Now that the administrators know that there will be no short term respite and dreams of a recovery had no basis in reality, the next year should be very, very interesting . . .
And as people are pointing out, each year a larger class graduates than matriculates, so the people entering in 2014 will be 2L's, ... the reduction moves through the system.
Good point, Barry. The Fall 2015 class will be much smaller than the Fall 2012 class was. These guys are under relentless financial pressure, year after year. Something has to give. We could see as many as 20 law schools close in the next three years.
All this means is that 50% of all law schools will increase acceptance rates to 90% by lowering admissions standards. The spineless ABA will not do a damn thing to these schools when they start reporting sub 50% bar passage rates. In the immediate future, don't be surprised to see Down Syndrome law grads at a bar exam test site near you.
The number of applicants now falls below the number of matriculants from a few years ago. Law skules will not succeed in putting a butt in every seat.
Already they're so desperate that many of them have been reducing tuition, increasing discounts, and greatly expanding their reach (the LSAC began to sell law school at community colleges and to people applying to business school). Already they're so desperate that they've lowered standards to the vanishing point, taking in people who score at the first or second percentile on the LSAT.
The decline in the number of applicants will hurt many a law skule.
"The number of applicants now falls below the number of matriculants from a few years ago. Law skules will not succeed in putting a butt in every seat. "
My money is on a number of schools becoming fith-seventh year senior program, aggressively recruiting at third-tier undergraduate programs (where most grads have problems getting jobs).
This will cause their bar passage rates to plummet to maybe 25%, but (a) that's a few years off, and (b) the bottom-feeders run the ABA education committee.
Given a choice of a third of the law schools collapsing, or the system becoming 90% corrupt, the people running it will choose the first.
We are rapidly moving towards the wonderful world of open admissions at a lot of these places; if you can fog a mirror AND have $$$(preferably student loan cash) then you're in.
Scam deans and law profs will argue that the decline in applicants to law schools is a good thing for prospective students. They would claim that the reduced competition will help the student get into a better school.
I believe this is an error. The schools worth getting into do not need to lower standards to fluff their entering class with lemmings to stave off fiscal ruin. The T14 will get the students of the caliber they desire without compromise. That hasn't changed and won't change. What has changed is the standards at low ranking institutions. The current era of open admissions means that anyone can get into a law school somewhere. Getting rejected from law school used to happen and would serve as a signal that a legal career was not a good idea. But with open admissions any ignorant lemming can go to law school, even if they are completely unsuited for a subsequent legal career. This is dangerous for the students' careers, mental health, and financial future.
Top 14 schools are maintaining standards but based on the interview with north westerns dean they are having to provide discounts to 3/4 of the entering class. They are feeling the effects of the scam movement too
Not even all of the so-called T14 are maintaining standards. Georgetown has been going down the shitter for some time.
Virginia, as I recall, is required to set aside 40% of its seats for the state's residents. That rigid policy has always held down the quality of Virginia's classes (it is well known that an applicant from Virginia can get in with a significantly lower LSAT score and GPA than an applicant just over the border in Maryland or North Carolina). The sharp decline in applicants will hit Virginia hard; it may even drive Virginia from the second tier to the third.
It's not just the poor job market that prospective students are afraid of; it's also the exorbitant cost, which in many cases leads to massive, unconscionable, life-destroying debt. It's good to see Northwestern paying attention to the cost issue for a change.
That's an interesting analysis, Old Guy. What happens when Virginia dives into the third tier? I'm guessing that when that happens, it's no longer worth attending. What do you think?
First tier (Harvard and Yale, maybe Stanford): Certainly worth considering, but ordinary people (those lacking money and connections) should think twice about the risk that they are taking.
Second tier (a half-dozen schools, such as Columbia, Michigan, and NYU): Ordinary people might consider these at a very substantial discount.
Third tier (about ten schools, such as Duke, Cornell, and maybe UCLA): Ordinary people might consider these if they are free or almost free but should bear in mind that they're taking a significant risk.
Fourth tier (all others): Do not attend without money or connections, preferably both. (I'm willing to consider the possibility of a fifth tier for those schools that no one should attend under any circumstances. Feel free to discuss.)
Virginia is either at the bottom of the second tier or at the top of the third tier. I therefore consider it a questionable proposition already, even at a large discount.
