Chemerinsky vs. Tamanaha on Tutition Costs

I was reading the latest defense of the Law School Cartel, and had to take a break from student woes for a minute.  I remember having to bludgeon my way through Mr. Chemerinsky's con law text book for two semesters way back when, and not surprisingly, I find his defenses equally obtuse now.  Ladies and Gentlemen, "You Get What You Pay For":

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202564055135&You_get_what_you_pay_for_in_legal_education&slreturn=20120623185606

Some of my favorite parts:

“Tamanaha is correct that law professors are paid significantly more than university faculty in disciplines like English, philosophy and history. Imagine that a law school tried to pay at that level, say roughly half of current faculty salaries at top law schools. Who would come and teach at a school where they got paid half what other law schools would pay them, and who would stay there when other opportunities arose?”

Imagine!  Who, indeed, would deign to teach for such six-figure paltry scraps by slumming it with the Philosophy department?  By the way, Erwin, the problem you’re talking about is called “price-fixing”.  UC Irvine could take the moral high road and “lead the way,” or something. 

“About half of our budget is faculty salaries and benefits, but even slicing these in half wouldn't save nearly enough for a tuition decrease like the one Tamanaha argues for. The only way to accomplish that would also be to cut the size of the faculty at least in half. Increasing the teaching load from an average of three to four courses won't help much, since I and many on our faculty are already teaching four or more courses every year.”

Indeed!  A crushing burden!  You might have to actually forego a conference or something, and some people might have to (gasp) look for and compete for a job!  Someone, stop the madness!

“Cutting a law faculty in half would require relying far more on relatively low-cost adjunct faculty. Tamanaha's assumption is that relying on practitioners rather than professors to teach more classes won't compromise the quality of the education students receive. Here I think he is just wrong. There are certainly some spectacular adjunct professors at every law school, and they play a vital role. But as I see each year when I read the student evaluations at my school, overall the evaluations for the full-time faculty are substantially better than they are for the adjuncts. It is easy to understand why. Teaching is a skill, and most people get better the more they do it. Moreover, full-time faculty generally have more time to prepare than adjunct professors who usually have busy practices.”

The legal logic here is indeed mighty – “Here I think he is just wrong.”  Stand back, everybody!  Bask in the glory of those high-dollar “thinking-like-a-lawyer” skills everybody touts so much!

Ah well - the long slide towards the reverse-democratization of (legal) education continues.  Let's get down to Brass Tacks:  Law School (and most of higher education) is about the feedback loop of educating the well-to-do, so that they in turn support the school.  If it were actually about making, say, legal education affordable and/or accessable to the masses, then the "presteige quotient" collapses and well-to-do will not be showing up because they don't really care how much tuition is in the first place.  Defending liberty and pursuing justice will always take a back seat to "keeping things in the family," per se.

A little honesty would go a long way, and would allow non-trads and regular students both to make more informed decisions.  But, somebody's gotta get bilked, you know - how else would the economy function?      

This Blog Starts to Write Itself

The anecdotes keep piling up.  Call it hearsay if you want, although I can't see what the motivation to lie would be...

AnonymousJuly 7, 2012 11:13 AM

Last night, I had dinner with a college buddy who went to law school 12 years after we graduated from college. He went to a T50 on a partial scholarship. Prior to going to law school, he was making $120K as a biochemist. So he decided that he peaked at his former job and decided to become a non-trad law student at the age of 33. Fast forward to today. He is 40 years old, owes $105K in student loans and earns $60K a year in NYC. He went from making $120K 8 years ago with no debt to cutting his salary by 50% and carrying $105K in student loans. He is a smart guy, realizes he will never own a house, get married, have kids or have a bank account (to avoid Sallie Mae's bank levies). I suspect he works using a Tax ID Number instead of his social security number so that Sallie Mae doesn't garnish his wages. I don't consider this guy to be a typical lemming. He had a 2.8 GPA but a 176LSAT score. Today, he probably could have attended Rutgers, sorry, Rowan Law School, for free. But alas, he went to law school during the model and bottles day. Kids, Nando makes no money from this site. He is telling you the cold hard and brutal truth. Do not listen to the law school deans or law professors who are only going to paint a rosy picture to sucker you in and keep the gravy train locomotive running full steam ahead.

http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2012/07/third-tier-waste-heap-west-virginia.html#comment-form

One thing is for sure - the lol skools have every reason to keep on lying.  Thou$and$ of rea$on$ multiplied by hundreds of students.  Caveat Emptor.

Prestige and "Following the Script"

Wow.  As followers of this blog will know, this story is eerily familiar and hits WAY too close to home.  Comment #15, from "Non-Trad Student", per the following post:

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_pedigree_problem_are_law_school_ties_choking_the_profession/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly_email


"15.  Non-Trad Student


Jun 28, 2012 5:00 PM CDT


I wish I had known how much of a permanent caste system law is when i chose what school to attend.


In law, the choice of school is one that factors in at every step of an attorney’s career, for decades.  E.g.  people who dared attend a non-Ivy law school decades earlier won’t even be considered to be a Supreme Court Justice; while in some of your lifetimes, one didn’t even have to be a judge to be nominated.


