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The Atlantic: The Law-School Scam (180 article

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-law-...
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/14/14
Campos fatalitied florida coastal here
Razzmatazz preventive strike public bath
  08/14/14
Yes, but to be fair, it was a cheap shot. I would love for h...
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/14/14
T14s arent the problem (relatively) and arent where the vast...
Razzmatazz preventive strike public bath
  08/14/14
They aren't the *major* problem, but many consider the T14 t...
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/14/14
In my view, this is how the school's should be ranked: HY...
lime people who are hurt
  08/14/14
I'd say Y is the only school where one should go at any pric...
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
(actual autist weirdo 0L)
Soggy location
  08/14/14
Defend matriculating to H or S at sticker.
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
As long as you aren't the bottom 10% of the class, you will ...
lime people who are hurt
  08/14/14
If you can get into H or S, you can get full scholarships at...
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
you have no fucking idea what you're taling about.
Soggy location
  08/14/14
cr
Frisky costumed center
  08/14/14
OK, but that doesn't hurt my model. You are free to choose e...
lime people who are hurt
  08/14/14
Agreed. One of the reasons why it took so long to expose the...
sick pontificating dilemma community account
  08/14/14
...
Hateful corner
  08/14/14
this. even if you get the "prize" from the t14, it...
Fragrant box office striped hyena
  08/14/14
...
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
i have never understood why law students think going to bigl...
Frisky costumed center
  08/14/14
How do we ensure this is the 1st thing that returns on a goo...
lime people who are hurt
  08/14/14
Summon: doobs
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/14/14
...
Sapphire Vigorous Pervert Parlor
  08/14/14
wow it only took like 10 years for a crack investigator to b...
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
this shit is all news to boomers man. i interned at a fe...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
were they T14 grads?
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/14/14
some of them.
Soggy location
  08/14/14
I find that hard to believe considering how many lawyer job ...
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
why the fuck would a 55 year old career bigfed lawyer have a...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
why the fuck are you talking about a 55 year old bigfed lawy...
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
"i interned at a fed agency and the old boomer lawyers ...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
yeah i only read the first sentence of your post. I seriousl...
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
currently work in midlaw and it's a wide spectrum for older ...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
fair enough. you just made me despise all lawyers born befor...
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
i guess the trade off is that law school was 10X more misera...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
You'd be surprised then. A boomer partner at my V50 wasn't ...
emerald goyim
  08/14/14
lol, i forgot about this. if they don't have kids that they ...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
...
Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant
  08/14/14
Truth. During OCI several years ago I met with a boomer mana...
galvanic offensive locale
  08/14/14
this
Hateful corner
  08/14/14
LOL i clicked on this article and there was a full page curt...
pearly mood
  08/14/14
You'll get in if you apply!
Beady-eyed sneaky criminal space
  08/14/14
Michael • 12 hours ago I'm an administrator at Florida Coas...
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/14/14
I stopped reading after "IF the LSAC data cited in this...
lime people who are hurt
  08/14/14
why? 'data' is singular OR plural
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/14/14
somebody should smack that guy in the face
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
Can't wait until Leiter tries to piss all over this. BTW, Le...
lime people who are hurt
  08/14/14
Heh
Smoky shrine
  08/15/14
i don't think florida coastal has to worry too hard about it...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
explain
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
do you really need "the atlantic" in your post?
diverse stage corn cake
  08/14/14
good point
Soggy location
  08/14/14
...
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
ha
Frisky costumed center
  08/14/14
...
Sapphire Vigorous Pervert Parlor
  08/14/14
...
Useless underhanded chapel legend
  08/14/14
...
magenta kitty giraffe
  08/14/14
winrar
Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant
  08/14/14
...
Purple low-t quadroon whorehouse
  07/13/19
As always, the key to success in America is finding a way to...
galvanic offensive locale
  08/14/14
you are offered a job at this private equity firm for $100K ...
Hateful corner
  08/14/14
I would take the job, but the hours would need to be awesome...
galvanic offensive locale
  08/14/14
$100K is more than enough in normal parts of the country.
Hateful corner
  08/14/14
Objectively, yes, but its a substantial pay cut from Biglaw
galvanic offensive locale
  08/14/14
"Florida Coastal is one of three law schools owned by t...
Hateful corner
  08/14/14
shitlib here, but our dumbfuck policies created the unlimite...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
agreed
Hateful corner
  08/14/14
cr, libs are stupid and naive. but reptiles are also naive a...
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
the way their tongues flicked with delight when romney tried...
Soggy location
  08/14/14
I graduated from undergrad in 2002. Total tuition, room and ...
Tantric partner athletic conference
  08/14/14
...
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
Sounds eerily similar to the behavior of the MBS guys in '06...
emerald goyim
  08/14/14
the FDR-LBJ welfare state is fundamentally broken. we need ...
shimmering set
  08/14/14
yes because immoral corporations that add zero value to soci...
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
It's nothing to do with corporations. Higher education is...
Tantric partner athletic conference
  08/14/14
if the problem was limited to public and private not-for-pro...
transparent beta point turdskin
  08/14/14
yikes
diverse stage corn cake
  08/14/14
That's a great analogy, the car's price vs. tuition and a de...
lime people who are hurt
  08/14/14
I looked this up: 2014 Honda Accord EX MSRP = $24,880. 2002 ...
lime people who are hurt
  08/14/14
Have those things even caught up with the rate of inflation?
emerald goyim
  08/14/14
...
Useless underhanded chapel legend
  08/14/14
Wait wait wait - are you saying that tuition increases have ...
translucent library laser beams
  08/14/14
Outpaced inflation, and literally every other industry -- ev...
pearl locus
  08/15/14
who was it who made loans non-dischargeable? I'm guessing re...
Sapphire Vigorous Pervert Parlor
  08/14/14
it was while Bush was president. before that, loans could be...
Hateful corner
  08/14/14
...
magenta kitty giraffe
  08/14/14
You need to look-through the corporation to the evil PE firm...
Chrome Fortuitous Meteor
  08/15/14
(The high-five-figure-salary jobs that many prospective law ...
Laughsome Dopamine
  08/14/14
lol! TLS calls this MIDLAW
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/14/14
where's the TLS thread link?
Laughsome Dopamine
  08/14/14
Steven co-founded Sterling in 1983 and is Chairman of the fi...
Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant
  08/14/14
...
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
goy: BIG LOANS jew: BIG SCHOLARSHIPS
Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant
  08/14/14
180; also, 180 moniker
Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk
  08/14/14
ty ted.
Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant
  08/14/14
...
Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field
  08/15/14
...
glittery zombie-like rehab
  07/13/19


