a law school which will accept them. When you've got a mountain of debt, what's a bit more? Per the ABA, the average law student has debt of $130,000; how is someone who flunks the bar going to pay that off?
By your own admission there are only a small number of elite schools each with a finite number of admissions available worth attending. Then you contradict that by saying 'for many' higher ed produces incredible results. There are about 2,600-2,700 4 year colleges and universities in the US. How many are worth attending? How many are producing incredible results? There are exactly 8 Ivy League schools. There are 50 state flagships, although you might say Calif. has two, but not every state flagship is an elite. Would it be more accurate to say that higher ed works out for a few?
DeleteRetail manager at 53k is a better deal than an electrician at 67k, it is dangerous work and people have severe nerve damage by the time they are 50.
DeleteI understand a Cooley grad is not an economics major candidate. That said, posters on here repeatedly say all of higher ed is a scam, that the Ivys are trash, and attack credentials as a whole. It is a loser mentality that first-time visitors to this site will see through immediately. It is unattractive, incorrect, and prevents the anti-scam message from spreading. Most people here think if you are not born with a silver spoon in your mouth that America will chew you up and leave you out to dry. Most people offsite don't believe this and find it gross.
Higher ed works out for many, not a "few." Out of 2600 4-year colleges, maybe 300 are worth attending under any circumstance, another 1400 if the right scholarship and major are involved. Going to Bob Jones U (BJ University) is never a good idea.
Sorry but retail manager with $250k+ in debt is not better than electrician. And once again you just make things up; where did you come up with the "severe nerve damage by...50"? Ah yes, no doubt "people know".
DeleteAnd your obsession with Ivy league schools? Frankly it's a pipe dream. The Ivies, with most recent acceptance rate:
Princeton 4.5%
Harvard 3.6%
Yale 3.7%
Penn 5.8%
Brown 5.1%
Columbia 3.9%
Cornell 9.73%
Dartmouth 5.3%
So even at the most "available" Ivy-Cornell-90% of the applicants get rejected.
And the "flagship" state schools aren't a whole lot easier:
Berkley 11.3%
UVA 16.3%
Michigan 18%
UCLA 11%
And no, attending directional state U with a major in communications is a terrible idea; it guarantees debt, no real job prospects, and the temptation of trash law as a way to avoid reality-at a huge cost-for three years.
The site warns against attending law school, especially lower tier schools. It also warns against mindless education debt. You on the other hand, with no facts, extol the virtue of attending any school anywhere while attacking possible employment by citing...nothing.
And that is a recipe for financial disaster.
Old Guy's plumber, well into his sixties, is coming in the morning. Should I tell him that he'll be washed up and crippled by 45?
Delete@4:459 you do not need a BA to be a retail manager or an electrician. Most do not have student debt or a BA. Electricians get electrocuted all the time, no matter how many safety precautions are taken.
DeleteI did not say Ivy or bust, there are plenty of other good private colleges. Miami (OH and FL) are good options. There are 50 flagship state schools, 25+ are good, Maryland and Amherst will give you options.
I do not extol education debt at any school anywhere, I said more than half of colleges are not worth it in most circumstances, and only a small fraction are worth it in any major.
@11:08 your plumber is an exception, good for him I guess. It is weird how this website thinks the trades are so great. I would reckon that most here do not have substantial ties or experience with the trades other than being price gouged for a job at your house.
It's "weird" to you because to you, all those CEOs and important government officials came from middle and lower class backgrounds, and to you all electricians get nerve damage. Your proof? Everybody knows.
DeleteAnd glad you recognize that neither a retail manager nor an electrician needs to waste money on college; that's the whole point.
College is not "bad." It is a lot of fun and if it is a good college, many career opportunities will arise. If you come from a well-off background, it is not issue for your parents to pay for a four-year vacation with study abroad, fraternities, and some coursework. Anyone who approaches college admissions and a BA with even a little seriousness will be so much better off than anyone in the trades. It is really, really weird how people fetishize the trades on here. No one who has even the brainpower to be admitted to and graduate from Cooley will want to fix septic tanks.
DeleteJust a few years ago, a scandal broke out over bribery and fraud in admissions to various universities—not just Harvard and Yale, but even the U of Southern California and Wake Forest. The prosecutor contrasted these illegal methods with the legal one of donating money in a tacit quid pro quo, which he regarded as legitimate. So it's wrong, we're told, to pay someone to forge your child's SAT scores or pass the child off as an athlete by crossing the coach's palm, but it's A-OK to get the child in by means of an ever-so-convenient tax-deductible "donation" to the school itself. Too bad for all those people who don't have a couple of million to plunk down on Junior's college of choice.
ReplyDeleteOne would have to be awfully naïve to suppose that a nobody like Old Guy stood a fair chance alongside thousands of applicants with "legacy" status, parental donations in the millions, access to expensive "admissions consultants", prep schools, and the like. Harvard could easily fill its class entirely with the scions of its rich alumni, without ever considering a nobody. Instead, to lead the public to suppose that it isn't just a playground of the super-rich, Harvard takes a handful of nobodies. But those nobodies stand out like a sore thumb. They don't gain in standing from being around old money.
8:15 here. Yes, bribing a coach or SAT proctor is wrong because you are defrauding an institution. Yale and USC did not benefit in any way from its employee selling admissions slots for relatively small sums. Yale would prefer a seven-figure donation to its endowment rather than a water polo coach taking 50k directly. It is like paying your waiter $25 in cash to receive a porterhouse steak you are too cheap to pay the restaurant for.