By your regoning Old Guy Fifth tier schools definitely exist.
A fifth tier school is a school whose negative reputation outweighs the positive benefits of good connections. If you are a scion of a partner but still can't get hired to the firm, or if your daddy's friends joke about your law school to your face, or if you simply get disowned for enrolling in the school then your school was in the fifth tier.
However, normal people won't be able to tell the difference between a forth tier school and a fifth tier school because they won't have the connections where it would matter at all.
I think we can define fifth tier as a school having some special element that makes it an unusually terrible place. For example:
Cooley - monstrous class sizes TJSL - teetering on the brink of bankruptcy Infilaw - for profit
etc.
These schools uniformly offer an ITT-Tech level education at ivy league prices and have atrocious bar passage and job placement numbers. They uniformly admit full freight paying lemmings that have a poor chance of passing the bar and an even poorer chance of having a successful career in law.
I hesitate to define a fifth tier, as it would only elevate the fourth tier. Also, the scions of the great and the good rarely end up at the sorts of places that we might place in a fifth tier (witness the mooncalf who got into the U of Texas despite a 128 on the LSAT), so in practice there's little need for a separate category.
That said, I do think that there are law skules that no one should attend. These include unaccredited institutions (hello, Indiana Tech), those that are flirting with insolvency (Vermont Law School, Thomas Jefferson, Cooley), and those that are run for profit (anything controlled by Infilaw). Also any that are at significant risk of losing their accreditation in the next few years.
Whoa--good eye, OG. "More than full tuition"-- that is something I have never seen before on a law school disclosure. That one student, at least, is not being scammed-- just presumably underpaid. (Because it would take a lot of money to adequately compensate for having to listen to the worthless yapping of the Indy Tech faculty weirdos).
Advice to that one student. On your resume, put "MORE THAN FULL SCHOLARSHIP" in huge bold-lettered caps, and the actual name of your school underneath in tiny lower-case lettering, using an unreadable font, like this one:
They paid this person to go to school there, guaranteed. This is actually a story here: who is this person who is essentially siphoning off money from his/her fellow students??
Not a single person got full tuition, but one got more than full tuition.
Maybe the Princetonian is a brain-dead fuck-up. Even so, Princeton's name alone should be good for a bribe from Indiana Tech.
I've offered before to whore myself out to Indiana Tech, for the right price and a dispensation from coursework. For an extra consideration, I may even write a mealy-mouthed blurb recommending the concentration in executive leadership or whatever the hell they call it.
By the way, I was wrong when I said the entering class had increased by almost a third. As I recall, they ended last year with 24 students but started with 32, so this year the entering class has grown by 10%.
Who in the hell are the 35 idiots who signed to pay to go to this place? I think Nando should take break from profiling law schools on TTR and profile these idiots. What are they former drug addicts and prostitutes who stumbled into an lsat administration one day? I mean with those lsat scores it's not like they studied or took a prep class
Well, we know a few of them from last year. For example, there was an article here about someone named Noone who had had some minor experience and connections that he might actually be able to parlay into a job in the Fort Wayne area after graduating from Indiana Tech.
Sure, I'd go to Indy Tech for full tuition plus $60,000 a year. I'd work hard in law school, too. But after that, I'm not sure where I'd end up...maybe in one of those "JD advantage" jobs at Target.
I'm sure that some day soon, probably during this admission cycle, some clever dean is going to dramatically increase his enrollment by providing a full-time parole officer on campus. Wouldn't you love to have that JD-advantage job?
There are many law schools that give out "more than full tuition." Whittier, St. Thomas in Minnesota, etc. I think it's still a scam because the stipend they provide is not enough to cover living expenses, so unless you have a way to cover your living expenses, you will still end up taking on some level of debt.
I don't know who received "more than full tuition" this year, but in Indiana Tech's inaugural class, the only student that received full tuition + stipend was an international student from Africa. I don't know; maybe this is a good deal for this particular student, but for most students, it's not.
Also, I believe many low-ranked law schools are recruiting students from foreign countries. Are these students eligible for federal loans? I would think they're not. Maybe the law schools are just looking for anybody to hold up their LSAT/GPA numbers or simply fill seats. Are the American students in effect paying for the foreign students' tuition? Does anyone know anything about this or have any inside information?