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Date: August 14th, 2014 12:35 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-law-school-scam/375069/

David Frakt isn’t easily intimidated by public-speaking assignments. A lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve and a defense attorney, Frakt is best known for securing the 2009 release of the teenage Guantánamo detainee Mohammad Jawad. He did so by helping to convince a military tribunal that the only evidence that Jawad had purportedly thrown a hand grenade at a passing American convoy in 2002 had been extracted by torture.

By comparison, Frakt’s presentation in April to the Florida Coastal School of Law’s faculty and staff seemed to pose a far less daunting challenge. A law professor for several years, Frakt was a finalist for the school’s deanship, and the highlight of his two-day visit was this hour-long talk, in which he discussed his ideas for fixing what he saw as the major problems facing the school: sharply declining enrollment, drastically reduced admissions standards, and low morale among employees.

But midway through Frakt’s statistics-filled PowerPoint presentation, he was interrupted when Dennis Stone, the school’s president, entered the room. (Stone had been alerted to Frakt’s comments by e-mails and texts from faculty members in the room.) Stone told Frakt to stop “insulting” the faculty, and asked him to leave. Startled, Frakt requested that anyone in the room who felt insulted raise his or her hand. When no one did, he attempted to resume his presentation. But Stone told him that if he didn’t leave the premises immediately, security would be called. Frakt packed up his belongings and left.

What had happened? Florida Coastal is a for-profit law school, and in his presentation to its faculty, Frakt had catalogued disturbing trends in the world of for-profit legal education. This world is one in which schools accredited by the American Bar Association admit large numbers of severely underqualified students; these students in turn take out hundreds of millions of dollars in loans annually, much of which they will never be able to repay. Eventually, federal taxpayers will be stuck with the tab, even as the schools themselves continue to reap enormous profits.

There are only a small number of for-profit law schools nationwide. But a close look at them reveals that the perverse financial incentives under which they operate are merely extreme versions of those that afflict contemporary American higher education in general. And these broader systemic dysfunctions have potentially devastating consequences for a vast number of young people—and for higher education as a whole.

Florida Coastal is one of three law schools owned by the InfiLaw System, a corporate entity created in 2004 by Sterling Partners, a Chicago-based private-equity firm. InfiLaw purchased Florida Coastal in 2004, and then established Arizona Summit Law School (originally known as Phoenix School of Law) in 2005 and Charlotte School of Law in 2006.

These investments were made around the same time that a set of changes in federal loan programs for financing graduate and professional education made for-profit law schools tempting opportunities. Perhaps the most important such change was an extension, in 2006, of the Federal Direct PLUS Loan program, which allowed any graduate student admitted to an accredited program to borrow the full cost of attendance—tuition plus living expenses, less any other aid—directly from the federal government. The most striking feature of the Direct PLUS Loan program is that it limits neither the amount that a school can charge for attendance nor the amount that can be borrowed in federal loans. Moreover, there is little oversight on the part of the lender—in effect, federal taxpayers—regarding whether the students taking out these loans have any reasonable prospect of ever paying them back.

In the class that Florida Coastal admitted in 2013, more than half the students were unlikely to ever pass the bar.

This is, for a private-equity firm, a remarkably attractive arrangement: the investors get their money up front, in the form of the tuition paid for by student loans. Meanwhile, any subsequent default on those loans is somebody else’s problem—in this case, the federal government’s. The arrangement bears a notable resemblance to the subprime-mortgage-lending industry of a decade ago, with private equity playing the role of the investment banks, underqualified law students serving as the equivalent of overleveraged home buyers, and the American Bar Association standing in for the feckless ratings agencies. But there is a crucial difference. When the subprime market collapsed, legislation dedicating hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bailing out the banks had to be passed. In this case, no such action will be necessary: the private investors have, as it were, been bailed out before the fact by our federal educational-loan system. This situation, from the perspective of Sterling Partners and other investors in higher education, comes remarkably close to the capitalist dream of privatizing profits while socializing losses.

From the perspective of graduates who can’t pay back their loans, however, this dream is very much a nightmare. Indeed, it’s easy to make the case that these students wind up in far worse shape than defaulting homeowners do, thanks to two other differences between subprime mortgages and educational loans. First, educational debt, unlike mortgages, can almost never be discharged in bankruptcy, and will continue to follow borrowers throughout their adult lives. And second, mortgages are collateralized by an asset—that is, a house—that usually retains significant value. By contrast, anecdotal evidence suggests that many law degrees that do not lead to legal careers have a negative value, because most employers outside the legal profession don’t like to hire failed lawyers.

How much debt do graduates of the three InfiLaw schools incur? The numbers are startling. According to data from the schools themselves, more than 90 percent of the 1,191 students who graduated from InfiLaw schools in 2013 carried educational debt, with a median amount, by my calculation, of approximately $204,000, when accounting for interest accrued within six months of graduation—meaning that a single year’s graduating class from these three schools was likely carrying about a quarter of a billion dollars of high-interest, non-dischargeable, taxpayer-backed debt.

