The Tennesseean Questions the Value of College; Future Law Student Doesn't Want to Listen

This is a great article from the Tennessean about the dubiousness - and awakening consciousness of said dubiousness - of the four-year college degree in the current economic climate.

Just check out this gem of an excerpt:

Nicholas Holland, founder of Centresource, a Nashville Web design and development company, said he’ll pay a developer who has completed at least two Web projects $50,000 or more starting out, with or without a college degree. But a recent college graduate with less hands-on experience would get $35,000 a year at most.

College graduates “are typically worthless when it comes to programming and worthless when it comes to graphic design,” said Holland.
...
“They’ve spent 90 percent of their time learning stuff not relevant to their trade. And, in addition to all that, they are often taught by people who spent 90 percent of their time doing stuff not relevant to their trade. Show me a Ph.D. who knows how to program in any of the latest Web technologies.”

Sound familiar? There it is, in black and white, with elegant, yet brutal, simplicity: the guy will pay you $15k more if you know what you are doing, and he doesn't give a rat's ass if you go to college or not.

Just so we're all clear, I'm going to repeat the two pillars of my educational advice to 18-year-olds: 1) intellectual stimulation is a worthwhile endeavor, and highly recommended, but it is not synonymous with credentialing; and 2) you should only seek higher education if the expenditure of time and money will be worth it in terms of the benefit to your marketability as an individual.

Employers in the computer sciences have figured out that well-trained grads from the community colleges and technical schools may actually know more than their 4-year counterparts, and they often hire accordingly. (Obviously, the computer sciences need some sort of mandatory licensing mechanism to ensure that their four-year professors are taken care of).

In any event, I found myself nodding multiple times to this article, as it conforms everything I've read about how higher education actually interacts with the economy (rather than how it does in college brochures) and, in some cases, learned the hard way.

And then we get to a student who fights for the value of the degree. You'll never guess what she's studying and where she's planning to go.

Students at Vanderbilt University, which costs an estimated $59,248 a year to attend without financial aid —including $40,320 in tuition alone — said the expense and effort would be worthwhile.

Liesel Burks, a junior from Madison, Ala., said the bachelor’s degree in political science she plans to have on her résumé in 2013 will pay off in law school and beyond.

“It’s definitely worth it,” Burks said on her way to class Wednesday. “Just the education and experience you gain is so applicable to the future. In this economy, getting whatever edge you can is a really good thing.”

Thinking about having an "edge" is a great start (wish more would do that - I really didn't), but why in God's name does anyone think there's an edge in any kind of political science degree? Even from a school like Vanderbilt, the market is horribly oversaturated for employers who actually want to hire whatever skill set that education provides (which doesn't seem like much). And law school is no different.

In any event, the appearance of this article in a newspaper is yet another sign that the facade of educational prestige is crumbling, and that the free market is dictating that grads actually have applicable skills rather than some crap spewed at them by stuffy people who haven't done a truly economically-productive activity in decades. Again, law school is no different.

Another Sign that Change Will Come Whether the ABA Wants it or Not

This article is about Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers, an initiative that at least makes the attempt to change legal education from the nearly-useless Socratic model to a more pragmatic version where students actually get some skills that they may need after graduation.

Two comments:

1. This is hardly the only "reform" movement or initiative we'll see. As the bottleneck of new entrants becomes tighter and tighter, schools will continue to attempt ways to differentiate themselves from each other. Previously, they didn't have this same level of pressure, where most law schools could virtually guarantee some type of legal work for the median graduate, and everyone reported the same meaningless numbers as everyone else. Now that the truth about law school enrollment and lawyer need has become more mainstream, schools will push the envelope on how finding new ways to appeal to local hiring firms. It may (probably will) cause pressure from the bottom up as administrators at TTTs seek to ease the ABA's various restrictions, such as in-class required hours, tenured law faculty, etc.

It's clear at this point that the Socratic method and relying on firms to (1) hire and (2) train new attorneys in what they'll actually have to do is as dead as Ben Cardozo and Oliver Wendell Holmes. For law schools to preserve their own existence, they'll need to push initiatives like this (even if their actual success is debatable) and that necessarily means pushing the ABA and the state bar associations/state supreme courts/whomever to ease the restrictions.

2. As a corollary to the above, I find the list of schools adopting/paying into Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers telling: Cornell, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and USC are among the 15 schools. Two T-14s, one of the top law schools in the south, and a school that places quite well on the west coast. If schools at that level are willing to alter their methods, it's a sign of how deep these issues hit law schools. It's not just the schools at the bottom that have to change how they operate, it's schools like USC and Cornell as well. The bottleneck is so severe that mid-level graduates at those schools are being squeezed out.

