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Mass Insanity

University Diaries has followed the very strange public university system of Massachusetts for quite some time. Virtually all of its campuses clamor for attention. There’s the pointless bankrupting football program, the drunk and violent students… and, of course, the spanking new law school.

Yes. Law school. New law school. In the current climate for lawyers, U Mass opened, just a few years ago, a new law school.

Everyone with half a brain tried shouting it down, but up it went, with all sorts of cretinous promises (“the state would even earn a profit as enrollment was projected to more than double by 2017″). Its first president was quickly fired for financial malfeasance. It’s almost four million dollars in debt, and it’s shrinking its enrollment. Plus it’s not yet accredited.

UD is speechless.

***********

UD thanks Andre.

Margaret Soltan, May 10, 2015 8:05AM
Posted in: just plain gross

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11 Responses to “Mass Insanity”

  1. Van L. Hayhow Says:

    Actually, it is worse then that as they did not start the law school from scratch (if they had, I suspect they would have done a better job) but took over a failing private law school that had never been able to attract enough quality students or accreditation.

  2. charlie Says:

    Would it be of any comfort to know that the UC’s are also building law schools nobody needs?

    insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/07/the..

  3. Mr Punch Says:

    It’s even worse than that – the law school was originally started primarily to serve Rhode Island, which had no law school at the time. The first location was virtually on the state line.

  4. Jack/OH Says:

    In my aging, economically declining area we’ve added a proprietary college and greatly expanded a community college in the last ten years. Why?

  5. charlie Says:

    @Jack/OH, the same reason for both, Wall Street makes a fortune from both situations….

  6. Jack/OH Says:

    Charlie, uh, yeah–somebody’s making out on the higher ed deal. The county south of me has seen a 25% population drop since its 1960 peak. That county’s major city is down 60% from its 1930 peak. The local higher-ed student body is nonetheless ten times or more what it was a half-century ago.

    Back to UD’s law school post and related links. I’m so glad I rejected law school forty years ago. I had the LSAT chops, etc., but I think I calculated correctly that without family or other connections to better-quality law firms, I’d end up as a poorly paid permanent associate with no chance of partnership.

  7. MattF Says:

    Scott Lemieux posts regularly on law schools and ‘law schools’ at the Lawyers, Guns, & Money blog. Here’s a sample:

    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/05/on-top-of-a-huge-pile-of-money-with-many-beautiful-ladies

  8. charlie Says:

    @Jack/OH, no denying that student population demos, but the question is why are school districts and unis approaching the problem by firing teachers, increasing class sizes, all the while, going on massive capital/plant building jags? Well, precisely because of the reasons that Orange County, CA, decided to use Capital Appreciation Bonds to do the financing. What that means, no increased taxes, no bond servicing, but the bonds mature at far higher rates than if they had bothered to use traditional methods. The upshot, increasing class size and falling academic achievement.

    http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bonds-496091-school-bank.html

    The most telling part of the article is that Wall Street bond palaces are the biggest lobbyists and cheerleaders for the debt issuance. They have also been financing for profits unis, the one that you stated went up in your neighborhood, and pushing for massive increases in all of that building going on at the CC in your depreciating part of the world. UMASS isn’t any different, they’ve gone on a building jag, mainly for a football stadium, which has been financed by the same institutions which are draining k-12 and public unis of resources, creating a degraded pedagogy, due to the fact that all that debt has to be serviced, one way or the other.

  9. theprofessor Says:

    Our local CC has expanded despite a nearly stagnant population size because it is a steady source of patronage jobs (not so much for faculty as for staff and administration).

  10. Jack/OH Says:

    theprofessor–oh, yeah. I’ll guess any organization can maintain focus with a wee bit of patronage, cronyism, nepotism, and other irregular hires. There may be some critical mass of irregular hires where the organization just dissolves into a paycheck-collecting scheme with nominal cover activity.

  11. University Diaries » Lighten up, man! Says:

    […] contraire, the situation at U Mass, with its new law school (LOLOLOLOL) and way gussied up football program and ongoing tradition of student rioting, etc., […]

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