California Students Answer if Law School is Worth the Cost

CalBar.org (well, its e-journal for Cal. law students) asked the question whether law school was worth it to six California law students.

Two gave respectable answers. Four failed. Yes, I get that these are opinions, but they failed.

Three of them give some variation of "law is what I want to do, therefore it's worth the cost:

• Brandon Lewis (Chapman): "Law school is worth the cost to me because I want to do the type of work that lawyers do."
• Elisa Gibellini (U.S.F.): "[L]aw school is necessary to my goal and thus worth the cost."
• Onell Soto (San Diego [listed as "San Diego University School of Law"]): "[L]aw school is worth the cost because it's the path to doing what I've set out to do."

The fourth gives an even more ludicrous answer:

• Kuscha Hatami Fard (Cal-Western): "Law school has given me the opportunity to become part of an elite group who are some of the highest educated people in the country."

False and poorly-written is no way to go through life or present one's "high educated" status.

Going back to the reasoning of the first three, we as a society need to come to grips with the idea that career dreams can be overpriced such that the cost makes them unworthy of pursuit. People have no problem abandoning other dreams when the cost becomes too high. Why is it so difficult to understand that being a litigator or doing "lawyer work" may cost too much? Is it because if we acknowledge that some professions are just out of reach to non-wealthy people that the Emperor's merito-democratic clothes come flying off?

Look, folks, I really want to eat lobster every week and spend my afternoons banging a trophy wife. I really want that. But right now? It's not worth the cost. "But wait!" you say. "Those are 'things,' not investments. A law license gives you earning power!" Okay - sure - I really want to own a restaurant in the middle of New Mexico called China Ye-Haw! that'd be just like Casa Bonita only with a Chinese-meets-Western USA theme. There'd be a railroad running through it and everything. It's a dream, but there's no way in hell I should actually embark on it due to the high cost and low return on investment. Happy now?

Debt. I really don't think my generation understands debt, and why should they? Their parents obviously know jack shit about it, having lived their entire lives beyond their means to keep up with the imaginary Joneses in the advertisements, all while their public representatives piled liability on top of liability. And of course, most people, places, and things can get out of their ridiculous debts with bankruptcy, so people have been trained that erring on spending is acceptable, socially-beneficial even, as we just gotsta keep the economy going skyward, so you can screw up buying clothes or furniture or cars or houses or vacations or hookers or utilities and can generally scratch it out if you have to. In the select group of people where errors are discouraged is student lending. Try to figure that one out.

Which brings me, in a rambling fashion, to the Los Angeles Dodgers' bankruptcy filing. Here, Frank McCourt is using the United States Bankruptcy Court as a tool to maintain his stranglehold on a beleaguered, but still profitable, franchise, play white-collar chess with MLB, screw up his divorce proceedings, and correct a cash flow problem caused in part by his own abuse of the company (i.e., withdrawing money from the business for his lavish lifestyle).

While there's little risk that salaries and contracts won't be paid, I find it egregious that the moneyed elite can use a bankruptcy court to fix their multimillion dollar mistakes with asset-rich, profitable companies to better subsidize their swanky lifestyles while a college graduate who, for whatever reason (illness? honest miscalculation?), cannot pay back an education loan is deemed unclean and unfit for court.

Worse - you address these injustices to people and they say things like "well, it's too big to change" or they pretend that student loan debt is something it isn't, or that the risk of nonpayment is higher than with other unsecured claims. Much like the standard responses to the law school bubble, they're ground in complete fiction or a wholly pessimistic attitude towards reform and a callous disregard for social injustice.

Finally, looking over these students answers, I'm mildly bothered that many of the same people who think law school is a good investment now are the ones who may, in the future, be weighing possible settlement values against the cost of trial or further proceedings. Think about it. Are these the same type of people who will overvalue a trial victory in court? Ones who force their vision of the future, come hell, high water, or six-figure debt?

Friday Quotes on Higher Education

From Bill Gross, Chairman of PIMCO:

“A mind is a precious thing to waste, so why are millions of America’s students wasting theirs by going to college? All of us who have been there know an undergraduate education is primarily a four-year vacation interrupted by periodic bouts of cramming or Google plagiarizing, but at least it used to serve a purpose. It weeded out underachievers and proved at a minimum that you could pass an SAT test.”

From Gil Weinrich at AdvisorOne:

The medical profession may be no better than law from a financial perspective, according to Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff. Crunching the data for Forbes, Kotlikoff found that a doctor comes out only slightly ahead of a plumber in terms of lifetime earnings once you factor in the physician’s many years learning instead of earning; tuition; loan interest; and taxes paid. For all his effort, the doctor comes out with just a $500 a year advantage over the plumber.

But...but...but... my guidance counselor had a chart that said I'd make way way more going to college! How could it be wrong?!?! It was laminated and colorful!

As far as I'm concerned, people who still claim blindly that one should go to college - even graduate school - to make more money in the future are little better than strict creationists, "no plane" conspiracy theorists, numerologists, UFO watchers, objectivists, trickle-down economists, the jackasses who try to "fix" homosexuals, the anti-vaccination crowd, etc.

What worked in 1980 clearly doesn't work today. Wake up, people.

MBA USNEWS Flawed Numbers, Kansas Applications Down Big, and Duke Finds New Way to Grab Tuition Money

1. Grad School U.S. News Fraud:

From BusinessWeek:

The Gainesville Sun last night reported that the University of Florida Warrington College of Business supplied the magazine with inaccurate job-placement data, resulting in a higher ranking.

An anonymous complaint made through the university’s ethics hotline in August alleged that 37 percent of UF’s 2009 MBA graduating class had jobs at graduation, while 53 percent had jobs three months later. The figures supplied to USNWR indicated 53 percent placement at graduation and 79 percent three months later. UF was ranked 39th in 2009, falling two spots from the year before; in 2010 it fell to 47th.

An investigation found no evidence of willfulness, but you can't help but wonder at the similarities. Does any school ever drop as a result of submitting false numbers? Gee, I wonder why that never happens. In any event, the article gives us another look into the askew, dullard mind of Bob Morse, the laziest journalist/statistician on planet Earth:

[Morse] said he thought data accuracy was not a widespread problem, but it's one that should be addressed by organizations such as the American Bar Association and the MBA-CSC in their capacity as standard-setting bodies, not by the media outlets that conduct rankings.

"It's not my problem" is just about the shittiest possible answer a bona fide journalist or statistician can come up with. People who are actually interested in finding the truth - rather than serving as a press agent for the official organizations that supply them - actually get off their asses and find the truth, ensure accurate data, stop official manipulation where it's suspected, etc. I think at this point any illusion of U.S. News being anything more than a puppet with no journalistic or mathematical intentions is shattered by Morse's own admissions.

2. Kansas Applications Down

From the K.C. Star:

The University of Kansas Law School says its applications declined 23 percent for this year compared with last year.
...
About 850 students applied to the law school this year, down from about 1,100 last year.

They're still far from being underwater (they only admit about 350-400 each year), but this is a state flagship university. If you want to ultimately practice is Kansas or the Kansas City metro area, you can't find a better school to attend. I wonder how the quality of their applicant pool is, and I wonder what this kind of drop signifies for places like Washburn and UMKC that are 2nd-choices for KU applicants. I imagine we start seeing sub-150 LSATs more prevalently and schools have to reach further than they normally would.

