Setting standards for the LSAT

A few years ago, when I was in law school, I tutored people on the LSAT. I told them that a 150 would get admission only to a lousy school and that a 140 would almost certainly be rejected everywhere.

Today, by contrast, a 150 will earn a large discount (deceptively called a "scholarship" in scamsters' jargon) from any of several dozen toilets. Forty-nine ABA-accredited law schools—almost one in four—have median LSAT scores of 150 or lower (often much lower). (I have omitted the three law schools in Puerto Rico for linguistic reasons: the low scores there probably reflect the fact that most students had to take the test in a non-native language.) And even a 140 is good enough for admission at many a toilet. At Appalachian and Arizona Summit, the LSAT score at the 25th percentile is 140; at Cooley, it is 138. I hesitate to estimate the floor for admission nowadays: the Univershitty of Texas, regarded as a "first-tier" institution by the standards of You Ass News (but as a fourth-tier institution by my outcome-based standards), has been known to admit people with scores in the upper 120s.

The limp-wristed ABA requires that applicants take the LSAT but doesn't set a minimum score. Unsurprisingly, law schools take full advantage of the hollow requirement by admitting applicants with scores that would make a garbage collector blanch. To understand just how frightfully bad the students at many toilets are, we need to examine the percentiles that correspond to the various LSAT scores. One convenient table is found here:

http://www.alphascore.com/resources/lsat-score-conversion/

Although the table is six years old, its percentiles are close to those of today. Here is an extract:

150: 44.3%
145: 26.1%
140: 13.4%
135: 5.6%

Thus a person scoring 150 outperforms only 44% of the people taking the test in the same administration. Remember that nearly a quarter of the accredited law schools have a median LSAT score of 150 or lower. That means that a quarter or more of the law schools drew most of their students from the bottom half of all people who took the LSAT.

Does that seem appropriate? Is the pool of people who sign up for the LSAT really so strong and distinguished that the great majority should be presumptively admissible, even at law schools far from the bottom?

Consider Cooley's data. At the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of its latest entering class, the LSAT scores were, respectively, 138, 141, and 147. Converted to percentiles according to the table cited above, those scores correspond to 9.6, 15.2, and 33.0. In other words, at least a quarter of the students in Cooley's latest entering class fall in the bottom 10% of all test takers.

How can that be right? Does the bottom 10% of registrants spill over ipso facto with so much lawyerly potential that Cooley, by far the largest law school in the US, can appropriately draw upon it for a quarter or more of its class?

Is there any score on the LSAT that even hints at inadmissibility? Apparently not in the view of the ABA and the scam schools that it enables and defends. The very act of registering for the LSAT must mark a person with such godlike excellence that the score fades into anticlimax.

Well, maybe money-grubbing scamsters like Frank Wu feel that "law school is for everyone", but I don't. Not every Tom, Dick, and Harry is cut out for the legal profession. We lawyers should insist on high standards, not no standards. If (as I believe) the LSAT should be required of everyone, surely there must be some reasonable limit below which a candidate is at least presumptively inadmissible. I'd set the floor at the 80th percentile, which corresponds to a score of 160; but even the 70th percentile (157) or the 60th (154) would be a vast improvement—and would drive dozens of toilet schools out of business immediately. Perhaps each school should be allowed to admit a small percentage of students with lower LSAT scores, just to accommodate the common but unproven claims of brilliant applicants who Don't Do Well on Standardized Tests. But there should be some limit—and a damn sight higher than 120 (the lowest possible score).

I propose a slight reform that is triflingly easy to implement: get rid of the 120–180 scale and report the percentiles instead. Force Cooley to tell the world plainly that at least a quarter of its class scored in the bottom 10% on the LSAT. Make several so-called "first-tier" law schools admit to dipping well below the 60th percentile. Let prospective toileteers see just how horribly low their scores are. Straightforward percentiles in place of arbitrary scaled scores can cast much-needed light on shady admissions practices.

2,000,000 Page Views

Back around October 2014, this blog reached 1,000,000 page views.  Just a little over two years later, we have recently surpassed the 2,000,000 mark, and I thought a short review was in order.

