Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Possibly Dumbest Pre-Law Student Ever?


Money Quote: "St. Peter's senior Rosanna Hernandez, 21, appeared at [the side of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr., D-Newark] at today's event. Hernandez, who studies political science, said she's been taking out loans since her sophomore year in college, and she anticipates another four years of loans when she attends law school. She doesn't know how much her student loan debt is. 'I want to know at the end, because I know it's going to be scary,' she said. Hernandez said she didn't contemplate skipping law school to avoid more debt. 'It's going to be an investment in my future,' she said."

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. OMG. How freaking dumb.


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"ABA Proposal Alarms Law School Diversity Advocates,"  by Karen Sloan (National Law Journal

Money Quote: "A proposal to tighten the American Bar Association's bar passage requirement for law schools hasn't gone over well with some advocates for diversity in the legal profession."

Equal Opportunity Scamdom.


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"Forever in Debt: Who has student loan debt and who's worried? Published by Urban Institute

57% of people with student loan debt are afraid they will be unable to pay it off.

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30 comments:

  1. This is what happens when the government subsidizes or guarantees student loans.

    People who aren't even responsible enough for a credit card (this student doesn't even know how much she owes!) are allowed to easily borrow tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in unsecured debt. And no politician will turn off the flow of student loans because they will be labeled as elitist or racist for denying poor and minorities access to education. Unfortunately, as most of us know, allowing the poor to borrow money they can't pay back just holds them down.

    If we could just stop or at least limit the amount of subsidized student loans, law schools would quickly have to lower their tuition or shut down.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Anon 7:30 -

      Quite right about the role of loans (and, perversely, grants and scholarships) in feeding the beast.

      A somewhat different take on the "dumbest pre-law" angle, however:

      How many of us can honestly say that we wouldn't have stood near some VIP and uttered some similar drivel? The fault is not the poor (in more ways than one) future law student.

      THE hurdle we need to confront is that most students are in a happy, hopeful stupor.

      They believe the lies because everything they've heard and seen and thought about reinforces their view of law school as a path to prosperity and power and fast cars. OF COURSE their professors are going to help! Only now are glimmers of truth making it through.

      So, until we confront the natural and understandable need to believe, future law students will continue their paths down the chutes. (For anyone growing up out West, you'll know the "chutes" they're going down . . . straight to the slaughter house.)

      What makes this worse is that there are some for whom law school actually does work, and works quite well. This makes it much easier for the snowflake syndrome to take hold. That many of these stars are in reality *personally* connected with power-players isn't even on the radar. How many of us realize that the top performers in law school are almost always those with family members who are successful in law? Why? Not genius, or not only genius, but a *guidance* that the ways of most law students are absolutely wrong.

      The answer on the part of "respectable" authors is to provide some quasi-authoritative basis to challenge this dangerously narrow and often false view. But few students will ever hear this, as they're stuck in their own worlds needing to believe. So, that's where we can make the most impact.

      Students believe they can sign up for whatever loan docs, blow off the summer, and naturally end up on top. That the odds are 90+% that this won't happen not only doesn't matter, they will aggressively dismiss it as the whining of loser-lunatics. That THEY will be among that group will be too late for the next year's crop.

      There's a crop right now, most of whom are about to make the biggest mistake of their young lives.

      But again the advice might be nuanced: Don't go. But if you ARE going to go, then dammit, do it right. And "doing it right" is NOT how everyone else does it.

      Sorry to self-promote, but here's what they should read:

      To win by not playing:

      Con Law (or Tamanaha, Campos, or Harper's)
      http://www.amazon.com/Con-Law-Avoiding-Beating-ebook/dp/B00D2YJZM0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1372366489&sr=1-1

      To win if they do play, by not doing what everyone else does:

      Law School: Getting In, Getting Good, Getting the Gold (or Planet Law School)
      http://www.amazon.com/Law-School-Getting-Good-ebook/dp/B003D7K0HK/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1372366518&sr=1-3

      Thane.

