Whittier Shutting Down Forum

[lymenheimer]

So what you're saying is that if they google that question, there's one only one right answer to it(mylsn) and if they don't find that answer and/or come to the same conclusion you would from that, they're idiots? Why would the average 0L disregard everything they've heard both from school materials and elsewhere because of what they saw on one website? Do you really expect 0L's to go on mylsn look up their schools info and be like "oh my god, look at how horrible those numbers, are, I should give up on this despite all the people around me telling me this is a great idea/information that contradicts this? I'm sorry that is not a reasonable expectation of the average 0L, nm one's who are going to TTTT's(who have probably little exposure to the norms of this process).

Again
Here's a list of reasons why people go to TTT's and TTTT's
1)good local reputation that outweighs whatever they read online
2)students can go to better schools but are getting the best deals at TTTT's
3)students want to become a lawyer and will attend the only program they can attend, god damm the consequence
4)want to be solo practitioners(ignoring how difficult this is in reality) and thus don't care about the employment stats
5)I think it's fair to say it's more likely for 0L's to access the fake employment stats and propaganda materials a school sends them in the mail than find the ABA 509's/Employment reports. Also ABA employment reports and 509's just give raw numbers not percentages which makes it more difficult for students to put it in context(I just put it in Excel but this takes time).
6)many people will get nothing but positive feedback from their family, friends and community and simply don't know the people qualified to give them advice(and some of these people give advice that would make TLS cringe anyway).
7)if a student went into alot of UG debt and doesn't believe they will ever pay this off anyway they might doubledown with another degree. Some just don't understand what debt is.
8)you'd be suprised how many people have no idea how interest works. Paying back 200k in debt over time that doesn't grow is a very different thing than paying 200k in debt with 6% interest and if interest worked the way they thought it did, a lot of insane decisions would actually make sense somewhat.

I'm just quoting this for posterity, since the main debate has moved far afield.

That said, of course people who fall for cons are at least partly responsible. That doesn't mean the conman isn't a terrible person, and it doesn't mean that certain groups of people aren't disadvantaged. But literally read every one of Ferris's posts, and you see someone who was exposed to negative statistics about his school choices over and over and over and over and over again. Now, he's posting long missives about why other students might ignore objective information in order to make mind-blowingly stupid decisions, without realizing that he's literally talking about himself. At a certain point, I just can't feel that much sympathy for someone who willfully ignores reality in order to justify their own choices.

The second half of number 5 is my favorite. "Oh no! The raw numbers don't show percentages. You HAVE to put it in a spreadsheet to figure out the percentages". Because you can't look at 160 total students, see that 40 have jobs, and recognize that that's a poor figure somewhere less than 50%. Just proves it's still coming from the guy who doesnt know how statistics and math work...

[jingosaur]

I buy the positive feedback argument. If you tell your family and friends that you're going to go to a TTTT law school that they have never heard of, everyone will smile and say congratulations and dumb boomer shit like, "I know I'll see you on the Supreme Court one day!" For students who aspired to have a successful career and ended up with a sub-3.0 undergrad GPA, this is probably the most praise and positive feedback they've received in their young adult lives.

Confirmation bias is a helluva drug.

[shadowfax]

Last time I looked perpetrating a fraud was a crime. Being a victim of one was not.

Take the Madoff situation. He posted what he claimed were "risk free annual rates of return" of over 11% for 17 years. Impossible to believe. No educated savvy investor would ever think that could be true. His accountant was some guy in a trailer.

Here is a small sample of his victims. I bet they all know how to google which seems to be the answer to everything for some.

HSBC
Royal Bank of Scotland
Nomura
Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet (killed himself)
Burt and Joanne Meerow
The America-Israel Cultural Foundation
Steven Spielberg
Elie Wiesel
Jeffrey Katzenberg
Eliot Spitzer
Fred Wilpon

[star fox]

You guys are looking at this from a perspective that most people don't look at things. What's going on is people decide they want to be a lawyer - it'll improve their career prospects from whatever their liberal arts degree is, they think they'll enjoy it, it suits their skill-set etc. So they figure out what they gotta do - they take the LSAT, maybe talk to a prelaw advisor if they're still in undergrad. They take it and think "man that was hard, hopefully I don't have to do that again." They get their score. The next step isn't "what law schools are worth it? What law schools are a scam?" It's usually - "where are my stats good enough to get me into?" They're not googling "is Whittier worth it?" they're googling "Whittier Law Admissions data." To them, a law school is a law school and you got to law school to become a lawyer.