ReplyDeleteWhat percentage of Harvard's class of 2027 is "old money"? 43% of the class is white, 13.5% of the class's parents make over 500k (which is not "rich" in 2024 America, and not all of them are white), of the whites 11.2% are first generation college attendees, and about a quarter of the whites are Jewish.
Half the posters here live in a fantasy world where every solo is poor, getting into an Ivy is only for 6'4 blonde rowers with double digit IQs, and the trades will get you a Bentley and a hot wife.
Sources:
https://features.thecrimson.com/2023/freshman-survey/makeup/
https://www.hillel.org/college/harvard-university/
Right, 11:04. The fact that admission is for sale isn't the legal wrong. It's that those coaches were selling something that didn't belong to them, so of course like anything stolen it could be sold much lower than the university's actual price would be. Those kids' families got the same benefit for 10-20k that would normally cost "building named after you" type money, is what it essentially boils down to. This is no different fundamentally than how the mob used to steal trucks full of cigarette cartons and sell them cheaper than any store that acquired them legitimately could or would.
DeleteIt's not that admission was sold. It's that it was sold by someone to whom it did not belong, typically in this case the coach of an obscure sport.
The universities should probably stop pretending it's a pure meritocracy, but that's a moral issue and not a legal one.
Er 500k is rich. Not to you, obviously. And yes, every solo is poor (most make under 20k) you need to be socially and economically elite to get into an Ivy, and trades make far far more money than white collars. And also, education is utterly useless and has a negative return.
DeleteGoogle how large a mortgage 500k gets you. Then check nicer suburbs of NYC, Boston, and DC. You won't get far.
Delete"Every solo is poor" is not true. Plenty of people on this site have classmates or relatives who are solos making decent, sometimes big, money. I know a solo who makes seven figures.
You don't need to be socially or economically elite to get into an Ivy. I already posted the stats above, most students don't come from rich families and most are people of color.
The trades do not make more money than white collar work unless you count the secretary in your office white collar.
A Harvard econ BA has a positive return.
3:04, you give off "divorced dad about to kill himself" energy
@8:45 by my calculations, with no debt, about $1,750,000.
DeleteInflation has diminished the value $500,000 income but it is still solidly in the upper middle class.
Okay, even if the Ivies and other elite schools are all populated with inner city kids, what advice do you have for the 95% of applicants who aren't admitted to one of these hallowed institutions?
Typical of the US is the view that everyone is in the middle class.
DeleteYes, $500k per year in income makes you rich. It may not enable you to buy Neuschwanstein Castle, but it places you in the élite by income.
11:28 here. $500k is rich bit the point is it isn't necessarily that uncommon and it might be earned through combined incomes via occupations that are often scoffed at.
DeleteWhen I was working it wasn't uncommon to see these power couples of two CFOs or similar that would easily be making around $500,000 combined. Even a cop with overtime and a RN couple can make that much.
Yes, and 1.75mm does not get you far in west LA, Westchester or NJ towns with good schools, or Boston suburbs with good schools.
DeleteUpper Middle Class is very different than "rich." Seriously, rich people scoff at 500k a year and think a 1.75mm house is a joke, it would not even qualify as a starter home for the decently successful Ivy alums.
If you cannot get into an Ivy, go to your flagship state school with minimal debt and study econ or STEM. Then go to a corporate rotation program. Your choices are not limited to (1) Ivies, (2) mindless trades, and (3) law.
When "the decently successful Ivy alums" are the benchmark for wealth, there's a palpable disdain for the general public.
DeleteThe notion of "flagship state school" does not exist in most states. Michigan and Pennsylvania have flagship state schools; South Carolina and Montana do not.
There is no palpable disdain for the general public being espoused. I am giving actionable advice to avoid law and trades. Suggesting anyone with any academic interests or desire to use their brain enter the trades is insulting.
DeleteMontana has a lot of opportunity in Bozeman and Big Sky. Study engineering or finance and join a firm there. USC (South Carolina, not SoCal) is a fine school if you pay in-state tuition and study a tangible major. Become an architect, learn CS (you can easily freelance and afford a good life in Columbia SC on that pay), there are so many options.
This board has so much pessimism. I am in full agreement there should be maybe ten law schools in this country and that most are inexcusable scams, but the commentary on other options are so unrealistic and unhelpful to a 20-something figuring their way in the world.
SC and MT do have flagships but they are hardly elite. MT has an acceptance rate of 95%. SC is 64%. The University of Maine has an acceptance rate of 94% and the U of South Dakota 99.5%. I think nearly all, if not all states have a designated flagship. Usually based on being the oldest. By contrast Berkeley is 11.3%. Michigan 17.7. Virginia 18.7. UNC 17.1.
Delete8:29 you smugness-dismissing "mindless trades" is nothing short of amazing. But it's no match for your other worldly "just do this" mantras, the latest being state flagship/econ or STEM/corporate rotation program. Here's a hint: econ and especially STEM require actual, you know, effort which is not something a trash law school applicant is familiar with. And that corporate rotation program? That requires actuall results in college-as in good grades, yet another thing a trash law school applicant can't supply.
DeleteWith you, it's the old joke over and over:
How to get a million dollars and not pay a cent in taxes...
First, get teh million dollars....
Just by way of example OG, I give you University of Montana's website at https://www.umt.edu/about/
Delete"As Montana’s FLAGSHIP UNIVERSITY, we set a high bar for academic studies, creative accomplishments and scientific exploration which benefit our students, our community and the world at large." (emphasis added).
