From the New York Times:
… “Enron-type accounting standards have become the norm,” says William Henderson of Indiana University, one of many exasperated law professors who are asking the American Bar Association to overhaul the way law schools assess themselves. “Every time I look at this data, I feel dirty.”
It is an open secret, Professor Henderson and others say, that schools finesse survey information in dozens of ways. And the survey’s guidelines, which are established not by U.S. News but by the American Bar Association, in conjunction with an organization called the National Association for Law Placement, all but invite trimming.
A law grad, for instance, counts as “employed after nine months” even if he or she has a job that doesn’t require a law degree. Waiting tables at Applebee’s? You’re employed. Stocking aisles at Home Depot? You’re working, too.
… Job openings for lawyers have plunged, but law schools are not dialing back enrollment. About 43,000 J.D.’s were handed out in 2009, 11 percent more than a decade earlier, and the number of law schools keeps rising — nine new ones in the last 10 years, and five more seeking approval to open in the future.
… [M]any law school professors privately are appalled by what they describe as a huge and continuing transfer of wealth, from students short on cash to richly salaried academics.
… Solving the J.D. overabundance problem, according to Professor Henderson, will have to involve one very drastic measure: a bunch of lower-tier law schools will need to close. But nobody inside of the legal establishment, he predicts, has the stomach for that. “Ultimately,” he says, “some public authority will have to step in because law schools and lawyers are incapable of policing themselves.” …
January 9th, 2011 at 4:09AM
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rebecca Hains. Rebecca Hains said: “A transfer of wealth, from students short on cash to richly salaried academics.” http://bit.ly/ffcIbP (@ GReader) […]
January 9th, 2011 at 9:24AM
I think there’s a real shortage of serious information for kids about various professions—what they’re really like to work in, what’s required to get into them, and what’s required to succeed in them. There are various TV shows, of course, focused mostly on the fields of law, crime, and medicine..not very realistically in most cases. Books on jobs/careers seem to mostly be pretty bad…either mostly reformatted BLS data or hype about whatever is hot at the moment. High-school guidance counselors and advisers at universities mostly don’t know enough to give any meaningful advice. Professors, even with the best will in the world, are going to naturally encourage bright people to enter their own fields.
None of which provides any excuses for administrators who skew data to make things look better in a field than they really are.
January 9th, 2011 at 10:15AM
The ABA can’t close law schools — they don’t have that power. In theory, they could raise their standards for accreditation, but in reality they can’t do that because of antitrust concerns.
To minimize the creative accounting on employment statistics, ideally the statistics would be collected and tabulated by an independent third party. And the rules for what counts as “employed” should definitely be changed.
January 11th, 2011 at 2:00PM
A great American once remarked “There’s a sucker born every minute”. So we should not be that harsh on the law schools: They sell their stuff – like a circus its performance.
We should not hold it against them that they are better in selling their stuff than e.g. deconstructive linguists.