Web/Tech
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Privatization scheme highlights rifts in Democratic party between donors and educators (Michael Simkovic)
Democrats in Colorado recently voted overwhelmingly to reject public school privatization and deregulation efforts (charter schools). Chalkbeat reports: "Delegates at the Colorado Democratic state assembly Saturday sent a clear message to the state chapter of Democrats for Education Reform: You don’t have a place in our party. After booing down the head of the education reform organization, who described…
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Zephyr Teachout (Fordham): Congress let Facebook CEO off the hook too easily (Michael Simkovic)
In the Guardian, Fordham's Zephyr Teachout argues that members of Congress let the CEO of Facebook off easily and essentially treated his hearing as an opportunity to curry favor with him. Teachout writes: "It was designed to fail. It was a show designed to get Zuckerberg off the hook after only a few hours in…
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Jake Brooks in NY Times: Direct Federal Student Lending Should Provide Insurance to Students and Public Investment in Education (Michael Simkovic)
John Brooks of Georgetown's excellent Op Ed is available here. Brooks calls to task some of the questionable and alarmist narratives that have been coming out of nominally liberal think tanks (which are funded by foundations linked to the private student loan industry and purveyors of ed-tech of dubious value), noting that Direct Lending, IBR and…
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U.S. News.com and Pepperdine: There but for the Grace of God go we all (Michael Simkovic)
Pepperdine’s law school recently made an error when submitting enrollment data to U.S. News.com. Pepperdine contacted U.S. News promptly after uncovering the error and submitted corrected data in time for U.S. News to use the corrected data in its ranking. Although the erroneous data was more positive than the corrected data, no reasons have been…
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Student loans are too small to cause a fiscal crisis for the federal government (Michael Simkovic)
Many alarmist narratives suggest that federal student loans are going to lead to a fiscal crisis for the federal government unless loan limits are capped, interest rates are increased, and debt forgiveness is curtailed. These hyperbolic claims are implausible. Higher education is a tiny fraction of the federal government’s spending and of the U.S. economy…
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Republican Education Bill Would Boost Profits for Private Student Lenders and Raise Financing Costs for Students (Michael Simkovic)
House Republicans recently voted along party lines in favor of a tax bill that specifically targeted higher education institutions and students for tax hikes, while providing large tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals. The Wall Street Journal reports that House Republicans are proposing an additional higher education bill that would make the terms of federal…
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New American Foundation fires a prominent researcher who criticized one of its largest donors (Michael Simkovic)
The powerful Washington D.C. think tank New America Foundation, which has ties to the technology, finance, and aerospace industries, recently fired a researcher within days after the researcher praised the European Union for fining Google for antitrust violations. Google and its CEO are among the largest donors to New America Foundation, as well as other…
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Least educated county on Oregon’s Pacific Coast shuts its last public library rather than increase taxes by $6 per month per household (Michael Simkovic)
Douglas County in rural Oregon recently shut its last public library rather than increase property taxes by around $6 per month per household. Less than 16 percent of the population of Douglas County has a bachelor's degree or above, making it the third least educated county on the Pacific Coast of the United States and the…
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Should Venture Capitalists Compete with Law Firm Partners and Judges? (Michael Simkovic)
A partner in a prominent San-Francisco-Bay-area venture capital firm recently told me, “The tech sector is eating the world. The menu is full of inefficient legacy industries.” The thesis of USC Professor Gillian Hadfield’s new book, Rules for a Flat World, is that the legal profession should be near the top of the menu. Hadfield…
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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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Developer of Law School Admission Test (LSAT) Disputes Advocacy Group’s Bar Exam Claims (Michael Simkovic)
The Law School Admission Council (LSAC)–the non-profit organization which develops and administers the Law School Admission Test (LSAT)–recently issued a press release disputing claims by the advocacy group "Law School Transparency" about the relationship between LSAT scores and bar passage rates. "Law School Transparency," headed by Kyle McEntee, prominently cited the LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study (1998) as…
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New America Foundation versus College (Michael Simkovic)
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Frank Pasquale reviews "The End of College" by Kevin Carey of the New America Foundation: "Tax-cutting, budget-slashing politicos are always eager to hear that education could be much, much cheaper. . . . “disrupting education” mobilizes investors and excites startups. Kevin Carey’s The End of College is the latest book to seize…
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“Risk Sharing” Bill is a Covert Tax on Higher Education (Michael Simkovic)
Higher education provides massive benefits to the public fisc. These benefits come in the form of additional payroll and income tax revenue, less dependence on social welfare, and student lending profits.* Based on tax revenue alone, the government’s “cut” of the higher education earnings premium is typically far larger than tuition collected by the college…
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ABA Council approves merger of the two Rutgers law schools…
College costs more than it used to. It's also worth a lot more than it used to be worth. The increase in value of a college education exceeds the increase in the cost of a college education by a very wide margin. How much has the cost of college actually increased? It may be less…
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What Deregulated Law Schools Really Look Like (Michael Simkovic)
One of the key claims of critics of legal education in general, and of ABA-approved law schools in particular, is that accreditation requirements drive up the costs of legal education without improving quality. If only we could deregulate law schools and unleash the creative power of free market competition and the awesome technological potential of…
I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that