On February 9, 2026, OTLSS achieved its 5 millionth visit. Thanks to our valued readers for their support.
Unfortunately, the law-school scam has regained strength in recent years. Despite the abundance of anti-scam literature here and elsewhere, lemmings keep rushing headlong into scam-schools, usually using federally guaranteed student loans that bear high interest and cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Until the scam, and its monetary underpinning, have been eliminated, our work will not be done.
Think about it from the perspective of the folks applying to low ranked law schools. They often party away their time in college, and end up living at home with their parents, pushing a broom at their local grocery store for near-minimum wage after they graduate. Turns out that their degree in "film" or "English Literature" is wholly worthless. So, they can have three more years, away from their parents, out of the workforce, to do as they please--and not only is it all funded by student loans, but their current student loans, from college, well, they won't be required to pay any of them back until they finish law school! Or, on the other hand, they can keep stocking shelves and sweeping floors, and trying to pay back their college loans, while living with Mom and Dad. To them, this is an easy choice. In fact, some students will try to go on to even more higher education after law school, to keep the good times rolling, funded by ever more student loans. As long as we fund this nonsense, it will keep happening.
ReplyDeleteIt is often supposed that people who can't find work after graduating had gone into a field such as film or English that doesn't lead to any particular job. Well, hardly any bachelor's degree nowadays is worth much for that purpose. Further study is usually required, and that, too, may well not pan out.
DeleteThe Baby Boomers could major in anything, because there were so few people with degrees and any degree at all was good for a job in business. Now it is widely admitted that Generation X was the last generation for which university might have made financial sense. No major is good for much right out of university.
I have read that fewer people are going to college and more are going to Trade School instead, which is wise. What you say is true, there was a time, in the not-too-distant past, where a college degree, in and of itself, was worth a lot on the job market. That hasn't been the case for decades. The solution, however, is not to blame Boomers, but rather to ask why today's students and their parents are not smart enough, and savvy enough, to understand how much, or how little, a Bachelor's Degree is worth today. In addition, a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing, or Accounting, or Engineering, or Computer Science. . .all of those degrees can, in fact, lead to good, well-paying jobs immediately upon graduation. Remember what we learned in law school: it is not what a person knows to be true, but rather what a person knew, or reasonably should have known, before that person made a particular decision. If, in 2026, someone is dumb enough to get a degree in a garbage major from a garbage college, and that person ends up working at Wendy's afterwards, whose fault is that?
DeleteIt's not that anyone in particular should be blamed. But, yes, much of the responsibility lies on the baby boomers. They are the parents of most of the young people, and they keep telling the young people things that were true enough in 1979 but are not today. "Just major in anything! Any degree will be good! Do what you love; the money will follow!" That wasn't true for Generation X, and now university itself is a poor proposition outside fields such as nursing, which you mentioned. (Is computer science a sure bet? I doubt it. Even in the 1990s it was not.)
DeleteIt is also the boomers who drove the cost of tuition up monstrously—to pay for a bloated staff of boomers—after profiting from cheap tuition themselves. That's typical of their selfish generation.
And it is the boomers and their predecessors who spoiled blue-collar work in the early 1980s, thereby driving all sorts of unqualified people into the universities.
Also, the Boomers went to college when colleges were staffed with much more serious-minded academics than today. Many of their professors went to college on the GI Bill after WWII and were serious, mentally mature academics. Today's colleges have more than their fair share of cranks, crackpots, and midwits.
DeleteIn 1970, not even 10% of adults in the US had a degree; only about 50% had finished high school. Today, more than 30% have a degree. The increase was achieved by lowering standards dramatically.
DeleteThere's an old proverb: "It is better to light a single candle than curse the darkness."
ReplyDeleteThis blog has a new take in challenging the scam, acting as a single light:
"It is better to light a single candle...while cursing the darkness."
Congratulations on 5(!) million.
Thank you. We are trying to shed light on the law-school scam, which profits from being able to function in the dark.
DeleteThe Old Guy is the only one posting on this blog and it has been that way for quite some time. In the comments sections he takes up at least 1/4 of the comments. So by now is it all a one man show here? I mean, is the Old Guy some kind of a nut keeping something going and he lives for it, eating his heart out forever and ever blaming others?
ReplyDeleteWell, you're here commenting and eating your heart out.
DeleteSo there's that.
i luv this blog.
Deleteanother point missed here, is that most Gen Z is functionally illiterate and the colleges have catered to that. This is also a function of the shift from reading long text in a forum or book to a social media feed, where it's hard to respond to the idea and even harder to find a record of it. It's diminished the ability of the internet to tell truths.
ReplyDeleteOld guy is most certainly not the only person posting on this blog. Lots of people post on it and have for many years. He is not a "nut" at all, he is quite rational and lays out a major, and growing, problem in US higher education. There are 11 law schools in Florida, nine in Pennsylvania, nine in Illinois, and so on. These states could comfortably support, and employ graduates from one law school per state, perhaps two with moderate-sized classes. Pretending that Florida needs 11 law schools and there are jobs for all those newly-minted J.D.'s each year is a complete scam, and it hurts thousands of people each year. These are folks who spend three years of their lives, and often over $150,000 dollars (usually in student loans) preparing for jobs that don't exist. In Real Life, these hapless souls often end up doing "Temporary Document Review Projects" paying around $25.00 per hour. I am a successful lawyer, and I run into unemployed, and severely under-employed lawyers all the time. Due to political changes, the days when young people can rack up six figures in student debt and then just walk away laughing after they graduate are coming to and end. The government is starting to get serious about collecting this debt, and it cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. I wonder, by the nature of your post, if you yourself are a Dean or a professor who preys on gullible people, and profits when they get a worthless JD from a low-ranked law school and end up unemployed, with crushing debt, afterwards?
ReplyDeleteThis blog addresses the law school scam with data and statistics such as the excessive numbers of schools per state or schools requiring cash infusions to survive. The critics of sites such as this, or specifically this site, such as the Reddit blog recently covered never provide data or facts. It is usually just cliches and anecdotes, such as get out and hustle, or I got a great job with a 2.1 gpa from 4th tier toilet of the year.
ReplyDeleteI don't post much here but I did follow the anti-scam blogs from back around 2007 or so, posting comments here and there especially around 2008-2010ish or so. After that time I posted less and less, and haven't been checking much at all. But I'm certainly a unique person and not Old Guy.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we saw all this before. The scam apologists, they were in those earlier years very hostile and abusive. But then eventually they became more quiet, until they were mostly gone. Maybe they are returning.
The scam was blown wide open by the early-10s. I haven't kept up with recent ideas, but if it's finally known college is a scam for most, that's great news. It's actually a great idea, provided it's inexpensive, as it originally was for the Boomers. Boomers could pay a full year's tuition by working a simple minimum wage summer job. That's all they needed to do. But the costs were driven up for each succeeding generation while opportunities were removed. It really is an insane thing to do to younger generations that are taught to believe teachers and authority figures, and then have the rug pulled out from beneath them.
It's also an absolute fact that Boomers are the ones in office and as department heads and corporate executives. That's how the world works. Average age of Congress as risen the entire time, because it's mostly Boomers aging, the same people in place.
Most of us that got scammed are obviously getting much older now, and Old Guy was already older. The younger gens don't even read any blogs tmk, and I don't like watching videos but maybe that's where they tell each other about the scam. Or maybe they don't really, who really knows these days.
I for one am glad I can still check this site out every once in awhile (few times a year at best for me now, maybe even years between tbh). I don't always agree about everything I either read as a blog entry or from the comments sections, but as long as there's a reasonable attempt at veracity I'm happy to see it overall.