In fact, the risk is very real that many hirers may pass over the median USC grad in favor of a polished, well-trained Pepperdine, San Diego, San Francisco, etc. grad. Of course this doesn't happen at the Latham and Watkinses of the world, but if you're running a small PI shop, would you prefer hiring a top 20% TTT grad who had a clinical legal education or a 60% grad from USC/UCLA/Cal/Stanford who studied Law and Socioeconomics for three years?

There's anecdotal evidence that many firms prefer the former. If schools like Stanford are buying into these sorts of reforms now, it's a sign that legal hiring may not be as rigid from the prestige standpoint as many think, and that the Tier 1s will change even if their above-median grads can rake in the big money by taking garbage Socratic courses.

Selections from Cooley's President

So you're a law school president whose school has been sued for manipulative data. Wouldn't think it's a good idea to avoid making any comments in the media that might admit the case has some kind of merit? Apparently Don Deluc thinks otherwise.

About the school's new Florida campus:

The economy in Michigan is worse than elsewhere, so we were looking at a way to take our program to a location where students are, rather than try to entice students to come to Michigan where the economy is below par.

If the economy in Michigan is that bad - so bad that you're following Ave Maria's lead in high-tailing it to Florida - why was Thomas Cooley advertising promising salaries for its incoming graduates? If the local economy is "below par," can a law school really justify sucking in prospectives by the hundreds?

I realize the connection is not direct (and that it's indisputable that Michigan's economy sucks), but if I were representing Cooley, I would not be happy that the president is on record as saying the local economy is below par, especially when one of its recent studies shows relatively low unemployment for lawyers nationwide. If I'm trying to defend the accuracy of Cooley's representations to prospective students, I do not want the dean on record as saying the local economy was "below par" during a recession, especially when Cooley's representations looked surprisingly like its peers in non-"below par" states.

LJ: There are 11 ABA-accredited law schools in Florida. Is this really an underserved market?

D.L.: Florida is probably average for law school enrollment based on its population. It's 80% bigger than Michigan, but it doesn't have 80% more law school seats....

What we have here is, in my opinion, an admission that the "underserved market" - from Cooley's point of view - is not the amount of lawyers in practice or the amount of law school graduates looking for jobs, but rather the amount of people looking to go to law school. And he compares it not by looking at surveys of underserved populations, but rather by arguing that there are less proportional seats in Florida than in Michigan (of course there are, Cooley makes Michigan one of the most saturated law school states in the country).

One of the chief allegations of the suit, it seems to me, is that Cooley advertises an output (employment prospects of students) that is significantly rosier than it is. And here, the President of the school responds to a rather ambiguous question with the proportional input (government-backed demand for legal education) instead of even thinking that the "market" might be that of graduates' employability.

On the Kurzon Strauss lawsuit:

In effect, without commenting on the merits overall of what they said, they could have said what they said about the practices undertaken by any law school in the United States.
...
Without going into the details, because we haven't filed an answer to this yet, what we will be saying is that we are doing exactly what everybody else does.

Isn't lesson 8 or 9 in a course on negligence that this argument does not work because an entire industry could be out-of-compliance? Why would it be different for fraud? And why the hell would your defense be that "we're doing what everyone else does" when your defense should be "we're doing what's right," shouldn't it?

For that matter, could Kurzon Strauss really have filed a suit against Yale? Seriously? Cooley is no different than a T-14 or a solid state school like Texas or UCLA or Florida or Iowa?

Sometimes I think the arguments seem surprisingly childish. "Caveat emptor," "everyone else does it, so why can't we?", and my new personal favorite courtesy of the lawprof debacle "anonymous speech is cowardly and has no merit." None of these ideas has much serious legal heft anymore, and yet they get trotted out by parties that should have a sophisticated legal awareness and, often, bought wholesale by the same class of people.

How can Cooley defend a liability lawsuit on the grounds of 'all the kids are doing it" while (hopefully) telling their students that that argument hasn't flown since the century before last?

I'm not saying any of these statements will have legal relevance, but if I'm Cooley's attorney, I wouldn't be exactly delighted that my client's CEO is making comments that may bolster the opposition's points on some level.

One School, One Class, One Hundred Million in Debt Alone...for a 2-year degree

From Fortune/CNN Money:

In all likelihood, [the Wharton School of Business incoming class] will be the first MBA class in history to pay more than $100 million in loans and interest payments for the privilege of gaining the degree. In fact, if the class of 2013 continues to borrow at rates similar to their predecessors, it will take on a staggering $112.4 million in debt, loan origination fees, and interest payments. That heart-stopping sum includes interest payments of about $33.5 million. All this, for just a single class of MBAs, one in four of which is likely to incur no debt at all

.
Emphasis mine. Do you think the 1-in-4 who incur no debt will have any problem finding a remunerative job?