Yes, Indiana Tech had one student from Ghana. I remember because Alexander pointed out—for the dipshit Indiana Tech types who didn't know—that Ghana is in Africa.
I'm willing to bet that the one from Africa last year and the one from Princeton this year were indeed the recipients of Indiana Tech's bribe. By drawing in a foreign student and one from an Ivy League university, Indiana Tech forged (in more than one sense of the word) a reputation as a serious law school of interest to more people than the local mouth-breathers.
Or that they needed a token to flash around. The one from Ghana ("We attract foreign students"). The one from Princeton ("Three percent of this year's entering students came from the Ivy League").
If Princeton opened another law school, it would start in the top ten, and quite likely the top five. A non-name institution such as Indiana Tech, however, cannot pull off the same feat. Irvine is a special case—not quite no-name, located where many people (unaccountably) would like to live, and the first entering class was fully bought off (zero tuition). And even Irvine will prove to be a disappointment and a rip-off.
I'm fully expecting that in March, when US News ranks UC Irvine for the first time, it will rank lower than 30. By all relevant standards, including but not limited to rankings, it's not a school worth attending. The one exception would be someone from SoCal who wants to practice in OC and gets a full scholarship.
This is excellent news! Beautiful, heartwarming news. That's about 1000 more lives that won't be ruined in the spring of 2018.
I'm sure the writers of this blog, along with the vast majority of honest commenters, can take some credit for that. But quite frankly, there's something else going on here. It's the horror stories of children and cousins and nephews who ruined their lives that really have the most impact. Wasn't it the Franklin and Marshall guy who let it slip that people are starting to feel sorry for anyone who plans to go to law school? That's a huge cultural shift there.
We in the law school reform movement should be proud of what we stand for. But most of all we should just be happy that young people are making wiser financial and career decisions these days. Reality gets most of the credit for that.
As much as we live in the internet age, most people still respect and get news from traditional corporate sources, WP, NYT, WSJ, etc. It is articles in these papers that must continue. Can someone gather info and send it into journalists at these businesses to write investigative pieces?
Mainstream media knows what's happening, but law schools are a powerful foe ($$$$). Plus, law school is not a scam for the rich and well-connected, the very demographic law school has been designed for.
The entire modern society is designed to obscure the fact that we live in a guilded age. Oh, you have advanced education? That's nice.. But since it's not T10, it really doesn't matter.. In other words, designed to keep people working hard believing they have a fair shot at the American Dream when in reality things are the same as they ever were. Those who have already beaten the System will continue to beat it while the rest are ruthlessly used and profiteered.
Not disagreeing here, but the articles in the mainstream highlighting the scam have done much to shed light on this problem. These articles must continue.
There used to be a law scam Downfall clip. A lot of them got DMCA'd a few years ago. There were also those "make your own cartoons."
The full movie is pretty good BTW if you like the clip, basically showing Hitler going nuts with his meth addiction in his bunker surrounded by his depressed retainers.
There are still lots of Downfall clips on YouTube: Hitler gets his LSAT score, Hitler fails his exams, Hitler gets laid off from Albany Law School. Good stuff. Watch and enjoy.
I hope someone does a new variation on this: Hitler demands transparency from the bar examiners.
Since the height admissions a few years ago, 10,000 fewer people are enrolling in law school per year.
10,000 fewer people x $40,000 per year in student loans = $400 million
Law schools as a whole have $400 million less revenue this year. Obviously this is hitting the lower ranking law schools more. But when you think of these 10,000 revenue-producing-units (ie, student with ruined lives) over 3 years, that is $1.2 BILLION dollars that law schools are losing from the failure to enroll more people this year.
This has got to lead to major layoffs, campus closings, and school closings soon. I mean, more than the isolated couple of cases we have heard about.
Unfortunately, if the law school is part of a university campus, the university will almost certainly keep the law school afloat given the prestige of having a law school (or the loss of prestige that would come from shutting one down). Some schools will merge, some independent ones will go bust, a lot of admin will lose jobs, retiring profs won't be replaced. That's the best we'll get from the law schools. The main victors here are the people who don't attend.
Except that a fairly selective university is unlikely to be happy if its law school has become effectively open admissions. The university might be inclined to shut down the law school if they think that the declining reputation of the law school would drag down the overall reputation of the university.