I think most states actually do have a flagship. It is whichever university is the biggest/oldest/most research and generally the hardest to get into (even if "hardest" is a VERY relative term and may still be easy to get into, just a little less easy than the other public schools in the state).
I don’t know the commenter’s background. But with all due respect, they seem to be out of touch in a few areas. I agree with the wise Old Guy. An individual income of 500k places that person in the 99th percentile of income earners in the U.S. An individual at the 50th percentile earns 50k. Earning 10 times more than the median salary is a very significant difference. The numbers don’t change much if we look at household income. A household income of 500k places the household in the 98th percentile of households in the U.S. A household at the 50th percentile earns 74k. 500k a year is rich. The claim that some police officer/nurse married couples are making this is quite dubious. If they are suggesting a nurse anesthetist married to a police officer made $500k, I could buy that.
DeleteThe commenter is correct that all education is not worthless. The private secondary school to Ivy/elite liberal arts college/or other elite non Ivy like MIT or U Chicago path works out really well for the elite. But with all due respect to this commenter, I would not blithely advise everyone to just go to an Ivy when less than 1% of college students attend. What about the other 99%? The commenter is absolutely correct, there are state schools that produce great results for those who study fields such as business, engineering, and econ as they specifically mentioned. The objective data on the Department of Ed College Scorecard website demonstrates there are state schools producing graduates that earn significant sums of money. The commenter mentions econ. The median earnings of a econ major at the flagship state school where I grew up is 76k with a median total debt of $20k after graduation. That is a good outcome. But it is not hard to find data on other low tier colleges that demonstrate abysmal results for the poor marks. According to the college scorecard, the median earnings of all graduates of my toilet liberal arts school 10 years after entering school is 50k. Only 58% of graduates earn more than a high school graduate. The median total debt of grads is $27k. Anecdotally, I can tell you I personally know multiple people who graduated from that dump with me who are working jobs that only require a high school diploma. The general consensus of the commenters on this blog is that there are a number of colleges and law schools that produce poor employment outcomes for graduates while leaving the graduate deep in debt. It’s not hard to pull up the BLS data on the trades. That data shows one is objectively better off financially pursuing a trade over a college degree from a low tier college that leaves the graduate with tens of thousands in debt. This is not a controversial position. It is not hard to find a news story in recent years about poor outcomes for a segment of college grads. We even had the controversy over forgiving their student loans because they are heavily indebted with poor employment prospects.
Continued from above:I came from a lower middle class family that worked in trades and union jobs. Grew up in the same town as my parents with lower middle class and poor people. Only, as I have discussed before on this site, I went on to a low tier liberal arts school because I believed the nonsense about college grads making $1 million more over a lifetime than high school grads and that small liberal arts schools were superior with their small class size. I had no idea what the Ivy League or NESCAC was. Neither did my family or classmates. I made the mistake of not attending my flagship state school which has objective good outcomes in majors like business and engineering per the US Department of Education college scorecard. But I didn’t have that info. So I went to a toilet liberal arts school. In the early 2000s, I foolishly believed I could use my toilet liberal arts degree to get a good business job or attend a law school boasting about fictitious stats of 99% of grads getting jobs making 6 figures. When hardly any businesses came to my toilet liberal arts school to interview students and two companies I interviewed with on campus rejected me, I foolishly thought no problem, I’ll go to law school. So I went to a second tier toilet law school. Despite good grades and law review at my second tier toilet law school, at a time when the economy was reportedly good in the mid 2000s, I was rejected by big law, bid fed, sh-t law, prosecutor offices, public defender offices, local government, and judicial clerkships. I went to a legal job fair and a big law firm flat out refused to even accept my resume, rather than just take it and throw it in the trash.
DeleteWith $150k plus in student loans, I enlisted in the Army. I received a bonus and student loan repayment. I deployed to Iraq and thanks to a tax free salary and no expenses, I was able to repay all of my loans. Many of the people I served with were very similar to the people from my town and the people I went to High School with. They rejected that nonsense about retail and said things like, “it was either the Army or Walmart. The Army pays more and I get a pension.” They said, “I grew up poor in a trailer, now I have a nice paycheck and a nice barracks room.” Many people I know from both in high school and the Army flat out said they do not like school. They didn’t want to be in school and they didn’t want to study. The whiskey tango I went to high school with would literally shoot spit balls at the chalk board, insult the teacher, and make a scene in class every day. I am not exaggerating when I say some of them were kicked out of class every day. These people are not graduating from the flag ship state school in business, econ, or any subject for that matter. Many high school classmates of mine went into the trades. They are not complaining of being broken. Rather they are railing against overpriced colleges and having to work to pay the taxes to forgive the student loans of indebted broke college grads. They complain high schools don’t offer enough trades classes. They brag their kids are not going to college. Sure this is only anecdotal. But this general attitude is reflected in polls reported in news stories and in the recent decline in college enrollment. These people are very proud that they work in the trades. Not to condone the type of people some of them are or to make any type of threat. But if you told the builder, electrician, or any of the other people I went to high school with they should have worked at Abercrombie of all retail stores, a store they loath, rather than work in their trade, they would probably punch you in the face. Moreover, as one of the other commenters pointed out, the data supports the general consensus that the trades pays more than retail. On a personal note, my brother and cousin left the low pay and poor benefits of retail for the relatively higher pay and good benefits of blue collar union jobs. They are doing just fine. My Uncle, a retired electrician, is doing just fine in good health with a pension.
