Scummy for-profit universities are by now a notorious national scandal; Paul Campos reminds us that that you can get the same thing in a law school:

[S]chools 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.

It’s the very same scheme as the college scheme we’ve followed on this blog for years.

Campos features an amazing story that could have come out of North Korea (or, even worse, Chicago State University). The worse a university (the worse a country), the more repressive it is, particularly about threats to its propaganda machine. A candidate for dean at arguably America’s worst law school (one of the for-profits) not long ago tried to give a truth-telling presentation to its faculty. As the candidate spoke about the school’s astonishingly, cynically, low admissions standards, the school’s president stood up and told him to stop immediately, to leave the room, and if he didn’t leave, the president would call security.

The life of mind’s a beautiful thing, ain’t it? America can be proud of its ABA approved law schools and their commitment to the robust exchange of ideas…

I mean, to be sure, if fellow travelers, fair weather friends, and enemies of the state happen to appear among us, it is not only our right but our duty to rise up as one and eliminate them from our midst…

Low-ranking not for profit law schools, Campos points out, are pretty much just as brazen in their sordid profit-taking.

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.)… 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 [for-profit law schools].

I mean, if you’re wondering just how far you have to go to catch the eye of an accreditor, take a look. Decades of arrant criminal mismanagement and outright theft to the point where they’ve basically killed the institution. That’s what it takes.

And, you know, it’s not as though we’re talking revocation of accreditation or anything. It’s only probation because (cough) we’re just starting to get a little concerned here…

I guess they noticed the Pinson trial or something…

Background on South Carolina State University here.

Way to go, Yeshiva.

****************

Of course, there’s a teeny bit of collateral damage.

Classy of Yeshiva’s president (“One portion of spending that increased more than three times was the president’s compensation: according to documents the school filed with the IRS, where [the previous president] had earned just under $344,000 in his final full year as president (2002), in recent years, [Richard] Joel’s total compensation has reached $1.2 million.”) to make jokes about the situation.

Very Marie Antoinette.

Rape, rape, rape, go the fraternities; and now some of the complainants are coming out from anonymity, naming themselves (Wesleyan’s latest allegedly raped student is Cabri Chamberlin) and speaking directly to the media. That can be very compelling. A young woman telling her story can be very difficult for a frat to go up against in the court of public opinion.

And there have been two recent frat rapes at Wesleyan! Plus one almost-rape!! (Scroll down to this long article’s next to last paragraph.) This definitely goes against the school’s rep as a sylvan progressive civilized sort of place… People are saying that Wesleyan’s going to go the way of some other schools and shut down its fraternity system.

To which UD says: ATTENTION Dartmouth College Admissions Committee: HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS. For those east coasters for whom Zoo Mass simply won’t do – class-wise – you are kind of it now, if you know what I mean… The other Ivies either don’t feature your famous “intoxicating nihilism,” or they try and fail. No one does it like Dartmouth, and word’s getting out, especially after that Rolling Stone piece and all. An avalanche of applications for admission is on its way!

Correct answer: Nothing. You don’t want to know from NMSU because NMSU is NSFW – it’s the sort of obscenity from which decent people avert their eyes. Tens of millions of dollars in athletics debt… no one goes to the football games… no money for academics… and except for this guy and a few others no one gives a shit.

Here’s a sample from a letter the chair of the board of trustees wrote. I won’t quote from it because I’m one of those people who doesn’t enjoy puking her guts out, but you might enjoy it, so go ahead and take a look.

A couple of NMSU students actually thought trying to understand what the trustee wrote and then responding to it might be worthwhile, and UD applauds the effort. You should never give up on human beings, no matter how…

This is truly a clown school. This is truly a school with not a shred of dignity. And now this. One of their players is a violent shit who set off a huge on-court brawl. UD figures he’ll be back attacking opponents after a two-game suspension. After all, it’s New Mexico State.

Its applications are down fourteen percent this year due to the JTD (Just Too Disgusting) problem.

The Rolling Stone article about its way-past-you-could-puke frat system probably accounts for about five percent of the drop (“There’s been a lot of turnover [of staff] in the Dean of the College and other offices . . . and fraternities have been left somewhat to their own devices,” [one alumnus] said. “It’s become a bit of a ‘Lord of the Flies’ situation.”).