Agreed,, this was why ten (out of 70) dental schools shut down in the 90s--the appilcant: seat ratio was 1.4: 1 or so. It was embarrassing. This is where the hypocrisy of 'academic professionalism' and doing the right thing (shutting down the debt factories) coincides. Also, many lower schools are all about the cash--the law school could get shut down when the wrinkled dean that opened the law school for business gets wheeled away.
Agreed. Only small independent law schools which can't affiliate will go under. Vermont, for example, and Albany, desperately trying to affiliate into the SUNY system to get on the taxpayer dole, etc.
I too wouldn't look for mass closings. That might be what we scambloggers want. But realistically, the Education Cash Cow still has quite a bit of milk left in it - as long as Congress is willing to continue to write the checks.
The main victors will indeed be the ones who opt out and decide not to attend.
I can see the Scam continuing on for another 20 years at this point.
I don't foresee *mass* closings, but law schools within universities won't be subsidized forever. Eventually the cries from other university programs that want the money will become too strident. The job situation is not going to improve anytime soon (if ever). Even this month's ABA Journal, which hit my desk this morning, has an article about the continuing trend of corporations doing more and more legal work with in-house counsel. Eventually, even the dumbest, most out-of-touch lemmings will get the message that a law degree counts for nothing. When that happens, good-bye federal gravy train.
Some economists that study education trends are calling for 50 percent of all private colleges to close in the next two decades ... simply put, they are too expensive and provide too little in the way of employable, value-added skill. Thus, they are a prestige item, and not affordable by the vast majority of people....
"More than tuition" for UCI's first year class meant free health insurance and waived student fees. It could also mean discounted/free dorms. Though a 1-bedroom apartment in rural Indiana costs as little as $300 a month.
UC Irvine's admission and placement stats have plunged in the last couple of years. I predict intense disappointment for its backers once the new US News rankings come out in March.
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Only 48.6% passed the July California Bar.
ReplyDeleteNow that the administrators know that there will be no short term respite and dreams of a recovery had no basis in reality, the next year should be very, very interesting . . .
ReplyDeleteThat just means that people going to law school in 2015 will have unbelievably wonderful opportunities when they graduate in 2018!
ReplyDeleteThere will be bidding wars for new law grads!
New law grads will be picking gold nuggets off the streets!
Apply now - operators are standing by!
"Call in the next 10 minutes, and we'll throw in a set of Ginsu steak knives - a value of $89! Hurry, while supplies last!"
DeleteUseful for slitting your wrists.
DeleteOld Guy
And as people are pointing out, each year a larger class graduates than matriculates, so the people entering in 2014 will be 2L's, ... the reduction moves through the system.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Barry. The Fall 2015 class will be much smaller than the Fall 2012 class was. These guys are under relentless financial pressure, year after year. Something has to give. We could see as many as 20 law schools close in the next three years.
DeleteAll this means is that 50% of all law schools will increase acceptance rates to 90% by lowering admissions standards. The spineless ABA will not do a damn thing to these schools when they start reporting sub 50% bar passage rates. In the immediate future, don't be surprised to see Down Syndrome law grads at a bar exam test site near you.
ReplyDeleteThe number of applicants now falls below the number of matriculants from a few years ago. Law skules will not succeed in putting a butt in every seat.
DeleteAlready they're so desperate that many of them have been reducing tuition, increasing discounts, and greatly expanding their reach (the LSAC began to sell law school at community colleges and to people applying to business school). Already they're so desperate that they've lowered standards to the vanishing point, taking in people who score at the first or second percentile on the LSAT.
The decline in the number of applicants will hurt many a law skule.
Old Guy
"The number of applicants now falls below the number of matriculants from a few years ago. Law skules will not succeed in putting a butt in every seat. "
DeleteMy money is on a number of schools becoming fith-seventh year senior program, aggressively recruiting at third-tier undergraduate programs (where most grads have problems getting jobs).
This will cause their bar passage rates to plummet to maybe 25%, but (a) that's a few years off, and (b) the bottom-feeders run the ABA education committee.
Given a choice of a third of the law schools collapsing, or the system becoming 90% corrupt, the people running it will choose the first.
Mazeltov!
