Author Page for Paul Campos

Dealing with the crash, Pt. 2

This post is part of a series. The first post is here.. A third post is here.

Background information here.

I got a particularly glossy and garish bit of law porn in my mailbox yesterday, from American University’s Washington College of Law. It highlighted the school’s current one hundred and something million dollar building project, (a live stream of which can be viewed here), which is erecting a voluptuous and gleaming structure among the leafy streets of northwest Washington’s Tinley Park Tenleytown neighborhood.

American is arguably the biggest ripoff going in legal academia, as it combines “prestige” of a sort (it is normally ranked among the top quarter of ABA law schools) with sky-high sticker attendance costs (estimated as $71,070 per year for 2013-14), very little in the way of tuition discounts (more than 60% of the class is currently paying sticker, and almost all the rest get a miserly $10,000 discount off that $70K bill), and wretched employment statistics, which have combined to produce a massively indebted and seriously depressed student body.

In these increasingly transparent times, the school tries to disguise these facts with a bunch of malarkey about how a law degree from American will allow prospective admits to “champion what matters”

The school markets itself as deeply committed to serving the public interest, which is an accurate characterization if serving the public interest is defined as transferring increasingly large sums of taxpayer money in the form of non-dischargeable educational loans into the bank accounts of law school administrators and faculty. Prospective AU law students are lured with visions of writing Brandeis briefs about polar bears for the DC office of the Environmental Defense Fund, without being warned that these days it’s actually easier to get a job at Wachtell than an even moderately sexy public interest position.

Moving right along . . . despite the seemingly endless supply of naive young people who can be snookered by this kind of thing, it’s heartening to note that the law school reform movement has helped crash AU’s applicant pool, which has shrunk from 9,000 three years ago to 5,800 this fall. Like other schools, American had and has three options for dealing with this unpleasant and potentially unprofitable development, which are to reduce the size of its class, the cost of attendance, or the selectivity of its admissions — or some combination of these strategies.

While the University of Iowa represents a school that appears to have gone all in with the first option, American has shoved in its chips with the third. This fall’s entering class of 474 1Ls is at just about the average size for AU entering classes over the last decade, and while real as opposed to nominal tuition data isn’t officially available yet, all indications are that the school didn’t up its very small “scholarship” budget.

What it did instead was continue to slash admissions standards. The median LSAT for the entering class has declined from the 86th to the 70th percentile in just two years, and, even more tellingly, since 2009 the 25th percentile for full-time matriculants has fallen a startling seven points — from 160 (the 80.4 percentile) to 153, which is barely above average for LSAT takers (55.6%). To get some sense of what the latter stat signifies, consider that a decade ago, only 55.6% of all law school applicants were getting into any law school, and that only about two-thirds of LSAT takers even bothered to apply to law school at all.

Amusingly, even as it trends toward an open door policy for modestly qualified applicants, American has become particularly aggressive about practicing what is known in the trade as “yield protection.” This is the practice of rejecting or more often wait listing highly qualified applicants, in order to game admission stats for the purpose of the ever-pernicious rankings. The way this works is that part of a school’s ranking is based on its “selectivity,” which is measured by what percentage of applicants it offers admission end up enrolling. What American did in this last cycle was to wait list or reject almost everybody who applied with a 166 LSAT or higher, which under the circumstances is sort of like sending Salma Hayek an email informing her that you won’t be asking her out tonight after all.

Field of nightmares

This is the first of what may be a series of posts about how law schools are dealing with the sharp decline in demand for legal education. (The second post is here. The third is here).

The University of Iowa is currently the 26th-ranked (out of 202 ABA law schools) law school in the nation, per the US News rankings. Iowa is typical of fairly highly ranked law schools at state flagship universities, in that it has raised tuition drastically over the past ten to fifteen years. In state tuition has gone from $7,100 per year in 1999 to $28,047 this year, while out of state tuition has risen from $17,600 to $49,025.

Graduate debt has risen rapidly as well: members of the 2012 graduate class averaged around $110,000 in total law school debt alone when the first payments of their loans came due in November of last year. Such debt levels would be problematic under any circumstances, but despite the school’s relatively lofty ranking, very few Iowa graduates get high-paying jobs with large law firms (17 of 185 2012 graduates got such jobs), and only 53 graduates in the class (28.6%) were reported to have a salary of $57,408 or more.

Until about six years ago, the school typically enrolled 215 to 240 JD students each year, and had at any one time around 650 to 700 such students in total (Iowa usually loses a few students on net in the post-1L transfer market).

Then a few years ago the school’s entering classes began to shrink, slowly at first, then quite suddenly:

Total JD students enrolled

2004: 712
2005: 656
2006: 644
2007: 633
2008: 616
2009: 590
2010: 574
2011: 550

In the fall of 2012, only 155 1Ls matriculated – by far the smallest class the school had seen in decades. Total enrollment fell to 517: nearly 200 less than the 712 students attending the school in 2004. Then this fall the bottom fell out. Although the school hasn’t officially announced its entering class numbers, the university’s on-line enrollment system shows only 95 first-year students matriculated last month. This story essentially confirms that number, as it reveals only 422 students (I assume this means JD students; Iowa does have an LLM program) are enrolled this fall. Total enrollment has declined 41% since 2004, and first year enrollment is down an even more startling 62% since 2004.