I began my working career in another industry that had much more of a “what have you done lately?” approach.  My undergrad STEM credentials got me my first job, but I had to keep proving myself, and as time went by, my undergrad degree became less of a factor.  Where in law,  the choice of law school becomes a permanent asset or anchor, regardless of what an attorney can demonstrate once in practice.


When it came time to go to law school, I let geographic proximity control my choice rather than uproot myself to go to the higher-ranked school that my LSAT enabled.  I regret that decision every day because I will be perpetually perceived as lesser and inadequate by the very people who would have been my classmates—all because they ASSUME that everyone going to a lower-ranked school couldn’t get accepted anywhere else.  Especially for non-traditional students, factors other than USN≀ are used in our decision-making process.  My highly-ranked STEM undergrad, high LSAT score, and high bar exam score mean nothing because of my mistake in choosing the law school that was least disruptive to my life at the time.


Given that reality, it is even more absurd that the lower-ranked law schools charge what they do for tuition.  I think #8 is mostly accurate that the education is comparable.  But, clearly, the degree that is granted is not as valuable. "


Non-Trad Student, good luck to you; I feel your pain.  As for other Non-Trads considering lol skool, if you take nothing from this blog, heed this individual's experience.  The study of law is increasingly moving back to "traditional" students with family connections, backing, and/or scholarship potential, if it ever really was open to non-trads in the first place.  As I stated in some of my earliest posts, most non-trad students are already at a stage of life that make it even more difficult to succeed and thrive in the gauntlet, let alone find employment worth the opportunity costs.     

Again, if you have the right backing, Godspeed to you.  Everyone else, run away as fast as possible.  And I would say that to most traditional students, as well.

"You Can Do Anything With a Law Degree..."

...until you find out you can't, of course.  One data point does not make a trend, but darn it all if data points keep piling up and graphing out to the same conclusion - a JD does not help you outside of the practice of law. 

"Prior to attending law school, she worked at investment firms, so she was hoping to land a job at a securities law firm or another related field that could use her experience. Instead, says Tokarska, the only position she was offered after graduating was a $10 per hour part-time clerkship. Knee deep in debt and unable to find a decent job, she opened her own law office in San Diego in 2008. "I thought if I got a higher degree, I'd have a better chance to get a job, but that's not what happened," she says."

http://www.smartmoney.com/plan/careers/10-things-law-schools-wont-tell-you-1338933018704/


We can all debate why this is the case - the article suggests oversaturation of JDs, others would say that lawyering skills are not all that transferable to other jobs, what have you.  In any event, it turns out that neither law firms nor various "related fields" were interested.  This is not to impugn Tokarska, who by all accounts was a nontrad using her JD to make her more valuable in the marketplace and lead to some new advancement opportunity.  Just like the Office of Career Services said the JD would deliver, no doubt.

Sadly, its just not the 1970s anymore, no matter how hard the Law School cartel refuses to face facts.  Some would list her graduation date of 2005 as "the beginning of the end," although there appear to be legions who would claim there never was a "Golden Age" of Law regardless.  Either way, Law firms were starting to cut back, but the ABA Journal and other publications kept touting the "difficult" stories of law grads faced with too many choices for employment, not too few.  And the Law School Deans, Admins, Career Services offices and the like were all too happy to chime in, until 2008-2010 or so when "no comment" became the standard answer to employment statistics.

Nontrads, here it is again - do not go to Law School for any other reason other than to be a lawyer.  Period.  And if you must go, make sure (1) you know and understand the business of law, and (2) are capitalized well enough to hang out a shingle after bar passage, after the costs of three years of tuition, prior to ever darkening the door of a Law School.

Otherwise, that JD will be a $150k (and counting) albatross around your neck. 

Too old, too young, too qualified, too non-traditional...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-na-vets-unemployed-20120426,0,2627227.story?page=1

The hypocrisy runs high. Ten years ago, I guarantee that this individual would have been a highly competitive hire due to his law degree, military experience, and the maturity that goes along with these accomplishements.

Oh, how the winds change. Now, 25 is apparently too young, yet 29 is too old - explain that one to me. Law degree, military experience...it's too "non-traditional." Too different. What was interesting and multi-disciplinary is now strange, exotic, and untrustworthy. While this article focuses more on the civilian arena not appreciating the veteran experience and its (imagined) potential shortcomings, it does raise the question: where or what is this mythical, perfect-fit candidate-for-hire, legal or otherwise?

One would be lead to believe that there is a person who has run this fickle gauntlet: someone from the right familiy, who went to school at the right time, at the right age, with the right experiences, at the right circumstances of the job market, with the right connections, with the right backing. Who is this individual (besides Mitt Romney)?

Answer: A theoretical person who does not actually exist. It's a mistake to believe that any person can bootstrap their way through this gauntlet, yet higher education, the work world and even the military will try to entice you that it's possible and is the only way. Don't believe it, as they will all pull the rug out simultaneously as they did for Mr. Pizzo, yet blame him for not being a "sophisticated consumer" prior to good-faith effort and service.