They're aware on a broad scale that yes, Harvard is "better" than Whittier, but to them law school rankings are just like undergrad rankings, it's there for prestige-whores to ooh and ahh over, but not something that will serve as a barrier to entry into the profession. People aren't thinking when they're applying that their law school is the one that is going to get them a job, they think that it is is they themselves that will go out and get a job and they just need a law degree to have the tools to go out and get a job themselves.

It's a big fat strawman to say that these people probably thought they were gonna get a guaranteed six figure salary upon graduation. Most people who go to these law schools are explicitly aware that they will never be a "rich, fancy lawyer" and that's not even what they're after. They just want a normal middle class life and the intuition is if you graduate from law school, that should at least be obtainable. They see successful law grads from Whittier and think "that person was in the same position I am now, so there's no reason I can't do that." And most importantly, the part about needing to get a job is being kicked three years down the road. Time is a hell of a drug and makes people confident that the future will have a way of working itself out.

Add into all of this that people are getting positive reinforcement every step of the way. That one attorney they know is encouraging, their friends and parents are proud of them (and now add in if they come from a really low SES status, where pursuing a graduate degree makes them the most highly educated person they know). The natural inclination isn't to view higher education through the lens of cynicism and apprehension. This isn't giving your money to a Nigerian Prince. This is the traditional means for upward mobility in this country. For someone to try and better their situation and their family's, this is how you do it. The notion that they'd be better off sticking with a job at Burger King runs so counter-intuitive to everything society is telling you. As far as debt, well that's just the cost, it's another thing you can kick down the line. They may even be award of borrower-friendly terms from the government that make it clear that you don't pay more than you're able to. The $250K roll of the roulette table isn't how people are looking at it. They're looking at it as an investment in human capital that can be paid back to the extent of their means over a very long time horizon.

So if asking - why didn't they just google "is Whittier worth it?" first ask "why would they?"

[jjcorvino]

Last time I looked perpetrating a fraud was a crime. Being a victim of one was not.

Take the Madoff situation. He posted what he claimed were "risk free annual rates of return" of over 11% for 17 years. Impossible to believe. No educated savvy investor would ever think that could be true. His accountant was some guy in a trailer.

Here is a small sample of his victims. I bet they all know how to google which seems to be the answer to everything for some.

HSBC
Royal Bank of Scotland
Nomura
Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet (killed himself)
Burt and Joanne Meerow
The America-Israel Cultural Foundation
Steven Spielberg
Elie Wiesel
Jeffrey Katzenberg
Eliot Spitzer
Fred Wilpon

Nobody said it was a crime, just that it was an incredibly dumb decision.

[uion1715]

It is also incredibly difficult to change one's mind when one has already made a decision to go to law school. Confirmation bias is a helluva drug, and applicants are getting a lot of confirmation from nearly everyone they know.

On a side note, those who know about law school admission can have a hard time persuading people that they know their stuff (As TLS threads show).

Last week, I met a friend/acquaintance who is going to UNH Law this fall. Granted he is going there on a full ride, but he told me about UNH Law's "international IP programs," etc. I know a lot of those are BS, and I tried to nudge him to look at the school's employment numbers. But he said he already looked at the employment numbers and thought the numbers were fine.

At that point, I felt that it is incredibly awkward/difficult to push him on not going. There are his parents, friends, etc. all talking about how exciting it is for him to go to law school, and there is me, a 0L. Once he said he looked at the data and said it was fine, I had nothing to tell him but to wish him luck.

[vcap180]

I'll concede that the various factors that some of you are pointing out are probably sufficient reason for us to have some level of sympathy for these students, and an even more potent disdain for the diploma mills.

However, they do not in any way change the fact that information about these scam schools is now easily accessible and that they were therefore either willfully ignorant or reckless in their decision to attend one.

Arguments like "oh but their parents were probably so encouraging and happy for them" do not absolve them of responsibility to do their due diligence before making a life changing investment. These are adults, not infants.

[Nebby]

I'll concede that the various factors that some of you are pointing out are probably sufficient reason for us to have some level of sympathy for these students, and an even more potent disdain for the diploma mills.

However, they do not in any way change the fact that information about these scam schools is now easily accessible and that they were therefore either willfully ignorant or reckless in their decision to attend one.