Continued from above: After the Army I made friends with a new class of people. I had the 9/11 GI bill and I used that to attend medical school. My classmates went to Ivys and the elite non-Ivys like Stanford. One classmate’s family name was on the building. I am now in academic medicine. The people I work with jockey to live in the town with the best schools or send their kids to elite prep schools. Their kids go to Ivys, elite schools outside of the Ivys, elite liberal arts schools. I went on vacation to a resort a year or two ago. Sitting by the pool with a physician couple, they talked about how they were paying $40k a year to send their young child to an elite private grade school. If the kids in college are not going to Ivys, they are going to the other elite colleges and interning at places like Apple. I have had frank conversations with them. One friend who went to an elite prep school is still bitter he didn’t get into Harvard. I talked to him about my experiences in a lower class and going to a toilet liberal arts school. He said, an elite family that cared about their child would never let them go to a school like that. I think that is good advice. Low tier schools objectively produce poor outcomes for grads and leave them indebted. If that is your only option, you should seriously consider another career path that will pay more and leave you with no debt. Recommending the trades to people is not controversial.
Delete"Flagship university" isn't meaningful in a state such as Montana or South Carolina. Which other universities do these have? Montana State? Pfffffft. Clemson? A goddamn football team with a few classes tacked on for show. It's one thing to say that the U of Michigan, respectable in its own right, is the flagship university of Michigan; it's quite another to say that the U of Montana, with practically open enrollment as someone above proved, is the flagship university there.
Delete
DeleteIn other words, the best shit is still shit.
"Suggesting anyone with any academic interests or desire to use their brain enter the trades is insulting." Oh? Few people are more scholarly or cerebral than Old Guy, yet he thinks that he himself should have gone into a trade.
DeleteAlso, people cannot always get what they want. Baby boomers and the Silent Generation have been misleading people for decades with terrible advice such as "Do what you love; the money will follow". It probably did quite a few decades ago, when a bachelor's degree was rare and many corporate employers would put a college graduate into the entry levels of white-collar management on the belief that the degree at least attested to some degree of literacy and diligence. So, yes, someone could get a degree in English or sociology from East Bumblefuck U and still expect to get a well-paying job, or one could devote one's zeal to the bassoon or the easel and still find work that had nothing to do with music or art. Nowadays, however, jobs are scarce, and bachelor's degrees and even higher degrees abound but don't imply literacy or diligence at all. So we have boatloads of people with a bachelor's degree or more who are pouring coffee or running the cash register at a down-at-heel retail store. Yet still we hear that everything will work out well if we cultivate an interest in French literature or Dutch Old Masters.
And majoring in business amounts to using one's brain? Really?
In reference to the lengthy comment posted above, I point out that a lot of us come from white-trash or other unpromising backgrounds, and from states such as Montana and South Carolina that don't spring to mind when one thinks of the cream of erudition or education. The US is severely stratified, to the point that the circumstances of one's birth come close to determining one's path in life.
DeleteWhen Old Guy was young, people who knew next to nothing about Britain were nonetheless quick to contrast the US, allegedly a "land of opportunity", with Britain, where Junior would struggle to get into any class other than Daddy's ("class" being defined not by money but by type of work, such that the son of a shopkeeper was stamped from birth with the lowly label "merchant"). Even back then, however, the US was more socially stratified than Britain, and far more than many other wealthy countries. Someone a few years ago quipped "If you seek the American dream, move to Denmark".
For reasons of security (long-time readers will know how one prominent and much-admired member of the OTLSS team was tracked down and personally abused by a certain odious scamster born with a silver spoon up her ass), Old Guy isn't going to write in detail about his personal circumstances. Suffice it to say that Old Guy didn't grow up in New York City or Boston or Chicago—indeed, that he never saw any of these places until he was past 20. Nor did Old Guy come from a long line of lawyers or physicians or wealthy people. There wasn't a single one of these in his family, and he was 25 when he first met a lawyer. He had very little idea of what university was about and none at all—even when he was in university—about the route to practicing law or medicine.
Would you say that Old Guy had opportunities comparable to those of some kid from the Upper East Side who attended an expensive private school, grew up around graduates of Harvard and Yale, imbibed upper-class culture and savoir-faire with mother's (or wet nurse's) milk, and had abundant advice from parents, friends of parents, guidance counselors, and all sorts of others in the élite world or its penumbra?
It's telling that the army is replete with white trash and racialized people. Old Guy's high school had the ROTC (said to "Rednecks of the Community"); does Choate?
DeleteAny minute now, someone is going to mention the military academies. Just to apply to one of those, as I understand, one needs a letter of recommendation from a senator in one's state. How likely is some white-trash kid or poor Black or Latino to have access to that? There are also requirements of citizenship and physical fitness, among others, that would disqualify many people.
And, yes, as the poster above said, for many people it is either the army or Wal-Mart. Old Guy would choose Wal-Mart: there's simply no way that he could pull triggers in one of the US's countless genocidal campaigns on the side of evil. But he doesn't blame others for noticing that at least the army, unlike Wal-Mart, provides a pension and possibly some money for a degree that could support a civilian career. And the dreadful state of education in the US means that many, probably almost all, recruits suppose that they are "defending my country" rather than taking part in campaigns of imperialist aggression similar to those that fill the history books that they haven't read. It is informative to read the stories of the people who have sought to be recognized as conscientious objectors—usually without success—after seeing in Iraq what Uncle Sam's forces of oppression are all about.
