ScamMadness Round 2 Update

Welcome back to the Madness! For Round 2, scores and winners were determined by a simple equation: who charges more relative to the local economy? Adjusted tuition scores were determined by dividing the sticker-price tuition (which no one pays, except the people we make pay it) by the overall cost of living ratio found on http://www.bestplaces.net. For example, Texas Tech has a tuition of $32,148 in an area with a cost of living rated at 85, meaning they would have an adjusted tuition score of 378. Hamline has a tuition of $36,066 BUT Minneapolis as a cost of living score of 105 for an adjusted tuition score of 343. Thus, to the eyes of the Truth Center, even though Hamline has a higher nominal tuition Texas Tech is actually doing a better job of gouging students, which is, of course, what matters. It's an imperfect measure (very imperfect, but since when do law schools use precise stats?), of course, but we wanted to account for the differences in cost between professor's six-bedroom houses and gourmet dinners and whatnot.

You can throw out the seeds in ScamMadness, because it's upset city, baby!

SECOND ROUND RESULTS

EAST

WIDENER 374 (38160 / 102 (Wilmington))
PACE 238 (41950 / 176)

ROGER WILLIAMS 311 (40200 / 129 (Fall River))
BROOKLYN 295 (49,976 / 169))

BALTIMORE 406 (36570 / 90)
TOURO 359 (42810 / 119)

NEW ENGLAND 285 (42490 / 149)
W.NEW ENGLAND 356 (38116 / 107)

SOUTH

BARRY 381 (34300 / 90)
CHARLOTTE 400 (36882 / 92)

THOMAS COOLEY 451 (39,750 / 88)
TEXAS SOUTHERN 240 (21396 / 89)

REGENT 288 (32,850 / 114)
FLORIDA COASTAL 427 (37596 / 88)

LIBERTY 337 (30396 / 90)
AVE MARIA 226 (36490 / 161)

MIDWEST

THOMAS COOLEY 484 (39750 / 82)
JOHN MARSHALL 405 (42600 / 105)

WILLIAM MITCHELL 343 (36020 / 105)
VALPARAISO 358 (37980 / 106)

INDIANA TECH 343 (29500 / 86)
CHICAGO-KENT 408 (42900 / 105)

CREIGHTON 367 (31986 / 87)
CAPITAL 395 (34410 / 87)

WEST

THOMAS JEFFERSON 293 (42000 / 143)
PHOENIX 428 (37740 / 88)

WILLAMETTE 338 (34570 / 102)
LAVERNE 260 (39900 / 153)

WHITTIER 283 (40,310 / 142)
LOYOLA-LOS ANGELES 303 (43660 / 144)

SAN FRANCISCO 212 (42284 / 199)
MCGEORGE 397 (42972 / 108)

NOTES AND ANALYSIS

For the public schools, out-of-state tuition was used. For schools who list tuition by the credit hour, 30 hours of credit were assumed for a full year. Credit must be given to many schools who make their tuition numbers obscure and difficult to calculate without spending 10 minutes and reading the fine print. Also, thanks to Regent U. for listing out what seems to be an accurate list of private school tuitions.

Clearly, schools in expensive urban areas need to be charging more. Law school appears to be a relative bargain in NYC or San Francisco compared to other consumer goods. The reason the cost of living in San Fran is so high is because people actually want to live there. And Rule No. 187 of the Scammer Code is that if people want to live there, they want to go to law school there. If Cooley can charge that much AND get people to move to desolate wastlands like Lansing, Michigan, surely schools like San Francisco and Golden Gate can break the 60k barrier. It's all monopoly money to the students, anyway, so why not take more of it?

Unfortunately, for-profit schools do not have to release their tax returns, so I have no way to be thoroughly jealous of the profiteers running Phoenix and Charlotte. Charging that much in low-cost areas surely must yield a lot of square footage in the BMW District with enough fencing to never have to see a minority unless they're mowing the lawn or speaking at a diversity conference.

While some heavyweights like TJLS and Barry and Brooklyn went down this round, we have a very strong Sweet Sixteen. Florida Coastal and Thomas Cooley have looked downright unstoppable as usual, but it's nice to see schools like Willamette and Valpo and Roger Williams staking their claim to scam greatness.