First of all, it is gratifying to see that a sea-change finally took place within the movement.  The first two to three years of OTLSS was regularly peppered with mockery, derision, and disbelief concerning the idea that law school could even remotely be a "scam."  Deans, Prawfs, and some other vocal critics would regularly pontificate about how great a law degree was, how the employment data was "fine," how the debt was "managable," and how scambloggers were uncouth know-nothings who just didn't want to work very hard.

Turning to today, I don't see much of that anymore.  With Indiana Tech closing down and schools like Charlotte teetering on the brink, all of a sudden the scambloggers don't sound so misguided.  Law jobs keep not coming.  LSAT and Bar Passage rates continue to drop.  Hard-hitting articles in major news sources, naming law schools by name, are more and more prevalent.  Significant amounts of staff and faculty have been let go.  The ABA and DoE are being shamed into finally doing their actual jobs and following their own standards.  Student Loan default rates and employment statistics have been shown to be doctored.  The Cartel is on the defensive, instead of basking effortlessly in the unearned, unspoken and unquestioned presumption of quality and preftige.  OTLSS and many, many others deserve a pat on the back for not backing down and proclaiming the truth.

That said, there are still miles to go.  Many schools are engaging in whatever tactics they can to garner students, get bail-out funds by slapping names on buildings, firing employees, and anything else to keep the doors open.  Shockingly, there are a handful of schools who are still trying to get opened and accredited in the first instance, as if there was some strange economic sign that law schools were lucrative again and legal careers plentiful at this point outside of the T14 or so (if that).  Many still want to blame the bar exam or State-level Boards of Bar Examiners for failing statistics, not their own admission policies.  The Courts are still loathe to afford the same standards and findings for law students that they are willing to afford to other students who have been scammed by educational institutions.  Yet more and more students are pumped out into a market that cannot absorb them by half.  

As we go forward, patience is key.  People are paying attention and getting the message.  Applicants are down again this particular cycle, and the "new normal" appears to be settling in.  Just an in protracted civil litigation, sometimes the process has to take its own course for an extended period of time before the parties are willing to settle, or before the court finally issues a ruling.  Reality is slowly being accepted, and we can celebrate that fact regardless of what particular source or sources are driving it at any given time. 

Perhaps one day, going to law school will actually be a smart move again for a significant number of people.  Up to and until that time, friends, let's continue to stick to our guns and proudly proclaim our message - it matters to people, whether or not they realize it and whether or not we get a "thank you".  (Although, once in a while, it happens!)  Ultimately, this market correction is fundamentally no different than any other, and it is long overdue.  

A Technical Programming Error

It's time to take a short break from failing law schools, as this will be going on for some time, and instead take a look at failing federal agencies.  Namely, the Department of Education:

Last Friday, the Education Department released a memo saying that it had overstated student loan repayment rates at most colleges and trade schools and provided updated numbers.

When The Wall Street Journal analyzed the new numbers, the data revealed that the Department previously had inflated the repayment rates for 99.8% of all colleges and trade schools in the country.

The new analysis shows that at more than 1,000 colleges and trade schools, or about a quarter of the total, at least half the students had defaulted or failed to pay down at least $1 on their debt within seven years.

Well, hey, anybody can make a mistake, amirite?  At least it wasn't 100%, so that counts for something!  I thought IBR and PAYE and all that alphabet-soup was solving the student loan crisis so that liberty and justice could abound, among other things.  What, pray tell, is the culprit here? 

A spokeswoman for the Education Department said that the problem resulted from a technical programming error.

Those damn computers, lemmetellya.  Continuing on:

This isn’t the first time data problems have affected the Education Department. A recent government report criticized how the department tracks information including the budgetary implications of student loan forgiveness.  

“This is a quality control issue with a Department of Education that has been facing criticism already for other data issues,” Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University.  The department “needs to be regularly audited so these issues can be discovered sooner.”

No college saw its repayment rate improve under the revision, and some schools saw their seven-year repayment rates fall by as much as 29 percentage points.

Wait, we have Education Professors at Seton Hall taking shots at the student loan gravy train, and demanding accountability and standards?  You may want to watch your back, Professor Kelchen, as the Law School next door may have a thing to say about that.    A law school, by the way, that puts approximately 25% of its class in full-time, long-term bar-passage-required jobs, at a $270k sticker price?  Physician, heal thyself!

