Tuesday, August 2, 2016

More Federal Funding for Law Schools - Vermont Edition

The federal policy of the United States to support institutions of legal study and the professors who sacrifice large law firm salaries could not be more clear.

Yet it is not enough that the federal government provides easily repaid, risk-free lending to tens of thousands of law schools.  Law schools need more.

Enter Vermont Law School, an innovator in legal education and now an innovator in law school financial operations.
Vermont Law School is hoping to borrow $15 million from the federal government to help restructure its debts and take advantage of lower interest rates.
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The school is seeking the loan from the USDA’s Rural Development Community Facilities Direct Loan Program, which develops “essential community facilities” in rural areas.
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In order to qualify for a loan, the school must demonstrate that it “provides an essential service to the local community for the orderly development of the community in a primarily rural area, and does not include private, commercial or business undertakings,” according to guidelines on the program website.
Uh, judicial notice?

We know for a fact that the South Royalton metropolitan area - shit, the State of Vermont - needs lawyers, and you can't grow lawyers without a generous rainfall of cash and favorable government financing.  Lord knows that the scarcity of law schools in places like New York or Massachusetts will not fill the void.  "Essential community facility," indeed.

Sure, the U.S. Government could simply give practice loans to encourage lawyers to meet any rural need for lawyers, but why be direct when you can flood the market and create capitalist competition.

Furthermore, we know that law schools are more important to rural economies than lawyers.  A single law school can employ dozens and bring in 500 semester-long tourists at worst.  They're as good as military bases and way more useful in peacetime.

Frankly, I don't know why more rural areas don't open up sham higher educational institutions.  Almost overnight, even the shittiest of colleges can become centers of economic pseudo-growth in small town America, with all the protectionist trimmings that go with it from the state and federal governments.

Sure, we could find more productive uses of federal lending.  For example, for $15 million, you could just give everyone in Vermont $24 that they could then use to buy twelve (12) Powerball tickets, yielding the state an additional 7.5 million Powerball tickets and increasing the odds that one of its residents would win hundreds of millions of dollars.

It probably has the same level of economic insight as funding a butt-fucking 4th-tier law school, but we know that suckering the federal government into injecting cash for lawyers is a winning plan.

You suckers are just jealous you haven't figured out to work the system this well.

2 comments:

  1. "Frankly, I don't know why more rural areas don't open up sham higher educational institutions. Almost overnight, even the shittiest of colleges can become centers of economic pseudo-growth in small town America, with all the protectionist trimmings that go with it from the state and federal governments."

    Your military base analogy is good but I will show you a better one: prisons. These seem to find their way to rural areas that need the jobs so badly they will overlook the risks and the potential of the whole community getting stigmatized. In "The Blues Brothers" John Belushi got released from a real prison called Stateville, but everybody in Illinois calls it "Joliet" and Joliet Jake broadcast the message to the corners of the Earth. Great advertising for the City of Joliet, previously best known as the home town of Johnny Hooker in "The Sting."

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    1. I have a law school in Kadoka, South Dakota. Sure, it's unaccredited, but we're working toward provisional accreditation. If you pay me $45,000 per year, all your dreams will come true.

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