And what sort of employment outcomes are these staggering debt totals producing? According to mandatory reports that the schools filed with the ABA, of those 1,191 InfiLaw graduates, 270—nearly one-quarter—were unemployed in February of this year, nine months after graduation. And even this figure is, as a practical matter, an understatement: approximately one in eight of their putatively employed graduates were in temporary jobs created by the schools and usually funded by tuition from current students. InfiLaw is not alone in this practice: many law schools design the brief tenure of such “jobs” to coincide precisely with the ABA’s nine-month employment-status reporting deadline. In essence, the schools are requiring current students to fund temporary jobs for new graduates in order to produce deceptive employment rates that will entice potential future students to enroll. (InfiLaw argues that these jobs have “proven to be an effective springboard for unemployed graduates to gain experience and secure long-term employment.”)

Americans are projected to incur nearly $1.3 trillion in student debt over the next 11 years.

As for those InfiLaw graduates who actually have full-time, long-term legal jobs—approximately 36 percent of the 2013 graduating classes—how many of them have a salary large enough to justify having taken on more than $200,000 in educational debt? Financial advisers often caution students not to take on more educational debt than the anticipated annual salary of their first post-graduation job, and they almost universally agree that taking on debt levels that are more than double one’s anticipated salary is a very bad idea. Although the InfiLaw schools make very little of the salary data they collect public, they do publish statistics regarding what types of jobs their graduates obtain, so it is possible to come up with some rough estimates.

In recent years, legal jobs for new law-school graduates have fallen into a markedly bimodal salary distribution. Most such jobs pay between $40,000 and $65,000, with the exception of associate positions at the largest law firms, which generally pay about $160,000. (The high-five-figure-salary jobs that many prospective law students imagine they will settle for if they aren’t hired by a big firm basically do not exist.)

One can estimate how many of a school’s graduates got jobs with six-figure salaries—that is to say, jobs that make the accrual of a six-figure educational debt a reasonable investment—by adding together the number who were hired on a full-time, long-term basis by firms of more than 100 attorneys and the number who obtained federal judicial clerkships, which are often precursors to such jobs. At Columbia Law School—an exceptional school by any measure—this number amounted to 78 percent of the 2013 graduates, according to the school’s report to the ABA. Nationally, the figure for graduates of ABA-accredited schools is about 16 percent, but at low-ranked law schools that figure is sometimes radically lower.

Among students who graduated from InfiLaw schools in 2013, for instance, the percentage who obtained federal clerkships or jobs with large law firms was slightly below 1 percent—0.92 percent, to be exact. In other words, the odds of a graduate of one of these schools getting a job that arguably justifies incurring the schools’ typical debt level are essentially 100 to 1.

InfiLaw does not disclose its finances, but law schools have traditionally been highly profitable enterprises. The reasons are straightforward: law schools are, or at least ought to be, relatively cheap to operate. The traditional lecture method of teaching allows for a high student ratio, and there is no need for expensive lab equipment or, at free-standing law schools like InfiLaw’s, other costly features of university life, such as sports teams, recreational centers, esoteric subjects pursued by an uneconomical handful of students, and so forth. Indeed, until relatively recently, many universities treated their law schools as cash cows whose surplus revenues helped subsidize the institutions’ other operations.

Thus, Sterling Partners seems to have calculated a decade ago that all it needed to make its new law-school venture profitable was large numbers of prospective law students eligible for federal student loans. What the firm must have seen at the time was, from the perspective of a profit-maximizing enterprise, a very large untapped market. Only slightly more than half of the almost 101,000 people who applied to ABA-accredited law schools in 2004 were admitted to even one of these schools. With unlimited federal educational loans available to cover the full cost of attendance at any accredited school, this meant billions of dollars of taxpayer-supplied law-school tuition revenue were being left on the table.

Over the next few years, the InfiLaw schools did their best to obtain as much of that revenue as possible. Florida Coastal, which had existed for eight years prior to its purchase by InfiLaw, nearly doubled in size, growing from 904 students in 2004 to 1,741 in 2010. Phoenix—now Arizona Summit—grew at a still faster rate, increasing from 336 students in 2008 to 1,092 just four years later. Charlotte likewise expanded, from 481 students in 2009 to 1,151 in 2011. Despite across-the-board declines for the past few years, all three schools remain among the largest law schools in the country.

The InfiLaw schools achieved this massive growth by taking large numbers of students that almost no other ABA-accredited law school would consider admitting. InfiLaw was—and remains—up-front about this. Its self-described mission is to “establish the benchmark of inclusive excellence in professional education,” by providing access to a traditionally underserved population consisting “in large part of persons from historically disadvantaged groups.” Yet this means accepting many students who, given their low LSAT scores, are unlikely to ever have successful legal careers. In 2010, for example, two of the three InfiLaw schools admitted entering classes with a median LSAT score of 149, while the third had an entering class with a median score of 150. Only 10 of the other 196 schools fully accredited by the ABA had an entering class with a median LSAT score below 150. (By 2013, some 30 additional institutions had joined these schools.) An LSAT score of 151 is approximately the average among everyone who takes the test. A score of 149 puts test-takers in the 41st percentile. And it is worth noting that a large number of those who take the LSAT do not end up enrolling in law school. (InfiLaw says it does not rely as heavily on the LSAT as other schools do, because “it is not the best determinant of success as a lawyer and clearly has racial bias.” The company says it has instead developed a tool that is “demonstrably superior to the LSAT.” Called the AAMPLE program, it involves applicants’ passing two classes prior to admission.)

Lawyers may be notoriously bad at math, but this equation was simple enough. The ABA requires schools to maintain certain bar-passage rates or risk losing their accreditation.

The InfiLaw schools’ rapid expansion was greatly aided by the fact that, until two years ago, the vast majority of law schools published essentially no meaningful employment information. Schools reported “employment rates” that included everything from a six-figure post at a large firm to a part-time job at Starbucks. They revealed little or nothing about what percentage of their graduates were working as lawyers, let alone what salaries they were earning.

This began to change when, inside and outside legal academia, the law-school reform movement began to demand that schools disclose accurate employment information, as stories of desperate law-school graduates, saddled with enormous debt and no way to pay it off, filled the national media. Dozens of Web sites dedicated themselves to exposing what came to be called “the law-school scam.” (In August 2011, I started a blog to bring attention to these efforts; within 19 months, it received more than 40,000 comments, many from unemployed and underemployed recent graduates.)