ReplyDeleteWe are rapidly moving towards the wonderful world of open admissions at a lot of these places; if you can fog a mirror AND have $$$(preferably student loan cash) then you're in.
ReplyDeleteScam deans and law profs will argue that the decline in applicants to law schools is a good thing for prospective students. They would claim that the reduced competition will help the student get into a better school.
DeleteI believe this is an error. The schools worth getting into do not need to lower standards to fluff their entering class with lemmings to stave off fiscal ruin. The T14 will get the students of the caliber they desire without compromise. That hasn't changed and won't change.
What has changed is the standards at low ranking institutions. The current era of open admissions means that anyone can get into a law school somewhere. Getting rejected from law school used to happen and would serve as a signal that a legal career was not a good idea. But with open admissions any ignorant lemming can go to law school, even if they are completely unsuited for a subsequent legal career. This is dangerous for the students' careers, mental health, and financial future.
Top 14 schools are maintaining standards but based on the interview with north westerns dean they are having to provide discounts to 3/4 of the entering class. They are feeling the effects of the scam movement too
DeleteNot even all of the so-called T14 are maintaining standards. Georgetown has been going down the shitter for some time.
DeleteVirginia, as I recall, is required to set aside 40% of its seats for the state's residents. That rigid policy has always held down the quality of Virginia's classes (it is well known that an applicant from Virginia can get in with a significantly lower LSAT score and GPA than an applicant just over the border in Maryland or North Carolina). The sharp decline in applicants will hit Virginia hard; it may even drive Virginia from the second tier to the third.
Old Guy
Good points by both 8:38 and 4:46.
DeleteIt's not just the poor job market that prospective students are afraid of; it's also the exorbitant cost, which in many cases leads to massive, unconscionable, life-destroying debt. It's good to see Northwestern paying attention to the cost issue for a change.
That's an interesting analysis, Old Guy. What happens when Virginia dives into the third tier? I'm guessing that when that happens, it's no longer worth attending. What do you think?
DeleteMy assessment:
DeleteFirst tier (Harvard and Yale, maybe Stanford): Certainly worth considering, but ordinary people (those lacking money and connections) should think twice about the risk that they are taking.
Second tier (a half-dozen schools, such as Columbia, Michigan, and NYU): Ordinary people might consider these at a very substantial discount.
Third tier (about ten schools, such as Duke, Cornell, and maybe UCLA): Ordinary people might consider these if they are free or almost free but should bear in mind that they're taking a significant risk.
Fourth tier (all others): Do not attend without money or connections, preferably both. (I'm willing to consider the possibility of a fifth tier for those schools that no one should attend under any circumstances. Feel free to discuss.)
Virginia is either at the bottom of the second tier or at the top of the third tier. I therefore consider it a questionable proposition already, even at a large discount.
Old Guy
By your regoning Old Guy Fifth tier schools definitely exist.
DeleteA fifth tier school is a school whose negative reputation outweighs the positive benefits of good connections. If you are a scion of a partner but still can't get hired to the firm, or if your daddy's friends joke about your law school to your face, or if you simply get disowned for enrolling in the school then your school was in the fifth tier.
However, normal people won't be able to tell the difference between a forth tier school and a fifth tier school because they won't have the connections where it would matter at all.
I think we can define fifth tier as a school having some special element that makes it an unusually terrible place. For example:
DeleteCooley - monstrous class sizes
TJSL - teetering on the brink of bankruptcy
Infilaw - for profit
etc.
These schools uniformly offer an ITT-Tech level education at ivy league prices and have atrocious bar passage and job placement numbers. They uniformly admit full freight paying lemmings that have a poor chance of passing the bar and an even poorer chance of having a successful career in law.
I hesitate to define a fifth tier, as it would only elevate the fourth tier. Also, the scions of the great and the good rarely end up at the sorts of places that we might place in a fifth tier (witness the mooncalf who got into the U of Texas despite a 128 on the LSAT), so in practice there's little need for a separate category.
DeleteThat said, I do think that there are law skules that no one should attend. These include unaccredited institutions (hello, Indiana Tech), those that are flirting with insolvency (Vermont Law School, Thomas Jefferson, Cooley), and those that are run for profit (anything controlled by Infilaw). Also any that are at significant risk of losing their accreditation in the next few years.