3. Duke Innovates in Ways to Leach

From the Nat'l Law Journal:

The school announced this week that it will launch a master of laws program in judicial studies geared specifically to judges....

The LL.M. program will open during the summer of 2012 to 10 to 15 sitting judges. They will take intensive four- to six-week sessions over the course of two summers. The curriculum will include classes and seminars in which both judges and scholars look at the history of the judiciary and judicial decision-making. Participants will examine topics including judicial independence, bias, the selection process and use of specialized courts.

Tuition for this four- to six-week program? $17k. For roughly 1/6 of the normal school year, with a guaranteed small class size and what surely will be the lightest teaching, lowest resource demand in academic history, the school is charging over 40% of its full-year tuition price.

Ca-ching! I'm sure Duke justifies this by some inflated beliefs that the judiciary could use the advanced training, but let's be real: most courts are overworked and, frankly, the judges have better things to do than take classes at Duke for $17k and a worthless L.L.M. If a judge in my district went to this thing and was subject to election, I'd vote against him/her on principle.

But hey, you have to hand it to Duke. If kids are going to start turning down law school to find better uses of their money and time, the law schools are naturally going to move to pushing education for existing practitioners, more than they have already.

An Interesting Answer from New San Diego Dean

The following is a question and answer from AmLaw Daily's recent interview with new U. of San Diego dean Stephen Ferruolo:

[Question]: Law schools have been under fire recently for reportedly misrepresenting post-graduation employment statistics. Did you consider that controversy before accepting the dean position?

[Answer]: I know, from the point of view of someone who's been running a law office for the past few years, what has been going on in the legal marketplace. The expectations of law students from the time they began three years ago to their graduation now have changed dramatically. Students have not been able to fund their lives the way they thought they would be able to when they started law school. But I still believe law is great training for a wide variety of opportunities out there. We just need to work hard to provide our students with the best training and show them the way to the best opportunities.

This may seem unremarkable to some, but notice how the answer doesn't exactly match what was asked. The question was only whether the indisputable controversy (like his lesser cross-town rival being sued) contributed in his decision regarding the job at all. You can admit that a controversy exists without conceding the most salient points of the "other side." And yet, our new San Diego dean didn't repeat the same ol' talking points, but rather admitted flatly that recent students are disgruntled with their return on investment, and that the end result does not match the incoming expectations.

Granted, Ferruolo is a long-time practitioner, so he likely missed the series of lectures about delivering academia propaganda while he was actually working, but consider how radical of a change this is from just a year or two ago, when administrators would defend their statistics and their graduates fortunes.

For all those of you considering going to San Diego law, consider this very carefully: the chief executive at your possible school just admitted publicly that the product did not meet the expectations of its consumers. Would you ever purchase, say, an oven if the CEO came out and said "yeah, the product isn't doing what everyone thought it would?" If the product being sold to you was the exact same thing with no substantive changes? Of course not!

But then one has to wonder: if someone straight from the front line of the legal marketplace says that students are not being able to "fund their lives," how is it that the median salary of San Diego graduates in the private sector is $97,000? And how is the "public service" sector salary $58,000? Will these numbers be similar next year after Dean Ferruolo lets everyone know that the legal marketplace is certainly NOT hiring half the "private sector" graduates at or above $97k??? Will San Diego tuition stay north of $41k to reflect the difficult reality for recent graduates, or will the plundering continue?

Only time will tell.

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.

Kentucky Students Fight Back

A few days ago, I discussed the case at the University of Kentucky, where the dean actually had the chutzpah to admit directly that his proposed tuition hike would go towards compensating professors.

Now, some blessed UK law students have decided to put up their own Facebook page to protest.

Law student Derek Hall and two others started a Facebook page entitled "UK Law Students Against Dean Brennen's Tuition Hike."

Hall, who met with the dean for about an hour on Monday, came away believing the proposed 1.8 percent tuition hike is just the beginning. "My fear is that he is going to continue doing this year after year," said Hall.

Hall, who's from Flemingsburg, believes the law school's money problems are being placed on the backs of its students. "Many of us are about to graduate into the worst law job market we've seen in decades. Many will have near $100,000 debt. It costs that much to go to law school. You close off a law degree to people like me who are fully paying for it themselves and who are from less fortunate urban or rural areas."

I already like this kid, and pledge to buy him an adult beverage of his choice if I'm ever in Lexington. He points out (as I did) that comparing UK's salary structure to the U. of Georgia's is absurd. He further points out the dean's timing couldn't have been worse for an honest discussion of the tuition hike, as it came within finals week, immediately before the Board's vote, and only a few weeks after a school forum where the issue was not discussed. Talk about a true lesson in governance.

Apparently, the Facebook page is already rife with some good content regarding the situation, to wit:

[O]ne contributor took a pot shot at the drop in the UK College of Law ranking. "So the salary increases are intended to keep the faculty we currently have from jumping ship? The same faculty that contributed to our 15-plus spot rankings plummet in the last two years?"

Unfortunately, I cannot find the Facebook group, but I definitely encourage and approve of what they're doing. At some point, students have to put up a brick wall and say "no more" to thriftless administrators who want hike after hike to line their own pockets under some ridiculous rationale, like competing with unreachable schools in a rigged ranking system. Here's an idea: how about you focus on training the next generation of Kentucky lawyers, people like Derek Hall, and stop this crazy and shameless resource grab.

Kentucky Wants to Hike Tuition Solely for Professors' Salaries

At least the University of Kentucky is being honest, right? At least about their motives? In addition to the 6% across-the-board tuition hike for UK students, law dean David Brennen is requesting an additional 1.8% to pay his professors even more cash.

"Our salary structure is simply not competitive with other law schools with which we compete," Brennen wrote. "For example, the average faculty salary at the University of Georgia College of Law is nearly 40 percent higher than the average faculty salary at our college. Top 20 law schools average almost 50 percent higher faculty pay."

Brennen's salary is $250,000, according to a February 2011 UK salary database.

I actually think Brennen's criticism is kind-of justified (see below) but as an initial matter, I find it hilariously disingenuous that Brennen is comparing his school's situation to the University of Georgia's or to a "top 20" law school's.

Georgia is in Athens, which is not far from Atlanta. In Atlanta, Emory, Georgia State, and John Marshall-Atlanta all hire professors. Emory is a superior school to Georgia and Georgia State is a fairly well-regarded secondary public school (at 61st in the USNWR rankings, it's ranked higher than Kentucky, Kansas, UNLV, Oklahoma, etc.). Furthermore, Atlanta has a sizable legal market where many of these professors might go and practice as an alternative to teaching. That is considerable competition for people the law school wants, meaning higher salaries, so long as they're playing along with the whole prestige thing (and since they're ranked 35th in the USNWR, it's a safe bet they are).

Kentucky is ranked 71st is the USNWR. Its in-state rival, Louisville, is ranked 100th. Northern Kentucky is in what used to be the fourth tier. There is no quality private school in Kentucky that may drive up salaries, nor is there a large legal market to give professors an alternative place to take whatever unique skills they think they have. Where are they going to go, Cincinnati?

The cost of living in Athens is more or less a wash compared to the cost of living in Lexington, but these are completely different schools and its completely disingenuous of the dean to use Georgia as a salary negotiation tactic to get he and his buddies more coin to spend at the horse track.