Arguments like "oh but there parents were probably so encouraging and happy for them" do not absolve them of responsibility to do their due diligence before making a life changing investment. These are adults, not infants.

Lol this is a concession? Damn you're bright

[vcap180]

I'll concede that the various factors that some of you are pointing out are probably sufficient reason for us to have some level of sympathy for these students, and an even more potent disdain for the diploma mills.

However, they do not in any way change the fact that information about these scam schools is now easily accessible and that they were therefore either willfully ignorant or reckless in their decision to attend one.

Arguments like "oh but there parents were probably so encouraging and happy for them" do not absolve them of responsibility to do their due diligence before making a life changing investment. These are adults, not infants.

Lol this is a concession? Damn you're bright

Keep fighting the good fight, pal.

And I assure you that your assanine posts ITT, much like any of the other 25,000 you've made in this forum, had absolutely no impact on anything lol

[Nebby]

I'll concede that the various factors that some of you are pointing out are probably sufficient reason for us to have some level of sympathy for these students, and an even more potent disdain for the diploma mills.

However, they do not in any way change the fact that information about these scam schools is now easily accessible and that they were therefore either willfully ignorant or reckless in their decision to attend one.

Arguments like "oh but there parents were probably so encouraging and happy for them" do not absolve them of responsibility to do their due diligence before making a life changing investment. These are adults, not infants.

Lol this is a concession? Damn you're bright

Keep fighting the good fight, pal.

I'm not fighting any fight bruh. Some of us just have firmer grasp on reality and an ounce of sympathy

[vcap180]

I'll concede that the various factors that some of you are pointing out are probably sufficient reason for us to have some level of sympathy for these students, and an even more potent disdain for the diploma mills.

However, they do not in any way change the fact that information about these scam schools is now easily accessible and that they were therefore either willfully ignorant or reckless in their decision to attend one.

Arguments like "oh but there parents were probably so encouraging and happy for them" do not absolve them of responsibility to do their due diligence before making a life changing investment. These are adults, not infants.

Lol this is a concession? Damn you're bright

Keep fighting the good fight, pal.

I'm not fighting any fight bruh. Some of us just have firmer grasp on reality and an ounce of sympathy

I edited my previous post to highlight how useless you are, just want to be sure you didn't miss it.

[star fox]

I'll concede that the various factors that some of you are pointing out are probably sufficient reason for us to have some level of sympathy for these students, and an even more potent disdain for the diploma mills.

However, they do not in any way change the fact that information about these scam schools is now easily accessible and that they were therefore either willfully ignorant or reckless in their decision to attend one.

Arguments like "oh but their parents were probably so encouraging and happy for them" do not absolve them of responsibility to do their due diligence before making a life changing investment. These are adults, not infants.

You're still assuming people are looking at higher education through the lens of - "is this a scam?" Why would anyone believe higher education could ever be a scam? These are real institutions not snake oil salesmen. You're pointing the finger at people for not looking at them through that lens when they are probably the most educated person in their neighborhood and everyone (community leaders, teachers, politicians) their whole lives has said "education is the key!"

[vcap180]

I'll concede that the various factors that some of you are pointing out are probably sufficient reason for us to have some level of sympathy for these students, and an even more potent disdain for the diploma mills.

However, they do not in any way change the fact that information about these scam schools is now easily accessible and that they were therefore either willfully ignorant or reckless in their decision to attend one.

Arguments like "oh but their parents were probably so encouraging and happy for them" do not absolve them of responsibility to do their due diligence before making a life changing investment. These are adults, not infants.

You're still assuming people are looking at higher education through the lens of - "is this a scam?" Why would anyone believe higher education could ever be a scam? These are real institutions not snake oil salesmen. You're pointing the finger at people for not looking at them through that lens when they are probably the most educated person in their neighborhood and everyone (community leaders, teachers, politicians) their whole lives has said "education is the key!"

No, I am assuming people have the responsibility to treat any multi-year, quarter million dollar investment as a decision that requires thorough research. Anything less is negligent.

[Nebby]

I edited my previous post to highlight how useless you are, just want to be sure you didn't miss it.

Lol u mad?

Yup

[jjcorvino]

A lot of salt in here

[ernie]

ITT people make thoughtful critiques about higher ed and its normative role in society (and vcap squawks BUT NEEEEEEGLIGENCE over and over again)

[star fox]

I'll concede that the various factors that some of you are pointing out are probably sufficient reason for us to have some level of sympathy for these students, and an even more potent disdain for the diploma mills.

