Texas is going to let its top court, not the ABA, decide which law schools' degrees graduates are eligible for admission to the bar. Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee are considering similar proposals for wresting control of accreditation from that private entity called the ABA.
Here at OTLSS, we have said for years that the ABA is unsuitable as accreditor. It does a shitty job, always favoring scam-schools even when they fail year after year to fulfill the ABA's frightfully weak standards.
But accreditation by a court is unlikely to improve the situation, and quite likely to make it worse. Apparently the move to brush the ABA aside is driven by a wish to permit schools that even the ABA would not take. It also seems improbable that the courts or other entities would undertake a proper investigation of the various things that call themselves law schools.
This new effort to seize control of accreditation may well send us out of the frying pan and into the fire.
You will start seeing retiring Texas judges opening up toilet "Texas Bar Association Approved" law schools trying to grab student loan money and they will open up these law schools leasing space at strip malls next door to adult entertainment clubs.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone remember Larry’s Law School in some small town in California? Apparently it had only six students ever, in its location over a defunct Mexican restaurant in a strip mall.
DeleteThomas Jefferson, before it surrendered its accreditation, moved into office space—the sort of thing that Yeshiva reportedly has. Rather far removed from the leafy campus of many a toileteer's fantasies.
LOL I don't know about Larry's, but look up "People's College of Law" also in California. Similarly laughable.
DeleteAnd that's the rub here. This is obviously motivated by Texas republican judges adopting trump's hate of the ABA (which has nothing to do with law schools but with their opposition to many of his judicial nominees, natch). But it's not something that just red states do. By allowing ABA OR calbar accreditation OR just "unaccredited registered" schools whose students must take the "baby bar," California long ago allowed something similar and it is ALWAYS to allow for more toilets, not less.
Those toilets usually are cheaper. It's true. Often way cheaper. But almost no one passes the bar and the few who do can only practice in that state and generally can only hang a shingle as no one would hire them as an actual employee.
The big question though would be what'd happen if Trump actually did strip ABA of recognized accreditor status for student loans. That almost happened once before. It was under President Clinton and it was because the ABA allegedly, once again, wasn't allowing ENOUGH toilets to open! That lawsuit, brought by then-AG Janet Reno, was premised on anti-trust. The idea that we needed MORE law schools, not less, so there'd be more competition!
I'm like look, we all hate the ABA. No love lost there. But god forbid you get actual policymakers to hate them too. Cuz no matter which party is hating on the ABA, their solution ALWAYS JUST RESULTS IN MORE TOILETS. WTF.
Just a few years ago, the Department of Education nearly stripped the ABA of its accrediting power. We wrote about it here.
DeleteImagine if Trump's Department of Education decided to strip the ABA of law school accrediting power, and then gave it to the Federalist Society or another ultra- conservative organization. Would we be better off?
DeleteHard to say. Perhaps we'd just end up with a bunch of Bible-thumping law skools charging $100k per year. But maybe there would be a purge.
DeleteBible Thumper U is exactly what'd happen. Again, every single attempt to get rid of the ABA has been part of an effort to make there be MORE law schools, not less. It's ALWAYS based on the argument that the ABA adds unneeded barriers to entry, NEVER that its barriers aren't high enough or that there are too many lawyers.
DeleteYou're right. The ABA is made out to be an overly strict regulator, rather than the bought-off bitch of the law-school scam.
DeleteUnfortunately OG you are prescient and time will prove you to be 100% correct. As we've seen the past few years, these courts are packed with political hacks who will most likely accede to the ridiculous wishes of every state legislator who thinks that their district is terribly underserved...so it needs a new law school! So yes, with state top courts in charge, we could well have a tsunami of new law schools in theses states.
ReplyDeleteLike Cassandra, Old Guy will not be heeded. "Why, of course East Bumblefuck, Texas, needs a law school! Give us approval for Big Bubba’s Skool o' Law 'n' Bible Thumpin'!"
DeleteThe situation for law school graduates is even worse than most realize. Let me give you an example: Student A spends 4Y in college, 3Y in law school, takes a rigorous 2-day Bar Exam and racks up 200K in student loans. Student B spends 4Y getting a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing at an affordable school, perhaps with a scholarship, works during the summers, and graduates with 20K in student loans. Student A, the JD, then spends 3 months on a job search, and sends out 150 job applications. He finally receives a "callback" from one law firm, which subjects him to 3 interviews, over a period of days. The law firm then "ghosts" him and he never hears from them again. He remains unemployed, and deeply in debt. Student B, the Nurse, applies for 2 jobs during her senior year of college. She immediately gets 2 interviews, in which the potential employer tries to sell her on how good the job is, the competitive pay and benefits, instead of vice versa. The potential employer has minimal interests in her grade/class rank, and doesn't even understand "journals" or other foolishness done in law school. The Nursing student, after one, brief, low-stress interview for each job receives two job offers, each with a $5,000 cash signing bonus. She accepts one, applies the bonus to her student loans, and arranges to begin working full-time within a week of graduation. A very similar thing would happen to someone with an Accounting Degree, or an actual CPA, or a good airplane pilot, or someone with a 2Y degree in Dental Hygiene, or schooling to become a Radiation Tech, or someone with a CDL . . .the list goes on. While JD's are fretting about "callbacks" and being "ghosted" and spending months frantically trying to land a job, people who have an education and skills in fields that actually need workers are turning job offers down, and deciding what to do with their cash signing bonuses after they take the job of their choice.