Not that I'm much of a believer in the USNWR rankings, but Kentucky ain't no top 20 law school, so its professors should not be getting paid what a top 20 law professor gets paid. Kentucky is a flagship school in a state with a relatively small legal market. It fills a niche position, much like Kansas, New Mexico, Oregon, etc., and has very little chance of ever seriously competing with the top 25ish schools. At this point, the 1.8% increase seems like nothing more than a wealth grab by the faculty.

But Brennen does have a point to some extent if you look at the right numbers and consider who Kentucky's real competition is. One great thing about Kentucky is that they put their salaries online.

David Brennen - $250,000
William Wiecek - $180,000
Rutherford Campbell - $149,480
R. Schwemm - $146,043
Eugene Gaetke - $138,874
...

These aren't astronomical numbers by law faculty standards, but if any of them (or the ones making "only" $80-100k are having a hard time living in Lexington, Kentucky (median household income = $39k), they should quit, move, and give their position to a recent graduate.

What this really comes down to, I think, becomes apparent when you look at the salaries at their main competitor (real, not imagined), Louisville:

James Chen - $250,858.67
David Leibson - $188,168.00
Manning Warren - $182,114.00
Laura Rothstein - $178,021.04
Leslie Abramson - $162,341.00
...

I'm sure the Kentucky people are wondering why (or rather "furious that") Louisville is paying its faculty slightly more for a "lesser" school and that's at least part of the motivation for the salary request, especially since the cost of living in Louisville is only about 80% what it is in Lexington.

This is a much better point than the idea that Kentucky is trying to compete with the University of Georgia (or, God forbid, with Texas, Emory, UCLA, Vanderbilt, etc.). When you compare its numbers to Louisville's, the UK faculty really is getting screwed about as much as a law faculty can.

Of course, the real answer to this "dilemma" is not to raise Kentucky's tuition as a penalty for its administration's failure to keep up with salary inflation. Instead, the proper solution is to lower Louisville's salary levels and keep Kentucky's at the same rate. But with this ruling generation and this governmental climate, the answer is never to stand pat as a matter of fiscal responsibility. The answer is to raise expenditures and then jack up taxes (or in this case, tuition), albeit often this is accomplished indirectly (as in "we'll do it 10 years from now when the main beneficiaries of this thriftless zeitgeist are frying in hell").

Regardless of what one's peers are getting paid and whether or not its "just" between comparable employees, I still think it's deplorable for a group of six-figure earners running a non-profit educational racket to make their students fork over an additional $300-400 every year because they're the laughing stock of the AALS convention.

So in conclusion, David Brennen has a point from a fairness standpoint, but he argued it very poorly (he gets paid $250k and in 30 minutes I (salary = $0) found an argument that would probably work better to most aware people) and it's not a very morally-digestible argument, even if it's "fair."

And I think that's a good way to wrap up April.

The Waste of Legal Scholarship

This shouldn't surprise anyone, but Richard Neumann of Hofstra has pointed out that legal "scholarship" costs almost $100,000 per article by a full-tenured professor during a recent educational conference on tenure and the future of legal education:

Even articles written by assistant professors at lower-paying law schools come with a price tag between $25,000 and $42,000, he estimated.

Neumann also pointed to research suggesting that 43% of law review articles are never cited by anyone. "At least a third of these things have no value," he said. "Who is paying for that? Students who will graduate with six figures of debt."

Neumann actually uses this as a reason to argue for protecting tenure; he seems to believe that the tenure protection will allow faculty to think creatively about revamping legal education. I think he's a bit biased by his stake in the fight, but no one's perfect, and his realization that student's increasing debt loads are caused in some small part by subsidizing worthless research is a good start.

Also on the panel were Dean Yellen of Loyola-Chicago and Dean Matasar of NYLS. It seems like these guys do nothing but travel to conferences and pontificate. I wonder if Neumann will ever talk about the wasted money paying deans to fly around the country. There's nothing really unexpected from either.

Those unread articles in law journals cost tens of thousands to produce with very low benefits (as in, more people will read this sentence than who honestly read most secondary journals). Under no cost-benefit analysis would these things ever get greenlighted, but unfortunately, American universities not only eschewed cost-benefit analysis, but most made production of this worthless crud the hallmark of a tenure-worthy professor (instead of, say, teaching). Instead of producing only truly meritorious scholarship, the academy (including its legal peers) took to publishing as a CV-stuffer and convinced itself that its "scholarly mission" requires constant publication regardless of the quality. Their work becomes important because they produced it, not because it shares any qualities with truly important work.

And the students are left shouldering the cost of these things, all so the university can feel better about itself under standards and "missions" it fully made up.

I'm not saying all scholarship is worthless, not even all legal scholarship; that would be absurd. But the system we have now is a crap machine that has allows people to be employed at lucrative salaries for writing things no one wants. For the time, effort, and energy spent on articles that have no economic value, all to impress some students on a law review board, these individuals could be doing things that have some value to society, like running clinics to represent indigent clients. At the very least, it's unjust to have students subsidize these quixotic efforts, just as it would be to force students to subsidize novel or screenplay or poetry anthology attempts.

$100,000 with a good chance it never proves worthy enough to cite. If you think of all the alternative uses for that $100,000 per full-time professor article and you write out all the possible options, your list is guaranteed to be far more interesting than 95% of what's come out of legal academia in the last few decades. And it will probably contain some items the paying customers would actually use and appreciate.

Massachusetts School of Law Dean at it Again

As Matt at LSTB has pointed out, Massachusetts School of Law associate dean Michael Coyne is back with another editorial about why the ABA model of law school education sucks. I dissected one of his editorials in January, noting that while I love his jabbing-at-the-ribs spirit, I think he still falls into the myth and propaganda division on many points. And this one's no different, although he does get some points for, at some level, calling ABA law school a "scam." I'm not even sure I would go that far.

This one has a better title than the first one: Law school for the white and wealthy, and it's in a better place than the Worcester Telegram (I wonder how often he shoots these invectives to newspapers?).

The first few paragraphs are exactly the same as his previous rant, but he's added a few things. To wit:

The fact that Massachusetts School of Law charged tuition that was less than half of what ABA law schools charge (today that figure stands closer to one-third) meant it threatened the ABA's reason for its existence: ensuring high fees for lawyers by charging exorbitant admissions fees to enter its exclusive club.

If there's one thing Americans love, it's lower prices. With law schools, we have a clear case of indirect price restraints set by a centralized organization. But that doesn't necessarily lead to "ensuring high fees for lawyers." Aside from fixed costs, the undersupply or oversupply of labor is what dictates service fees. Lawyers' fees have been in a race to the bottom in the last 20 years everywhere except the high-stakes corporate law of the largest firms. Profit margins on simple, straightforward legal tasks have dropped relative to inflation while law school tuition has risen sharply. If the ABA served to ensure high fees for lawyers, it's already failed.

And low tuition isn't really a direct threat to the ABA or its existence. The MSL wouldn't be in competition with the ABA. It would force other schools to slash prices or reevaluate their curricula, but the ABA could still serve as the gatekeeper without any functional change. The problem is that MSL's potential competitors - the Suffolks and even the Boston Colleges of the world - all lobby the ABA about how crucial their accreditation standards are, sometimes with genuine concerns and sometimes as a pretext to keep prices and salaries high.

Again, love the spirit, but the reasoning needs work. Appealing to high lawyers' fees seems like little more than baseless populism that isn't necessary in villainizing the ABA.

