Law School - Failure of a Model

More proof of the failure of the law school educational model.

"A law degree isn't necessarily a license to print money these days.

For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. Big law firms this year boosted their starting salaries to as high as $160,000. But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from a supply-and-demand imbalance that's suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don't score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can exceed $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market."

If you go to the career services website of the school where I work, mean, median, mode and range of salaries earned by graduates is public data. Granted, there may be some survey problems. Some law schools offer the same, but only the highest earners respond.

The failure of the law school model is clear in this article. Universities open a law school as a cash cow, because you can offer large classes and save money on professors, resources, etc, unlike with most other graduate programs. Case in point: "Universities are starting up more law schools in part for prestige but also because they are money makers. Costs are low compared with other graduate schools and classrooms can be large. Since 1995, the number of ABA-accredited schools increased by 11%, to 196." Unlike say, a college of education, where most full-time grad students work on campus to defray the cost of tuition, law students generally pay full price.

Law schools are failing their students. I think this is the bottom line here. They're advertising a product (a career) on which they can't follow through. It's a shame, and having experienced it first hand with friends and loved ones, it makes me angry.

I think there's a separate issue here, too, of why people go to law school (it came up in some facebook conversations with friends) but I'll save that for another post.

Scrabble

Did you know you can play scrabble on facebook? The only issue is that there doesn't appear to be the extra points squares (you know, double letter points, triple word points, etc). I played scrabble with B on Friday night and as usual, lost. Being an English major I try to come up with the best words, although it's usually the use of points that helps you win. That would make sense, I suppose.

In any case, play scrabble with me on facebook! Right - like I need more time wasters at work.

It's a Sunny Day...

...outside and in my head, too. I'm still working on the Really Big Idea, but I need to get ready for launch. I will most likely preview the article that I'm writing here first, and then I will ask you for your help!

Right now I'm working on the title/website domain name.

A Really Big Idea

If you know me, you know that if I'm up at 11:50pm on a Thursday night (and I have to work tomorrow), something is up.

And something is up. I'm working on a really big idea, a huge idea. The problem is that I need a good wiki to do it, and word on the blogs is that Google is about to launch a wiki. I had been using PB Wiki, but the capacity is low (i.e. you can't load that many files). If I can get my idea to really take off, I will need more space than they can provide. I don't know that Google will have a more robust wiki, but it's worth waiting... although I'm hoping it doesn't take a month, by which time someone else could come up with the same really big idea and... well, there you go.

I'd love to share it, but I want to do it right. So please stay tuned. And remind me if I somehow get caught up in the day-to-day details of say, getting my car's emissions tested.

Vanishing Languages

"About 80 percent of the world's people speak 83 languages, while about 3,500 languages are spoken by just 0.2 percent of the world's population."

Just one stat from this article.

"Vanishing Languages Identified." (Weiss, R. The Washington Post. 9/19/2007)

Enduring Voices Project: National Geographic Society

Paris and Fashion, all in the same day

By now you can tell how much I'm procrastinating simply by how many articles I read today. You should see my office. I recycled about 10 newspapers and it barely made a dent! There are still papers everywhere, namely the Chronicles I'm busy not reading. Although that would be another good way to procrastinate. That and clean out all my coffee cups.

In any case, this first article reminded me of when I was working on my master's thesis and spent every day it was open at Pompidou. Known to most people as a museum, it also has a free library where all the great unwashed students go to do research. The queue would begin about an hour before the library opened (which was at NOON, people. Can you imagine how crazy this drove me? I hate getting to work after 8:30!) and people would cut in front of you continually.

Once you entered the library, things got a little better. I sat at my microfiche machine, reading 10-year old copies of Elle (don't ask), searching for truth by way of fashion. About four hours into my research, inevitably one of the unwashed Parisian students would ask me out on a date. The library is a well known lieu-de-drague, or pick-up-joint. This would terrify me and I would leave, scurrying back on the metro to my silent peach-carpeted apartment in the 16th arrondissement.

This article paints a different picture, but a poignant one.

"A Scholar's Paris." (Kaplan, A. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 9/14/07)

And now for fashion! There are a few professors in the business school who subscribe to the "LL-Bean-Jeans-and-T-shirt-backpack-one-of-the-students" look (I disapprove), but most look like they work in the dean's office. Or maybe that's because most of my interactions are with people who do work in the dean's office. Either way, it's a lot of Brooks Brothers.