ReplyDelete2:16-you are, of course, correct but here's the problem: all the healthcare fields require that the student complete and pass actual challenging courses which most soon-to-be students at lousy law schools would never take, let alone pass. People end up in law school because they have worthless BAs and can't get jobs; the proverbial jobless liberal artist is a real thing.
DeleteAnd yes, there's an actual shortage of CPAs...but that requires five years of school and passing a multi-part exam. And there aren't any tv shows about CPAs, so who would want to do that?
Throughout the 1970s, there was no such thing as a worthless BA. Yes, starting in the 1960s there were jokes about majoring in underwater basketweaving. But in 1970 not even 10% of young people pursued a degree, and loads of jobs in the public and private sectors were available to people with a BA in whatsoever field.
DeleteThings changed quickly in the early 1980s, when factories were moved out of the US (you'll notice that few exist in the US now) and people who had had blue-collar jobs snatched up low-level white-collar jobs. Whereas dropping out of high school was a reasonable decision in 1979, even a bachelor's degree wasn't good for much a decade or so later, when people who weren't cut out for tertiary study were being herded into the universities. Now some formerly respectable universities start more than half of their incoming students on remedial courses that didn't exist in the day when admission to a university meant something. And there are far too many graduates for the positions that are available, so lots of people with degrees find themselves out of work.
Unsurprisingly, the natural suggestion is to set oneself apart by pursuing yet another degree, in some such field as law. These fields, too, are greatly oversubscribed, especially because a whole government-funded racket of scam-schools has flourished. Since standards have been lowered to the vanishing point, with law professors complaining routinely about the marginal literacy of many of their charges (notably at toilets and über-toilets but even at the "good" law schools), the JD is an unreliable way to distinguish oneself as anything but a patsy.
8:35, you hit the nail on the head. Lazy 18 year olds go to joke colleges, and get joke majors with A's and B's they don't deserve due to grade inflation. Then they end up living at home working menial, low-paying jobs after graduation, and see law school as a way out. I do think that these folks are either not serious about getting a job as a lawyer afterward, or are delusional, or some combination thereof. A serious student can get a 2 year associate's degree in the medical field that leads to an immediate, well-paying job, often with at cash signing bonus, whereas a delusional fool who wastes 7 years on college and law school is likely to end up with no job at all. If we would stop making huge "student loans" that will never be repaid to fund all this nonsense, perhaps things would change. I have heard that college is declining in popularity, and more high school grads are going to trade school instead, so at least that is a positive sign that things may be moving in the right direction.
DeleteJust yesterday, someone mentioned that all of the boys in her daughter’s high-school class (this was in a rural area) were going to trade school. They are probably smart to do so.
DeleteThe baby boomers milked bachelor's degrees for all they were worth. Except for entry to medicine or a few other fields, a bachelor's degree may well be a bad idea.
Beyond the challenge, 8:35, keep in mind that Stafford loan limits are lifetime limits. They do not get restored as you pay the loan off, and they are rather low for undergraduate education to begin with. There's also an annual undergrad borrowing limit of 12.5k/yr, so unlike law school Uncle Sam won't be paying your rent.
DeleteBetween that and the need to pick up 30ish credits of prerequisites whenever your local community college happens to have a seat for a non-matriculated student (and paying for that out of pocket too), switching to nursing when you already have a bachelors degree in something else is EXTREMELY difficult and usually takes MUCH longer than the supposedly "accelerated" programs advertise.
Those glossy ABSN brochures that say you can pull it off in 12 months or whatever assume you already have all the prerequisites and the ability to pay for it and all living expenses in cash. Everyone I know who has tried it (and I've known many) has taken much longer than they'd anticipated, if they manage to do it at all.