But there's more: Coyne continued playing the race card, now with a cited authority:

As law professor Vernellia Randall, a well-known public speaker on issues of health, race and representation of African-Americans in the legal profession, has noted, "Institutional discrimination in law schools is really about maintaining the legal profession as 'The Whitest Profession.' "

After referring off-offhandedly to Jim Crow (as if someone can offhandedly refer to Jim Crow), Coyne again noted that African-American enrollment has declined. Compelling stuff on its face, but again, this needs more explanation. How do the ABA standards keep the profession abnormally white? How do you explain the decline? Is it because of the tuition or just because of the culture of law school? Is the LSAT keeping qualified and willing African-American applicants out? Without these logical connections, Coyne looks like little more than a biased polemicist.

At least he ends on a bang:

So to the ABA: Spare us the kind words and coronets. Reform our higher education system now. Allow innovative, low-cost colleges and law schools to develop. Let those schools compete on an even footing with the barons in their ivy-towered campuses who preside over schools for students to whom money does not matter. Allow the graduates of all our law schools to take every state's bar examination and compete in the marketplace. Hope, opportunity and competition are what made this country great; they can do so again.

I think the English royalty metaphor is a bit trite and strained, but it's hard to argue with the rest of it. Once we've allowed capitalism to be the reigning force in the legal profession (and we hvae), nothing should stop law school from following suit. If you're going to keep it as a "profession," keep it as a profession in all regards, including limiting entry into the market. But once professionalism's gone (and it pretty much is), there's no reason lawyers can't be trained at schools like MSL so long as they pass the licensing requirements, especially if places like MSL actually can prepare people to practice better than the casebook method used by students at other schools.

The "Market" Does Not Drive Law Professor Salaries High

A few days ago, someone a level-headed, but misguided, anonymous comment on my post about the UNLV budget cuts:

(2) Law professors are indeed paid more than virtually any other professional/grad school instructors --- because the market provides that. Med School instructors earn a lot, too, for the same reason. They can go elsewhere or go into the profession itself (practice medicine, practice law) and be paid better than they are as professors. The world might well be a better place if the dedicated professor of whatever stripe were paid the same, be that person a teacher of philosophy, art, literature, or law --- and if all those professors were paid the same as someone who practices as an attorney --- but the market isn't that way.

First, this is a straw man - I never advocated that all professors be paid equally, nor would I.

Second, and more importantly, the "market" is not what dictates that law professor salaries are some of the highest in the business. If normal market forces were actually applied to legal education, professor salaries would drop immediately. Why? Well, the system has been producing an excess of 10k+ people each year who are qualified to teach the subject matter. In some cases, the excess actually being more qualified in the particular subject matter because they've recently passed a stringent bar exam that actual law professors have not.

Law is not brain surgery. There are thousands of people, many of whom are unemployed and have otherwise-great credentials, who are perfectly qualified to teach torts, property, legal research, and anything other than the most sophisticated courses. In normal supply-and-demand terms, there is a massive oversupply and fairly low demand. The nation only needs about 650-800 people who can teach contracts or torts or civil procedure each year, but there are literally thousands upon thousands of qualified people who would gladly take those jobs.

And it's not like people don't want the job. Tenure, even at a fourth-tier toilet, is a career landmark. Elite-graduate BigLaw associates regularly run back to academia after 3-5 years, sometimes because they aren't working out and other times because they'd just rather work a relatively easier schedule for a very handsome wage than work a mind-breaking schedule for a slightly handsomer wage. Assuming it's true that law professors could make more in private practice, many of them would regularly turn down the lucre for allegedly-lower salaries teaching law school. But that is NOT a valid reason to keep law professor salaries high. If anything, it provides a reason why law professor salaries should be lower, namely that, apparently, there are job perks that compensate the attorney for the lower salary.

But we don't even have to address that logical fallacy because there's a bigger one before it: most law professors would not make what they make as faculty members in private practice. Many of them became law professors solely because they couldn't make bank in private practice. It's not uncommon to have law teachers who aren't even members of the state bar. And the option to be an adjunct professor seems to cut out any possibility that tenured law professors are regularly leaving large sums of money on the table. Honestly, human nature being what it is, no one is going to leave 500k+ on the table to take a law professor job for "only" 200k, especially when the professor could make the 500k+ and teach a class or two in order to meet their desire to educate the next generation. A lot of good teachers do just that, and for the most part those not affiliated with BigLaw aren't making it rich.

Above all, the schools' only actual task is to teach its students how to be lawyers. Law professors generally have no requirements beyond having a J.D., and very few law schools require that their professors were actually successful in practice. Nor did they have to take - or do well - in the class they now teach. As the market for legal services shrinks and the number of bar members increases, it's simply absurd to continue paying professors $150k+ for a job that would have no shortage of qualified applicants if it listed for $65k and benefits.

But as we all know, there are forces that distort the market at play. First is the tenure system, whose place is secured by the ABA and the AALS and ensures that certain members of the old guard will be back next year. Second, there's this absurd emphasis on "prestige" driven mostly by things like the US News and World Report rankings. There's no natural need for law professors to have studied at a T-14 and yet, for the most part, those are the people who wind up on the faculty rolls. This focus unduly narrows the labor pool, which is a factor is having higher salaries. This is, of course, ridiculous. No real business operates this way. If you need a plumber, you don't care who went to the best trade school. You care only who can fix the damn pipes. Teaching torts should be no different.

And yet it is. The schools can get away by being thriftless and overpaying people who have relatively cushy, low-stress jobs because they themselves are exempt from normal market forces. Specifically, demand becomes artificially inflated because loans are more or less guaranteed. Meanwhile, the law schools have a monopoly that limits supply only to those who agree to their principles regarding things like professor tenure. This allows the schools to raise prices and force consumers to essentially subsidize their professors' unduly high salaries.

Thus, it is only because there are significant market distortions that law professors are paid what they are. The market is not dictating anything; on the contrary, the powers that be prevent the market from actually functioning properly.

Third, I'd like to reiterate the problem with UNLV's budget proposal. Whereas the dental school decided to cut faculty salaries - even though there is a much lower supply of dentists than there is lawyers - not one law professor was going to have his salary decrease as a result of the cuts. Not one, even though an analogous professional trade school with stricter entrance requirements willingly cut faculty salaries. That is blatant fiscal irresponsibility by the university. It's also a disregard for their moral duties as educators and a slap in the face to any notion of "social justice."

If the UNLV law professors can make more money in private practice, they should quit immediately. But I don't believe that, and neither should anyone else. And even if it were true, it would be best for everyone if they went to private practice and let the university hire others at lower salaries.

After all, like I said, it isn't like there's a shortage of people who can do this work; this isn't quantum physics. Throw a rock on the strip and you'll probably hit an attorney who can teach legal writing. The fact that current law professors have set up a white collar union that has suckered people into believing they're worth the cost doesn't change that fact.

Massive UNLV Budget Cuts, Law School Will Jack Tuition; No Law Faculty Harmed

The University of Nevada-Las Vegas is facing severe budget cuts:

To meet proposed budget cuts, UNLV would eliminate 33 degree programs with more than 2,000 students in them, killing 315 jobs, UNLV President Neal Smatresk told school employees and students Tuesday.
...
Philosophy, Women's Studies and Social Work would go under Smatresk's proposal, which would ultimately require approval from the higher education system's Board of Regents.

