… Above the Law, is UD‘s kind of guy. They don’t agree on everything (Mystal thinks laptopped classrooms are great), but I like his style, and I certainly agree with him on this one: Professors at law schools with poor placement rates shouldn’t pontificate about for-profit universities with poor placement rates.
Mystal first describes Seattle School of Law:
[It’s] ranked 77th by U.S. News, but the school charges $35K – plus for tuition. The cost per year exceeds $50,000 when you include books, board and other living expenses. But the school only sports a 67.9% “employed upon graduation” statistic.
Then, writing about this New York Times piece about for-profits, which basically rewrites the Business Week piece UD blogged about here, Mystal mocks a professor at Seattle interviewed for the NYT article who says this:
“If these programs keep growing, you’re going to wind up with more and more students who are graduating and can’t find meaningful employment,” said Rafael I. Pardo, a professor at Seattle University School of Law and an expert on educational finance. “They can’t generate income needed to pay back their loans, and they’re going to end up in financial distress.”
Mystal remarks:
How can you fix your mouth to criticize “trade schools” for setting up their students for financial ruin when you teach at Seattle School of Law? … I wonder why Professor Pardo exempts Seattle from the list of schools who graduate more and more students who “can’t find meaningful employment.” …
March 16th, 2010 at 10:38AM
Unfair. A rank of 77 among law schools is actually perfectly respectable territory. And graduates not only get jobs, some get very good jobs. Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law, the TARP overseer, is I believe a graduate of Rutgers-Camden,tied for 77th.
March 22nd, 2010 at 3:37PM
Right on!
The student loan game has produced a financial debacle in the USA of near-apocalyptic proportions. And universities, especially mediocre ones, have been complicit.
It has been interesting that in the past two-plus years of recession, and year-and-a-half of financial crisis, that the issue of student loans has barely been addressed.
Why didn’t the nation’s students get a TARP?!!