Why has enrollment at Iowa declined so sharply? The precise reasons are no doubt complex, but a simple answer is largely sufficient: because the school has neither reduced admissions standards nor cut real tuition (real tuition = nominal tuition minus “scholarships,” i.e., deep tuition discounts for students with high LSAT and GPA scores, cross-subsidized by students with lower scores who pay full price).

The entering 75th/median/25th LSAT percentiles for last fall’s entering class were actually higher than those of the much larger classes from a few years earlier, and while the stats for this year’s class haven’t yet been released, it seems clear that a willingness to admit a class less than half the size of the school’s traditional 1L group indicates that the school is refusing to cut admissions standards at all. Meanwhile the real cost of tuition to attend the school, as measured by nominal tuition minus discounts, continues to rise.

It’s an interesting strategy, although one that doesn’t seem sustainable, especially given that the school’s student to faculty ratio has declined from 15.5 to 1 in 2009 to 10.8 to 1 last year (I’ve been told that the faculty features a large number of very old very highly paid professors who appear to have no intention of ever retiring). At any rate, these numbers suggest that the school is experiencing a radical decline in its revenues relative to expenses. Indeed the school at present is likely to be losing a great deal of money — something which most universities (though not all) are unwilling to tolerate from schools that have traditionally been profit centers.

Iowa’s strategy is just one of several being pursued by law America’s law schools, as they confront a world in which something resembling accurate entry-level employment statistics for law graduates are now widely available, and (not coincidentally) it is suddenly no longer possible to indulge in unending consequence-free tuition increases that fund reckless institutional spending sprees, while remaining willfully blind to the effects of these policies on law school graduates.

Mmmm . . . donuts

KRISPY KREMES FOR ATTORNEY WORK (CHATWORTH, SAN FERNANDO VALLEY)
Needing a Seasoned Lawyer who’s familiar with civil suits filed at the Chatsworth courthouse. Will agree to a modest cash donation and for your time will also deliver 2 Dozen Krispy Kremes to your firm each Friday for 2 months if you can help me negotiate a settlement with Mandarich and make this Go Away! Please email phone number will call you back quickly Thanks a lot!

Location: CHATWORTH, SAN FERNANDO VALLEY
Compensation: Krispy Kremes plus Cash for Services Rendered
This is a part-time job.
Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Posting ID: 4081080825

Posted: 2013-09-20, 8:37PM PDT

Updated: 2013-09-20, 8:47PM PDT

September 19, 1973

Gram Parsons died 40 years ago today, at the age of 26.

An brief appreciation, with links to six other songs.

Did climate change cause the Great Colorado Flood of 2013?

I don’t know anything about climate science, but the rain we got last week in Boulder was truly freakish — instead of a short intense thunderstorm (the usual mode of rainfall in these parts) we had many hours of non-stop deluges, of a sort I’ve only seen in the tropics before.

Mass shootings, homicide, and the politics of gun control

Mass shootings actually aren’t on the rise, homicide in America rates are half of what they were 20 years ago — although still far higher than in other Western nations — and meaningful gun control isn’t a political possibility in this culture at this time.

Credibility struggles

It turns out that Elizabeth O’Bagy was never even accepted into the Georgetown graduate program from which she claimed to have already acquired a Ph.D.:

O’Bagy, whose work on the Syrian opposition was hailed by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), was fired from her job as the lead Syria researcher at the Institute for the Study of War on Sept. 10 after it was revealed that she misled her bosses by telling them she had completed a dissertation defense for a Georgetown Ph.D. Subsequently, questions arose as to whether or not O’Bagy was ever enrolled in the joint MA/Ph.D. program that she claimed in her official biography.

O’Bagy confirmed to The Daily Beast that she was only enrolled in a master’s program at Georgetown and had applied to join the joint MA/Ph.D. program but was never accepted.

The psychology of this sort of thing is interesting. As several LGM commenters pointed out when this story first broke last week, it’s not like you have to have a Ph.D. to get on the wingnut warmonger conservative expert on foreign affairs talking head circuit in D.C.

Perhaps these people lie just to keep in practice.

Fan appreciation day

This Deadspin story provides as good of an excuse as any to once again enjoy the wit and wisdom of Lee Elia:

(Not suitable for younger or more sensitive listeners).

Expert knowledge

A young researcher whose opinions on Syria were cited by both Senator McCain and Secretary of State John Kerry in congressional testimony last week has been fired from the Institute for the Study of War for allegedly faking her academic credentials.

The institute issued a statement on its website concerning the researcher, Elizabeth O’Bagy:

The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O’Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O’Bagy’s employment, effective immediately.

O’Bagy and her op-ed drew scrutiny last week when the Wall Street Journal failed to disclose O’Bagy’s ties to an advocacy group backing the Syrian opposition and lobbying the U.S. government to intervene in Syria. The Journal was forced to post a clarification that “in addition to her role at the Institute for the Study of War, Ms. O’Bagy is affiliated with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nonprofit operating as a 501(c)(3) pending IRS approval that subcontracts with the U.S. and British governments to provide aid to the Syrian opposition.”