Old Guy
Here's a song to compliment this post:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYB3yyu0UrQ
Only for the scammers. Here is one for the rest of us:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a23945btJYw
We live our lives in chains,
Deleteand never even know
we have the key.
Indiana Tech released its ABA required disclosure for 2014: http://law.indianatech.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/509.pdf
ReplyDeleteClass Size: 35
75th Percentile LSAT: 151
75th Percentile GPA: 3.15
I'm surprised that the number of matriculants rose this year. By almost a third!
DeleteThe LSAT scores for the 50th and 25th percentiles, respectively, were 148 and 142. Dreadful.
One person got "[m]ore than full tuition" from the skule. I wonder who that was, and why they paid her or him to attend.
Old Guy
Whoa--good eye, OG. "More than full tuition"-- that is something I have never seen before on a law school disclosure. That one student, at least, is not being scammed-- just presumably underpaid. (Because it would take a lot of money to adequately compensate for having to listen to the worthless yapping of the Indy Tech faculty weirdos).
DeleteAdvice to that one student. On your resume, put "MORE THAN FULL SCHOLARSHIP" in huge bold-lettered caps, and the actual name of your school underneath in tiny lower-case lettering, using an unreadable font, like this one:
http://www.identifont.com/show?70
^^^^ They should parse out what hourly wage their getting to attend and put THAT in bold caps:
DeleteWAS PAID EQUIVALENT OF 8.50 PER HOUR TO ATTEND INDY TECH LAW
$100 says that the "more than full tuition" student is the one from Princeton. Yes, there is a Princeton grad in ITSL's incoming class this year:
Deletehttp://www.theindianalawyer.com/members-of-the-class-of-2017-start-law-school/PARAMS/article/34969
"Interim dean andré douglas pond cummings said the incoming class will have about 30 students with a median LSAT score of 148. Students in this second class, he said, are coming from undergraduate institutions as diverse as Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and Weber State University along with schools throughout Indiana including Ball State University, DePauw University and IU Bloomington."
They paid this person to go to school there, guaranteed. This is actually a story here: who is this person who is essentially siphoning off money from his/her fellow students??
Not a single person got full tuition, but one got more than full tuition.
DeleteMaybe the Princetonian is a brain-dead fuck-up. Even so, Princeton's name alone should be good for a bribe from Indiana Tech.
I've offered before to whore myself out to Indiana Tech, for the right price and a dispensation from coursework. For an extra consideration, I may even write a mealy-mouthed blurb recommending the concentration in executive leadership or whatever the hell they call it.
By the way, I was wrong when I said the entering class had increased by almost a third. As I recall, they ended last year with 24 students but started with 32, so this year the entering class has grown by 10%.
Old Guy
Who in the hell are the 35 idiots who signed to pay to go to this place? I think Nando should take break from profiling law schools on TTR and profile these idiots. What are they former drug addicts and prostitutes who stumbled into an lsat administration one day? I mean with those lsat scores it's not like they studied or took a prep class
DeleteWell, we know a few of them from last year. For example, there was an article here about someone named Noone who had had some minor experience and connections that he might actually be able to parlay into a job in the Fort Wayne area after graduating from Indiana Tech.
DeleteAlso, we exposed (http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.ca/2014/04/connections.html, about halfway down) the odious shill David Felts for declaring at the top of Indiana Dreck's home page "If the current Circuit Court Judge for Allen County recommends a certain law school, it is definitely a school to consider and attend"—without mentioning that that judge ever so coincidentally happens to be his father. Despite the exposé, Felts fils still intones the same words on that home page, his face resplendent with glee atop a hideous orange-yellow necktie.
There. You've just read profiles of 8% of last year's entering class.
Old Guy
I flunked a Calculus final and got a C in the course, but still had a 3.6 GPA. And these jokers didn't take calculus.....
DeleteSure, I'd go to Indy Tech for full tuition plus $60,000 a year. I'd work hard in law school, too. But after that, I'm not sure where I'd end up...maybe in one of those "JD advantage" jobs at Target.
DeleteI'm sure that some day soon, probably during this admission cycle, some clever dean is going to dramatically increase his enrollment by providing a full-time parole officer on campus. Wouldn't you love to have that JD-advantage job?
