Saturday, October 5, 2013

The Enduring Fourth Tier: CSOL and Indiana Tech

The year is 2013.  It's October.  The cat has been out of the bag for quite some time.

And yet there's a pending bidding war that's developed for the for-sale Charleston School of Law.  Read it and weep:
The state’s Commission on Higher Education on Thursday gave Charleston School of Law leaders a green light to discuss a possible sale of the private law school to the public College of Charleston.  Edward Westbrook, one of the law school’s founders and a member of its board, had asked the commission...
...
Retired U.S. magistrate judges George Kosko and Robert Carr, two of the three remaining founders and board members of the law school, however, announced Tuesday that they were proceeding with a sale to the for-profit InfiLaw System.
...
College of Charleston spokesman Mike Robertson said the college is interested in entering into discussions about a possible acquisition of the law school.... the college is prepared to enter into these discussions if the Charleston School of Law indicates its interest.”
Ha!  You stupid kids keep talking about law schools closing.  These founders have a private party who wants to buy their craptacular law school, and now they have the green light to open discussions with a public school.  So now they're either getting the state to overpay them for a law school that has limited prospects OR they can push InfiLaw for a higher price.

Have these guys played their cards right, or what?  They picked one of the two entities that would cause an uproar among their fourth-tier alunmi sufficient to get the state involved in possibly taking over the law school instead.  This is high-level corporate gamesmanship.  These guys have been feasting off student loans for years; what more could you expect than a brilliant exit strategy that screws the state one way or the other?

Seriously, at this point these public servants (two of the three are former federal judges) are either going to leave the state of South Carolina holding the bag of a deadweight second public law school or a fully-fledged member of the InfiLaw troupe.

In case you can't see the ending, the founders are the only people sure to win this game.

Meanwhile, at Indiana Tech:
...the school is also providing training in things like legal writing, litigation and alternative dispute resolution with a lot of hands-on instruction in courtroom settings. 
"We'll basically enact or re-enact a case like Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, where we have to present both sides of the argument, and both sides can be argued very well, and we're learning that, and we learn it a lot better than just a regular lecture..."
Behold the revolution in law school pedagogy!  Arguing cases like Hamdi v. Rumsfeld is exactly what these students will be doing in five years, so it's good that they're actually learning how to argue these high-level cases about the due process rights of who-the-fuck-cares.

(Why in the butter-flavored world are you discussing Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in the first two months of law classes?)

Oh, and for the record, the survivor count at Indiana Tech is at 28 according to that article.  The joke's on you, people who thought they'd be down to 25 by midterms.  If junction boys logic has any truth to it, these are going to be the best lawyers in the state.

(Are they even going to set a curve for this class?   Kick out the bottom 2?  Rescind scholarships for not being in the top 14?  Is everyone going to be a board member on the I-Tech Law Review?)

5 comments:

  1. about Chazton:

    The state can wait for Infiscam to go bankrupt. They have huge refinanced debts of their own, and when income goes to near zero they have to auction off the assets. The state can then pay its own price, assuming there isn't yet another scamcorp eager to buy a defunct JD factory in Chazton.

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    1. Do you think a state government/entity is smart enough to tell its citizens to be patient on assets of declining value, when they're fretting because their beloved school is going to soiled by the profiteers?

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  2. Indiana TTTTTech Law Sewer had an initial class size of 32, correct? If four students have already dropped out, then the school's enrollment is 12.5% lower already! I am loving this development.

    I seriously have a smile from ear to ear. Hell, I usually only get this thrilled when my kid does something funny.

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    1. I'm quite happy about this one too. If Indiana Tech is going down, and down some more, then justice does exist, and everything's right in the universe. Not to mention the comic ineptitude of the Fort Wayne scammers, which is to me an unending source of amusement.

      And, of course, my heart goes out to those 32 (or maybe 34?) poor bumpkins whose indentured servitude gave Indiana Tech some cause for optimism. Those who dropped out--a very good decision by the way--must have incurred some debts for tuition, but otherwise they're now free from the scam.

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    2. I went back to the August 20 interview for some basic facts, as presented by the dean of Indiana Tech. It was indeed 32 students, with a 33rd approved overnight and expecting to attend.

      And, of course, the dean didn't do his homework, didn't know enough about his incoming students, and showed poor preparation and a poor work ethic. Not to mention the dubious ethics of presentating his redundant institution as somehow progressive or unique.

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