Today in Lower-Tiered Law School News: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good: the University of New Hampshire is freezing its law school tuition. While 39,900 is extremely high, especially for a school that is basically the only option in the state, "good" is relative and it's nice to see the Dean admit that law school tuition "must be brought under control."

The Bad: Thomas Jefferson School of Law not only just built a brand new campus downtown, but now it's branching into the student housing market.

While normally I would welcome a school that provides affordable housing to its students, this paragraph made my jaw drop slightly:

Law school officials plan to charge market-rate rent for the apartments. In some cases, they will offer need and merit-based housing grants to students. About 90 percent of Entrada's units are studios with rent ranging $900-$1,200.

$1200 for a studio? San Diego is a nice place, but seriously?

And why is the school charging market-rate? Property owners charge market-rate because they want a profit that makes ownership and management worthwhile. A law school has (or, rather, should have) no such motive; it's purpose is to provide quality legal training, not to charge market-rate in an apparently-expensive downtown area. And why would a TJLS student choose to live there if there's no price advantage and you know the service is probably going to better somewhere where they want to build long-term relationships rather than with temporary transients?

The ugly: Concord's Online Law School is celebrating 117 recent graduates Feb. 26 at 10 am. The guest speaker is an MBE expert who "lectures to recent law school graduates across the country as they prepare for the exam." What do you say to them? Something like "congratulations, folks, even if you get a perfect score on the California Bar Exam, the odds of you practicing at all are slim at best?"