The rest of the drop might be parceled out between catastrophic credit swaps courtesy of grown up frat boys, and of course Christopher Kipouras.

The American university as plantation.

… keeps his job as superintendent of schools despite a domestic violence incident, and despite sending out a series of disgusting tweets about the state’s education secretary. The school board loves him and is keeping him until at least 2016. Although it’s not extending the contract, it has made clear that because it continues to love him, it will review its non-extension decision.

Why does it love him? Because he fanatically opposes the ed secretary’s efforts to do something about the fact that New Mexico perennially ranks close to dead last for educational achievement.

Don’t nobody get to fuck with that.

… once again cracks the whip. You recall its directive to faculty last year:

In an email sent March 22 to faculty and staff, Sabrina Land, the university’s director of marketing and communications, wrote that all communications must be “strategically deployed” in a way that “safeguards the reputation, work product and ultimately, the students, of CSU.”

The policy applies to media interviews, opinion pieces, newsletters, social media and other types of communications, stating that they must be approved by the university’s division of public relations. “All disclosures to the media will be communicated by an authorized CSU media relations officer or designate,” the policy says.

Failure to follow the rules “will be treated as serious and will result in disciplinary action, possible termination and could give rise to civil and/or criminal liability on the part of the employee.”

And they meant it, baby. Chicago State has a 10% graduation rate, and much else besides, to protect; and now you’ve got some faculty undermining the peace-loving progressive masses of CSU by starting a blog!

A blog written by Chicago State University faculty members that has been critical of the school’s administration was sent a “cease and desist” notice by university lawyers …

[CSU] said the blog “violates the University’s values and policies requiring civility and professionalism of all University faculty members.”

Cage demanded that site administrators “immediately disable” the blog and provide written confirmation of that no later than Friday to “avoid legal action.”

UD trusts free speech advocates are all over this one. I’d say it’s an outrage, but everything about CSU is outrageous and it still syphons huge tax dollars from the poor citizens of Illinois. So it’s wasted breath.

************************

Scott Jaschik takes note.

New to teaching, I was proudly gazing at a sign on my office door proclaiming “Assistant Professor Grossman,” when the department secretary knocked.

“Would you like seasons tickets for the faculty cheering section in the football stadium?” she asked.

“No thank you,” I said, effectively ending my social life at the University of Nebraska. I didn’t realize it wasn’t a question but an imperative. Faculty members were expected to wear sweaters with the school colors and hold up colored pieces of cardboard to spell out, in giant letters, eternal verities like: “Hold That Line!”

Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune

Brings back memories of Mr Risperdal himself, Harvard University’s Joseph Biederman.

… tradition; the university itself is clearly proud of it, since after decades of totally pissed vileness it continues to respond with soft words… Continues to set things up on campus to achieve optimal pillaging. They riot when they’ve been sleeping; they riot when they’re awake; they riot when they’ve been bad or good — so let them RIOT for goodness’ sake!

U Mass Amherst is one of those schools which (let’s be honest) knows it would have to shut down if it didn’t admit its cohort, and the U Mass cohort happens to be gangs of alcoholic bullies from the eastern seaboard. Similarly, if Ole Miss systematically shunned Confederacy loyalists with a big thirst, they’d lose a significant chunk of their incoming class. Most universities are dominated by a representative slice of the American pie; U Mass Amherst, Ole Miss, LSU, Clemson, Auburn, Alabama, Cal State Chico … these schools are not. They play the role of the freaks of this blog, the frenzied teetering muttering mad uncles of the American university family. When you give their students guns, as at Oklahoma State, you witness all manner of amazing things.

Yeshiva University. A gem of a place. Once again it is fighting with all its might against doing the decent thing: Offering a reasonable settlement to the 31 men sexually abused as boys by its educator of the year, under the watch of its president.

… med students, Evan Dobelle has decided to go down swinging.

… just took one hell of a plunge.

“I hope that [by] using this soft, constructive approach, we can help them and North Asia and the world to be a better place for mankind,” [the conferring university’s president said].

***************************

Sets an interesting precedent.

“The Indian Institute of Technology has awarded an honorary doctorate in criminology to Dawood Ibrahim. ‘I hope that by using this soft, constructive approach, we can help the D-Company and organized crime around the world to be a better activity for mankind,’ IIT’s president said.”