Non-traditionals, don't believe what they say - do what you need to do, education or otherwise, but make your own path. Immediately distrust any advertised results. Just like the stock market, bank on the fact that past results do not guarantee future returns, and look critically at everything - the establishment is looking out for themselves, not for you.

In short, in whatever you do, assume they are lying to you.

The Erosion of Trust

I am a child of the 70s, a teen of the 80s – by most definitions, I am firmly planted in Gen-X.

With the rise of yuppies, “no pain, no gain” culture, be-boppy hair bands and recreational lines of coke in Manhattan penthouses, one message that came through in the 1980s was rugged American individualism. Work hard, play hard. Fight the commies. Make a lot of money. And be happy, because you deserved it!

One of the working-world truisms was the relentless pursuit of “the top”. Winners job-hopped every few years, took risks, while increasing their income and title along the way. Losers kept their head down, plugged away, never changing anything, and got what they deserved – lower pay, fewer prospects.

Only now, looking back with more seasoned hindsight, it wasn’t true. Like most mythologies, the risk-taking winner was an anecdote, not the broad norm. Later in life, I saw people leave good jobs to pursue a risk, only to come back years later with their tail between their legs. Or to be never heard from again, destination unknown (one can only presume the results were luke-warm, else you would have heard about it non-stop in good American fashion). Not that there is anything inherently wrong in taking a risk – after all, that is the predicate of our entrepreneurial economy, correct?

However, the schizophrenic, nasty truth of our economy and culture came through – despite the cultural messages of the 80s, we punish failure. Strongly. Mercilessly. We revel in the hardship and failure of others, if recent political debates are any indication. It’s as if we culturally lead people astray on purpose – create an image that hard work and mettle are all that one needs to achieve the American Dream, when in reality, what matters is connections and backing, period. All I can figure is that by scamming people, it is easy to profit off of their failure.

Enter higher education, self-proclaimedly free from the bonds and constraints of business and economics. The “non-profit” world of education and ideas, advancing human understanding and knowledge. The noble, ivory tower of human betterment, preparing the future leaders of tomorrow.

At tuition rates that increase at several times the rate of inflation. That leave most students debt-strapped with few to no prospects. With “innocent” educators, deans, and administrators looking on with well-rehearsed shock and horror when the manufactured statistics don’t square with reality, while simultaneously buying large homes and sending their children to private school.

I can’t fault anyone for wanting to go to school to better themselves. And I take no pleasure in the difficulties that others face, whether it be a failed business venture or a career chosen “in error.” There is plenty to trip over in this world that you can’t predict, let alone the things that are in plain sight. Why we want to hold the little-people’s feet to the fire for their good-faith American Dream efforts, while the very wealthy and extremely connected get every kind of break imaginable for the exact same behavior, even when they crash the system, is a form of cognitive dissonance and mean-spiritedness I will never fully understand.

My error, however, was thinking that higher education (and law school in particular) was different than the “truth behind the 80s” of the business world and politics. Looks like I was wrong, and I am now worse off for it.

Congratulations, higher-ed, your scam worked! I believed in you and what you stood for, yet you were more than happy to take my money and wave your handkerchiefs farewell as I drove off the cliff. Not your fault, of course. How could anyone, with inside information and superior knowledge, have *ever* seen this coming, what with a huge oversupply of law school graduates with no prospects? Just like the investment bankers on Wall Street couldn’t have predicted the consequences of the increasingly tangled web that they weaved. Truly shocking, I tell you.

One thing is for certain – the continued erosion of trust will only hamper our nation as a whole. One can only be mislead so many times by so many institutions without there being long-term consequences for everyone. Our nation and our world is suffering from the gestalt of this erosion, and it will not recover quickly.

Another thing is for certain - this “education” I received, this erosion of trust, I will not soon forget. And this is not the kind of result that anyone would have rationally hoped for, either for an individual or for our nation at large.

Tom Tomorrow And Seeing Into the Future

When things go awry, as they will from time to time, what is the typical response?

"Well, you should have known better."
"Well, you should have tried harder."
"Well, you should never have gotten into that mess in the first place."
"Well, you should have done your research first."

I'm sure we can all think of others. Regardless, the point is: you should have been able to see into the future and understand exactly how this was all going to play out, even if the odds were stacked against you. Yes, you, an army of one, should have been able to dig through the (questionable) statistics, the (self-serving) publications and the (rosy) anecdotes, and realized that it was all put there to make you bet the farm against your best interests. Yes, you, should have been able to predict the future for you and your career!

Nope. Despite what the legal shills say, nobody actually has any answers. It is much easier to blame the victim (as usual) rather than admit to any culpability in aiding or abetting the failed processes that led us to where we are today. The good-faith desire to be a journalist, a lawyer, or anything else is irrelevant - you have only yourself to blame, and the sooner you blindly accept what the shills say, the better (as it will get them off the hot seat, and that is all they care about anyway).

Now, go out there and get a job! People were able to do it in the 1960s, so can you! Whiny entitled brats.