However, they do not in any way change the fact that information about these scam schools is now easily accessible and that they were therefore either willfully ignorant or reckless in their decision to attend one.

Arguments like "oh but their parents were probably so encouraging and happy for them" do not absolve them of responsibility to do their due diligence before making a life changing investment. These are adults, not infants.

You're still assuming people are looking at higher education through the lens of - "is this a scam?" Why would anyone believe higher education could ever be a scam? These are real institutions not snake oil salesmen. You're pointing the finger at people for not looking at them through that lens when they are probably the most educated person in their neighborhood and everyone (community leaders, teachers, politicians) their whole lives has said "education is the key!"

No, I am assuming people have the responsibility to treat any multi-year, quarter million dollar investment as a decision that requires thorough research. Anything less is negligent.

You're just not looking at it the way most people do. I remember at orientation at my T14 school most people had no clue what % of people get BigLaw jobs (if they even knew what "BigLaw" was)

[timbs4339]

Couple of things:

I don't see the point of debating the relative responsibility of the various parties in this scenario. The problem is fundamentally structural: if the government lends people $230,000 no questions asked to attend law schools with something close to de facto open admission policies, then those schools are going to be filled with people who shouldn't be going to law school, who will never be lawyers, and who will never pay back the money they owe.

Those schools will keep operating until one of two things happen: the government turns off the loan spigot (this is what's happening to the Infilaw racket, because the government actually has some minimal standards it applies to explicitly for-profit educational outfits), or the central administrators at an otherwise respectable institution get too embarrassed by their law school to keep it open. That's what happened with Whittier, which is actually a pretty decent LAC.

One thing that's been mentioned by many people in this thread really needs to be emphasized: the extent to which people all across the political spectrum in the USA treat higher education as some sort of magic bullet. The idea that we need a lot more college graduates is absurd, as is the idea that the problem is that too many people are majoring in "useless" majors instead of STEM. There's no shortage of STEM graduates, and there's essentially no structural unemployment in the STEM fields.

The big problem of the 21st century (along with the planet getting a bit toasty) is going to be the problem of surplus labor. The law school/higher ed mess in America is just one very early symptom of that. Millennials are screwed because there aren't enough good jobs for them and there are never going to be, full stop. Things will be even worse in this regard for their kids. "Google it" is a useful piece of advice on the individual level, but a worse than useless response in terms of collective political action.

I've been around these parts for a long time. I started lurking right when the "scamblog" movement was just kicking up (back when TLS was considered a pro-law school, head in the sand forum) and before all the NYT and Wapo articles. Every time the issue of big debt and no jobs was raised there were always people who made sure to remind everyone about how lazy and greedy the people who who were complaining had probably been, how if they'd just done a little more digging and asked a few more obvious questions they could have found the information they needed to avoid making a bad decision, how they shouldn't blame schools and deans and professors for operating in a flawed system because it was their right to make money, and how the solution to the law school problem was for these ungrateful millennials to just get some sweet hot PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY111!!1!!!

Thankfully, the "whiners" persisted. And only once there was a saturation of articles in major media outlets did you start seeing a severe decrease in applications; about the time when anyone who googled "law school admissions" would get the first 10 results being articles in major publications about high debt and crappy job prospects. Even after that there were still a lot of people who ignored this information or who just didn't think to even ask the questions that would help them understand the impact of the decisions they were making. (Even now, the majority of LSAT takers do not retake even once, despite the obvious benefits and no drawbacks in doing so.) That's just the way people are and the way people always will be.

Ultimately, where you come down in the debate is whether you believe the current system is a good one or not. I do not, and I strongly believe that there is a better system out there, one that delivers a modern legal education for a fraction of the current price. I also believe that if enough people also believe that the system we have now is not good, we can fix it even in the face of opposition by powerful stakeholders (ABA, government, law school deans and professors) with a lot of money at stake. If you agree on those things, the rest of the discussion is just about implementation.

[vcap180]

Couple of things:

I don't see the point of debating the relative responsibility of the various parties in this scenario. The problem is fundamentally structural: if the government lends people $230,000 no questions asked to attend law schools with something close to de facto open admission policies, then those schools are going to be filled with people who shouldn't be going to law school, who will never be lawyers, and who will never pay back the money they owe.