In 2011, Senators Barbara Boxer and Chuck Grassley each sent polite but pointed letters to the ABA implying that the Senate was watching. Before long, the traditionally torpid organization’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar began energetically backing a proposal to publish meaningful school-specific employment data. Meanwhile, many individual schools began posting such data on their Web sites unilaterally, in anticipation of the ABA’s new requirements.

Not surprisingly, the sudden availability of something resembling actual employment information contributed to a collapse in the number of law-school applicants, from nearly 88,000 in 2010 to approximately 55,000 this year. And that collapse led to, among many other things, David Frakt’s aborted presentation to the Florida Coastal faculty this April.

David Frakt was a finalist for the deanship of Florida Coastal School of Law. But when his presentation to the faculty touched a nerve, he was told to leave the premises immediately. (Ben Van Hook)

The drop-off in applications hit the InfiLaw schools hard. In total, the three schools received 12,754 applications in 2010; three years later that total had fallen by 37 percent, to 8,066. At Florida Coastal the decline was particularly severe, with applications falling by more than half. In his presentation to the faculty, Frakt made clear that the school’s administration—by which he meant the management of InfiLaw, and ultimately that of Sterling Partners—had reacted by drastically cutting the school’s already very low admissions standards.

Florida Coastal’s 2013 entering class had a median LSAT score of 144, which was in the 23rd percentile of all test-takers. Fully a quarter of the class had a score of 141 or lower, which meant that they scored among the bottom 15 percent of test-takers. (The entering classes of Charlotte and Arizona Summit had identical median and bottom-quarter LSAT scores, suggesting that these numbers were chosen somewhere high up on the corporate ladder.)

Frakt pointed out to the faculty that the LSAT scores of entering students correlate fairly strongly with the probability that those students will eventually pass a state bar examination, which is of course a prerequisite for actually becoming a lawyer. He noted that according to statistics from the Law School Admission Council—the organization that administers the LSAT—scores higher than those in the 60th percentile correlate with a low risk of failing to eventually pass a bar exam. Scores ranking from the 60th to the 40th percentile, by contrast, correlate with a moderate but rapidly increasing risk of failure. Scores below the 40th percentile correlate with a high risk of failure, and scores below the 25th percentile correlate with an extreme risk of failure, to the point where it is quite unlikely that someone with an LSAT score below 145 will ever pass a bar exam.

In the class Florida Coastal had just admitted, then, more than half the students were unlikely to ever pass the bar. But Frakt emphasized that the actual situation the school’s eventual 2017 graduates would face was likely to be even worse than this. In each of the past two years, about 20 percent of Florida Coastal’s first-year class transferred to other law schools. These students essentially made up the top fifth of their classes in terms of law-school grades. This is significant because high law-school grades have an even stronger correlation with passing the bar than high LSAT scores do. In other words, if only half an entering class had a decent chance of eventually passing the bar, and nearly half of those students wound up transferring elsewhere …

Lawyers may be notoriously bad at math, but this equation was simple enough. The ABA requires schools to maintain certain bar-passage rates, or they risk losing their accreditation. Indeed, the ABA’s standards state that “a law school shall not admit applicants who do not appear capable of … being admitted to the bar.” By admitting so many students who, upon graduation, seemed unlikely ever to pass the bar, Frakt pointed out, Florida Coastal was running a serious risk of being put on probation and eventually de-accredited, which would put the school in a financial death spiral. (A loss of accreditation would make it impossible for students to receive federal loans and, crucially, would prevent students from taking the bar exam in many states.)

Last summer, in the face of declining enrollment, Florida Coastal essentially fired 20 percent of its faculty in one stroke.

It was at about this point in Frakt’s presentation that Dennis Stone, the school’s president, entered the room and told Frakt that if he didn’t leave immediately, security would be called. (When The Atlantic reached out to InfiLaw for comment, the company said that Frakt’s presentation was “based upon clearly erroneous information about the school’s accreditation status and key data points,” and that Stone decided “to end the presentation rather than put up with further insults to the faculty and school from a candidate who had no chance to obtain the position.”)

But the salience of Frakt’s analysis is hard to deny, and his conclusions appear to apply equally well to the other InfiLaw schools, which are also admitting hundreds of students that no law school would have admitted until very recently. For the reasons Frakt noted, moving to a de facto open admissions standard is the law-school equivalent of eating the seed corn, since even the generally feckless ABA will not tolerate the sort of bar-passage rates that the InfiLaw schools seem likely to produce.

So why has InfiLaw—or, more accurately, Sterling Partners—gone down this route? A Florida Coastal faculty member who is familiar with the business strategies of private-equity firms told me that, in his view, the entire InfiLaw venture was quite possibly based on a very-short-term investment perspective: the idea was to make as much money as the company could as fast as possible, and then dump the whole operation onto someone else when managing it became less profitable. (As of this writing, InfiLaw is attempting to acquire the Charleston School of Law, which could be read as evidence either of its commitment to stay the course long term or of a hedge against the possibility that one or more of its current schools might lose accreditation.) For its part, Sterling Partners notes that it has been an investor in InfiLaw for more than 10 years, and that this can “hardly be described as short-term compared to industry standard.” The firm says that it takes a long-term view of its investments in higher education because “producing quality outcomes for students takes time,” and it notes that InfiLaw funds are reinvested in the schools rather than being used to subsidize a university.

Whatever InfiLaw’s intentions, one advantage of this sort of investment is that it features very few long-term capital costs. A law-school building can easily be converted into something else, and the only other significant operating cost—the school’s labor force—can be eliminated overnight. Indeed, last summer, in the face of declining enrollment, Florida Coastal essentially fired 20 percent of its faculty in one stroke, according to a faculty member familiar with the terms of the arrangement. The school offered the faculty members a buyout package and implied, according to sources, that if they declined it, the school would declare a financial exigency, allowing it to fire them without any compensation. When I asked, around the time of the buyouts, about what had taken place, InfiLaw’s former general counsel, Chidi Ogene—who had just been named Florida Coastal’s interim dean—explained to me that “some of our faculty members have indicated their interest in resigning, retiring, or continuing in a different role with the school.” Around the same time, I was told by a different faculty member that the school is negotiating to buy out the contracts of another 10 percent or so of the remaining faculty. (InfiLaw declined to comment, based on confidentiality agreements, but it denied any coercion.)