Zerohedge, as usual, cuts through the chaff:

There is another interpretation: as we reported yesterday, when we revealed that a Chinese province admitted it had fabricated fiscal data for the period 2011-2014, the reason the data were made up "because officials wanted to advance their careers." One can imagine that the career pressure for those government workers who would report, and be held accountable, for revealing the true picture of America's disastrous student loan bubble, would be likewise staggering...the far more dire implications, however, are for broader student loan market, because if the latest unfabricated data suggesting that loan delinquencies are rapidly rising toward 50% across most of America's colleges, then the US is facing a default problem of staggering proportions. 

Ok, kids, non-trads, whoever:  go sign up for law school, and take out those massive student loans!  I'm sure IBR will be there, waiting for you.  No worries.  The Law School Cartel says so.  I have no doubt that they all have your best interests at heart.  I'm also sure the angry Senators and Representatives who feel mislead about ballooning higher education costs will get over it soon...

Charleston and Florida Coastal fail DOE's standards for "gainful employment"

[NOTE: Thanks to a poster for pointing out that I had written Charlotte instead of Charleston. I have edited this posting accordingly. Apologies for the error. ——OG]

The US Department of Education has identified more than 800 programs that fail its "gainful employment" rule by having a typical graduate's annual loan payment exceed 30% of discretionary income or 12% of total earnings:

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-Are-the-Programs-That/238851

Unsurprisingly, the usual suspects are various associate's degrees or "certificates" in fields to do with make-up, hairdressing, drawing, photography, and the performing arts. But the list also includes two professional degrees: the JD programs at the Charleston School of Law and the Florida Coastal School of Law ("Horrida Coastal").

Charleston has been in dire financial straits; its very survival is in doubt. Horrida Coastal, like the recently disgraced Charlotte School of Law ("Harlotte"), is owned by the notorious InfiLaw company, which also operates the equally dreadful Arizona Summit Law School ("Arizona Scum Pit").

Failure to meet the threshold for "gainful employment" can result in loss of eligibility for federally guaranteed student loans. That would sound the knell for institutions that depend on such funds—especially profit-seeking academies, such as Charleston and Horrida Coastal, most of whose students could not come up with many tens of thousands of dollars per year without a little help from Uncle Sugar. Already Harlotte has been kicked off the student-loan gravy train, for reasons that go well beyond a comparison of debt and earnings. Horrida Coastal may be the next to get the boot.

That would leave InfiLaw with only one scam school, Arizona Scum Pit. With the dubious distinction of being one of only five out of 200+ schools (excluding the ones in Puerto Rico) to post LSAT scores worse than those of the other InfiLaw toilets, Arizona Scum Pit may not lag far behind. See these data on Arizona Scum Pit from Law School Transparency (LST):

https://www.lstreports.com/schools/arizonasummit/jobs/

A quarter of the class of 2015 was "Non-Employed"—not working in any capacity—ten months after graduation. Almost a third of the graduates reporting employment were in "Business & Industry", which could mean anything from CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation (not bloody likely) to stock clerk at a grocery store. Arizona Scum Pit reports no data on salaries, but LST estimates that someone relying wholly on loans will owe a cool quarter of a million dollars at the time when payments begin. Almost a third of the class pays full price, and the great majority get small discounts at best.

If Arizona Scum Pit isn't already out of compliance with the standard for "gainful employment", it must be close to the line. Even typical debt of only $80k upon graduation would require a typical gross income of $58k—quite a lot for a toilet school with many unemployed graduates—in order to stay within the limit of 12% of total earnings.

InfiLaw, it would seem, derived its name from the Latin infimum, meaning 'the lowest'. Now it's sharing the ignominious company of fly-by-night beauty schools. With one school already ineligible for student loans, another threatened with ineligibility, and the third hanging by a thread, InfiLaw may soon be gone. Good fucking riddance.

The Student Loan Cycle of Madness Continues

It was bound to happen.  Just as the lax attitude of the Law School Cartel steadily marched towards mutually-assured destruction due to increasing cost and terrible prospects, so has the student loan system begun to turn full-circle and prey upon those least able to pay:

The government has collected about $1.1 billion from Social Security recipients of all ages to go toward unpaid student loans since 2001, including $171 million last year, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday. Most affected recipients in fiscal year 2015—114,000—were age 50 or older and receiving disability benefits, with the typical borrower losing about $140 a month. About 38,000 were above age 64.