Those schools will keep operating until one of two things happen: the government turns off the loan spigot (this is what's happening to the Infilaw racket, because the government actually has some minimal standards it applies to explicitly for-profit educational outfits), or the central administrators at an otherwise respectable institution get too embarrassed by their law school to keep it open. That's what happened with Whittier, which is actually a pretty decent LAC.

One thing that's been mentioned by many people in this thread really needs to be emphasized: the extent to which people all across the political spectrum in the USA treat higher education as some sort of magic bullet. The idea that we need a lot more college graduates is absurd, as is the idea that the problem is that too many people are majoring in "useless" majors instead of STEM. There's no shortage of STEM graduates, and there's essentially no structural unemployment in the STEM fields.

The big problem of the 21st century (along with the planet getting a bit toasty) is going to be the problem of surplus labor. The law school/higher ed mess in America is just one very early symptom of that. Millennials are screwed because there aren't enough good jobs for them and there are never going to be, full stop. Things will be even worse in this regard for their kids. "Google it" is a useful piece of advice on the individual level, but a worse than useless response in terms of collective political action.

I've been around these parts for a long time. I started lurking right when the "scamblog" movement was just kicking up (back when TLS was considered a pro-law school, head in the sand forum) and before all the NYT and Wapo articles. Every time the issue of big debt and no jobs was raised there were always people who made sure to remind everyone about how lazy and greedy the people who who were complaining had probably been, how if they'd just done a little more digging and asked a few more obvious questions they could have found the information they needed to avoid making a bad decision, how they shouldn't blame schools and deans and professors for operating in a flawed system because it was their right to make money, and how the solution to the law school problem was for these ungrateful millennials to just get some sweet hot PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY111!!1!!!

Thankfully, the "whiners" persisted. And only once there was a saturation of articles in major media outlets did you start seeing a severe decrease in applications; about the time when anyone who googled "law school admissions" would get the first 10 results being articles in major publications about high debt and crappy job prospects. Even after that there were still a lot of people who ignored this information or who just didn't think to even ask the questions that would help them understand the impact of the decisions they were making. (Even now, the majority of LSAT takers do not retake even once, despite the obvious benefits and no drawbacks in doing so.) That's just the way people are and the way people always will be.

Ultimately, where you come down in the debate is whether you believe the current system is a good one or not. I do not, and I strongly believe that there is a better system out there, one that delivers a modern legal education for a fraction of the current price. I also believe that if enough people also believe that the system we have now is not good, we can fix it even in the face of opposition by powerful stakeholders (ABA, government, law school deans and professors) with a lot of money at stake. If you agree on those things, the rest of the discussion is just about implementation.

I agree, but I don't think the positions w/r/t your last point are mutually exclusive. I think the system is flawed and it's set up to prey upon the reckless and willfully ignorant. This is a system that requires two parties to be at fault - one for not doing their due diligence, and the other for exploiting that.

[Julius]

Couple of things:

I don't see the point of debating the relative responsibility of the various parties in this scenario. The problem is fundamentally structural: if the government lends people $230,000 no questions asked to attend law schools with something close to de facto open admission policies, then those schools are going to be filled with people who shouldn't be going to law school, who will never be lawyers, and who will never pay back the money they owe.

Those schools will keep operating until one of two things happen: the government turns off the loan spigot (this is what's happening to the Infilaw racket, because the government actually has some minimal standards it applies to explicitly for-profit educational outfits), or the central administrators at an otherwise respectable institution get too embarrassed by their law school to keep it open. That's what happened with Whittier, which is actually a pretty decent LAC.

One thing that's been mentioned by many people in this thread really needs to be emphasized: the extent to which people all across the political spectrum in the USA treat higher education as some sort of magic bullet. The idea that we need a lot more college graduates is absurd, as is the idea that the problem is that too many people are majoring in "useless" majors instead of STEM. There's no shortage of STEM graduates, and there's essentially no structural unemployment in the STEM fields.

The big problem of the 21st century (along with the planet getting a bit toasty) is going to be the problem of surplus labor. The law school/higher ed mess in America is just one very early symptom of that. Millennials are screwed because there aren't enough good jobs for them and there are never going to be, full stop. Things will be even worse in this regard for their kids. "Google it" is a useful piece of advice on the individual level, but a worse than useless response in terms of collective political action.

