[Albany and Touro] plan to admit 10 fewer students.Still, the cuts represent an unprecedented acknowledgment among law deans that the product they’re churning out isn’t as highly valued now as it was, say, 5 years ago.
“It is the ethical and moral thing to do,” Touro Dean Lawrence Raful told the NLJ. “I don’t think the [job] placement situation is going to turn around for a number of years and I think we are concerned about the ethics of turning out quite so many students in debt when we know that not everyone can get a job to pay off that debt.”
According to the NLJ, if the Touro board agrees to Raful’s proposal, enrollment in this fall’s first-year class will dip to 270 from the 280 in 2010. Raful is proposing further 10-student reductions in the falls of 2012 and 2013.
Are they a few years late? Absolutely. But good for them for taking this stance rather that certain other states' deans*. It's not like anyone could reasonably expect the schools to just cut off 50% of their graduates at once.
They aren't completely waving the flag of justice and "the ethical and moral thing to do," but you have to applaud steps in the right direction. Good for Dean Raful for scaling Touro's wreckage back despite his self-interest. I wonder if we can expect the other New York lower-ranked schools (Hofstra, New York Law School, Syracuse, St. Johns, Pace, Brooklyn, Buffalo) to do likewise and help ease the saturation in the Empire State.
*My prime example here is Minnesota's four law deans, notably Thomas Mengler. Their sharp wit and brilliant approach to oversupplying the market can be seen here. Among the highlights are Mengler's assertions that lawyers are no different than coffee shops and that the market should be able to handle all St. Thomas grads because St. Thomas is a unique educational experience unrivaled by any other.
“Why in this market economy do we view coffee shops different from lawyers?”
ReplyDeleteAnswer: Because the judiciary does not endorse a monopolistic entry barrier to the cafe industry, nor do coffee shops thrive on a federal coffee purchasing lending program that issues non-dischargeable loans from tax dollars to coffee drinkers.
My answer was that people actually like coffee shops, but I'll give you points.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that SLEAZEBAGS such as Dean Mengler remain in business with impunity is that unlike real professions, like medicine and dentistry, law schools do not depend for their existence on the allocation of scarce resources.
ReplyDeleteMedical schools (and I will offer for example the recent duel between Wayne State University Medical School in Detroit and Oakland University's new medical school here in Michigan) compete against each other for the scarce and relatively rare resource of licensed physicians in a given specialty willing to interrupt their very busy and valuable practices to take students on rounds. Whereas, law schools have hoards of individuals who, in many cases, gladly spend their whole lives "teaching" law and in many cases would not know how to go to court to defend a drunk driver. The market will not miss, in any way, their presence. Therefore, the "value" of their "teaching" can be painlessly squandered on an oversupply of students, many of whom will never actually practice.This type of economic waste is intolerable in the scarcity-based market of medical teaching skills.
Law school is truly a scam, and a convenient cash cow for the universities many of them are attached to.
Law School is the only professional school that can look at a 300 person class size and say, "acceptable." Medical, Pharm, Dental, DC, and DO schools, have max 100 person class sizes. And yes, they don't have PT, Distance, Online, or correspondence options. To be treated by a physician with a correspondence school MD, ouch! Further, there is no clinical requirement to the JD. You are require to have a LW1 and LW2 courses, if you LSAT scores are too low. I don't get the correlation.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, if Law school class sizes were in the 100 person range, then the high number of law schools we now have might be manageable.
theyuppieattorney.blogspot.com
Who is forcing anyone to go to law school? If you don't want to take the risk of unemployment as a lawyer, then don't go. Any law school that can't attract enough customers will be unsustainable. Such schools take the risk that eventually no not enough people will want to attend their school. How is any of this different from undergraduate schools? Should undergraduate schools close because some grads are underemployed or unemployed? There is no "scam".
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ReplyDeleteThis blog doesn't treat education as a "scam," nor has it (or any blog that I'm aware of) ever claimed that anyone is "forced" to go to law school, nor has it claimed that schools should close in a top-down fashion.
My guess is that no one would go to a non-elite law or undergraduate school if they knew the truth of post-graduate employment. The problem - which the deans at Touro and Albany recognize - is that there's a disconnect between what people believe and reality. Thus, the "risk of employment as a lawyer" is seen as significantly lower by the purchasers of the investment than it actually is (i.e., what the sellers know), which props up their "sustainability," as does the backing of unsecured, non-dischargable debt.
"My guess is that no one would go to a non-elite law or undergraduate school if they knew the truth of post-graduate employment."
ReplyDeleteNo one would go to a non-elite school? The truth of post-graduate employment is simply undiscoverable? I don't believe this is true. Even in a terrible economy and amidst tons of publicity concerning poor employment prospects, tens of thousands are lining up to fill non-elite graduate and law schools. All of these folks may be playing the lottery concerning post-graduate employment, but to say they are doing so without knowledge of the risks defies common sense.
It appears that we may just disagree about the magnitude of the "ignorant applicant" problem. I think that a high percentage of students are aware of risk of not being able to get a job after graduation and you think that a very low percentage are aware of these risks. Such is life.
