Delaware "Delaying" Law School; Hofstra Professor Rips on Merit Scholarship System

In case you haven't heard yet, the University of Delaware is delaying its plans for a new law school. At some point, cooler heads have to start prevailing. Let's hope we continue to see more articles like this and less articles like the ones where cray Alaskan representatives/candidates who spam my email think a law school in Fairbanks is a good idea.

In a mostly unrelated story, Hofstra Law professor Daniel Greenwood has written an article worth reading for the HuffPost on why merit scholarships are a market irrationally that should be regulated as price fixing.

"Merit" scholarships should more properly be called "US News & World Report Ranking Rebate Fees": schools give them because they need to maintain entering class GPA and LSATs in order avoid sinking in the rankings -- not because they believe recipients are likely to be better law students or happier, competent, just or successful lawyers.

This is a new angle, but one I like given my affinity for the "law schools act like for-profit businesses" viewpoint. I'm not sure it would fly legally (honestly, I don't know; my guess would be that non-profit businesses and those heavily backed by state policy are exempt from anticompetition statutes, but I'm not going to research anything), but I give him major props for creativity nonetheless.

Additionally, he has some dead-on-point remarks about the USNWR rankings scheme.

USNWR's rankings quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Schools that learn how to play the rankings game attract the students, faculty and money necessary to make real improvements, while schools that don't -- don't. Any school that dares to ignore the USNWR rankings risks a death spiral of rapidly departing employers, students and faculty, leading to lower ranking and even more problems.

Unfortunately, rankings are a zero sum game: if everyone learns to game them, no one can get a competitive advantage.

He goes on to articulate fully how everyone loses under the current system.

Throughout the article, he makes it crystal clear that what exists in legal education is not the result of a pure free market, but rather a distorted market, of capitalism gone wrong, in stark contrast to the stances taken by many industry apologists. However, the solution he believes would fix the problems would violate current antitrust laws, he claims.

Overall, I'm not entirely sure I agree with Professor Greenwood's solution of more stringent regulation, but the article's analysis of the problems is spot-on and a welcomed look from the inside of the legal academy.

If Ranking Rebates were illegal, many schools could immediately cut their tuition by a quarter or a third. Admissions officers could focus on the qualities that actually predict success in the law, instead of the ones that are easily measured in numerical rankings. Law students would be better able to focus on education, group learning and building relationships with their peers and professors, instead of competitive grade grubbing to keep their grant or transfer to a higher ranked school. And scholarship money could go to those who would best make use of it, instead of those who make schools look better on USNWR's arbitrary rankings.

It's hard to disagree with that, unless you've drunk from the bin of kool-aid that actually makes you believe LSAT scores are the end-all-be-all of a student and school's worth.

I encourage others to read the article, as there's more good in it than what I could reasonably exploit here.

On Advertising, Law School v. Medical School

When I run a simple google search for "medical school," I don't see any legitimate American medical schools advertising, not even for lower-regarded, lesser-known ones. The only advertisements I see are for places in the Caribbean (like this and this) or Mexico.

Even if they were allowed to (I'm not sure that they are), I'm not sure medical schools would advertise on the internet. They really have no need to.

But law schools? I wasn't surprised to see Thomas Jefferson advertising on this site, or St. Thomas advertising on other sites, but some of the following surprised me. Even when Thomas Jefferson advertises, it amazes me that they don't censor what articles their advertisements appear on better:


Extremely dignified, isn't it? Advertising on an article about law school being overpriced, right below the "sympathetic" family law people?

In case you cannot read it, the one on the lower right is Hofstra, a top 100 school; upper left is St. Thomas, a Catholic law school in Minnesota.

But if I had to guess who the real high-roller on google ads would be, it'd be Syracuse:

Yes, if you run a search for law schools near ARIZONA, Syracuse Law comes up. I'm pretty sure you have to pay quite a bit of last year's tuition money to get a placement so absurd.

If salaries really were in the stratosphere and being a lawyer really was the cat's meow, would school really have to take such steps of desperation, the same routes as countless "get-your-degree-now!" places?

You expect cheap ads from lawyers trying to pull in mesothelioma clients or pushing for father's rights, but for law school?

That's some pathetic, desperate penny stock advertising for a $100k+ investment that alleges a high rate of return. Medical schools don't (and don't have to) do this.

Just some food for thought.