Ludicrous Hyperbole Watch
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Blast from the past: the “ludicrous hyperbole watch”
Back in 2005 (it was named originally for former NYU Law Dean John Sexton, the king of ludicrous hyperbole in promoting his school).
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McKinsey responds to New York Times hit piece (Michael Simkovic)
The consulting firm McKinsey is a leading employer of graduates of elite law schools, business schools, medical schools, and other professional programs. The New York Times recently ran a piece attempting to link McKinsey to regimes that abuse human rights. McKinsey's response appears below. Readers of this blog are probably familiar with how uneven in…
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Taking the LSAT will soon become more convenient (Michael Simkovic)
LSAC is rolling out several initiatives to make the LSAT more accessible, including a tablet-based version of the test that will increase the number and type of facilities that can serve as test administration centers, and will pave the way for more frequent test administration. LSAT takers will also be able to take the essay…
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Pope Center: UNC Chapel Hill remains “a problem” for suggesting that programs to alleviate poverty might help alleviate poverty (Michael Simkovic)
When North Carolina researchers who study poverty criticized conservative law makers in North Carolina, political leaders reminded academics of the dangers of speaking out against their bosses. Republicans responded by shutting down the law school's poverty center, crippling its civil rights center, and voting for draconian cuts to UNC Chapel Hill law school's budget. North…
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Northwestern Lecturer Mark A. Cohen’s Angry Outburst on Twitter (Michael Simkovic)
I recently pointed out some factual problems with claims by Northwestern lecturer Mark A. Cohen. Cohen, writing in Forbes, claimed that faculty terminations at Vermont Law School were proof that student debt was unsustainable, not only at Vermont, but at all law schools except for a handful of elite institutions. Here’s the problem: When student…
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The trouble at Vermont Law School isn’t due to “unsustainable” debt levels for students–but it might be because of unsustainable tuition discounting and underinvestment in outreach (Michael Simkovic)
Vermont Law School recently stripped many of its tenured faculty of tenure. A recent article in Forbes by Mark Cohen, a lecturer at Northwestern, claims that Vermont's financial problems are a sign that tuition is too high and student debt is unsustainable. The data doesn't support his contention. When student debt levels are unsustainable, student default…
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Skeptical academics and journalists reject Koch-Brothers-backed claims of “free speech crisis” on campus (Michael Simkovic)
Few would consider Stanford University left-wing. Stanford University hosts the controversial, conservative Hoover Institution.[1] Stanford has raised more than $40 million from conservative donors. Stanford is a major military contractor. Stanford’s last acting president (and long-time provost) argued for affirmative action in hiring in favor of conservative faculty, deploying barely coded, neo-McCarthyist phrases like “the threat…
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Should the government raid university endowments? (Michael Simkovic)
Vanderbilt Tax Professor Herwig Schlunk wants the federal government to tax university endowments, preferably out of existence. He writes: “In the best of all possible worlds, the federal government could and probably should . . . confiscate[e] all private university endowments . . .” Toward that end, Schlunk recycles arguments that were discredited years ago.…
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New York Times Reporter Elizabeth Olson Claims That Professors Earning Less than First Year Associates are Paid like Law Firm Partners (Michael Simkovic)
New York Times reporter Elizabeth Olson recently complained that the Dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law was suspended after attempting to slash faculty compensation (“Cincinnati Law Dean Is Put on Leave After Proposing Ways to Cut Budget”). According to Olson, “law schools like Cincinnati [pay hefty] six-figure professor salaries that are meant…
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Must be a slow news day
New York Times journalist Elizabeth Olson recently reported that the law school graduating class of 2015–which was very close to the size of the class of 1996–had about the same number of private sector jobs 9 months after graduation as the class of 1996. That's a pretty good outcome considering that the economy-wide employment population ratio…
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Law School Bloggers’ Latest Unscientific Fad: BLS Job Openings Projections (Michael Simkovic)
The latest unscientific fad among law school watchers is comparing job openings projections for lawyers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics* with the number of students expected to graduate from law school. Frank McIntyre and I tested this method of predicting earnings premiums–the financial benefits of a law degree–using all of the available historical projections from…
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Has there really been an IRS scandal going on for nearly three years?
Blog Emperor Caron appears to think so, though I'm a bit skeptical about his motives: since the "Instapundit" blog run by the right-wing Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds links to each day's posting about the alleged "scandal," the Blog Emperor has another incentive to keep this "hits" cow going! But what do readers think? We'll…
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Competitive Scholarships, Mandatory Courses, and the Costs and Benefits of Disclosure (Michael Simkovic)
There is a wide range of views about the benefits, costs, and appropriate use of conditional merit scholarships—scholarships that under their terms, will only be retained after the first year of law school if students maintain a minimum GPA or minimum class rank (if there is a mandatory grading curve, a minimum GPA effectively is a…
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Buffalo offers retirement incentives to faculty over 55…
…and eight accept, bringing the size of the full-time faculty from 48 down to 40. The school is also shrinking its class size slightly. Seems like sensible responses to the current economic climate for legal education.
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NYU’s Misleading Presentation of its Academic Job Placement
Tsk, tsk–technically accurate, but also misleading, since it omits the fact that NYU also had the third highest number of candidates on the market (and by a wide margin). In fact, NYU's percentage placement of its academic job seekers is quite respectable (and better than Harvard's, as it happens!), but the fact is most NYU teaching candidates did…
I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that