It is important to note that while InfiLaw’s abuse of the student-loan system may be egregious, it is far from unique. Ultimately, this story is about not only for-profit law schools, or law schools, or even for-profit higher education. It is about the problematic financial structure of higher education in America today. It would be comforting to think that the crisis is confined to for-profit schools—and indeed this idea is floated regularly by defenders of higher education’s status quo. But it would be more accurate to say that for-profit schools, with their unabashed pursuit of money at the expense of their students’ long-term futures, merely throw this crisis into particularly sharp relief. To see why, consider the regulatory and political mechanisms that have allowed InfiLaw to make such handsome profits while producing disastrous results for so many of its “customers.”

Students at the InfiLaw schools are able to receive federal loans and take the bar exam after they graduate because the schools have been accredited by the ABA. But why would this organization accredit such brazenly profit-driven ventures, which seem to have so little regard for whether the level of debt students incur has any rational relationship to their future job prospects?

The answer is that the accrediting committee purports to certify only the educational quality of the experience provided by these institutions, not whether they are rational investments from the perspective of their students. And the reason for this level of circumspection is evident if we consider the identity of those behind the accreditation process. The ABA’s accreditation arm was historically dominated by law-school deans and faculty. For tax purposes, almost all law schools are nonprofits. But apart from their tax status, many low-ranking ones are almost indistinguishable from for-profit schools such as Florida Coastal, Arizona Summit, and Charlotte.

What, after all, is the difference between the InfiLaw schools and Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley, or Boston’s New England Law, or Chicago’s John Marshall, or San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson? All of these law schools feature student bodies with poor academic qualifications and terrible job prospects relative to their average debt. In recent years, as law-school applications have collapsed, all of these schools have, just like the InfiLaw schools, cut their already low admissions standards. And, like Florida Coastal, Arizona Summit, and Charlotte, all of these schools now have a very high percentage of students who, given their LSAT scores, are unlikely to ever pass the bar. Ultimately, what difference does it make that none of these schools produce profit in the technical (and taxable) sense, because they are organized as nonprofits?

The only real difference between for-profit and nonprofit schools is that while for-profits are run for the benefit of their owners, nonprofits are run for the benefit of the most-powerful stakeholders within those institutions.

Consider the case of New England Law, a school of modest academic reputation that for many years produced a reasonable number of local practitioners at a non-exorbitant price. Like many similar schools, New England Law has spent years jacking up tuition and fees by leaps and bounds—after nearly doubling its price tag between 2004 and 2014, the school now costs about $44,000 a year—and graduating invariably large classes, even as the demand for legal services, and especially the legal services of graduates of low-ranked law schools, has contracted radically.

A glance at New England Law’s tax forms suggests who may have benefited most from this trajectory: John F. O’Brien, the school’s dean for the past 26 years, whom the school paid more than $873,000 in its 2012 fiscal year, the most recent yet disclosed. This is among the largest salaries of any law-school dean in the country. (By comparison, the dean at the University of Michigan Law School, a perennial top-10 institution, was reported to make less than half as much, $420,000, in 2013.) Meanwhile, the school’s graduates are burdened with crushing debt loads and job prospects only marginally less terrible than those of InfiLaw graduates. Approximately 41 percent of the students in New England Law’s 2013 graduating class had jobs as lawyers nine months after graduation, and nearly 20 percent were unemployed. (Patrick Collins, a spokesman for New England Law, said in an e-mail that, while the school does not publicly discuss its employees’ salary amounts, O’Brien “has voluntarily reduced his salary by more than 25 percent.” Collins also noted that, among last year’s employment statistics for the eight law schools in Massachusetts, New England Law’s ranked “in the middle” in terms of graduates who were “employed in full-time, long-term, JD-required positions within nine months of graduation.”)

O’Brien’s résumé reveals that he has served recently as the chair of both the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which oversees the ABA’s accreditation standards, and of the Section’s Accreditation Committee. In short, a better example of what economists and political scientists refer to as “regulatory capture”—the takeover of administrative oversight mechanisms by the very interests those mechanisms are supposed to be regulating—would be hard to find.

The odds of a graduate getting a job that justifies incurring the schools’ typical debt are essentially 100 to 1.

To be fair, O’Brien is far from the only recent example of a dean who has played a prominent role in debates about law-school regulation and reform while at the same time pulling down a gargantuan salary as the head of a law school with catastrophic employment outcomes for its graduates. For instance, Richard A. Matasar, a former dean of New York Law School, was, until his resignation in 2011, quoted regularly in the national press about the need to reform the structure of legal education, even as he collected more than half a million dollars a year from a school with employment statistics nearly as poor as those of New England Law and the InfiLaw schools.

None of this is to claim that greed and other selfish motivations are the only—or even the principal—drivers of the problematic trends in American higher education. Across the ideological spectrum, it is almost universally assumed that more and better education will function as a panacea for un- and underemployment, slow economic growth, and increasingly radical wealth disparities. Hence the broad support among liberal, moderate, and conservative politicians alike for the goal of constantly increasing the percentage of the American population that goes to college. Behind that support seems to lurk an inchoate faith—one that is absurd when articulated clearly, which is why it almost never is—that higher education will eventually make everyone middle-class.

That faith helps explain many economic features of American higher education, such as the extraordinarily inefficient structure of federal loan programs, the non-dischargeable status of student debt, and the way in which rising college costs that have far outstripped inflation for decades are treated as a law of nature rather than a product of political choices.

