Remember in the last TASK FORCE, where our heroes, after getting their hands quite dirty with months of callous-creating hard work, concluded that another TASK FORCE was necessary?
Friends, the bugle call of the cavalry is just o'er the ridge.
The task force is charged with looking at the cost of legal education for students, the financing of law schools, student loans and educational debt. It will also consider current practices of law schools regarding the use of merit scholarships, tuition discounting and need-based aid.And who is on our Super Best Friends list? Among others:
- Dennis Archer (chair!): policy board member, InfiLaw
- Luke Bierman: incoming dean, Elon
- Christopher Champan: President and CEO of Access Group
- Heather Jarvis: "advocate for reducing the financial barriers to practicing public interest law"
- Philip Schrag: Georgetown Professor, cogent and insightful critic of Brian Tamanaha's work.
As a bonus, Archer is former mayor of Detroit and member Kurt Schmoke is a former mayor of Baltimore. If there's one industry that knows how to make a declining industry thrive and prosper, it's mayors who oversaw decaying industrial-growth cities. If they could only get former mayors of Cleveland or Buffalo or Scranton or Youngstown, we'd have a freakin' law school financing renaissance.
God speed, TASK FORCE. I know there are a lot of villains out there. And I have no doubt that you will respond appropriately by calling for another TASK FORCE.
Jesus Christ. The wolf pack has been tasked with analyzing and explaining why they're the right wolves to guard the hen house.
ReplyDeleteThe entire law school industry is going down in flames. You can't have 10-20% of a class (being generous) have decent outcomes and the rest of the class live with their parents in perpetual impoverishment. The ABA is a worthless mouthpiece of large corporate law firms and money-grubbing law schools. I can't wait to read what shallow drivel they come up with in this report. Why not just have ol' Chem chair the damn thing? He let us all know in the NYT that he knows law school costs are a problem. He's sure got the students' backs!
Thanks for the wonderful news. I can now sleep at night knowing that the problem of overpriced legal education will soon be solved - er, I mean, submitted to a conscientious and thoughtful task force who might come up with some ideas within a decade or two.
ReplyDeleteThe correct spelling is "ta$k force". How much money are these worthies getting for their services?
ReplyDeleteMore like task farce.
ReplyDelete"Advocate for reducing the financial barriers to practicing public interest law" is another way to say "lobbyist to get the government to subsidize law schools even more".
ReplyDeleteThe law schools are waiting for Superman. They are hoping that daddy government will step in and save them from themselves. Until then, they have to look busy with task force reports and concerned expressions on their faces.
This whole task force is an attempt to eliminate merit scholarships without lowering tuition. That means bigger profits for debt-leveraged law schools like the Infilaw roach traps.
ReplyDeleteActually, eliminating unfunded merit scholarships is probably a good step. I think the distorted market (by federal loans) would respond and lower top line prices a bit. It would also expose the lower tier as being the complete crap pile they are without the freeloaders.
ReplyDelete