I've been around these parts for a long time. I started lurking right when the "scamblog" movement was just kicking up (back when TLS was considered a pro-law school, head in the sand forum) and before all the NYT and Wapo articles. Every time the issue of big debt and no jobs was raised there were always people who made sure to remind everyone about how lazy and greedy the people who who were complaining had probably been, how if they'd just done a little more digging and asked a few more obvious questions they could have found the information they needed to avoid making a bad decision, how they shouldn't blame schools and deans and professors for operating in a flawed system because it was their right to make money, and how the solution to the law school problem was for these ungrateful millennials to just get some sweet hot PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY111!!1!!!

Thankfully, the "whiners" persisted. And only once there was a saturation of articles in major media outlets did you start seeing a severe decrease in applications; about the time when anyone who googled "law school admissions" would get the first 10 results being articles in major publications about high debt and crappy job prospects. Even after that there were still a lot of people who ignored this information or who just didn't think to even ask the questions that would help them understand the impact of the decisions they were making. (Even now, the majority of LSAT takers do not retake even once, despite the obvious benefits and no drawbacks in doing so.) That's just the way people are and the way people always will be.

Ultimately, where you come down in the debate is whether you believe the current system is a good one or not. I do not, and I strongly believe that there is a better system out there, one that delivers a modern legal education for a fraction of the current price. I also believe that if enough people also believe that the system we have now is not good, we can fix it even in the face of opposition by powerful stakeholders (ABA, government, law school deans and professors) with a lot of money at stake. If you agree on those things, the rest of the discussion is just about implementation.

I agree, but I don't think the positions w/r/t your last point are mutually exclusive. I think the system is flawed and it's set up to prey upon the reckless and willfully ignorant. This is a system that requires two parties to be at fault - one for not doing their due diligence, and the other for exploiting that.

Yes, but one of the problems with dense people is they don't realize they're being dense. Am I right?

[vcap180]

Couple of things:

I don't see the point of debating the relative responsibility of the various parties in this scenario. The problem is fundamentally structural: if the government lends people $230,000 no questions asked to attend law schools with something close to de facto open admission policies, then those schools are going to be filled with people who shouldn't be going to law school, who will never be lawyers, and who will never pay back the money they owe.

Those schools will keep operating until one of two things happen: the government turns off the loan spigot (this is what's happening to the Infilaw racket, because the government actually has some minimal standards it applies to explicitly for-profit educational outfits), or the central administrators at an otherwise respectable institution get too embarrassed by their law school to keep it open. That's what happened with Whittier, which is actually a pretty decent LAC.

One thing that's been mentioned by many people in this thread really needs to be emphasized: the extent to which people all across the political spectrum in the USA treat higher education as some sort of magic bullet. The idea that we need a lot more college graduates is absurd, as is the idea that the problem is that too many people are majoring in "useless" majors instead of STEM. There's no shortage of STEM graduates, and there's essentially no structural unemployment in the STEM fields.

The big problem of the 21st century (along with the planet getting a bit toasty) is going to be the problem of surplus labor. The law school/higher ed mess in America is just one very early symptom of that. Millennials are screwed because there aren't enough good jobs for them and there are never going to be, full stop. Things will be even worse in this regard for their kids. "Google it" is a useful piece of advice on the individual level, but a worse than useless response in terms of collective political action.

I've been around these parts for a long time. I started lurking right when the "scamblog" movement was just kicking up (back when TLS was considered a pro-law school, head in the sand forum) and before all the NYT and Wapo articles. Every time the issue of big debt and no jobs was raised there were always people who made sure to remind everyone about how lazy and greedy the people who who were complaining had probably been, how if they'd just done a little more digging and asked a few more obvious questions they could have found the information they needed to avoid making a bad decision, how they shouldn't blame schools and deans and professors for operating in a flawed system because it was their right to make money, and how the solution to the law school problem was for these ungrateful millennials to just get some sweet hot PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY111!!1!!!

Thankfully, the "whiners" persisted. And only once there was a saturation of articles in major media outlets did you start seeing a severe decrease in applications; about the time when anyone who googled "law school admissions" would get the first 10 results being articles in major publications about high debt and crappy job prospects. Even after that there were still a lot of people who ignored this information or who just didn't think to even ask the questions that would help them understand the impact of the decisions they were making. (Even now, the majority of LSAT takers do not retake even once, despite the obvious benefits and no drawbacks in doing so.) That's just the way people are and the way people always will be.