In other places, the article states that there are 845 students in the class. So 634 are going to carry $100+ million between them. $157k per person.

You might argue the job prospects for Wharton grads are outstanding, but the article points out that median salaries were only at around $110,000 last year. And I can tell you that there are a lot of MBAs from even elite programs floating around working at jobs that simply don't require such credentials.

Sound familiar? Wait, there's more!

As one incoming student puts it, "The tuition is a big number when you look at it. But I think an MBA or an education in general is a long-term investment. When you graduate from a program, you might get a salary, which is not all that great. But that's a short-term phenomenon. At the end of the day, you take a calculated risk. There's a lot more that I'll gain from the program, and if I have to repay the loan over a longer time, that's okay."

Jesus Hardtack Christ, you really think this is a long-term investment that will pay off when there are a gazillion other MBAs out there, and thousands more coming through the pipeline?

Oh yes, they have saturation, too:

For the Harvard Class of 1949, of course, the rich life was easy. They ascended the ranks of business in the Go-Go years as the U.S. bestrode the world as an economic colossus. When they graduated, there were only 2,300 other students getting MBAs that year -- and only 50,000 living MBAs in the entire U.S. Today, roughly 250,000 people in the U.S. alone are enrolled in MBA programs, which pump out more than 100,000 MBAs a year. There are some 40,000 living Wharton MBAs alone.

Years from now, I wonder how historians will write about our hysteria for severely overpriced education, and how sharply history will frown on the cheerleaders who talk about education being great at any cost.

Roughly 30% of the University of Pennsylvania's graduates are having trouble paying back their student loans, according to government statistics.

This is one of the top 20 universities in the country.

Higher education has become little more than a lottery, where the winners apparently get to break even on their investment.

The Free Market Approach, Summed Up

From openmarket.org, I bring you a recommended piece on how taking the free market approach to law school reform can improve the present situation. Included are comments on some questionable comments on deregulation in general, some excellent comments on law school price competition and practicality, and some arguments about standardizing court procedures:

To stimulate the economy, and make it cheaper to obtain justice, Congress should require the abolition of local federal court rules that differ from one trial court to another, and one appeals court to another, making a uniform set of rules for each for civil trial and appeal by supplementing the existing Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Appellate Procedure. It should also consider conditioning federal funding to states (some of which ends up funding state judiciaries or participants in the state court system like prosecutors, police departments, and state child-support agencies) on their adopting simpler court rules for their own state courts. For example, it could require each state to adopt procedural rules in civil cases that are uniform across each state, and are organized to correspond where possible with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Good luck with that one. No one way in hell are the reigning baby boomer niche lawyers going to make it easier for people to compete across county and state lines.

As I've pointed out previously, there are solutions where law becomes more regulated, and I think the results could be similar. But it's clear that there are a lot of things that could be done to fix a variety of problems that aren't being seriously considered.

And that brings me to another point. It seems that in the wake of LawProf beginning his blog, a lot of law professors have started talking more seriously about legal reform. This actually concerns me for two reasons: first, I worry that innovative voices (such as the author of the piece I linked to) may be effectively shut out of the debate by the entrenched parties, beliefs, and interests, which, let's face it, law professors represent; second, and I mean no offense towards law professors, these issues are too important to be left to academics.

1194% Incrase in Student Loan Debt over 15 Years; Why has this not been front-page news?

From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle:

Shannon Chaudhry knows what it's like to be saddled with student debt.

The Victor native, who graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in business administration, limited her undergraduate debt to about $16,000, but borrowed another $166,000 to earn a degree from Albany Law School.

"I'm hardly putting a dent in what I owe," said Chaudhry, 30, who now practices law in Washington, D.C., and uses a sizable chunk of her income — $921 a month — for payments, most on a 20-year plan.

A 30-year-old lawyer has a whopping 11k in annual take-home pay in one of the most expensive metro areas in the country. It should be earth-shattering given TV- and film-fueled perceptions, where even the grubby lawyers wear $500 suits. How are folks still blind to what is going on out there?

Nationwide, student borrowing is estimated to have mushroomed to $931 billion — for the first time eclipsing the estimated $798 billion in credit card debt.

"We are going to hit the $1 trillion mark this year," said Mark Kantrowitz, who publishes two websites focusing on financial assistance for college students.

Total student debt 15 years ago was about $72 billion, according to Kantrowitz's estimates.

Student loan borrowing has increased 1194% in 15 years. Our media has ignored this to the point of irresponsibility.

When borrowing suddenly increases that much, it's a signal that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

After the housing crisis, people look in hindsight with scorn at those lower-middle class people who borrowed six figures to houseflip in mid-level suburbs and upstart exurbs, and give even greater scorn to the people who approved the loans with no inquiry into payback.