1:39, I agree. Yes, idiots who get joke Bachelor's degrees and end up doing menial jobs for near minimum wage will, indeed, find it to be very expensive, difficult, and perhaps impossible to get a second degree in Nursing and get a good job after they graduate from college. I have no sympathy for them. These are people who could and should have gotten a degree in Nursing, or in something else practical, in the first place. If they chose to screw around and have fun in college instead, and find themselves saddled with a worthless BA in Philosophy or Film afterward, or English Literature or whatever, that is entirely their fault. The US sells and markets college as a 4 year long party, and has done so for at least the last 50 years, with stupid movies like "Old School" and "Animal House". High schoolers are wooed with tales of drinking, casual sex, and fun watching semi-professional football and basketball teams play, in lavish stadiums. If they are gullible enough, dumb enough, to fall for that, and they do in fact have a blast at college and end up working at Wal-Mart afterwards, that is entirely their own fault.
DeleteWell, even in the 1910s there were songs such as "The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi" that focused on fun and games instead of academic matters. That was in a day when only about 15% of people in the US finished high school (most didn't even have access to high school), and far fewer attended universities. Even then universities were big amusement parks, the province of aristocrats. Now they welcome every knuckle-dragging troglodyte who can endorse the papers for student loans with an X.
DeleteI really don't understand why the US treats college as a party. Other nations do not do this. In fact, I am pretty sure that the US is the only nation in the world that has semi-professional sports teams, primarily college football and basketball, with gigantic stadiums, massive gambling, coaches being paid millions per year, that dominate many college campuses. I don't think other countries have massive "Rush weeks" for students to "pledge" fraternities and sororities, and then kill the pledges in hazing rituals. . .there is something seriously wrong with this country. And yes, I do think it all plays a role in the over-proliferation of law school and the massive over-glut of lawyers, because people who don't get a practical degree in college, and end up stocking shelves in their local grocery store afterwards, living at home with their parents, deeply in debt, are desperate, and see law school as a way out. If we had serious colleges and universities with serious students pursuing serious majors. . .if a Bachelor's Degree isn't seen as today's version of a high school diploma. . .so many ifs. . . .scam law schools cash in on people who wasted their time in college and can't find a decent job with their college degree.
DeleteQuite right: that stuff is found only in the US. It's all insane. Elsewhere in the world, universities are for education; in the US, they're mainly for fun and games.
DeleteThe over emphasis of college sports and also greek fraternities and sororities in U.S. education is embarrassing actually. College football coaches being paid millions of dollars is ridiculous. I remember reading about new female students spending thousands of dollars to pledge sororities. I don't think this stuff goes on at foreign universities.
DeleteWhen I was around 16, I received a brochure from Duke University that referred to a high presence of Greeks. I understood that to mean students from Greece. I was astonished to find out what fraternities and sororities were, and I didn't understand why they used Greek letters when hardly anyone in them knew as much as the Greek alphabet. (The reason seems to stem from Phi Beta Kappa, founded in a day and for a population in which the ability to read Euripides and Xenophon in the original was not uncommon.)
DeleteI am a lawyer, and this isn't something I am making up out of my imagination, by the way. Look on the Lawyer talk reddit page, and you will read about JD's sending out hundreds of job applications, going on multiple job interviews, and being ghosted by the employer. . .and, of course, about people who graduate from law school, deeply in debt, and never find a job practicing law at all, anywhere, at any salary. You will also read about people who are arbitrarily fired and find getting another job practicing law difficult or impossible. As more and more law schools open up, flooding the already grossly over-saturated job market for JD's even more, things will get worse and worse for newly-minted JD's.
ReplyDeleteMany people who graduate from law school still had no business going into law and will not make good or even adequate lawyers.
DeletePeople who are good, such as Old Guy, are also kept out of opportunities. But many of the people who bitch about not getting jobs were never worth a damn.
Cooley law school was just taken off ABA probation by meeting the 75% within 2 years bar passage rate. I think the ABA should have a standard that at least 75% of a graduating class has to have employment. Excluding working at Starbucks or flipping burgers at McDonald's.
DeleteNot one goddamn one of us is surprised that the ABA gave Cooley its rubber stamp of approval, yet again. The next article here will be on that subject.
DeleteI can tell you that lack of accreditation created an entire alternate reality of Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christian private colleges in the South and Midwest. We need a better body than the ABA, because the Thomas Jefferson School of Law is still operating as a instructor in California state law only; the place needs to be entirely defunct.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, we're probably headed for a body even more scam-hungry than the ABA.
DeleteDidn't Thomas Jefferson and Laverne give up their ABA accreditation and go for state accreditation in California instead? I haven't paid attention to them since we reported their demise a few years ago.
I have some familiarity with the Christian accreditation. One would think this would have more integrity, but it seems the whole operation came out of Calvinist Pre-Destination type scamsters, trying to get a college going for their megachurch. The respectability and wealth as an indicator of God's favor is a purely Calvinist idea.
ReplyDeleteI know of a school in Georgia that is exclusively a school for foreign kids to work illegally in the usa, the academics an excuse for the F1-Visa.