Trailer trash may indeed perceive advantages in having mess halls and barracks. People from fancy backgrounds would not consider those advantageous: they'd want to know when the footman was bringing the oysters on the half-shell.
Posters here confuse many different demographic groupings. Someone going to a dumpster fire law school probably won't hack it anywhere. They are dumb for going to a bad school given all the information out there in 2024 and they are too lazy to have gotten decent GPA in undergrad, hence why they are in a trash program. They do not have the drive or intelligence to be in the trades or study econ, respectively. There is no hope for these people.
DeleteAn intelligent person should go to an elite private university, get a top GPA and SAT and you will do it. Statistics revealed during discovery in the Harvard lawsuit bear this out. If you can't go to Harvard, there are 100+ good schools out there to get a BA or BS. The US is setup for these people to succeed no matter what their background.
A middling person should go to that flagship university. If you live in Montana or SC, going to the flagship is not at all something to be embarrassed about even if they are pretty much open door for admissions. An out-of-state Princeton alum will be looked upon skeptically when it comes to business opportunities when they roll into Jackson MS. Clemson has a high percentage of alums doing better than your average OTLS poster, given the commentary here. I am skeptical most here can afford a 4k sf house, a RV, a boat, and pay for John Jr.'s Clemson in-state tuition. This is standard middle class Southeast life.
Concerning the trades, every poster here has too much intellectual interest to have ever entered them. You may have shared a public school/backwoods background, but you did not take that path for good reason. You watched your classmates go to vocational school in HS every afternoon and you had no interest. For every plumber with a healthy retirement account, there are four or five in debilitating pain who want to retire in poverty but a judge will lock them up if they quit their job and fail to pay alimony.
Regarding 500k being upper middle class, people making 500k household income are not scattered around the US proportionally. People in Missouri, Columbus OH, and AL do not make that money in appreciable numbers. Because they are so concentrated in the Acela Corridor and West Coast, there are not enough decent houses, school slots, and other markers of status to go around. If you make 500k in Detroit, you are living a block away from the lake and own a sports car. If you are in the NYC metro, there are way too many people who significantly outearn you for you to ever get ahead.
Standard middle-class life in some such dreadful place as South Carolina is a palatial house and various expensive toys? I suppose that the lower class must live on caviar and truffles.
DeleteAt Old Guy's backwater high school, the entire student body was forced to attend a presentation by a scam-chain of vocational colleges. Bachelor's degrees were not promoted at all. Old Guy did look into the vocational programs on offer. What else was he supposed to do?
It seems that some people don't appreciate the fact that many people just don't know about universities, professions, and the like.
A friend urged Old Guy not to retire early, saying that Old Guy would deprived of intellectual stimulation. Response: I get very little intellectual stimulation from my work already. Where would I get it? From interactions with other lawyers and judges? How many of them are intellectuals?
What we see from the comment above is a typical patrician attitude of downplaying the immense wealth of people just because others have more. Of course, the same thing could be said for people with $2.5M per year, or $5M: "How could we be called rich? Our yacht is nothing like X's." The right comparison, however, is with the 99+% of people who don't come close to $500k per year.
DeleteOld Guy isn't going to shed crocodile tears about the alleged poverty of people with half a million a year in income.
4k sf is not "palatial" outside of the tristate area and California. A boat and a RV do not have to be that expensive. I cannot tell if you are seriously calling South Carolina "dreadful." It has its attractive parts and its forsaken parts like almost every state in the union.
DeletePer your name, Old Guy, a lot has changed since you went to HS. With the internet, there are countless articles, data sets, and Youtube videos to instruct young people in making good choices. People are not hapless victims of DeVry and spend 200k to learn to design video games anymore, it is not 2004.
The law has not be a "learned profession" for the entirety of my life. Lawyers could be counted on to have some background in Latin and other liberal arts disciplines back in 1930.
Understood with the 500k comment. Commenters here lose potential allies left and right by offputting and bitter commentary.
Gotta ask: who are these "allies" you speak of repeatedly? You, who can't resist the urge to come back and carp regularly?
DeleteAnd since we're swapping anecdotes, you're wrong about the all knowing younger generation and the itnernet. Took my clunker into the shop last week; the shuttle driver was a young man. We started conversing-and yes, his goal was to attend the local "art institute" to become a "computer game designer". All on loans, of course.
I want almost all law schools to close down. To do that, you need a combination of (1) federal loan reform at the legislative level and (2) fewer law school enrollees. There is very little material online to warn prospective law students about the perils of entering the "profession." What exists was mostly written 10+ years ago in the wake of the GFC. More people such as myself would contribute to speaking out against the scam if partisan politics, culture war issues, and blanket assertions such as "all education has a negative return" and only the rich Protestant scions get into Ivys were eliminated. A more rigorous focus on the truth and the scam would attract a broader readership.
DeleteRandom comment but it fits with the lawschool scam. I'm a Mississippi College Grad, I swear if ever I ever hit a windfall or the lottery I'm going litter the whole Jackson area with billboards that say " Broke? Try Six Figure Law School Debt." All fourth tier towns need to be littered with the truth. Who disagrees?
ReplyDeleteMississippi College, I'm afraid, is an über-toilet. I'm sorry that things have turned out badly for you, but that's how it usually goes at Mississippi College and similar bottom-feeding law schools.
DeleteYou hit the lottery then the Mississippi College of Law Dean will be at your doorstep shamelessly asking for a donation and promising you they will engrave your name somewhere .