"Frump and Circumstance." (Fogg, P. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 9/14/07)

Crazy name, that Fogg. At first I thought it was Frogg. That would be cool.

InsideCatholic.com

A friend of mine (from Sewanee, no less) wrote the headline column for 9/11. I was disappointed that I couldn't respond, but maybe they'll get that feature up.

InsideCatholic.com

Miller/McKeon Draft of Changes to NCLB

I like it! No foreign language yet, but we're getting there, right?

"House plan embraces subjects viewed as neglected." (Manzo, K. Education Week. 9/7/07.)

Thoughts on Florida Merit Pay as a way to avoid working

I'm avoiding my work, which stinks right now, and even my research project, which has hit a major snag. Usually I can do one to avoid the other, but right now it is not the case. I'm kind of bummed, actually. I haven't been this exhausted from work since my first year of teaching.

So, I am procrastinating by looking at policy. No Child Left Behind is up for re-authorization. A senator commented that reauthorization is like a get-well card; you have good intentions, but it doesn't help the person out that much. So there's going to be a large fight with many lobbying groups represented over what a "Get Well, America's Schools" card should say. Can you imagine? I can see some interest groups arguing over the apostrophe. "America doesn't own the schools! Schools are local!" Or something like that.

Man, I am bummed! I have to keep writing, it will allow me to focus on other things.

Also, I found an article about merit pay for schools that should surprise no one. And it's in the Orlando Sentinel, the closest thing I have to a hometown newspaper in the closest thing I have to a hometown!

Woah, apparently there was a 12-car crash on I-4. Whoops.

Anyway, back to merit pay. According to the email:

"At Palm Lake Elementary, two out of three teachers earned a bonus through Orange County Public Schools' merit-pay plan.
At Richmond Heights Elementary, the number was zero.
Palm Lake is a predominantly white school in the affluent Dr. Phillips area.
Richmond Heights is a predominantly black school in a poverty-stricken pocket of Orlando."

Apparently the "Special Teachers are Rewarded" program should really be named the "Special Teachers of White Children are Rewarded, and Sometimes Hispanic Children." I guess STWCAR isn't really as good of an acronym as STAR.

Again, merit pay can be a good thing, I think. What Orange County has done, though, is provide more ammunition to those who are against it. This is merit pay poorly executed, and should not represent what it can do. Although I have to find some research supporting my position; I'm basing my argument that merit pay can be good on gut feeling, which is not scientifically accurate.

Oh, and our beloved Hanushek makes an appearance - the relatively famous (at least for eduwonks like me) economist of education.

"Eric Hanushek, a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, said he was surprised by Orange's results. The Koret panel analyzed Florida's education system last year.

Hanushek's own research shows that good teachers are mixed in at all kinds of schools, he said, so he can't account for the disparity or to what degree the state's formula, Orange's hiring practice or other issues influence the result."

Check out the article for yourself. I'd love to be on a "Task Force" for education. I also have several old posts on merit pay.

"Florida and Merit Pay." (2/12/07)
"Life School Balance." (2/19/07)

"Merit pay for teachers reveals sway of affluence." (Hobbes, E. The Orlando Sentinel. 9/9/07)

Email

All emails should: be brief, contain context for the reader, give the reader something to act on, and contain a deadline. Also I think all emails should have a signature with your contact information, including email address, phone, fax, and office address so when I'm FedEx-ing you a document, I know what office it is going to.

"Write a perfect email." (Wired How-To Wiki.)

Contents of My Brain

I would love to sit here and spill the contents of my brain to you. At the moment, my brain is off scheming about ways I can take a nap. I could lay down on the floor of my office and close the door with a "Please Knock" sign. Or discover a way to be sitting up and....

I just did it, and for a moment was in far away deliciousness. But back to here and now.

I have discovered that I often present people with the outcome of a carefully considered chain of thought, without letting them know many (or any) of the steps in-between genesis and completion. It's a problem, and it gets worse when I'm tired. Sometimes, though, explaining myself to other people makes me feel exhausted. It also makes me feel as if others don't trust me. I know that it's probably a combination of my communication difficulties and a lack of trust on the part of others. It's me, and it's them.

Just zoned out again, this time with my eyes open. I can't wait for an uninterrupted nap. Or uninterrupted time, where I can just think.