Ultimately, where you come down in the debate is whether you believe the current system is a good one or not. I do not, and I strongly believe that there is a better system out there, one that delivers a modern legal education for a fraction of the current price. I also believe that if enough people also believe that the system we have now is not good, we can fix it even in the face of opposition by powerful stakeholders (ABA, government, law school deans and professors) with a lot of money at stake. If you agree on those things, the rest of the discussion is just about implementation.

I agree, but I don't think the positions w/r/t your last point are mutually exclusive. I think the system is flawed and it's set up to prey upon the reckless and willfully ignorant. This is a system that requires two parties to be at fault - one for not doing their due diligence, and the other for exploiting that.

Yes, but one of the problems with dense people is they don't realize they're being dense. Am I right?

Haha of course, but apologizing for them and refusing to acknowledge any responsibility certainly isn't going to help anything.

[Npret]

Couple of things:

I don't see the point of debating the relative responsibility of the various parties in this scenario. The problem is fundamentally structural: if the government lends people $230,000 no questions asked to attend law schools with something close to de facto open admission policies, then those schools are going to be filled with people who shouldn't be going to law school, who will never be lawyers, and who will never pay back the money they owe.

Those schools will keep operating until one of two things happen: the government turns off the loan spigot (this is what's happening to the Infilaw racket, because the government actually has some minimal standards it applies to explicitly for-profit educational outfits), or the central administrators at an otherwise respectable institution get too embarrassed by their law school to keep it open. That's what happened with Whittier, which is actually a pretty decent LAC.

One thing that's been mentioned by many people in this thread really needs to be emphasized: the extent to which people all across the political spectrum in the USA treat higher education as some sort of magic bullet. The idea that we need a lot more college graduates is absurd, as is the idea that the problem is that too many people are majoring in "useless" majors instead of STEM. There's no shortage of STEM graduates, and there's essentially no structural unemployment in the STEM fields.

The big problem of the 21st century (along with the planet getting a bit toasty) is going to be the problem of surplus labor. The law school/higher ed mess in America is just one very early symptom of that. Millennials are screwed because there aren't enough good jobs for them and there are never going to be, full stop. Things will be even worse in this regard for their kids. "Google it" is a useful piece of advice on the individual level, but a worse than useless response in terms of collective political action.

I've been around these parts for a long time. I started lurking right when the "scamblog" movement was just kicking up (back when TLS was considered a pro-law school, head in the sand forum) and before all the NYT and Wapo articles. Every time the issue of big debt and no jobs was raised there were always people who made sure to remind everyone about how lazy and greedy the people who who were complaining had probably been, how if they'd just done a little more digging and asked a few more obvious questions they could have found the information they needed to avoid making a bad decision, how they shouldn't blame schools and deans and professors for operating in a flawed system because it was their right to make money, and how the solution to the law school problem was for these ungrateful millennials to just get some sweet hot PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY111!!1!!!

Thankfully, the "whiners" persisted. And only once there was a saturation of articles in major media outlets did you start seeing a severe decrease in applications; about the time when anyone who googled "law school admissions" would get the first 10 results being articles in major publications about high debt and crappy job prospects. Even after that there were still a lot of people who ignored this information or who just didn't think to even ask the questions that would help them understand the impact of the decisions they were making. (Even now, the majority of LSAT takers do not retake even once, despite the obvious benefits and no drawbacks in doing so.) That's just the way people are and the way people always will be.

Ultimately, where you come down in the debate is whether you believe the current system is a good one or not. I do not, and I strongly believe that there is a better system out there, one that delivers a modern legal education for a fraction of the current price. I also believe that if enough people also believe that the system we have now is not good, we can fix it even in the face of opposition by powerful stakeholders (ABA, government, law school deans and professors) with a lot of money at stake. If you agree on those things, the rest of the discussion is just about implementation.

I agree, but I don't think the positions w/r/t your last point are mutually exclusive. I think the system is flawed and it's set up to prey upon the reckless and willfully ignorant. This is a system that requires two parties to be at fault - one for not doing their due diligence, and the other for exploiting that.

How many 0Ls have done any due diligence at all regarding their career and their loans? Very few applicants are "TLS experts" or that even TLSers have a handle on their actual debt load.

The reason people go is because they trust what the school says because they think law schools will uphold high standards of integrity. We all know that isn't true, but most people don't.

Just as an example of the more general point that law schools are primarily engaged in marketing, not scrupulous honesty. Here quotes from Columbia's website, which we know aren't true. (in the sense that retaking the LSAT for a higher score will never hurt you) But reading this, there are people who won't retake:

How heavily does LSAT performance factor into admissions decisions?