DeleteAccording to Wikipedia 10 % of Mississippi College of Law graduates found no job in any capacity whatsoever. Wonder if they are at high way off ramps with signs asking for money for food?
Delete"According to MC Law's official 2021 ABA-required disclosures, 69.6% of the Class of 2021 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment (i.e., as attorneys) within nine months after graduation, and 10.9% were not yet employed in some capacity by that time. "
I am 10:12 and agree many of the graduates probably do beg for food on the side of the road. Shockingly, there is a group of students who believe it is a good school they are either connected and had jobs when they enrolled as 1Ls or just drank the kool aid enough to believe it is a great place even if they can't afford rent. The ABA needs to do the world a favor and shut the place down!
DeleteIf Mississippi College is a good school, I shudder to think of a mediocre school, let alone a bad one.
DeleteHere's Fortune jumping on the why-go-to-college bandwagon, while questioning the value of an Ivy education and the point of getting an MBA:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/only-2-ivy-league-schools-110942852.html
As the article mentions, there are eight Ivy League schools. Originally there were four—IV in Roman numerals, which explains "Ivy" (no, the word doesn't refer to ivy growing on the façades of buildings). The Ivy League is an athletic conference in the Northeast that happens to include prestigious Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, along with a not-so-prestigious institutions (Brown, Cornell, the U of Pennsylvania).
DeleteSalaries in the vicinity of $90k or $100k may seem like no cause for weeping, but consider how very much it costs to achieve that (if one ever does): four years of one's time and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The article also correctly mentions that the Ivy League schools are peopled largely with rich kids, who are far more likely than those of modest or lesser means to get high-paying jobs. That should serve as a warning to the Old Guys who are admitted to a Harvard or a Yale: the dice are loaded, and not in your favor.
Back in the 1980s, everyone and her pet gerbil were getting an MBA. Quickly the MBA was discredited as a bullshit degree—which it is, unless it comes from one of three or four selective, well-regarded schools. Now, for some reason, it is becoming popular again. People seem to think that they can take a few courses and become CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation.
Please link to support there being four Ivy league schools. Most posters here never had a shot to go to Brown Cornell or Penn based on their SATs. If they did, they would likely not be posting here and would have gone to better law schools and firms.
DeleteFor MBAs, there are seven great programs, called the M7. Alums from those schools will have better careers than your average T13 alum. Elites know you get elite MBAs, not elite law degrees at this point.
Not sure what your point is; notwithstanding your not so veiled insults, pretty much everybody here agrees that law is a dead end.
DeleteMy point is posters here attack the Ivys from a place of ignorance and envy. It’s a bad look. 22 year olds thinking of law school read those comments and say “wow. The only scam blog around think my Dartmouth BA is worthless. I should disregard everything else they have to say”
DeleteNo one here has said that the Ivy League is worthless. Kindly refrain from making irresponsible allegations.
DeleteWhat has been said, since you evidently were not paying attention, is that the game is rigged in favor of the scions of aristocrats. Yes, Harvard and Yale admit a handful of ordinary people. But those ordinary people don't spring into the élite just because they hold a degree from Harvard or Yale. I know from experience.
Nor is there any validity to your allegation of "ignorance and envy". I went to one of the Ivy League universities myself, so I am neither ignorant nor envious of them. On the contrary, when asked about them, I say "Don't believe the hype".
June 2, 2024 at 5:08 AM said "All education is worthless, and has a negative return." That is saying an Ivy is worthless.
DeleteThe game is slanted towards scion is every period of history in every single locale, even communist USSR. You went to an Ivy League graduate institution, people who went to the undergrads know the Ivy BA/BS is far more prestigious and the true gatekeeping. Your HLS class was not over 50% Ivy alums, and it is not like that remaining 50% was so brilliant that they edged them out. Rather, most Ivy undergrads know not to consider law school. Law is not for true elite scions.
4:47 you did see the low single digit acceptance rates for the Ivies, right? For any applicant-even one with amazing credentials-admission is at best a crap shoot. You can do the internet search about all the 1600/5.0/Varsity football players who don't get accepted.
DeleteIt's clear that everything about this blog bothers you, and you feel its your job to regularly share your annoyance. Here's a hint: it's not. It's perfectly fine for you to stop reading and stop commenting...and to take your "allies" with you.
People often defend the law-school scam by saying that there is nothing better to do. To that, Old Guy has a few answers.
ReplyDeleteFirst, it's irrelevant. Even if it were true that the only alternative to the law-school scam was a prompt death, the law-school scam would still be a scam, and it would still be true that nobody other than the independently wealthy and a handful of other well-placed people should go to any law school outside the thirteen élite ones, and that most people shouldn't go those either.
Second, it's false. There are indeed other things to do. We don't pretend to have a handy-dandy, one-size-fits-all choice of occupation to offer, but options discussed here include medicine (including nursing), the skilled trades, military work, and positions in different orders of government, to name but a few. Each of these has its drawbacks; none is ideal, and none suits everyone's abilities, circumstances, or needs. But it just isn't true that law is the only choice, or even a good choice. If setting up a solo practice in rural Nebraska were feasible, we would have said so years ago.
To your first point, people who go to bad law schools will get scammed no matter what. I agree bringing attention to the law school scam is beneficial, especially for those with prospects that are ruined by schools just outside the T13. Those going to Cooley, however, will always be indebted, poor, and lacking in direction. Law school is just a detail in their dissipation. I would say outside Yale and Stanford, even the wealthy shouldn’t go to law school given other opportunities out there.