And yet, we have an even greater problem going on right now in the student loan industry, and very few people want to acknowledge that it's a potentially bigger problem than the housing bubble. I realize the two, and that housing is about ten times greater in raw number, but because of our "go get it" attitude towards higher education, an entire generation of lower- and middle-class students are being saddled with non-dischargable debt at levels that will delay or prevent them from contributing to the economy.

Mortgage debt doesn't really do that, at least not at the same level. Generally, mortgage debt only comes into existence for those above certain income thresholds. It also can be discharged if there's a housing price fall and the property value plummets. Parties have ways of protecting their income and wiping their hands clean.

Student loan debt does not work that way. It's given out like candy to students on the pure hope - unsupported by any type of empirical proof - that they'll have the income to cover the debt later.

There could be a few "checks" on the situation that would ensure more reasonable lending standards. Private lenders could have to bear the risks as they would with other unsecured debt, like credit cards; yet, our spendthrift stupidity has the federal government back-stopping these economically foolish trainwrecks. The students' payback prospects could be more carefully scrutinized, but yet schools are allowed to spread marketing myths that would get a private company hauled into court immediately. Those schools with their hands on the faucets could be more tightly regulated to ensure that they're not abusing their power, but yet they admit sub-par students and ensure that socially-worthless professors make six figures.

A 1194% increase in student loan debt in fifteen suggests that none of these things are properly happening. And because student loan debt is non-dischargable, an entire class is going to be disabled in purchasing homes, having children, spending discretionary income, etc.

Although people complain more about credit card debt, student loan debt is a far bigger problem, and potentially as big as mortgage debt. It's happening right now.

Another Worthless Ranking

A few days ago Rose linked to an article that ran on Philly.com that talks about some survey that apparently showed Philadelphia's law schools outproduce their peers in terms of BigLaw placement:
The study counted the graduates from the last 25 years who are now partners in one of the nation's top 100 law firms.

The results, which the study claims are the first ever to measure such a statistic, rank Temple Law 26th in the nation, with 160 partners placed in law firms over the last quarter-century.
...
In contrast, Temple Law ranks 61st in the controversial U.S. News and World Report's graduate-school rankings, which weigh everything from a school's student-teacher ratio to its LSAT scores.
...
In top-law-firm placement, Villanova Law ranked 35th in the nation. It placed 84th overall in the U.S. News list.

Widener Law, which has campuses in Wilmington and Harrisburg, is unranked in the U.S. News standings, but 70th in law-firm placement.

The article later notes that UPenn somehow did worse than its U.S. News placement.

I bring this ridiculous study up only to show the intellectual vapidity at work in research/propaganda about the legal field.

And here it is:

The study ignores that some schools have larger student bodies than others, Seto wrote.

"If employers cared solely about per-capita outcomes, they would all interview at Yale. They don't. For employers attempting to allocate scarce recruiting resources, aggregate numbers matter."

This should raise a question: who, exactly, is the professor doing this for? Employers trying to allocate those resources, or - you know - objective truth? As a so-called legal scholar, he doesn't exist to serve as a free consultant to his old buddies in BigLaw, does he?

But I digress again. The real problem I see here is that this ranking is even more useless than the U.S. News rankings, and yes, I think those are fairly useless.

Who the hell cares what school produced the most BigLaw partners from the last 25 years? For one, partnership is generally something attained like 7 years down the road, so you're looking at who made partner from the group of people who graduated law school between 1986 and 2004 or so.

Since we're not factoring in enrollment sizes, we're basically rewarding schools for cranking out the most students between said years. And obviously, schools located in large metro areas are going to be at an advantage, as they would have a better chance at their mid-level graduates later lateralling into BigLaw partnerships. (You can see the list here and see the schools that out-perform their "other" ranks are almost all in large urban areas).

How the hell such a limited and non-proportional study is supposed to show anything of relevance for prospective students now is beyond me. Temple Law enrolls 1000. Many "better" law schools enroll far less.

This is the same type of screwy, illogical accounting error that allows Cooley to rank itself second in the country. And there it is being published by a law professor and appearing on a major newspaper's website.

Never mind the fact that population shifts and the fortunes of large law firms affect these sorts of things. And never mind that becoming a partner almost always features variables that have little to do with one's legal education aside from the prestige of the name on the degree.

This list would lead one to believe John Marshall and NYLS are better options that Alabama or Colorado, or that Georgetown is a superior school to U. of Chicago or Yale by virtue of its size.

In other words, AWAC (as worthless as Cooley's). Of course, Elie Mystal calls them "rankings worth paying attention to."