The work to which Paul Campos referred in the last sentence of this April 2011 New Republic piece involved honest analysis of (wretched) job placements for law school graduates.
And now, with the latest numbers on applications to America’s law schools – not surprisingly, given the lack of jobs, they’re way, way down, especially among America’s smartest students – the work also involves an honest look at tuition, law professors’ salaries, and the outrageous rate at which new law schools (most notoriously, the one at Irvine, and the one at U Mass) are opening.
On the salary issue: As Campos noted in a comment on this blog:
A range of $140K to 300Kish is accurate for top law schools… Mid-tier schools are more likely to have a range from the low $100s to the mid $200s. Lower tier schools pay less, perhaps $80K to high $100s.
At Above the Law, a writer asks, “could the decline in law school applicants mean tuition cuts [and therefore lower salaries] are on the way?,” and answers no: “[I]nstead of listening to reason, law school tuition is still on the rise.”
It’s really a kind of let them eat cake madness.
Ira Boudway, in Bloomberg Business Week:
Ad Age reported this week that the NCAA has sent out a request for proposals for a new agency to help spread the good word about college sports. The request includes a sideways acknowledgement of the bad press that has dogged the NCAA over the past two years: “Market research and media analytics show that misperceptions persist and opportunities exist to inform public opinion, increase confidence in the association, and boost awareness and advocacy for the positive values of intercollegiate athletics.”
To quote George Orwell, “such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”
He goes on to list some of the zillions of events and people in big-time university sports whose pictures you don’t want your phraseology evoking.
And not that a basement-dweller like the NCAA can get any lower, but note the insult of using university money for burnishing the NCAA.
University Diaries will cover the ad campaign. Should be a hoot.
… have been killed in what looks like an attempted carjacking near campus.
“Today Auburn does not have to take a back seat to nobody academically or in sports, especially in football, and a big part of the reason is Bobby Lowder.”
… goes to the University of Alaska, for refusing to talk about accusations of plagiarism against the dean of students, one of whose jobs was “enforcement of the university’s plagiarism policy.” The dean has just resigned, as it happens, and that’s the end of the matter.
Fired.
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The Petrino valedictories are already rolling in.
College football is better off this morning than it was the day before. We don’t get to say that very often about the dirtiest sport in the country, do we?
Readers sometimes wonder why University Diaries spends so much time on big-time university sports. It’s the dirtiest sport in the country, kiddies, and it’s happening at America’s universities.
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And as with the beaten-to-a-pulp-by-football-players problem at Colorado State, don’t even bother wondering about the reputational damage (though read this – you’ll enjoy it.) Just think about how much money it’s going to cost the University of Arkansas. Petrino “seems to be leaning in … [the] direction” of a lawsuit; the woman on his motorcycle might want to try her hand at a lawsuit too; there’s the cost associated with a new coach, who will certainly ask for a premium given the shit he’s walking in to. Think of how much money this public university will pay to vet candidates for that job in order to avoid another liar who can’t control his motorcycle.
But hey. The state of Arkansas is doing a great job educating its people. No problem siphoning off that tax money.
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[B]y putting his girlfriend on the state payroll, Bobby Petrino sealed his fate. And cost himself $18 million…
UD loves that shit. She’s heard it so many times from so many university coaches over the years of this blog. We didn’t recruit the football players who beat four of our students to a pulp (the students filed formal complaints at Colorado State University today). It was those other guys…
What other guys? The coach before you? Like you don’t have a recruiting staff? Like it’s not made up of the same people who brought the school the three horsemen of the apocalypse? Like it was just that guy, the bad guy, and now you’re here, and you’re the good guy…
When your university’s endowment is 32 billion dollars, every penny counts. Anything that might threaten it needs to be resisted.
So you can understand why Harvard Management Company representatives refused to appear on a panel with a person critical of their management of the endowment. What if something that person said discouraged people from giving to Harvard? What would become of Harvard if its endowment sank to 30 billion?
Yes, we few, we happy few, selectively admitted to American universities because we’re sons of bitches who can tackle. Are we bad at distinguishing between on- and off-field tackling? Yes, but everyone will put up with this because we play football! If the university that admits us has to sacrifice a few raped or beaten students to our violence… well… okay!
But it’s so unfortunate when newspapers run pictures of the latest batch of students we beat the shit out of. There they are with their eyes sealed shut and their teeth broken and shoeprints on their backs. Parents can thank the Colorado State University recruiting coaches. Parents can say a totally fucked up kid is more than worth it. Go Rams!
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While watching this interview, imagine you’re the chief financial officer of Colorado State University. Forget reputation and bad publicity and all that. Simply consider how much this is going to cost you in court fees, buyouts of athletic staff, settlements, attorneys.
The fact that some of the same players, only a few weeks ago, got into a violent fight and CSU did nothing about it is really not going to help you. Words like negligence come to mind.
A couple of updates:
1.) The University of New Mexico athletics will run a two million dollar deficit.
Reasons? All the classics: Gotta pay a vile ex-coach hundreds of thousands in buyout bucks. Nobody comes to the shitty games. Current coach costing almost a million.
Solutions? All the classics: Stick it to the students — up their fees. (Nothing says grow your fan base like the combination of a bad team, an overpaid coach, and ripped off students.) And take out a whopper of a loan.
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2.) The University of Hawaii will run a two million dollar deficit. Same as UNM.
Reasons? Same as UNM.
Solutions? Same as UNM.
— the fifth in my series of Inside Higher Ed columns about what it’s like to teach a MOOC, is here.
… will shortly be available. It’s a close reading of Sunday Morning, by Wallace Stevens.
My fifth in a series of posts at Inside Higher Education about doing a MOOC will also be published soon. I’ll link to it.
“It’s like saying, ‘I don’t like Pollock because he splattered paint,’” said Nina Rappaport, chairwoman of Docomomo-New York/Tri-State, an organization that promotes the preservation of Modernist architecture. “Does that mean we shouldn’t put it in a museum? No, it means we teach people about these things.”
Actually, disliking a local Brutalist building and wanting it demolished – see this New York Times article about townspeople in upstate New York interested in getting rid of a Paul Rudolph thing – is nothing like that. When you’re in the mood, you visit a Pollack painting in a museum. You don’t live or work in a Pollack painting. You don’t look at it every day whether you want to or not.
You don’t get to say I’m thrilled to have a job working for the city of Boston, but I’m going to work in a building I prefer.
It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to work for the FBI, but I’ll be moving into a space in the Old Post Office, thanks.
No, people feel strongly about architecture because it’s ubiquitous, inescapable, having profound quotidian impact.
Nina Rappaport can teach ’til she’s blue in the facade, but it turns out that no one likes to be brutalized.