DeleteRegarding other jobs, obviously the Cooley and MS student isn’t going to pursue those out of laziness and stupidity. Someone who goes to GW or UCLA to enter corporate law will not be a nurse, will not enter the military, and will never ever be a HVAC specialist. You can say they are elitists but that’s the reality of it. There are attractive alternatives to law for those capable of a 165+ LSAT, but when mentioned here (corporate rotational programs, consulting that isn’t MBB, commercial banking) it gets shut down as only being for rich Protestant Ivy leaguers. It is demoralizing and a prospective law student reading this thread will say “screw it. Going to law school if the alternative is being in Army HR”
This blog that mentions the MBA being a waste reminds me of the comedy movie with Rodney Dangerfield " Back to School" when he knew more about business than the business professor in the YouTube video called:
DeleteBack to School (1986) - Thornton Talks Business Scene (4/12) | Movieclips
Yes, people who regard themselves as being too good for nursing or military work or HVAC are indeed élitists. Old Guy wants nothing to do with them and their Jupiter-sized sense of entitlement.
DeleteA person who cannot break into corporate law had better make other plans. Those who expect everything to be handed to them on a silver charger wouldn't heed Old Guy's advice, and he has none to offer them anyway. If they're so much better than the hoi polloi, let them fend for themselves.
I understand your frustration, Old Guy, but of people entering the top 50 (maybe more) law schools, over 90% think they will be entering big law, saving LGBTQ dolphins in South Africa at the Hague, or clerk for the Supreme Court (I exaggerate, slightly). Statistically, none of them would enter HVAC work under any circumstance, same with the military outside JAG. Nursing is a bit more complicated, still most would not do it.
DeleteIf you think a school like Fordham is a scam (it is), providing more credible options to its "marks" than HVAC repair or being sent to Kabul is important. There is no excuse for having more than six law schools nationwide.
Again, I'm not here to save people from refusal to go into perfectly respectable lines of work such as nursing and skilled trades. Their problem is a sense of entitlement. Plenty of people with doctoral degrees deliver pizzas or drive taxis, out of necessity.
DeleteI am here to tell people that Big Law and Supreme Court clerkships are unrealistic and that saving LGBTQ dolphins in South Africa is a risible fantasy concocted by law-school scamsters. If, disbelieving me, they rush off to a Fordham to do one of those things, they cannot say that I didn't warn them. And since they're so firmly convinced that the world wants to pay them lavish salaries to save queer dolphins for Jesus, they wouldn't listen even if I did come up with a long list of occupational options—something that really goes beyond the scope of what we are doing here.
Those people with doctoral degrees should not be delivering pizzas and, if warned this would be their outcome, would never have pursued their PhD. I would not tell a law prospect who explicitly asks "should I do army OCS or law" that the army is a bad call. It's just that so few law prospects every hit that crossroads or would find being an infantry officer appealing.
DeleteIf you really want to kill the scam, and I am here because this is the ONLY scam blog left (there is not even a presence of people to send warnings on Reddit or TLS), alternatives are very important. 22 year olds without clear professional direction are scared witless and signing up for Fordham in a cool area for 200k in debt that is year away sounds positively awesome to them.
If you want the job of talking people out of attending UCLA by presenting a range of alternatives to law that will flatter their egos and cater to their sense of entitlement, be my guest. We are prepared to publish an article of decent quality on that subject. We are not prepared to publish a rant calling us jealous slackers or tarring racialized people with a similar brush.
DeleteFor my part, I'm not interested in coming up with a list of occupations that some UCLA snob with a sense of entitlement the size of Jupiter might not reject as infra dig. But you're welcome to do that.
8:47-You are consistently shut down because the jobs you list aren't begging for applicants and require enormously impressive credentials just to get an interview, and most of your opinions are fact-free.
ReplyDeleteDidn't you give us this whopper?:
"Most of the CEOs, ambassadors, and journalists you read about...come from middle class backgrounds or lower."
You supply zero proof for this statement...because it isn't true.
If anything, this blog is crystal-clear about law school: for the great majority, don't go. This advice troubles you. In your elitist worldview, where everybody is apparently a CEO just for asking, nobody would deign to work other professions such as nursing. Well then; start your own blog. You can call it "Everybody's a CEO...ok, if not that, an ambassador or something." It's sure to attract dozens.
And that great GW law school? For 2023, 14% of first time takers flunked the bar. Combine that with GW's average student debt of $154,500 and that's quite an accomplishment.
CEO, ambassador, journalist—totally unrealistic ambitions for the general public.
DeleteOne can set up a poxy little company and call oneself CEO of it, but that doesn't place one in a league with the CEOs of Exxon-Mobil or IBM.
Ambassador? Really? Does anyone here think that one sends a résumé in for the post of ambassador to Bolivia or Pakistan? These are political appointments, typically given to friends of the president. Expertise in Bolivian or Pakistani affairs will not put you in the running for one of these positions.
Becoming a journalist nowadays also realistically requires connections that most of us don't have. Some people, it is true, call themselves journalists for selling an article to some Web site, or perhaps giving it away for the publicity. But that's no way to make money. In case people haven't noticed, newspapers have been closing.
@3:54 I am not consistently "shut down." I am consistently disagreed with by posters with bad undergrad credentials, lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and a romantic view of men toiling in the trades. These three qualities of the median poster here crystal clear and repel potential allies in the anti-scam movement. I will grant an exception to that solo who has made a good life for himself here, it seems he will have a well-funded retirement and had business acumen.