DeleteThere are many law schools that give out "more than full tuition." Whittier, St. Thomas in Minnesota, etc. I think it's still a scam because the stipend they provide is not enough to cover living expenses, so unless you have a way to cover your living expenses, you will still end up taking on some level of debt.
DeleteI don't know who received "more than full tuition" this year, but in Indiana Tech's inaugural class, the only student that received full tuition + stipend was an international student from Africa. I don't know; maybe this is a good deal for this particular student, but for most students, it's not.
Also, I believe many low-ranked law schools are recruiting students from foreign countries. Are these students eligible for federal loans? I would think they're not. Maybe the law schools are just looking for anybody to hold up their LSAT/GPA numbers or simply fill seats. Are the American students in effect paying for the foreign students' tuition? Does anyone know anything about this or have any inside information?
Sorry, I meant Hamline in Minnesota is giving out "more than full tuition," but St. Thomas may be doing it, too.
DeleteYes, Indiana Tech had one student from Ghana. I remember because Alexander pointed out—for the dipshit Indiana Tech types who didn't know—that Ghana is in Africa.
DeleteI'm willing to bet that the one from Africa last year and the one from Princeton this year were indeed the recipients of Indiana Tech's bribe. By drawing in a foreign student and one from an Ivy League university, Indiana Tech forged (in more than one sense of the word) a reputation as a serious law school of interest to more people than the local mouth-breathers.
Old Guy
I was accepted to Hamline with an 85% no strings scholarship in 2011 - I would have been able to obtain a JD for ~15k + COL. I did not attend.
DeleteGiven the super saturated MSP legal market I do not regret this decision.
Now Indy Tech can start recruiting students from China. You know, in Asia.
Delete"One person got "[m]ore than full tuition" from the skule. I wonder who that was, and why they paid her or him to attend."
DeleteOld Guy
It either meant that they were paying part of his cost of living, or the son/daughter of somebody influential is being 'taken care of'.
Or that they needed a token to flash around. The one from Ghana ("We attract foreign students"). The one from Princeton ("Three percent of this year's entering students came from the Ivy League").
DeleteOld Guy
"$100 says that the "more than full tuition" student is the one from Princeton. Yes, there is a Princeton grad in ITSL's incoming class this year"
DeleteThe Princeton grad should have gone to Princeton Law School, instead.
After all, PLS is a LOT closer to ABA accreditation than is ITLS.
2:09 and 2:20 here. This information comes from Jessica Lynn Anderson (now Glassburn), Assistant Dean of Admissions at Indiana Tech.
DeleteYes, I do know that Ghana is in Africa, but she did not specify to me what country the student is from. Enough with the snark.
If Princeton opened another law school, it would start in the top ten, and quite likely the top five. A non-name institution such as Indiana Tech, however, cannot pull off the same feat. Irvine is a special case—not quite no-name, located where many people (unaccountably) would like to live, and the first entering class was fully bought off (zero tuition). And even Irvine will prove to be a disappointment and a rip-off.
DeleteOld Guy
I'm fully expecting that in March, when US News ranks UC Irvine for the first time, it will rank lower than 30. By all relevant standards, including but not limited to rankings, it's not a school worth attending. The one exception would be someone from SoCal who wants to practice in OC and gets a full scholarship.
DeleteThis is excellent news! Beautiful, heartwarming news. That's about 1000 more lives that won't be ruined in the spring of 2018.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the writers of this blog, along with the vast majority of honest commenters, can take some credit for that. But quite frankly, there's something else going on here. It's the horror stories of children and cousins and nephews who ruined their lives that really have the most impact. Wasn't it the Franklin and Marshall guy who let it slip that people are starting to feel sorry for anyone who plans to go to law school? That's a huge cultural shift there.
We in the law school reform movement should be proud of what we stand for. But most of all we should just be happy that young people are making wiser financial and career decisions these days. Reality gets most of the credit for that.
As much as we live in the internet age, most people still respect and get news from traditional corporate sources, WP, NYT, WSJ, etc. It is articles in these papers that must continue. Can someone gather info and send it into journalists at these businesses to write investigative pieces?
ReplyDeleteMainstream media knows what's happening, but law schools are a powerful foe ($$$$). Plus, law school is not a scam for the rich and well-connected, the very demographic law school has been designed for.
DeleteExactly.