This past April, the Congressional Budget Office projected that Americans will incur nearly $1.3 trillion in student debt over the next 11 years. That figure is in addition to the more than $1 trillion of such debt that remains outstanding today. This is the inevitable consequence of an interwoven set of largely unchallenged assumptions: the idea that a college degree—and increasingly, thanks to rampant credential inflation, a graduate degree—should serve as a kind of minimum entrance requirement into the shrinking American middle class; the widespread belief that educational debt is always “good” debt; the related belief that the higher earnings of degreed workers are wholly caused by higher education, as opposed to being significantly correlated with it; the presumption that unlimited federal loan money should finance these beliefs; and the quiet acceptance of the reckless spending within the academy that all this money has entailed. These assumptions enabled InfiLaw’s lucrative foray into the world of for-profit education. But they have just as surely shaped the behavior of nonprofit colleges and universities.

The result is a system that has produced an entire generation of overcredentialed, underemployed, and deeply indebted young people. Just as the law-school reform movement has exposed the extent to which law schools have overpromised and underperformed, similar reform movements are calling into question the American faith in higher education in general, and all its extravagant promises regarding the supposed relationship between more (and more expensive) education and increased social mobility.

Two aphorisms from economists sum up how the story of InfiLaw, despite its idiosyncrasies, illustrates in a particularly sharp way why American higher education cannot continue down the path it has been on for more than half a century—a path of endlessly increasing costs, enabled by an unlimited supply of federal student loans. The first is Herbert Stein’s insight: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” The second is Michael Hudson’s observation: “Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be.”

The applicability of these almost Zen-like adages to the structure of higher education in America helps explain why the Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen predicted in 2013 that as many as half of the nation’s universities may go bankrupt in the next 15 years. And it also helps explain why Florida Coastal kicked a dean candidate off campus in the middle of his presentation to the faculty. The alternative was to let him discuss frankly the ways in which the school, like so many of America’s institutions of higher education, is based on a fundamentally unsustainable social and economic model.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126430)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:40 PM
Author: Razzmatazz preventive strike public bath

Campos fatalitied florida coastal here

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126474)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:41 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field

Yes, but to be fair, it was a cheap shot. I would love for him to attack the T14. Now THAT would be somethin'.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126480)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:47 PM
Author: Razzmatazz preventive strike public bath

T14s arent the problem (relatively) and arent where the vast majority of law students go

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126517)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:51 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field

They aren't the *major* problem, but many consider the T14 to be unscathed of ITE. Data from the 2012-present graduating T14 class, however, shows that they are struggling too. The problem is that prospective law students get advised that these schools are the only schools to attend. Prospective students then study the LSAT for months, cop 170+, attend, graduate with over 100k in loans, and a shit job.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126547)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:01 PM
Author: lime people who are hurt

In my view, this is how the school's should be ranked:

HYS - go at any price

CCNP - go with a small partial scholarship/grant/financial aid

Rest of the T14 - go will a 1/2 scholarship/grant/financial aid

Any state law school that has in-state tuition that is at least 1/3 less than they charge out of staters and is 40% less than a comparable private law school charges in the state.

Go nowhere else unless a scholarship equates to the same costs you would have if you went to your state school.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126611)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:04 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk

I'd say Y is the only school where one should go at any price.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126628)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:05 PM
Author: Soggy location

(actual autist weirdo 0L)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126637)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:06 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk

Defend matriculating to H or S at sticker.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126642)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:09 PM
Author: lime people who are hurt

As long as you aren't the bottom 10% of the class, you will be golden.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126658)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:12 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk

If you can get into H or S, you can get full scholarships at the lower T14 (maybe even at CLS or UCHI). Why not go there and be debt free? Does the H or S name matter that much at this juncture?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126670)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:14 PM
Author: Soggy location

you have no fucking idea what you're taling about.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126679)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:27 PM
Author: Frisky costumed center

cr

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126766)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:15 PM
Author: lime people who are hurt

OK, but that doesn't hurt my model. You are free to choose either or in that scenario. But yes, the H-bomb carries a lifetime of gravitas that a full scholly to Northwestern does not.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126681)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:02 PM
Author: sick pontificating dilemma community account

Agreed. One of the reasons why it took so long to expose the law-school scam is that students and schools always pointed the finger at those ranked below them and argued that their school was different. The attack needs to be broader. Even those graduating with highly-compensated jobs often find themselves in a career death-trap given the shifts in how firms now operate.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126617)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:04 PM
Author: Hateful corner



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126630)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:12 PM
Author: Fragrant box office striped hyena

this. even if you get the "prize" from the t14, it's a shit career because it's only a few up and most out. and the exit options are not nearly as good as consulting, etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126669)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:13 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126672)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:30 PM
Author: Frisky costumed center

i have never understood why law students think going to biglaw is some sort of life-win. it's basically a shit job, you live life by the billable hour, you get golden handcuffs, and then you're pushed out the door. miserable.

of course, i guess it's one of the only ways for some elite folks to turn an english major into a six figure salary...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126785)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:43 PM
Author: lime people who are hurt

How do we ensure this is the 1st thing that returns on a google search for Florida Coastal Law School?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126493)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:45 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field

Summon: doobs

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126504)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:27 PM
Author: Sapphire Vigorous Pervert Parlor



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126771)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:50 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

wow it only took like 10 years for a crack investigator to break this story open! meanwhile some retarded ape is getting paid 200k to be the diversity administrator for wustl

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126537)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:56 PM
Author: Soggy location

this shit is all news to boomers man.

i interned at a fed agency and the old boomer lawyers could not fucking believe their eyes when i showed them a comparatively tame WSJ article about how law school grads are dealing with a shitty market.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126578)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:57 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field

were they T14 grads?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126587)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:59 PM
Author: Soggy location

some of them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126596)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:57 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

I find that hard to believe considering how many lawyer job postings offer shit like $15/hr or $40k/year

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126588)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:00 PM
Author: Soggy location

why the fuck would a 55 year old career bigfed lawyer have any idea what craiglist law job postings were averaging?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126601)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:03 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

why the fuck are you talking about a 55 year old bigfed lawyer? is that synonymous with boomer in you mind?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126620)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:06 PM
Author: Soggy location