In reviewing applications to Columbia Law School, no weights or relative levels of importance are assigned to any one specific criterion for admission. Indeed, the Admissions Committee takes the entire application into consideration to arrive at a final admissions decision. While strong LSAT scores may certainly indicate strength in one's application, the Committee considers the academic record, along with the other personal and biographical information in a candidate's file, most carefully.

How are multiple LSAT scores viewed?

Even though the ABA requires that we only report the highest LSAT score, the Committee considers the entire LSAT testing history when evaluating applications for admission.

[Julius]

Couple of things:

I don't see the point of debating the relative responsibility of the various parties in this scenario. The problem is fundamentally structural: if the government lends people $230,000 no questions asked to attend law schools with something close to de facto open admission policies, then those schools are going to be filled with people who shouldn't be going to law school, who will never be lawyers, and who will never pay back the money they owe.

Those schools will keep operating until one of two things happen: the government turns off the loan spigot (this is what's happening to the Infilaw racket, because the government actually has some minimal standards it applies to explicitly for-profit educational outfits), or the central administrators at an otherwise respectable institution get too embarrassed by their law school to keep it open. That's what happened with Whittier, which is actually a pretty decent LAC.

One thing that's been mentioned by many people in this thread really needs to be emphasized: the extent to which people all across the political spectrum in the USA treat higher education as some sort of magic bullet. The idea that we need a lot more college graduates is absurd, as is the idea that the problem is that too many people are majoring in "useless" majors instead of STEM. There's no shortage of STEM graduates, and there's essentially no structural unemployment in the STEM fields.

The big problem of the 21st century (along with the planet getting a bit toasty) is going to be the problem of surplus labor. The law school/higher ed mess in America is just one very early symptom of that. Millennials are screwed because there aren't enough good jobs for them and there are never going to be, full stop. Things will be even worse in this regard for their kids. "Google it" is a useful piece of advice on the individual level, but a worse than useless response in terms of collective political action.

I've been around these parts for a long time. I started lurking right when the "scamblog" movement was just kicking up (back when TLS was considered a pro-law school, head in the sand forum) and before all the NYT and Wapo articles. Every time the issue of big debt and no jobs was raised there were always people who made sure to remind everyone about how lazy and greedy the people who who were complaining had probably been, how if they'd just done a little more digging and asked a few more obvious questions they could have found the information they needed to avoid making a bad decision, how they shouldn't blame schools and deans and professors for operating in a flawed system because it was their right to make money, and how the solution to the law school problem was for these ungrateful millennials to just get some sweet hot PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY111!!1!!!

Thankfully, the "whiners" persisted. And only once there was a saturation of articles in major media outlets did you start seeing a severe decrease in applications; about the time when anyone who googled "law school admissions" would get the first 10 results being articles in major publications about high debt and crappy job prospects. Even after that there were still a lot of people who ignored this information or who just didn't think to even ask the questions that would help them understand the impact of the decisions they were making. (Even now, the majority of LSAT takers do not retake even once, despite the obvious benefits and no drawbacks in doing so.) That's just the way people are and the way people always will be.

Ultimately, where you come down in the debate is whether you believe the current system is a good one or not. I do not, and I strongly believe that there is a better system out there, one that delivers a modern legal education for a fraction of the current price. I also believe that if enough people also believe that the system we have now is not good, we can fix it even in the face of opposition by powerful stakeholders (ABA, government, law school deans and professors) with a lot of money at stake. If you agree on those things, the rest of the discussion is just about implementation.

I agree, but I don't think the positions w/r/t your last point are mutually exclusive. I think the system is flawed and it's set up to prey upon the reckless and willfully ignorant. This is a system that requires two parties to be at fault - one for not doing their due diligence, and the other for exploiting that.

Yes, but one of the problems with dense people is they don't realize they're being dense. Am I right?

Haha of course, but apologizing for them and refusing to acknowledge any responsibility certainly isn't going to help anything.

To be clear, I was calling you dense and you didn't realize it.

[uion1715]

Let me ask you this, then, how does attacking those who fell for this "trap" do anything?

[vcap180]

Let me ask you this, then, how does attacking those who fell for this "trap" do anything?

1) not attacking them; simply acknowledging that they are partially responsible.
2) this acknowledgement can help them be more diligent before the next time they rely on "normative roles" or whatever other BS to inform their major life decisions.