University Diaries » ‘If schools are providing their students with a quality education, Ayres said, they should have nothing to fear in offering to cover part of their students’ loans should these students decide to quit.’

A very cool idea from a couple of Yale law professors: Along with being totally candid with applicants about LSAT scores, grades, passing the bar, getting a job in a terrible legal market, and of course your school’s prestige or lack of same, and the effect of this on employment prospects, all law schools should “offer to pay off part of their first-years’ loans should these students realize that their prospects of successful legal careers are slim.”

Disapproving Yale professors fret about how the school would afford this idea. Yale’s endowment sputters along at around twenty billion – a big fat nothing compared to Harvard’s almost forty billion. They also think it would encourage students to drop out. They also fear it would lower their salaries.

None of the other professors says this last thing, of course. About salaries. But people who are still pulling down $300,000 or so in the worst market for their students in years have got to be keeping an anxious eye on the bottom line.

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=34613

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Mr Punch Says:
January 19th, 2012 at 12:30PM

Last time I looked, Yale’s endowment per student was more than Harvard’s – nothing like Princeton’s of course, but still ….

Actually, a great part of the issue for (the better) law schools is that the legal profession has changed much faster than any professional school ever could — in effect a complete revolution in career paths within large law firms (where most Yale grads go) within about five years.

david foster Says:
January 19th, 2012 at 6:01PM

What would be the logic, if any, for this applying only to law schools, rather than professionally-oriented programs (computer science, engineering, business, etc) in general??

Shane Street Says:
January 19th, 2012 at 9:05PM

Why limit the scrutiny to professionally-oriented programs?

GTWMA Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 7:01PM

Shane, you just made a lot of English and Psychology Department Heads suffer strokes.

Shane Street Says:
January 21st, 2012 at 11:26PM

GTWMA: Qui? Moi? Farthest thing from my mind…
Meanwhile, I hear Elizabeth Warren is making good bank while fighting The Man from Harvard.

GTWMA Says:
January 22nd, 2012 at 7:57AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/for-college-grads-where-the-jobs-are/2012/01/03/gIQA43KCZP_graphic.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/what-is-a-major-worth/2011/05/23/AFTmV59G_graphic.html

I agree that if we are going to go down that path, we ought to go the full measure. But, I’ve always believed a university education is about much more than getting a job. It’s about becoming a better person.

Shane Street Says:
January 22nd, 2012 at 11:40AM

UC system students are floating a plan where they would pay no tuition but some percent of their income after graduation for some period of time. Would have to find a link…..it’s interesting, and I thnk the economics could work in such a way as to make even state schools essentially independent of state funding.

GTWMA Says:
January 22nd, 2012 at 4:53PM

I think that’s a much better idea than some I’ve seen.

8 Responses to “‘If schools are providing their students with a quality education, Ayres said, they should have nothing to fear in offering to cover part of their students’ loans should these students decide to quit.’”

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Archives

Categories