"i interned at a fed agency and the old boomer lawyers could not fucking believe their eyes when i showed them a comparatively tame WSJ article about how law school grads are dealing with a shitty market."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126644)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:08 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

yeah i only read the first sentence of your post. I seriously doubt most boomers in law are as ignorant as your bigfed buddies

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126653)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:14 PM
Author: Soggy location

currently work in midlaw and it's a wide spectrum for older lawyers. the ones that have the most idea have kids in law school or working in law. many completely have their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge that it was substantially easier in their day.

when this very topic was being casually discussed at a firm thing one older partner said he thought "the whole thing is being drummed up as an angle, to get sympathy." these are people that went to law school prior the modern LSAT, computers, or anything else that defines the current era. they're not all state of the industry in perspective and many of them have no real clue about the reality of the job market or law schools. you could get into GULC in their day with what is functionally a 162 on the current LSAT, a college GPA above 3.0, and a nice letter of recommendation. they don't understand why anyone goes anywhere except harvard or the state flagship on a full ride.

edit: boomer logic of the last sentence as actually pretty credited when i think about.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126678)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:21 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

fair enough. you just made me despise all lawyers born before 1960

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126723)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:25 PM
Author: Soggy location

i guess the trade off is that law school was 10X more miserable back then. but that's a small price to pay for having such an easy career after that.

one of the bigfed boomers i was talking about had worked there his entire career. he graduated from my T20 shit law center in the early 80s. he said he took the fed job because he 'couldn't get anything better at the time' because he was a fuckup in law school. if someone from my school got the job he did straight out of school today they would be in the top 15% of the class in terms of successful first job outcomes and would generally be fucking elated.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126758)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:16 PM
Author: emerald goyim

You'd be surprised then. A boomer partner at my V50 wasn't aware that law school couldn't be paid off with what you made working during your summers. They're out to lunch.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126689)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:18 PM
Author: Soggy location

lol, i forgot about this. if they don't have kids that they pay for, their minds are blown straight out the back of their skulls if you tell them what law school costs.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126705)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 3:31 PM
Author: Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127809)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:29 PM
Author: galvanic offensive locale

Truth. During OCI several years ago I met with a boomer managing partner and he thought in state tuition at the law school he attended was around $3500/year. I honestly think he didn't believe me when I told him it was ten times that.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126775)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:42 PM
Author: Hateful corner

this

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126858)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:53 PM
Author: pearly mood

LOL i clicked on this article and there was a full page curtain advertisement for a tax LLM program from a TTT school showing for 15 seconds before I could move on.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126558)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:55 PM
Author: Beady-eyed sneaky criminal space

You'll get in if you apply!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126574)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:54 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field

Michael • 12 hours ago

I'm an administrator at Florida Coastal and, IF the LSAC data cited in this article are correct, I think the author has just made our case for us. He seems to be saying that students at other law schools have at most a 30-40% chance of passing the bar if they have an LSAT score below 145. At our school, the bar pass rate is substantially higher - 70-80% ultimate, and a first time bar pass rate of 65%. For the most recent published bar results (February 2014), our bar pass rate was the same as the state average, 72.9%.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126570)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:56 PM
Author: lime people who are hurt

I stopped reading after "IF the LSAC data cited in this article are correct"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126580)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:57 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field

why? 'data' is singular OR plural

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126586)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:59 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

somebody should smack that guy in the face

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126599)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:55 PM
Author: lime people who are hurt

Can't wait until Leiter tries to piss all over this. BTW, Leiter, if you are ITT because you just read the article in The Atlantic; THAT IS SCHOLARSHIP!!!111

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126571)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 15th, 2014 6:50 PM
Author: Smoky shrine

Heh

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26136825)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 12:58 PM
Author: Soggy location

i don't think florida coastal has to worry too hard about its potential applicants reading the atlantic.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126592)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:00 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk

explain

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126603)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:04 PM
Author: diverse stage corn cake

do you really need "the atlantic" in your post?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126629)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:06 PM
Author: Soggy location

good point

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126647)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:06 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126648)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:25 PM
Author: Frisky costumed center

ha

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126755)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:40 PM
Author: Sapphire Vigorous Pervert Parlor



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126842)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 2:28 PM
Author: Useless underhanded chapel legend



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127226)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 2:51 PM
Author: magenta kitty giraffe



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127467)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 3:32 PM
Author: Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant

winrar

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127823)



Reply Favorite

Date: July 13th, 2019 11:50 AM
Author: Purple low-t quadroon whorehouse



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#38525824)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:03 PM
Author: galvanic offensive locale

As always, the key to success in America is finding a way to get the Government to give you money. InfiLaw figured it out, and by the time the hammer falls (if it ever does), it will have made billions.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126619)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:04 PM
Author: Hateful corner

you are offered a job at this private equity firm for $100K per year. do you take it, or do your morals prevent you?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126624)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:08 PM
Author: galvanic offensive locale

I would take the job, but the hours would need to be awesome because $100k sucks

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126654)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:10 PM
Author: Hateful corner

$100K is more than enough in normal parts of the country.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126662)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:13 PM
Author: galvanic offensive locale

Objectively, yes, but its a substantial pay cut from Biglaw

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126674)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:03 PM
Author: Hateful corner

"Florida Coastal is one of three law schools owned by the InfiLaw System, a corporate entity created in 2004 by Sterling Partners, a Chicago-based private-equity firm. InfiLaw purchased Florida Coastal in 2004, and then established Arizona Summit Law School (originally known as Phoenix School of Law) in 2005 and Charlotte School of Law in 2006."

and republicans laugh at the suggestion by libs that corporations are often straight up evil.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126622)



Reply Favorite

Date: August 14th, 2014 1:08 PM
Author: Soggy location

shitlib here, but our dumbfuck policies created the unlimited federal education lending for everyone bullshit that makes infinilaw or whatever viable. if corps are demonstrably the evil parasites we say they are, then libs are the naive spend-happy fucktards they say we are.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126655)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:10 PM
Author: Hateful corner

agreed

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126660)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:14 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

cr, libs are stupid and naive. but reptiles are also naive and think every profit-seeking business owner is a jerb creator

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126677)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:16 PM
Author: Soggy location

the way their tongues flicked with delight when romney tried to rebrand bloodsucking bain capital as a 'turnaround' firm is evidence that reptiles are willingly naive about their own shit.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126687)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:29 PM
Author: Tantric partner athletic conference

I graduated from undergrad in 2002. Total tuition, room and board package was 34,000.