 The report highlights the sharp growth in baby boomers entering retirement with student debt, most of it borrowed years ago to cover their own educations but some used to pay for their children’s schooling. Overall, about seven million Americans age 50 and older owed about $205 billion in federal student debt last year. About 1 in 3 were in default, raising the likelihood that garnishments will increase as more boomers retire.

 “I believe this is the tip of the iceberg of what may be to come if we don’t work harder on this problem,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the top Democrat on the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-21/baby-boomers-increasingly-having-social-security-checks-garnished-cover-student-loan

Wait, I thought it was only lazy, stupid Gen-Xers and Millennials who didn't want to work hard, were entitled, were deadbeats, wanted a trophy just for showing up, etc.  Maybe these Boomers should show some initiative, go get a damn job, and pay their bills.

Except I can't really bring myself to say this with the venom I might like.  While I and many. many others have had to deal with this sort of dismissive verbal abuse for decades, and it has taken some time for the truth to bear fruit, two wrongs do not make a right.  Maybe the actual truth, a truth that the scamblogs have diligently proclaimed for some time now, is (1) that the last ten years (and more) have been hard on most everyone, and (2) that the cost of higher education has been a cost that has rapidly and disproportionately risen compared to the value actually received.

Further, I believe once you start garnishing social security checks, the ridiculousness and moral depravity of non-dischargable student loans are apparent for all to see.  These people are not doctors who declared bankruptcy after medical school and now have enjoyed million-dollar salaries for decades, scott free - they are people who worked, tried to make a living, tried to support others, have varying degrees of disability, and yet still have the yoke of student debt affecting their retirement.  

A failed small-business owner can declare bankruptcy, learn from what worked and what didn't, and try again.  A student-loan debtor apparently carries the albatross around her neck for life.  Meanwhile, in the irony of all ironies, the ABA has had to sue to enforce PSLF for its own employees.  IBR and PAYE are increasingly in the crosshairs due to angry legislators who feel mislead.  Now, get out there and "network."

Friends - do not go to law school.  Costs are only increasing, prospects only get worse, and the student-loan "safety-net" touted by ScamDeans and LawProfs is actually no safety-net at all to graduates.    Find something actually in demand and hopefully less financially onerous regarding the requisite education.   Perhaps we will all have garnished checks in "retirement", but at least you can act to minimize the damage, now.

Federal government kicks Charlotte off the gravy train

As of the end of the month, the Charlotte School of Law will be ineligible to receive funds from federally guaranteed student loans:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article121768063.html

Last year those funds brought almost $50 million into Harlotte's coffers. Without that money, which represents the bulk of its revenue, Harlotte cannot continue to operate. It may well never open its doors again.

Unsurprisingly, the news of this minor victory for the anti-scam movement has ruffled feathers over at Harlotte. Students are circulating petitions and seeking legal advice in contemplation of litigation. Professors are calling upon InfiLaw, the parent scam-company, to keep the school alive, presumably by injecting tens of millions of dollars per year:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article122250319.html

Particularly aggrieved are those students who expected to graduate after one more semester. I agree that they should be given that chance to finish their degrees. Late December is a terrible time to find out that the skule may not open again after the break.

But should they want to finish? If the skule closes down on them, they can wash their hands of their student loans. That's a hell of an opportunity, one that many similarly placed students and recent graduates would grab in a trice. I suspect, however, that at least 90% of the 3Ls at Harlotte won't share that view: they'll still want the degree, despite their very poor prospects and the huge amount of non-dischargeable debt that most of them will have run up.

Might two camps emerge at Harlotte? The professors and most of the students will probably demand that Harlotte stay open for one more semester at least. But students who find out about the rare opportunity to dump their student loans may lobby for Harlotte never to open again. And the administrators may even advertise that opportunity in order to drum up support for a prompt closure.

The option of transferring raises an additional complication. Traditionally one could transfer no later than the end of the first year. Lately, however, some law schools have taken transfer students with two years of credit. Might some enterprising scamsters, especially those in or near North Carolina, go after some Harlotte students needing to transfer for only one more semester? Students availing themselves of that option would not be allowed to discharge their student loans, so transferring would probably still be a bad idea.