      Delete
  2. They buried my father this morning. I could not afford to travel the 1000 or so miles to the funeral. I have cried on and off for the last few days. What was hardest was that I have not seen him in 3 years, and I could hardly talk to him on the phone because he is hard of hearing. A series of strokes carried him in the last month.

    After my disastrous attempts at getting a job out of law school (even with top 10% grades) and my attempt at solo that just ruined my life savings, I had to take any job I could get, which was 1000 miles away.

    I will make you scammers pay for ruining my life with your lies.

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    1. I am sorry to hear about that. Your father loved you very much.

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    2. This was why I wrote that piece a few days ago about Lawyers in Poverty. When you enter law school, you have no clue all the ways that the resulting poverty will effect you and your family. Complete nightmare.

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    3. That's terrible wo/man. Condolences.

      Delete
    4. Deep, deep condolences. There's not much that can be written to ease your pain, but we're here with you in spirit, as is he.

      Thane.

      Delete
  3. Re: that Hernandez kid, I can only hope she goes to a good skool with a good scholly. Otherwise, she is digging her own grave.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Do you think she got into a good school or got a good scholarship? No, she probably just went with the highest USN ranked school that would take here, without even looking at the cost. Because she's "investing in her future".

      Delete
  4. Ah, yes, the Jersey Journal. This fine paper covers the twilight zone known as Hudson County. Unfortunately, the article linked to here is no longer available on line, but you can grasp the mentality.

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  5. Not sure Charles Schumer is a fierce conservative.

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  6. Diversity is great. Equal access is fine. If law schools want a diverse student body, then they should f*$%ing pony up for one.

    If law school was less expensive, that would virtually guarantee diversity. But if you have to be Charles Everson Winchester III to afford it, however, then guess what?

    What is actually going on here is that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, so now it's time to hit the URMs with visions of sugar-plums in order to get them to pay thousands of dollars for a degree they will likely never use.

    Until law schools start putting their money where their mouth is, this diversity concern-trolling is just that. Equal access with other people's money.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ^^This^^ If the professors and administrators really valued diversity and access to legal education, they could achieve that goal overnight.

      If all the professors and administrators at a law school voluntarily capped their own salaries at $100K (not exactly poverty), the school could drastically cut or even waive tuition for poor but promising students.

      Until law professors and deans are willing to give up at least some of their enormous salaries, any talk of diversity is just a way to justify burdening the poor to further enrich elite law professors.

      Delete
    2. The harsh reality is that the URM's are underrepresented for a reason. According to one set of statistics that I read, roughly 2% of top performers in law school are black. Biglaw hiring classes might be as much as 15-20% black. But guess what percent of those who make partner are black? That's right, 2%.

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    3. Why is "diversity" great?

      Why is it even relevant, much less a "compelling" state interest?

      How about fairness, equal treatment, justice, compassion, respect, integrity . . . ?

      Delete
  7. "'It's going to be an investment in my future,' she said."

    Is it really "investing" (in any meaningful sense) if she has no idea how much money she's putting on the table, or what returns she might reasonably expect?

    ReplyDelete
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    1. But no less than the President of the United States wants to preserve student loans because education is an "investment in the future" and he even told an unemployed law graduate that his future was bright!!

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    2. Maybe a job in the White House?

      NSA is hiring! And I think the IRS is looking for a few good examiners.

      Delete
  8. It's the exact same tactics as the for-profit colleges or the subprime lenders used. You advertise and recruit in places that culturally lag behind the rest of the country. Where people haven't yet discovered that higher ed =/= automatic money, they don't know any lawyers, and get all their information about the profession from TV and movies. Find and recruit in places with extremely low financial literacy, where people are often perpetually indebted.