When you have a university willing to sacrifice entire disciplines at the altar of "fiscal responsibility," you know something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Philosophy is an essential subject, indeed the foundation of many other subjects (putting the "Ph" in PhD"), including law. (side note: it's nice to see UNLV will continue its mid-major athletic existence even while sacrificing its ****ing low-cost philosophy department; I'm a huge sports fan, but c'mon!).

Of course, given such drastic measures, these cuts will go down to the The Boyd School of Law, which is ranked 78th according to the latest and greatest USNWR rankings. And the President is concerned, according to Legal Skills Prof Blog (also cited on the faculty alliance page, below):

These additional increases [in tuition] will undermine the Law School's successful formula and render it a mediocre institution.

"Mediocre, n., Moderate to inferior in quality; ordinary. See Synonyms at average."

What is the Boyd School now, if not mediocre? This is not Boston U. we're talking about. Of course, it's also not Thomas Cooley. But UNLV frankly can't drop that far. It's the only law school in Nevada, meaning it has a virtual monopoly over the students who most want to go there. And it's not like Nevada is unique in its severe budget troubles and the desperate need for cuts or tax increases no one wants.

And furthermore, what is the law school going to do, faced with these budget cuts?

From their Faculty Alliance blog:

Tuition increases will be used to cover the cuts. This will bring tuition increase totals more than triple the cost of just three years ago.

Yikes. In an age when law school demand is dropping, these counter-revolutionaries are going to raise tuition even further, as if students continuing to come are a foregone conclusion.

And according to this, despite this perilous situation, they're not cutting a single dollar of law professor salaries.

Look at this salary list from 2008:

Douglas Grant, Prof. of Law: $176,910.48
Joan Howarth, Prof. of Law: $170,468.67
Jeff Stempel, Prof. of Law: $169,206.54
John White, Prof. of Law and Dean: $167,423.65
Elaine Shoben, Prof. of Law: $164,341.98
Christopher Blakesley: Prof. of Law: $163,068.00

And so on. By the way, the cost of living in Las Vegas, Nevada is about 50-60% of what it is in New York. A salary of $160k in Nevada is similar to a salary of about $288k in New York.

Yet, with the state budget in peril and the flagship University possibly dumping its philosophy department, the school of law has chosen to drastically increase tuition rather than cut faculty positions. Tenured professors are going to get the unceremonious axe and these charlatans - in a class of people who often espouse this drivel about "public service" and "social justice" - won't take a pay-cut or see one of their own go, instead choosing to saddle the burden on students who they know will probably come to UNLV anyway.

This is absolutely deplorable, immoral decision-making. The dental school is cutting $1.3 million in salaries, but the law school can't spare a buck and would rather send tuition skyrocketing, which will inevitably put students who are actually dedicated to legal study deeper in debt.

Christ, the a public university is going to completely wipe out important programs (if you're a state institution, you should have a social work department), sending numerous professors into unemployment and the entire law faculty will continue living as comfortably as they did yesterday. They're like gluttons who eat a fourth meal while people starve next door, and if this proposal goes through, the law faculty who went along with it have no standing to tell anyone about "justice."

Iowa Law Symposium In Review: No Motel 6's For These Deans

Matt at LSTB has run a review of the recent Iowa Law Review Symposium/masturbation for academic eunuchs concerning the future of legal education, which I had mentioned earlier. He reviews the Chronicle of Higher Education's commentary and the fallacies and the moral dubiousness certain administrators keep spouting amidst some sensible concessions and realizations. He also asked my opinion, which is a mistake almost no one makes, but here goes.

I don't want to rehash the same ground, because LSTB's run-down is fairly brief and gets the point across well, but - setting aside the moral issues - I wanted to focus on the theme of law school efficiency, tradition, and readiness for legal practice. Here are some relevant excerpts from the Chronicle's review:

One reason schools are sticking with a familiar playbook: "It's a cost-effective method of education," Mr. Chemerinsky said.
...
Richard A. Matasar, dean of New York Law School, summed up the attitude he sees at many campuses: "We're all old dogs trying to learn some new tricks, and all of us old dogs have got tenure and we're not going any place."
...
Legal education does cost too much, Mr. Matasar said, mainly because it is "grossly inefficient." Schools could cut costs by stratifying—offering, as a friend characterized it to him, a "Motel 6" education with few bells and whistles, in which practicing lawyers teach many of the courses, as well as a "Ritz-Carlton" version taught by full-time, tenure-track professors. Neighboring schools could share library, faculty, and other resources, he said, adding, "Does every law school need an expert in the law of Timbuktu?"
...
Gail B. Agrawal, dean of law at the University of Iowa, cautioned that law schools should be careful, as they shift their emphasis toward practical skills like drafting motions and interviewing clients, that they don't shortchange broader goals, such as cultivating a commitment to social justice.

Reading through these responses conjured up two main streams of thought: (1) this is exactly the type of predictable "the sky's the limit"/"but we have so much to do" worthless-at-the-end-of-the-day dialogue I expected; (2) this is exhibit A as to why self-regulation is a bad idea for legal education.

From a student view, who in the hell would choose a non-elite "Ritz-Carlton" (a.k.a. "Undergrad II") law school model? I would think that student demand would be to actually learn how to draft legal documents, file motions, argue at hearings, and - you know - make money as a practicing attorney. Frankly, it's derisive, ego-centric, and presumptuous to call the tenured professor model the "Ritz-Carlton" and the efficient, functional model the "Motel 6." Is it really a "luxury" to learn the Rule in Shelley's Case?

In other words, given a choice at equal cost between a Ritz-Carlton and Motel 6, everyone would take the Ritz. Given a choice at equal cost between a functional, trade-type law school and an Undergrad II model, I would think 2/3+ would prefer the former, since I'm 95% certain that that school's graduates would succeed and be more employable than those who got a less-hands-on education.

But the casebook-Socratic method thrives. For one, it is, as Dean Chemerinsky asserts, cost-effective from the schools' point of view. From the students' point of view, it isn't effective at all (i.e., they're not even getting the product they paid for). And I take issue with the idea that teaching practical skills is inherently more expensive. Setting up a formal law clinic or an advocacy course, yes, that's expensive. But so is having an Israeli Law and Policy seminar with 5 students in it, and so is paying Professor Bookworm 250k to be an expert on arcane applications of federal procedure.

But if you're going to have a class called, say, Constitutional Law, why not look at actual Con Law cases and arguments made in the past 5 years? Why do they do an anguishing review of commerce clause cases from the 1930s? Do a brief intro and go straight to Lopez, Morrison, and Raich. Are the Lottery Case and the Shreveport Rate Case interesting? I suppose. Would anything of real value to practicing lawyers be lost? Nope. After all, when given a new topic to do legal research on, no one would ever start at square one. Why would you? We tell students in their first-year legal skills classes to go straight to Am. Jur. to figure out what's going on and yet, in the doctrinal classes, they start at time immemorial. Why, God, why?

But it's more than just professors being "old dogs." It's also that the ABA has built in a number of safeguards to ensure that this system will remain in place for a long time. They allude to this in the article, quoting Jay Connison, Valparaiso Dean and ABA Accreditation chairman, in saying that the ABA is looking into changing their standards. Of course that should have been done 20 years ago and probably won't be done now, but the deans are right when they say the ABA's standards limit their creativity. For example, read Standards section 4 and tell me how in the "Motel 6" model of law school is even possible. And how is a school supposed to share a library with section 6 in the way?

