General - Noto Law School

Proposal To Cut Fed Funding

August 17, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General

A reader sent this article in. It made my day, enjoy!

Could the tide be turning? For-profit colleges are starting to get burned. And for added fun, they face more regulation and higher costs:

The government is now cracking down. The U.S. Education Department has proposed restricting admissions growth or cutting federal funding if not enough students can repay their loans. This would partly be based on starting salaries following graduation. The significance of these new schoolyard rules can’t be understated: federal aid makes up at least three-quarters of revenue at many for-profit educators.

The real toilet colleges will get toasted first:

Preliminary estimates suggest many of the big schools will get hit. Corinthian Colleges, the Washington Post’s Kaplan Higher Education, ITT Educational Services, and DeVry had estimated overall loan repayment rates that would fall well below the 45 percent proposed threshold.

Imagine how many law schools will have to shut their doors if these proposals expand to include them. Enrollments will go way down, and standards to get in will go way up. Maybe future classes of lawyers will actually have a shot at getting a job. Another reason to default!

Law School Scam Article

August 16, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General, Law School

The New Jersey Star-Ledger has an article today about the law school scam. It focuses on Seton Hall grad Scott Bullock, who wrote one of the scam blogs.

Unless students graduate from schools like Harvard or Yale, they “might as well be busing tables,” Bullock said.“It’s really just a big Ponzi scheme,” said Bullock, 33, of Bridgewater. “They’re just cranking kids out for $45,000 a year.”

The scam artists school administrators admit they’re watching:

School administrators, who admit to keeping tabs on these so-called “scam blogs,” which now number in the dozens, bristle at the charge that they run diploma mills.

They don’t deny it, but they still won’t put this on those shiny welcome to law school brochures:

What law school officials don’t deny is that these are challenging times for new graduates. Job openings are scarce. Firms are increasingly turning to outsourcing or contract work.

Here is why I spend time writing this blog:

But the critics ask: How can prospective students make informed decisions when they aren’t given enough information in the first place?

The schools continue to lie report numbers like this:

On its website, the school currently reports an employment rate of 94 percent for the 2009 class, but does not break that down into full-time, part-time or temporary work. The school also claims a starting salary of $145,000 in private practice, though it does not specify how many grads reported salaries in this area.

It’s not just that there is no longer a return on your monetary investment, the educational value is questioned by this recent graduate of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles:

However, Rothman, who graduated last May, says he soon questioned the value of his education when classes proved so easy that he slept through them and still achieved middling grades. He began wondering whether admissions officers would have “let a dead squirrel roll in.”

If a squirrel could get loans, they will let the squirrel in, dead or alive. They will just charge the little guy extra for insurance in case he chews on a human’s nuts while in class. It will pay another over-priced and worthless professor’s salary.

Outstanding Student Loan Debt Soars

August 16, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General, Law School

The same journalist who wrote an article on the law school scam (see post below) also wrote about school debt.

In the article, she notes that, for the first time, Americans owe more on their student loans than their credit cards. That didn’t surprise me, but the amount did:

Outstanding student loans now amount to nearly $830 billion, surpassing the $827 billion owed in revolving credit, according to an analysis by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and FastWeb.com. At least $300 billion of the student debt was incurred in the last four years.

I think it’s time for a bailout for students, or controls to keep the schools competitive enough that the degree means something when you get out. Right now, my law degree has about the same value as a used movie ticket stub.

Fourth Tier Bottom Feeders

August 14, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General, Legal Aspects

The tuition checks are being cashed and the school doors are about to open wide to another incoming class of blissfully naive students. I’ve blogged repeatedly about the crappy second and third tier schools in New York, but haven’t yet touched on the fourth tier, or what I call matchbook schools, because that’s where you’ll find most of their advertising.

Fourth Tier Albany and Touro law schools are for the truly delusional. Even in the best of times, these are schools with students who have no hope to find work even if they graduate at the top of their bottom of the barrel class.

I knew a woman who graduated from one of the fourth tier toilets “with honors” (which means she showed up sober to most of her classes) and she spent most of her career as a glorified paralegal with delusional aspirations to be an in house counsel. She was extremely impressed with her intelligence, so at least there was one person on the planet who appreciated her. I wouldn’t let her defend me for a traffic ticket.

These schools shouldn’t be accredited and students who go there shouldn’t be offended when asked if they are. It’s a valid question. Here’s what these students missed: If your LSAT score was so low that the only law school you could get into was either Touro or Albany, then you should have either waited and taken the LSAT again, or realized this just wasn’t the field for you.

Frankly, I would have forgotten that they existed if a reader hadn’t asked me to mention Touro. But someone who went to Touro will never be able to forget: They charge $20,475 PER SEMESTER for tuition. Yes, $40,950 big ones a year for a TTTT. Albany is about the same, $39,970 per year just for tuition.

Columbia, a T-5 or 6 depending on the year, charges $48,648. Even going to Columbia in this economy is a risk, going to TTTT Touro or Albany to get a degree that will at best get you a job as a paralegal, is just flushing it down a toilet.

You can still get a refund, the doors haven’t closed yet; grab your money and run out!

The Meds Made Me Do It Defense

August 14, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General

Chauncey DePew, a Kansas attorney, harassed not one, but five assistants in just two years. He claims the medicine he was taking for low testosterone made him do it.

In addition to the meds-made-me-do-it defense, Chauncey said that,”he didn’t view his behavior as wrong because he was friends with most of the women he was accused of harassing and was only joking around.”

He does criminal defense, and I really think there is something about criminal law that makes a man crave anal. Chauncey asked one of the assistants if he could “lick her butt.”

Friends don’t ask friends to lick their asses, Chauncey. The court didn’t go for either excuse and suspended him for a year.