    The problem law schools have is that they have to maintain a certain bar passage rate in order to qualify for the federal loans that make it possible for these kids to go to school in the first place. But by capturing the regulator and using the big stick of racism to bully them into lowering standards, they can continue to have open admissions. And they can fail out enough kids during 1L and 2L so that only those people likely to pass the bar remain.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Have any of you guys bothered looking at what colleges are charging these days for nothing but a B.S.? University of Miami, a good but not great school is something like $1700 per credit. They will allow parents however to guarantee the same 45K year price of admission by signing a contract up front . so that the cost doesn't increase to 55K per year in tuition by the time your child graduates.

    So is law school a scam? Maybe. But so is almost the entire private education system in our country . . especially at the for profit level.

    Professors at many UG schools are earning well into six figures, some of them mid six figures.

    Parents everywhere are skimping and living on tight budgets to help their children get a B.S. or B.A. and until a recent Court Ruling making unpaid internships in many situations a violation of the FLSA, many very profitable corporations were then scamming students further by requiring unpaid internships (still happens of course, but with lawsuits pouring into the Courts, I assume unpaid internships in most places will be things of the past)

    The entire system we have is to separate people from their money with the belief that they were investing in their futures. This is limited to only Law Schools, but to most educational institutions in the country.

    Go to the University of Miami for Tuition of 45K per year in addition to living expenses? Are you kidding me? And how many gullible parents are paying full pay for the privilege of their children attending this school?

    And the scam goes on.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Yes, totally agree. Law school is the final nail in the coffin for many students not the first. I'll be posting an article in the next news round up about the 8.9% tuition increase at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan which I recall has a way less than 50% graduation rate. The auto exec who came out of retirement to act as interim President basically said nothing Wayne can do because they have to keep up with Michigan and Michigan State. Free Press said that was the same mentality that led to the Big Three auto collapse. Once competition arrives the brand will be dead.

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    2. I agree with everything here...except your distinction of "for-profit" colleges. "Non-profit" schools are just as scammy and maybe even worse because they hide behind their non-profit status while paying professors and administrators exhorbitant salaries.

      The extremely frustrating part of the current system is that students are forced to pay faculty salaries (via tuition) even though professors spend the majority of their time on research and "scholarship." Students are thus forced to subsidize professors' intellectual endeavors (which rarely actually benefit the students) as some sort of right of passage.

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    3. Similar thing with the medical industry in America. Neither socialized or truly free market, instead the very worst of both worlds which drives the price into the stratosphere.

      But unlike medical care higher education is really a luxury, not a necessity. At some point people are going to cotton on that these statistics about how a college degree automatically increases your lifetime earnings by a huge amount are largely inaccurate.

      And politicians (and most of the public) assume the more people who have a college degree, the better, without question. But past a certain point, you hit diminishing returns where you just cause credential inflation and no longer boost overall productivity.

      Delete
  10. "'Non-profit' schools are just as scammy and maybe even worse because they hide behind their non-profit status while paying professors and administrators exhorbitant salaries."


    Absolutely right. At least for-profits are honest.

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    1. The critical distinction between for-profit and so-called "not-for-profit" schools is this. The federal government monitors the default rate among the graduates of for-profit schools. If a certain percentage default on their loans the school will be declared ineligible for further student loans and will go out of business as a result.

      No matter how many graduates of a "not-for-profit" default the money keeps flowing.

      Delete
  11. Clearly 1:56 is unfamiliar with "Americans for a Conservative Direction," a pro-Schumer, pro-amnesty front group for the radical left. Hence the sarcasm about ultraconservative Schumer.

    Let them in so that we can find out who they are.

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  12. Agreed with above comments on overpriced university in general.

    We need student loan reform. And the proposals in Congress dealing with interest rates are just reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Student loan total amounts per year per student ought to be capped at a generous 20-25k.

    The law school scam is an interconnected piece of the higher ed scam.

    --Jim

    ReplyDelete
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    1. http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2013/06/28/democrats-blow-up-bipartisan-student-loan-proposal-n1630154

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  13. Different subject but similar betrayal by the LEFT:


    http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2013/06/28/democrats-blow-up-bipartisan-student-loan-proposal-n1630154

    ReplyDelete