What I suspect Matasar knows full well is that such a vision is impossible under the ABA guidelines. And while deans may complain about the ABA guidelines publicly, they are the ones who run the show. You can't blame "the man" when you are "the man!" And despite Connison's words, nothing is going to change. Why would it? Deans are self-interested capitalists who love the Ritz-Carlton model. Do you think anyone makes six figures under a Motel 6 model? No, and no one gets to fly to Iowa to pontificate, either.

Thus, all of this mess comes back to the ABA's monopoly over national accreditation, which the deans - especially the vocal ones who seem to wind up at all these symposia - have power to change. So, they've essentially bound their own hands so they can cry about having their hands tied.

But because their restrictions require so much in the line of library resources, tenured faculty, scholarship, and all sorts of things that seem, to me, ancillary to legal education that they've effectively shut off price competition. It's a complex oligopoly. Instead of having price (tuition) stability, they let anyone compete against them, provided that they have the virtually the exact same expenditures (guaranteed by ABA regulations). This isn't how real business works, of course. In the "real world," there'd be "Motel 6" law schools everywhere by now. And as much as we joke about it, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Business has a natural tendency towards efficiency. We're seeing that in law firms, as they integrate LPO and cost-cutting. If "Motel 6" law schools could generate 90% bar passage rates at do teaching students part-time at $15k total cost, who in the hell would care? As long as there are still ethical and admission standards that the ABA holds the schools to, the American justice system wouldn't suffer at all. If anything, the range of options available may cause consumers (prospective students) to actually research the places more and figure out which schools are good, which are bad, which produce results, etc.

If you cut the resource requirements to what is actually reasonable, the "Motel 6" schools would have an incentive to keep costs low in a way that current TTT/TTTT schools simply can't. People bemoan the third-tier private schools that cost 30k+ a year, but the fact that every private law school has raised tuition in lock-step seems indicative that something else is driving their upward price movements. I don't think they're dumb enough to collude on prices, but nonetheless you wouldn't expect that in a world where the lower-tiered schools have at least some incentive to provide quality at a lower price. I think a lot of that comes back to the resource requirements (or perceived requirements), having a full-time tenured faculty, having a library, having state-of-the-art technology, having a scholarly output, etc.

Don't get me wrong, tuition has also gone up because of unnaturally-high demand for the product, but you can't tell me that it really costs 30k+ to teach someone enough law to pass the bar and be a practicing lawyer, and you can't tell me that all third- and fourth-tier private schools independently decided to set their tuition higher and higher every year because not onl are they trying to meet USNWR's (unreachable, for most) 2nd-tier status, they're also trying to outpace ambiguous ABA requirements.

And those regulations won't change. The deans have no intention of ever seeing a "Motel 6" law school genuinely compete for national students. No businessman - and that's what these guys are at heart - gives up a monopoly.

It's a remarkably simple problem with a remarkably simple solution, but it's one you'll never see at a symposium like this, where they'd rather show concern for "social justice" while implicitly supporting a system that is blatantly socially unjust. Where is the justice in stifling honest competition and innovation? Where is the justice in having an exclusive system that saddles students with $150k+ in non-dischargable debt? Where is the justice in forcing people to sit through instruction that has absolutely no relevance to their professional career, merely because some professor is interested in English common law conversion actions?

Fair criticisms aside, capitalism is excellent at rewarding efficiency. If you admit your system is inefficient, as Dean Matasar did, the answer is to remove any artificial constraints. Don't misread me: I don't think there should be law schools on every corner. I can't imagine the U.S. needing more than 100-150 law schools for its present population.

But I'm not about to grandfather in a bunch of inefficient dinosaurs merely because they have a second-tier name. If someone can make a law school that teaches ethics, gives hands-on experience, teaches practical skills, and gets a 90% bar passage rate for Costco-level pricing , I'm all for it. Anyone who is seriously concerned about tuition costs should be as well.

That, I think, is ultimately what the future of legal education hinges on: whether the ABA changes its ways or someone makes the ABA change its ways. Beyond that, I doubt it will be much more than morally duplicitous talk by men in nice suits who acknowledge the problems but want to find a solution that's more amenable to their interests.

Very long and winding and barely-coherent, I'm sure, but that's my basic take.

UMass Law School "Proving Critics Wrong"

UMass Law School, not to be confused with the Massachusetts School of Law (or any of the other directional Massachusetts schools) is apparently turning into a cash cow for the good ol' Commonwealth:

With higher than expected enrollment, UMass School of Law, which operates as part of UMass Dartmouth, will turn over a lot more money this year to the state than the original projection of $674,000 in tuition revenue, officials said.

"It's subsidizing the taxpayer," UMD Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack said. "It's sending $918,000 to the commonwealth, and the commonwealth is not sending any money to it."
...
Officials had projected $5.9 million in total revenue for fiscal year 2011, but they have revised that number up to $6.9 million. Tuition is turned over to the state, while fees and private donations are used to operate the school.

Tuition at this thing is 23k for in-state students and 31k for out-of-state students.

Basically, the school accepted 36% more students than it anticipated and is apparently doing things on the cheap, which isn't entirely good, because, as one critic points out, they don't have the resources the ABA requires for accreditation, which they hope to achieve by 2017.

But my favorite line in the whole story is that last bit: tuition goes to the state, but fees and donations run the place. Isn't that screwy? Why are students expected to fund the state of Massachusetts while they're law school is floundering? And while I'm at it, wouldn't a real public university lower the costs and fees to the break even point in order to serve the public?

The real sad thing is that this place is pinning its hopes, more or less, on getting accredited six years from now. But that hasn't stopped it from selling the optimism:

Sandra Saenz, a second-year student who started when the school was still a private institution, said students are pleased with the transition so far.

"I really think everyone is very excited about this, especially the new students coming in," said Saenz, 36, who is from Seattle.

...

"I think there are many people familiar with the UMass name," she said. "It's going to be really nice to have that on my diploma."

Okay, so you're going to be 38, from Washington, and looking for an attorney job with a law school no one's heard of and you think it's going to be "really nice?" UMass is, what, the 5th or 6th nicest school in Massachusetts, and there's already an over-saturated legal market with at least three schools UMass Law doesn't have a prayer in outshining anytime soon. The only people impressed by UMass Law School are non-lawyers.

But hey, when you're desperate for good news, one year suffices to "prove critics wrong," I guess.

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?"

Albany Law Getting Smaller, Less Demand, But Higher Tuition

Read this excerpt and see if the conclusion sense to you:

Albany plans to reduce the size of its incoming class from 250 to 240 and cut 2% from its $32 million budget — a $600,000 reduction. The school has also nixed pay raises for employees and is raising tuition by 4%, though dean and president Thomas Guernsey said that increase isn't enough to offset the lost tuition revenue that will result from the smaller class.

Albany has received about 20% fewer applications this year. Reducing the class size is intended to help the school preserve the academic qualifications of the new class, and to ensure they have access to jobs when they graduate, said Guernsey.

If tuition is $x per student, a 4% increase for 240 students would translate to $249.6x in tuition revenue. So if you froze tuition for the hypothetical 250, you're talking about a budget difference of 0.4x, which for Albany's tuition is like $16,000 a year, which is negligible in large-scale academic operations. In real terms, 250*39000 = 9.75 million. 240*40560 = 9.73 million. Big deal. You lose $20k in revenue, but $600k from the budget.

