… wants to open a new law school. First there was California, whose many law schools already graduate thousands of unemployed attorneys. California just opened yet another law school, at UC Irvine, so taxpayers there can spend yet more of their money on law professors who graduate yet more unemployed attorneys.
Now it’s Massachusetts. The Boston Globe points out the obvious:
With state tax revenues plunging, this is a baleful time to entertain the creation of a public law school at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
… [T]he state’s fiscal picture has become downright bleak… with tax revenues falling by as much as $200 million below projections in September alone. Students interested in a legal education can still turn to eight law schools across the state.
…[The] plan aims to return a portion of the tuition to the general fund rather than hold it in a trust fund managed by law school leaders. But the promise that the school won’t fall back on taxpayers relies on optimistic assumptions about tuition and enrollment levels – and appears unrealistic, especially in tight financial times. A new school could well find itself strapped for operating funds in the same way that the state college system often finds itself. Earning accreditation is neither cheap nor predictable. Significant costs include the need to build a sizable library collection, maintain an adequate student-teacher ratio, and recruit well-paid law professors capable of both teaching and publishing…
Now, multiply-billioned Harvard University, whose law faculty has grown in the last few years to fill its football stadium, could of course see an opportunity here…
I know, I know. Harvard’s so poor now. Only 25 instead of 35 billion in its endowment… But say they’d like to save a little money and spin off a whole bunch of law professors hired in flush times at four, five hundred thousand apiece. They could offer that group not termination but relocation at a lower salary… See where I’m going with this?
October 16th, 2009 at 9:54AM
The math here is entertaining. Harvard has lowered the size of introductory courses from 140 students to 80, AND every 80 students have a faculty advisor all to themselves! But Harvard has a student faculty ratio of 10:1.
Heck, sounds to me like Harvard Law could spare at least half its faculty for UMass-Dartmouth without blinking.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:27PM
This, of course, has nothing whatever to do with Harvard Law, or the law schools at Boston University, Boston College, Suffolk, NESL, WNEC, ….
There’s long been a desire in some quarters of UMass to have a law school on the theory that this would increase the university’s political clout. But the UMass system would not choose Dartmouth as a location. This initiative is also, perhaps primarily, an attempt to bail out an existing private law school. (The institution in question was established just on the Massachusetts side of the Rhode Island border at a time when RI had no law school (no longer true), and it has never achieved ABA accreditation. But it does have many local lawyers, judges, etc. as part-time faculty members, and they’re looking for a state takeover.
October 1st, 2011 at 5:40AM
[…] UC Irvine and – even more – U Mass look terribly clever. Taxpayers in these states get to subsidize these bright new law […]
October 21st, 2011 at 12:24AM
[…] whole point of a new public law school, you recall, was that “the school won’t fall back on taxpayers.” Whose money did the president […]