The same year my pop bought a brand new BMW 3 series. Basic model, a few upgrades. Cost of the car: 32,000.

Last year my pop replaced the BMW with a brand new one. The 2013 version of the 2002 one. Cost of the car: 36,000.

Cost of my alma mater this year? 62,000.

Something's seriously out of whack. And yep, it's a liberal problem, not a conservative one.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126778)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:30 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126780)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:35 PM
Author: emerald goyim

Sounds eerily similar to the behavior of the MBS guys in '06-'08. Many of them were reasonably aware of the fact that values were way off and a crash was on the horizon. But rather than try to get out ahead of it and prevent the crash, they kept pumping the gravy train for all they could before it came to a stop in order to amass all the cash they could.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126814)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:38 PM
Author: shimmering set

the FDR-LBJ welfare state is fundamentally broken. we need a Texas-SV style libertarian private sector paradise

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126828)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:39 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

yes because immoral corporations that add zero value to society while raping the govt coffers is generally a liberal problem

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126833)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:45 PM
Author: Tantric partner athletic conference

It's nothing to do with corporations.

Higher education is dominated by liberals. The staff, faculty and administrations at American universities are thoroughly liberals and probably gave over 90% of their vote to Obama. They call themselves progressives and espouse a diverse, inclusive environment. Yet they've allowed their schools to rack up tuitions at a pace well above inflation and somehow justify charging a quarter of a million for a BA.

It's a deep hypocrisy underlining much of American higher education that the values they preach is completely contradicted by the financials underpinning higher education. And these people ignore it. It's one of the great hypocrisies of our time - liberal, progressive boomers encouraging young people to rack up huge debts in the name of education.



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126877)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:49 PM
Author: transparent beta point turdskin

if the problem was limited to public and private not-for-profit universities I would agree with you 100%. except I'm pretty sure it was reptiles who wanted to lump these disgraceful for-profit "universities" in with the former

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126898)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:39 PM
Author: diverse stage corn cake

yikes

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126835)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:42 PM
Author: lime people who are hurt

That's a great analogy, the car's price vs. tuition and a decade's change.

Campos should use that. It is an effective illustration. Might want to change it to a Honda Accord for more resonance with the masses.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126856)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:49 PM
Author: lime people who are hurt

I looked this up: 2014 Honda Accord EX MSRP = $24,880. 2002 Honda Accord EX MSRP = $21,500. Like a 15% increase.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126908)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:51 PM
Author: emerald goyim

Have those things even caught up with the rate of inflation?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126925)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 2:40 PM
Author: Useless underhanded chapel legend



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127348)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 2:55 PM
Author: translucent library laser beams

Wait wait wait - are you saying that tuition increases have outpaced inflation?

HO LEE FUK. Have you contacted any journalists about this revelation? XO might just be on the cusp of breaking its first major media story!

Shit bro, will you tell us how you learned to see through the Matrix like this? I'm truly impressed. There's this really smart and astute writer named Thomas Friedman that you might like too. Check him out if you get a chance.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127489)



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Date: August 15th, 2014 6:07 PM
Author: pearl locus

Outpaced inflation, and literally every other industry -- even healthcare -- by a fairly wide margin.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26136552)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:45 PM
Author: Sapphire Vigorous Pervert Parlor

who was it who made loans non-dischargeable? I'm guessing reptiles.

don't get me wrong, I still think libs get the lion's share of the blame for the retarded "everyone must go to college!" meme, which has caused as much damage as anything republicans have ever done in this area of policy.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126876)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:48 PM
Author: Hateful corner

it was while Bush was president. before that, loans could be discharged 7 years after graudation. Clinton increased that from 5 years which was the waiting period before.

also under Bush the gradplus loan was introduced, and raised rates to 6.8% and 8.5% fixed for stafford and plus loans, respectively.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126894)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 2:51 PM
Author: magenta kitty giraffe



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127471)



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Date: August 15th, 2014 5:35 PM
Author: Chrome Fortuitous Meteor

You need to look-through the corporation to the evil PE firms that created it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26136452)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:49 PM
Author: Laughsome Dopamine

(The high-five-figure-salary jobs that many prospective law students imagine they will settle for if they aren’t hired by a big firm basically do not exist.)

---

SOMEONE POST THAT ON TLS

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126904)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 1:52 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field

lol! TLS calls this MIDLAW

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26126930)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 2:40 PM
Author: Laughsome Dopamine

where's the TLS thread link?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127359)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 3:37 PM
Author: Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant

Steven co-founded Sterling in 1983 and is Chairman of the firm. Steven has been active in a number of non-profit organizations and educational charities, including the Illinois Board of Higher Education, President of the Glencoe Educational Foundation and the Investment Committee of the Jewish United Fund. He received a BS in Accountancy with Honors from the University of Illinois.

WITH JEWS YOU LOSE.

they are also in this shit, which has its kikey hands in k-12.

http://www.educate-online.com/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26127847)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 4:33 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26128365)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 4:35 PM
Author: Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant

goy: BIG LOANS

jew: BIG SCHOLARSHIPS

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26128375)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 4:36 PM
Author: Carnelian Curious Faggot Firefighter Milk

180; also, 180 moniker

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26128384)



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Date: August 14th, 2014 4:36 PM
Author: Talented Genital Piercing Legal Warrant

ty ted.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26128389)



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Date: August 15th, 2014 5:30 PM
Author: Gaped adventurous antidepressant drug field



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#26136424)



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Date: July 13th, 2019 11:48 AM
Author: glittery zombie-like rehab



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2644871&forum_id=2#38525815)