DeleteI am more emphatic that the majority of law students should not attend and any school outside of the top 6 should be shut down (yes, that includes UVA Cornell Berkeley etc.). GW is a horrible law school and UCLA is mediocre to bad. I mention them because someone who attends is generally organized, somewhat intelligent, and is probably presentable. They most likely want corporate law but are in a program that will be unlikely to deliver it. They will not go to nursing school or repair HVAC, hence why they need other suggestions.
I did not say CEO, ambassador, or journalist is a realistic ambition for the general public. Those are not even realistic ambitions for an Ivy grad. Becoming a loan officer and working the corporate ladder is very actionable for someone who got into a T50 law school and it has a higher ceiling than nursing. Also no one addressed the elephant in the room, Men Will Not Become Nurses. Pop culture and movies make fun of men who enter this field endlessly. A man with an acceptance letter from U. Southern California with dreams of being a super agent is not going to work a roto rooter and clean excrement from underneath people's houses. There are so many white collar fields to enter that are lucrative and not law.
DeleteAnd OG, those friends of the president getting appointed ambassadors? There's the not-so-small thing of them having contributed lavishly to the winner's campaign.
DeleteI have worked as a newspaper reporter. It's absolutely not a career for all but a privileged few. I was paid 1099, and by the word. The only way I could make enough to pay rent was by cranking out an enormous number of articles, usually on the most boring things imaginable for this network of local small-town newspapers that were all owned by this one conglomerate which had been busily buying them all up. So silly human interest pieces, stuff about high school sports, covering the topics addressed in the latest zoning board meeting, or culling the police arrest log for that week looking for anything of interest.
DeleteAnd as if all that wasn't bad enough, the printing press people have a deadline of like 6:00AM so the editor needed to have eyes on it by like 4:00AM (the editors at least got a salary, but obviously their hours were brutal). This often meant staying up all night to crank these things out at all kinds of hours, if it was something that happened the day before that they wanted in the paper the following day, either because it was more newsworthy or because they just had unused space that they needed to fill. And you can forget investigative journalism. For one thing, there is no time or funding for it when you're paid by the word and for another, the papers' margins have been decimated by online journalism. So they can't have anything that risks advertisers pulling out.
This is what journalism looks like for the great unwashed. It's a darn far cry from writing for the Atlantic or NYT or whatever. And it was, at best, a bare-subsistence level existence.
Thanks for sharing that account of the mythological profession of journalism. Honestly, I'd sooner pump gas than shit out disposable copy about local trivia as a penny-a-liner for the East Bumblefuck Morning Herald.
Delete7:56-You stated that ambassadors, CEOs, etc come from middle/lower middle class backgrounds...and you can supply zero evidence of this claim...because there is zero evidence. And glad to see you've backed off using GW as an example...of what, exactly? That the 14 % who flunked the bar would get other lucrative jobs?
DeleteAnd there's a solid argument to be made that it's better to take a job in the skilled trades than to get a degree in communications with a ton of debt. But with you, it's always something different-so please, consult with your "allies" and supply the proof that Horatio Alger lives and he's in every ambassador/CEO/important person job out there because, by gum, he took your advice and got that American Studies degree from the local "flagship" public u.
If you are a 1099 you are not really a "journalist." It is like saying a paralegal is "in law." It is only true in the most literal and misleading sense.
DeleteMany people think that Horatio Alger's predictable novels were about rising from poverty to wealth through hard work. Most of them actually feature a poor boy whom a wealthy benefactor elevated to a modest middle-class job. In other words, they're about being in the right place at the right time. Really, that's not a bad model for financial success in law.
DeleteNot to denigrate choosing the military either as a stint or 20+ year career, on the contrary, it can open up a lot of opportunities, but it can go the other way for some. As an example, about 15 or 20 years ago PBS ran a documentary series, Carrier, which was about life on a US Navy aircraft carrier. One of the sailors was particularly miserable. He said his shipmates constantly played loud rap and hip hop music and it was driving him crazy. So to get out of the Navy he told his chief that he was racist and shouldn't be in the Navy, this got passed up the chain of command to the Captain, who ordered him to report and give his statement. Apparently, his story that he was a racist and shouldn't be in the Navy was accepted and he was discharged for racism. Apparently, he had other disciplinary issues such as getting excessively drunk while in Guam. He didn't seem like a particularly bad guy. Not some white supremacist fiend. Just some food for thought about the realities of military life.
ReplyDeleteYou get a lot of rap and hip hop in the military. You are who you spend time with, and many enlisted are bottom of the barrel. They had to lower IQ thresholds and physical demands due to recruiting issues. The bread and butter grunts, rural Scotch-Irish and German-Americans, are not too fond of American foreign policy and direction.
DeleteUnderlying much of the interest in law, journalism, diplomacy, and similar occupations is a quest for glamour. Even within these, rare is the person who seeks to do the thankless work. For example, nearly every law student wants to become either a corporate whore, an associate of celebrities ("sports law", "entertainment law", "international law"), or the richly paid advocate of a trendy political agenda (this romantic fantasy of saving queer immigrant South African baby dolphins at the Supreme Court). Most lawyers, however, handle real-estate transactions, traffic tickets, unsexy divorces, foreclosures, evictions, and other stuff that isn't at all flashy. When did you last meet a glassy-eyed law student who wanted to do that shitwork?
ReplyDeleteCorporate law is not sexy and it is thankless. Financiers and C-Suite types are merciless to transactional attorneys and view them as the coal shovelers of corporate America. It is considered back office.
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