It's also an absurd notion that a 4% decrease is going to either "preserve the academic qualifications" or "ensure they have access to jobs when they graduate." At this rate, what's 10 more Albany students on the market? Are they scared their median LSAT would drop below 154?

Also, you have to love a business that can jack its prices when demand drops 20%. This can only happen in bizarro world where the government guarantees the purchase price no matter how much society needs the product or how likely an individual is to pay back the $120k in debt.

Law School of the Day: Ave Maria

In the wake of Villanova admitting that they "lacked character and fitness," shall we say, I find it necessary to give credit to a law school administration who appears to be doing things right.

I've previously disparaged Ave Maria; in one comment on another blog I remember naming it as a bottom-five law school on the grounds that it moved to a completely different region of the country (granted, they left Michigan, but seriously, who does that?).

But not only was Ave Maria the first school to agree to the reasonable requests of law school transparency, today it announced that it was freezing tuition rates - again - for next year:

Ave Maria School of Law announced Monday that it will freeze tuition for the 2011-12 academic year. It’s the second consecutive year the Naples-based institution has kept its rate flat.

Is there tuition still high as a kite at a Charlie Sheen all-nighter, all things considered? Yes, of course. But in a world where tuition rates vastly outpace the CPI, leveling tuition is an act worth beatification. This is undoubtably a positive that reflects well on Ave Maria's administration in comparison to many of its peers (and many schools regarded as significantly better).

A Rant/Calculation on Professor Salaries

Recently, I noticed someone had added a post on an old entry of TTR defending the salaries of law professors that are paid over $200,000. Their defense rested on two principal grounds: (1) the cost of living in the particular city (in this case, San Francisco) and (2) that they're exceptional teachers and "worth every penny."

It got me wondering what the actual "worth," in annual salary, of a law professor is. Considering what follows, I'd have to be convinced to pay one more than $100,000 given the current oversupply of qualified people for such positions and the fact that law schools are professional schools that exist for the public's benefit. And I'd only pay that much to retain someone who is outstanding and legitimately has other offers. To do otherwise, I think, is a disservice for institutions of "public benefit."

The hardest-working law professors I've come across teach two large lecture courses and a smaller seminar-level course over an academic year. Let's assume - to give the professors the benefit of the doubt - that they teach this schedule and that the large courses have 90 students and the smaller course has 20. That is 200 students total.

Let's assume that the two large lecture courses meet for 4 hours each week on average and that the smaller course meets for 3 hours a week. Assuming 15-week semesters, that's going to be around 165 hours a year of in-class instruction. Let's assume that the professor puts 3 hours of preparation into every hour of in-class instruction (considering their expertise and how the Socratic method works, this is probably excessive). Generous preparation time would add 495 hours.

There is also office hours. Let's assume the professor puts in 2 office hours each week for the entire year, which, from my experience, is fairly standard. That adds 60 hours. And then there's grading. To keep things simple, let's assume the teacher spends an hour grading each student's final exam or paper. That adds 200 hours of work for 200 students.

All tallied, that's 920 hours of work to teach three classes in an academic year. That may sound like a lot, but under normal labor conditions (40 hr/week), that's only 23 weeks. If you're a lawyer who works 60 hours a week, it takes you only need to work about 15 or so to get to 920.

At 920 hours, a professor that makes $200,000 is pulling in $217 an hour.

But wait! you may say. Professors also write articles and books! And they must attend faculty meets and are supposed to go to all sorts of events at the schools! Okay, sure, let's say there's two hours of meetings each week and that the professor spends six weeks each year writing things to build the college's reputation. That would add 344 hours and lower the per/hour taking to $158 an hour. In a world where some graduates make minimum wage selling t-shirts, I'm skeptical that complies with any definition of reasonableness.

A common claim made in defense of professor pay is that they could make more in the private sector. Well, even if that's true, so what? I'm sure there are lots of people who could make more doing something else. Most of our Congress could make more doing something else, but they all chose to do what they're doing. And it seems to me that being a law professor has numerous perks over private practice. I can't speak for everyone, but personally I'd sure as hell rather make $200k working 30 weeks a year in a fairly low-stress position than make twice as much working 60+ hours a week as an attorney.

You might argue that professors bring some level of expertise that is in short supply on the market. To me, this argument really only holds water for small, specialty areas of the law, like Military Law or Advanced Energy Law. I could legitimately see where certain areas like that are legitimately hard to find someone qualified to teach them. But for 90% of law courses, there's not really a shortage of "expertise." For first-year and some upper-level courses, there are literally tens of thousands of people produced every single year who are competent in the subject matter. There a slew of people with specialized knowledge in areas like copyright, environmental law, and constitutional law that are either unemployed or working outside of their area of "expertise." Explaining legal concepts isn't brain surgery (unless you try to do something stupid like reconcile the politicized Supreme Court's history into unified objective rules); that's why there are 10 gazillion study aides available for any given legal subject.

The only thing keeping the law schools from paying less and hiring the law school equivalent of SAT/LSAT tutors is that there remains a "prestige" in having Harvard graduates stock your faculty. Personally, since law school is professional training and not a philosophy-based institution, I think it's absurd that they run them the same way you would a liberal arts college, and were I in charge, I would definitely have a preference for hiring adjuncts who actually work, but that's just me.

All in all, I don't want to make a blanket claim that all professors are overpaid, but let's not pretend that most professors aren't benefiting gratuitously from an extremely fortuitous situation, where they're compensated at a favorable rate for doing a task where, in normal market conditions, there would be a significant oversupply of qualified applicants driving down wages. There is a reason professorial jobs are coveted like medieval salt; through devices like tenure and misplaced elitism they've basically rigged the labor market.

I would gladly teach Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Evidence, and Professional Responsibility at a Fourth-tier law school for $40 an hour, even in San Francisco. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Peter Keane makes 4 times as much (per GG's tax return cited on TTR) - if not more - teaching those pedestrian, run-of-the-mill courses. Plus, he gets to fly around the country and reap the harvest of being a "dean emeritus." And he regularly makes TV appearances. Golden Gate pays him significantly more than market rate even though I can practically guarantee you that no one goes to Golden Gate University Law School because Peter Keane is there. To me, that's economic silliness and a waste of money, but I don't fault Keane for rigging a sweat deal; I fault the "public benefit, not-for-profit" institution that pays him.

As for the cost-of-living argument, I can't take that seriously when professors are paid significantly more than the local average and the schools they work for expect their students to live on a fraction of that amount.

Finally, one can't help but ignore the role of escalating professor salaries in contributing to ridiculous tuition increases. While, again, I can't fault the professors for capitalizing on absurd conditions that pay them quadruple what the market would likely bear, I would have moral difficulties cashing an inflated paycheck from somewhere like Golden Gate knowing that my salary increase was partially paid for by loans that fourth-tier graduates will have an increasingly hard time paying back, all because I conned someone into thinking that an education from me was something special and worth paying four or five times the market rate.

If certain, patently-overpaid professors had any kind of a moral conscience that trumped their financial motivation, it seems to me that they would take voluntary pay cuts to aid their universities in providing their "public benefit" at a reasonable cost. But alas, as the last two decades have taught us, the education sector no more believes in the true "public benefit" than Microsoft or Alcoa. Non-profit or for-profit alike, those at the head-table will resource-grab as much as they legally can. Again, I can't fault professors for being human and wanting to exploit the mine for as much gold as possible, but I sure as hell can and will fault the system for giving them bigger pick-axes and carts.