And what is InfiLaw going to do? Presumably it will offer to absorb Harlotte's students at one of the other two InfiLaw toilets. But would anyone, even a Harlotte student, be stupid enough to take that offer after being stung by InfiLaw?

Is the ABA violating its own protocol for auditing law school employment survey results?

In my last two posts, I criticized ABA managing directors Barry Currier and William Adams for asserting, on the basis of highly deferential preliminary audits of the annual employment survey results from 10 randomly selected law schools, that law schools were accurately reporting their placement results. See here and here. 

These posts did not receive the customary number of page views or comments. The reason, I strongly suspect, is that I am one of the few persons, other than sub-150 LSAT-scoring 21-year olds, who was sufficiently naive to believe that the ABA audit of would amount to something more than a public relations ploy. Law schools scam up their placement numbers without consequences. The sun also rises. What else is new?

Nonetheless, I am going to flog this hobbyhorse onwards for the length of at least one more boring post.

Recall that five out of the 10 law schools selected for a random annual audit did not comply with the ABA's preliminary stage requirement that no more than 5% of their employment files be deficient (i.e. incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading). Accordingly, Adams informed the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education by memo that a three-member ABA committee would decide, as a matter of discretion, which of the five schools would be subject to Level 2 Review (A Level 2 Review involves independent verification of some of the reported data, unlike a first-stage audit, which basically just involves a review of employment files for completeness). 　

In his memo, Adams stated that "If more than 5% of a school’s files are found to be deficient, a Level 2 Review. . .  may be ordered. . . . A committee of three persons, including me, has been appointed by the Data Policy Collections Committee to determine which of the schools with discrepancies should get elevated levels of review. . . After this further review of the schools with a compliance rate below 95%, the review committee will determine which of these schools may warrant a Level 2 Review." (emphasis added)

What is the problem here? The problem is that the ABA's "Protocol for Reviewing Law Graduate Employment Data, and Statement of Procedures for Collecting, Maintaining, and Reporting Law Graduate Employment Data" (hereafter: "Protocol") states that "If more than five percent (5%) of the Files are found to be deficient, the ABA will then proceed to a Level 2 Review." (emphasis added).  

Why then is there a need for Adams and the other two members of the review committee to deliberate and determine which of the five law school violators may be subjected to Level 2 review? Under the Protocol, they all should.  You see how the Protocol's "will then proceed" has turned into the memo's far more equivocal "may be ordered" and "which. . . may warrant"?  I think that every lawyer appreciates the often night and day difference between a mandatory procedure and a discretionary one, and Currier and Adams surely do. 

As a further confidence-builder, the members of this great triumvirate have been appointed by a larger ABA committee known as the Data Policy & Collections Committee (DPCC). The DPCC consists of two law school deans, two associate law school deans, four law school professors, one director of law school admissions (at bottom-tier New England Law), and one dean emeritus. So the three member review committee was specially selected by a group of persons who have a vested interest in the public perception that law schools are modeling the values of professionalism and are accurately representing that a JD usually leads to a good job.

Consider the following significant defects in the ABA Protocol and in the way the audit has been managed by Currier and Adams: (1) Only 10  out of the 205 accredited law schools, were selected for a random audit, a disturbingly small pool that Currier has no intention of expanding. (2) The first stage of an audit consists "solely" of a review of the employment files themselves and does not involve independent verification or confirmation of reported data. (3) The first stage of an audit accords the school a presumption that its employment files are complete, accurate and not misleading, absent credible evidence to the contrary. (4) Under the Protocol, up to 5% of a school’s employment files may be found to be incomplete, inaccurate or misleading without triggering additional review. (5) According to Currier, the names of the five schools that did not comply with designated minimum standards will not be publicly revealed.

Now consider the following praiseworthy aspects of the ABA Protocol, those that may genuinely protect consumers by deterring or exposing scammed-up employment survey results: (1) According to the Protocol, if more than 5% of a school’s files are found to be incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading, that school will be subjected to independent verification of some of its reported data, aka Level 2 review. (2) Sorry, this list only runs to one item. And yet it is this verification provision that has been quietly diluted. 

It is distressing that the ABA is, seemingly, unwilling to enforce its own standards. Are law school employment survey results anything more than fantasy fiction in highly granular numeric form?  Who knows?  The law school scam abides.