DeleteThe entire modern society is designed to obscure the fact that we live in a guilded age. Oh, you have advanced education? That's nice.. But since it's not T10, it really doesn't matter.. In other words, designed to keep people working hard believing they have a fair shot at the American Dream when in reality things are the same as they ever were. Those who have already beaten the System will continue to beat it while the rest are ruthlessly used and profiteered.
Not disagreeing here, but the articles in the mainstream highlighting the scam have done much to shed light on this problem. These articles must continue.
DeleteI wish someone would do a "Hitler Finds Out" parody of this, you know, using the Downfall video clip.
ReplyDeleteThat would be AWESOME.
DeleteThere used to be a law scam Downfall clip. A lot of them got DMCA'd a few years ago. There were also those "make your own cartoons."
DeleteThe full movie is pretty good BTW if you like the clip, basically showing Hitler going nuts with his meth addiction in his bunker surrounded by his depressed retainers.
There are still lots of Downfall clips on YouTube: Hitler gets his LSAT score, Hitler fails his exams, Hitler gets laid off from Albany Law School. Good stuff. Watch and enjoy.
DeleteI hope someone does a new variation on this: Hitler demands transparency from the bar examiners.
Since the height admissions a few years ago, 10,000 fewer people are enrolling in law school per year.
ReplyDelete10,000 fewer people x $40,000 per year in student loans = $400 million
Law schools as a whole have $400 million less revenue this year. Obviously this is hitting the lower ranking law schools more. But when you think of these 10,000 revenue-producing-units (ie, student with ruined lives) over 3 years, that is $1.2 BILLION dollars that law schools are losing from the failure to enroll more people this year.
This has got to lead to major layoffs, campus closings, and school closings soon. I mean, more than the isolated couple of cases we have heard about.
So, 2015 or 2016?
Unfortunately, if the law school is part of a university campus, the university will almost certainly keep the law school afloat given the prestige of having a law school (or the loss of prestige that would come from shutting one down). Some schools will merge, some independent ones will go bust, a lot of admin will lose jobs, retiring profs won't be replaced. That's the best we'll get from the law schools. The main victors here are the people who don't attend.
DeleteExcept that a fairly selective university is unlikely to be happy if its law school has become effectively open admissions. The university might be inclined to shut down the law school if they think that the declining reputation of the law school would drag down the overall reputation of the university.
DeleteAgreed,, this was why ten (out of 70) dental schools shut down in the 90s--the appilcant: seat ratio was 1.4: 1 or so. It was embarrassing. This is where the hypocrisy of 'academic professionalism' and doing the right thing (shutting down the debt factories) coincides. Also, many lower schools are all about the cash--the law school could get shut down when the wrinkled dean that opened the law school for business gets wheeled away.
Delete12-8-14 @ 8:36 AM:
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Only small independent law schools which can't affiliate will go under. Vermont, for example, and Albany, desperately trying to affiliate into the SUNY system to get on the taxpayer dole, etc.
I too wouldn't look for mass closings. That might be what we scambloggers want. But realistically, the Education Cash Cow still has quite a bit of milk left in it - as long as Congress is willing to continue to write the checks.
The main victors will indeed be the ones who opt out and decide not to attend.
I can see the Scam continuing on for another 20 years at this point.
I don't foresee *mass* closings, but law schools within universities won't be subsidized forever. Eventually the cries from other university programs that want the money will become too strident. The job situation is not going to improve anytime soon (if ever). Even this month's ABA Journal, which hit my desk this morning, has an article about the continuing trend of corporations doing more and more legal work with in-house counsel. Eventually, even the dumbest, most out-of-touch lemmings will get the message that a law degree counts for nothing. When that happens, good-bye federal gravy train.
DeleteSome economists that study education trends are calling for 50 percent of all private colleges to close in the next two decades ... simply put, they are too expensive and provide too little in the way of employable, value-added skill. Thus, they are a prestige item, and not affordable by the vast majority of people....
Delete"More than tuition" for UCI's first year class meant free health insurance and waived student fees. It could also mean discounted/free dorms. Though a 1-bedroom apartment in rural Indiana costs as little as $300 a month.
ReplyDeleteUC Irvine's admission and placement stats have plunged in the last couple of years. I predict intense disappointment for its backers once the new US News rankings come out in March.
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