Professor Donates $6 Million to Law School for Scholarships, Gives Me Reason to Rant About Tuition and Universities

From the Oklahoman:

NORMAN -- University of Oklahoma President David L. Boren has announced the largest one-time contribution in the history of the OU College of Law – a historic $6 million gift from OU Law Professor Emeritus Frank Elkouri and his wife, Edna Asper Elkouri, to support student scholarship programs in the college.

My usual reaction to people donating large sums of money to a law school is "blech!" With so many places to put your money, it kind-of disgusts me when rich people pour it into a system that's so broken, especially when the donation comes from a rich law professor and especially when it's used to construct some new building. Such donations smell of not being made from humanitarian interests, but rather out of some desire for the rich person to slap their name on a new building or auditorium in an egocentric, old-age proxy for sexual arousal. Worse is when their donations bankroll the meaningless research of law professors.

But my cold hear warmed to Mr. Boren when I saw that he was wanting to use his donation to support scholarships for students. In an age where tuition prices are pricing the middle- and lower-class out of responsible higher education, I think that's the only virtuous way to donate to a university. And although I'm cynical, I'm not compeltely dismissive of things like this:

Professor and Mrs. Elkouri said they were grateful to have scholarships while they were in law school, and they hope their gift provides similar opportunities to students today.

“We wanted to do for the students what we couldn’t do for those who helped us,” Professor Elkouri said.

Bravo!

But what stuck out to me in the article was this paragraph:

“Generations of students will benefit from this generous gift,” said [OU President] Boren....

"Generations?" Who the hell are you kidding?

Six million may sound like a lot. But currently, OU tuition is at $28,000 for out-of-staters and $14,000 for in-staters. A $6 million dollar scholarship can give full rides to 215 out-of-state students and 430 in-state students. Or it could give half-tuition scholarships to 430 out-of-state students and 860 in-state students.

But that's only on a one-year basis. On a 3-year basis, you cut the numbers by 1/3. And that's not even factoring in living expenses or the rise in tuition.

For comparison's sake, OU currently enrolls 500+ students every academic year.

And if anyone wants to argue that the scholarship fund will grow over time and provide more opportunities for students down-the-road than may be apparent now, I would like to point out that tuition at OU has risen 50% for out-of-state students and 90% for in-state students over the last 6 years according to LSTB. You couldn't even get that return investing in high-risk mutual funds, much less the bonds that universities shove their endowments into.

Between tuition inflation and state expenditure cuts, the money will not go as far if it's saved. Fewer students will benefit.

The OU President knows this reality. He knows quite well that $6 million isn't going to be around in 15 years, and yet he began a sentence with the word "generations." He did not say "hundreds of students" will benefit." He chose "generation."

Why?

It seems to me that much of the appeal of high education depends on this "timeless" quality. That this is the way things have been for 150 years and when you go you'll pay it forward to the next generation. Elderly donors can be persuaded to part with their money much easier if they believe that they're contributing to something that will extend long past their earthly demise.

It's nothing more than marketing to bring more investment into the university scheme. In fact, one could argue the Elkouris of the world are, in a way, getting lied to as much as the students. Their investment won't last long at all, and once their dead no one on campus will care about them.

For education to return to its proper role in the United States, it seems to me that myth (and similar ones) probably need to perish.

So I applaud to Elkouris, but their contribution must be put into perspective. It's wonderful that they're helping students achieve the same things they did, especially against a system so biased against new entrants. But its impact will be minimal, and in truth OU will probably wind up shifting the money they would have spent on scholarships to other wastes of money, like increases in salary for administrators.

This is, after all, big business, and not some rah-rah wonderland where generation after generation gets the same education with the same impact at a low cost. We need to get through to the 50+ crowd that it isn't the way it was way back when.

Past ABA "Top Dog" Seeking So. Carolina Dean's Position

Something called Fitsnews has a rather interesting write-up criticizing University of South Carolina Board member William Hubbard for seeking the position of dean at South Carolina's law school.

William C. Hubbard . . . wants the job so bad that he is reportedly pressuring his fellow board members to rally behind his candidacy – while at the same time exploring ways to remain on the board while he serves in his new role.
...
Hubbard is no friend to the taxpayers of this state. Over his 24-year tenure on the USC board – including four years as chairman of the board – he has subjected students and parents to massive tuition increases. This money has gone to fund an unprecedented expansion of the school’s snowballing “mission” – including unnecessary duplication of existing programs, numerous unnecessary new programs and the spectacular failure of so-called “economic development” projects.
...
As one of the top dogs with the American Bar Association (ABA), Hubbard was reportedly instrumental in helping our state’s notoriously corrupt S.C. Supreme Court evade responsibility for its deliberate manipulation of a 2008 ABA investigation into its controversial attorney discipline system.

Wow, sounds perfect, doesn't he?

State Budget Cuts "Hurting" Arizona State

From the National Jurist:

As state governments struggle, many have slashed their high-education allocations. . . At Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law . . . Dean Paul Schiff Berman has suggested a five-year plan where tuition will rise between 5 to 10 percent and student enrollment with increase from about 195 to 225 per class.

Other schools facing "significant shortfalls" mentioned in the article include Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia.

But what strikes me about the article is that their definition of "significant shortfall" seems to be slightly different than mine, especially as it applies to Arizona State. To wit:

"The University has asked us to find a way to make us self-sufficient with regard to our operating expenses," [Berman] said. "That requires us to generate about $6.5 million more than we currently generate over the next five years."

Arizona State, as a whole, received approximately $380.93 million in state appropriations for the 2010-11 fiscal year. If the law school only has to make about $6.5 million over a 5 year period to become de facto private, that means that, excluding interest considerations, its 2010 revenue from the state is about $1.3 million, or about 0.3% of Arizona State's total take from the state.

That is a paltry, token amount that few law schools wound have any serious trouble raising (or finding in the budget, if necessary). Arizona State tuition is current $21,598 for in-state residents. At that total, adding 30 in-state students would raise roughly half the yearly total instantly with almost no additional burden on the school as long as they have auditoriums that seat more. If alumni fundraising drives couldn't raise the other $650,000, across-the-board salary cuts of like 8% (or equivalent layoffs) would take care of the rest (this is a rough estimate looking at their number of staff and guessing an average salary of over $100k, which is reasonable given that it's a top-50 law school).

Even a modest tuition increase, like the one Berman proposes, isn't that bad (although I think staff and program cuts should come before tuition increases as a matter of ethics).

But I have a problem with Berman's general attitude towards the situation.

Berman said students will be minimally impacted by increases in tuition and class size. To that end, ASU is boosting its financial aid to qualified students, and it has created a post-graduate public interest fellowship program, designed to provide a stipend to students entering the public sector. And first-year students are looking at following the example of their 3L peers by creating a fund-raising effort to help fund new scholarships. (Emphasis mine)

Wow, what a business running a law school must be.

• Your consumers are "minimally impacted" by paying $9,000 (over 3 years) at 7.5% interest.
• Although your budget has a "significant shortfall," you can boost financial aid (discounts) to guaranteed customers (e.g., to boost offers to high LSAT kids) and give out stipends to boost your post-graduate employment numbers.
• Your current consumers are setting up voluntary, unpaid fundraising drives to help with your expenses.

And now you get the advantage of being free of the guesswork involved in state budgeting.