O’Bagy wrote in an email this Wednesday morning: “I was just fired from ISW and I’m no longer legally allowed to discuss my employment with them or affiliate it any way.”

In an interview conducted before O’Bagy was fired from ISW, she rejected claims that her research was compromised by her affiliation to the advocacy group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force.

“My research is completely separate,” she said. “Every journalist and every researcher goes into the conflict with their own background and their own ideas.”

“Elizabeth is one of the best experts on Syria and her field work inside Syria along with her extensive networks on the ground makes her one of few people that can help inform policy makers on the reality on the ground,” said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.

Kim Kagan, the founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War, says she learned yesterday that O’Bagy had misrepresented her academic credentials and terminated her employment immediately.

O’Bagy has a masters from Georgetown University and was was enrolled in a Ph.D program, but had not yet defended her dissertation, a detail Kagan says she discovered while conducting “due diligence” and double checking O’Bagy’s work following a flurry of media attention on the young researcher.

Kagan stressed that the termination was not related to O’Bagy’s affiliation with SETF. “I had no problem with her affiliation, I approved it,” Kagan said.

Despite O’Bagy’s misrepresentation of her credentials, Kagan described her research as “rock solid” saying “the research stands, unfortunately, it stands alone.”

BTW if you thought Kim Kagan’ts name sounded familiar . . .

At Yale, Kagan met her husband Frederick Kagan, who is an American resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), son of Donald Kagan, a well-known historian and brother of Robert Kagan, another well-known writer and publicist. Robert Kagan’s wife is Victoria Nuland, spokesperson for the United States Department of State.

Tragedy and farce

Thoughts on a grim anniversary.

Diplomatic clown show or 11th-dimensional chess?

You make the call.

It’s a stunning turn of events that could change everything on Syria — if it pans out.

Facing the threat of a U.S. military strike, the country’s leaders Tuesday reportedly accepted a Russian proposal to turn over its chemical weapons.

The development, reported by Syrian state television and Russia’s Interfax news agency, came a day after the idea bubbled up in the wake of what appeared to be an off-the-cuff comment by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry . . .

Details of such a transfer have yet to be worked out, such as where the arms would go, who would safeguard them and how the world could be sure Syria had handed over its entire stockpile of chemical weapons.

But President Barack Obama worked the idea in earnest on Tuesday, speaking with French and British leaders to explore the viability of the Russian proposal. . .

The idea surfaced Monday, when Kerry — responding to a reporter asking what Syria could do to stop a U.S. attack — suggested that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week.”

“He isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously,” Kerry added.

His spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, sought to roll back the comments, saying the secretary was simply responding to a “hypothetical.”

But Lavrov quickly seized on the comment, suggesting publicly that it would be a way to avoid a U.S. strike on Syria.

Administration officials at first batted down the proposal.

A U.S. official who declined to be identified by name said Monday afternoon that no one in the administration was taking the proposal seriously.

But before long, deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf was saying the United States would take a “hard look” at the idea. White House spokesman Jay Carney said administration officials were “highly skeptical” but had to take a look.

By Monday night, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Obama was calling the idea a “potentially positive development.”

“We’re going to run this to ground,” Obama said. He said the United States will work “to see if we can arrive at something that is enforceable and serious.”

. . . snarkiness aside, if Kerry’s bumbling over the past couple of days has forestalled more unnecessary carnage, that’s all to the good.

This is getting ridiculous

And also familiar. From the Guardian’s live blog of Susan Rice’s comments this afternoon:

29m ago

Rice makes the credibility argument:

“Failing to respond could indicate that the United States is not prepared to use all the tools necessary to keep our nation secure… [it] would raise questions around the world as to whether the United States is truly prepared to use the full range of its power.”

“Other global hotspots might flare up,” she says.

“Most disturbingly, it would send a perverse message to those who seek to use the world’s worse weapons, that you can use these weapons blatantly and just get away with it,” Rice says.

Rice says that diplomatic efforts have been exhausted:

“We and others have already exhausted a host of other measures aimed at changing Assad’s calculus… these efforts have not succeeded.”

34m ago

Rice is starting to sound downright Cheney-esque. She says Assad gassing east Ghouta could “threaten our soldiers in the region and even potentially our citizens at home.” (emphasis added)

38m ago

New America Foundation president Anne-Marie Slaughter introduces Rice. She begins. Rice says it’s in the US interest to conduct “limited” strikes against the Assad regime.

She said the chemical attacks in Syria are a “serious threat to our national security.” (emphasis added)

She says she’ll explain why “it is in our national interest to take limited military action to [deter] future use” of chemical weapons.

Here’s a Rumsfeld-esque phrase: “Opening a door to their use anywhere threatens the United States and our personnel everywhere.”

There are (arguably) defensible arguments for bombing Syria, but since they’re not playing in Peoria, the administration has decided to switch to the indefensible ones.

Perhaps the new Russian initiative will allow for face-saving all around.