@6:02
ReplyDeleteI don't think you really appreciate the consequences of living with the debt. Maybe you do. Maybe you don't.
After gradation one is off the starting blocks and racing against the debt, which can destroy your life.
There was a time when the truth about post graduate employment was simply assumed, and correctly, that prospects were good, and the future was bright.
Now people have to be warned, over and over. You can't just assume that everybody knows the reality by now.
Maybe more people know because of the scamblogs, but if people are still lining up in droves as you say, the message is not widespread enough, and needs much more than just one NY times article.
Also, j.dog, Touro was where I went.
I plan to post on how my first semester's grades were withheld until two weeks into the second semester. I could not start the second semester without my tuition being paid in full--all with Federally backed Student Loans.
Come on JDpainterguy - of all people, you can't claim any reliance on law school post-grad employment stats because everyone everywhere knows that to work as a lawyer you must become a lawyer.
ReplyDeleteYou never passed the bar exam and quit trying years ago.
So how can you claim to have been deceived by employment stats? Should they have provided you with stats on how many law grads who never pass the bar exam are able to find employment as lawyers?
Ridiculous.
Law school is a huge, gigantic festering SCAM. I am a licensed attorney, and law school, unlike any other form of education or instruction I can possibly muster to my consciousness, bears absolutely, positively NO RESEMBLANCE to the practice of law nor does it prepare one, in any way, for it.
ReplyDelete@9:02
ReplyDeleteI could not pass that Test. Period.
That doesn't change the fact that Touro Law School had some odd things about it; and I'm going to discuss thems things on my blog, for what it is worth and not for nuthin'.
My score was so damn far from passing I would have had to take the exam at least two or three more times, and at that point I was out of money.I was down to below 160 pounds. There was no money coming in. What does a person do without money coming in?
I was begged, borrowed up to the hilt, and with a very unhappy wife that wanted me to go back to work and to not take any more time for the exam. We argued constantly about the exam, and the debt, and the inability to find decent non-legal work. It pretty much broke up the marriage. It was not the only factor in the break-up, but it was a major one.
Then I embarked on a very, very long and unsuccessful search for Non-legal employment and discovered that the JD on the resume is a major hindrance and not a help.
All I could get were sales jobs, and only by taking the JD off the resume.
Paralegal want ads said: "JD's need not apply" in so many words.
I met a guy from Touro in the Javits center that was taking the Bar for the 8th time, and I thought there was something very wrong about that.
There is a practivcing lawyer out there from Touro now, and probably more than one, that took an option Touro had to take his entire first year over; and there is something terribly wrong about that too.
But suppose I had passed after 5 tries, and then practiced law? I would have been sued for Malpractive for sure.
I finally came to the conclusion that I do not have a legal or analytical mind. I never could organize my thoughts for an essay, no matter how much it was explained.
I am not a talker or a speaker. Some people can talk all day. Many people are excellent speakers and that is a gift and I admire them. But that is not me. I get flustered and stammer and turn red.
God knows I tried to overcome that, but I cannot, and that is just the way it is.
Whatever talents I have, they do not lie in law.
So now you say I deserve my debt, in so many words. Maybe so. Maybe so.
At some point, one has to realize that trying the same thing over and over a reasonable amount of time and failing, with no money coming in is foolish.
So I sucked at law, and found out I could not cut my losses and do something else.
Come over to my blog if you want to discuss it more. I noticed you made the same remarks on SMS, but I'm not going there anymore.
And you sound young. So young.
And if next you are going to say I should have gone to another state, that's a whole different argument which I won't go into now.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete(I removed the last post because of typos, but this one is the same, only fixed up)
ReplyDeleteAnd also 9:02, Employment stats include people who are working, no matter how, whether it is in, or out of law.
Shocking as it may sound to you, A JD, for many, is a sure way to become permanently under or unemployed.
And the saying: "You can do anything with a Law Degree", is simply not true, as I have discovered.
Seeking non-legal employment does not require bar passage, and I could not find non-legal employment. The JD makes one an anomaly in the eyes of larger job market. A square peg. A misfit. A Pariah. A Freak. An oddball. An outcast. A ne'er do well. A Tom Fool who more know, than Tom fool knows. A higgledy-piggledy example of misguided humanity obnoxiously shoving an offensive resume in a Human Resource Officers face.
This message cannot be repeated enough.
Would you have forced Tiger Woods to not pursue Golf after his failures to make it in Tennis?
Would you have told Mr. Jordan, after he didn't make it in Pro Baseball, that he was not allowed to return to Basketball?
Would you have told the renowned Cornell Wilde, the heroic cheeky chappie of cinema that we all have to come to know and love so well, not to fence and pursue the glories of rarefied Thespianization, and to evermore and drearily remain a Medical Student?
Or comdemn Marlon Brando to a life and career working in his Uncle's Printing shop?
Or Charles Dicens to stay in the blacking warehouse with only the young master Mealy Potatoes for company?
Oh, what a Pen!
No offense JDpainter but get some professional help right away.
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