Law Schools That Fudge Job Data Could Face Fines, Accreditation Loss

October 18, 2011, 1:24 pm

Law schools that intentionally falsify data on their graduates’ jobs could face fines or even lose their accreditation under a proposal being drafted by the American Bar Association.

The association is drawing up a new standard that will spell out “specific and severe penalties” for misreporting the kinds of jobs and salaries that law-school graduates land. The association, whose Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar accredits law schools, has publicly censured Villanova University School of Law for misreporting another form of consumer data—students’ grade-point averages—and a similar complaint is under investigation at the University of Illinois’s law school.

Meanwhile, law schools are facing challenges in the courts and in Congress for allegedly glossing over gloomy postgraduate-employment statistics.

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suomynona

The way we live now: corporations are so massive that, even if bosses like R. Murdoch were ethical and responsible people, they couldn’t possibly oversee with any credibility the vast empires over which they preside. This, in itself, is a major ethical problem, even before we get to the misdeeds of slimy CEOs.
akafka

Eloquently put, Laurie. I also hope the scandal doesn’t taint the excellent WSJ reporters and editors who have given the news side of that paper so much great momentum recently, and the hard-working local reporters of the Fox news stations who, whatever the biases of the network as a whole, still often cover a lot of breaking metro crime and city stories really diligently.
trendisnotdestiny

We can go after the 15 year old kid downloading free music off of napster with jail and fines, but uncle Rupert seems to get a pass here in his Propaganda empire?
trendisnotdestiny

To Everyone,

I do not think I am overstating this. Everyone should check out the latest information on ALEC (American Legislative Executive Council). It does pertain to the Murdoch’s and Koch’s of the world.

There is nearly 800 pages of information linking corporations and politicians to the creation of a decades old well-hidden “right-wing” organization that works to circumvent our democracy. The Nation Magazine name names, who these people are: corporations, lobbyists, politicians, scholars, and funding sources. http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

The press release by the Center for Media & Democracy links the work of these two thousand members of congress, corporate elite and ideological business community members to the following characteristics which may sound familiar:

1) Starving State Government of Revenue to make it Dysfunctional and Despised
2) Transforming Government for the Public Good into “Gov’t Inc.”
3) Race to the Bottom Wages for Americans (more malleable)
4) De-funding Traditional Supporters of Democratic Party or Larger Public Interests (PBS/NPR)
5) Pick & Choose Federalism Hypocrisy- boilerplate bills introduced into each state house

These are the people who want to privatize education (create on-line for-profit mega universities). These are the people who do not want a single payer system because it is socialist
but they fail to mention that:
   in 1980 the top 5% held $8 trillion in assets
           by 2011 the top 5% owned $40 trillion in assets

($32 Trillion is a greater total than all of the assets ever made in world history put together before 1980 – this stat was taken from Reagan chief finance adviser David Stockman.

But ironically they cannot afford tax hikes. Instead, they want to shift more and more of the burden to the middle class by reducing and eliminating medicare, social security, union organizing, tenure, and all long term obligations because they do not want to take a hit after the largest party in the history of the financial world…..   It’s time to stop the bastards…..

Brought to you by the Ministry of Magic, the next butter beer is on me.
_perplexed_

I followed the link to the “alecexposed” website that you provided, and thought that the treatment of ALEC may have been a bit hyperbolic. I then went to http://www.alec.org to see what they had to say for themselves…and after exploring their website, I have to say that the Center for Media & Democracy discussion is overly sober and restrained. ALEC’s “states rights” platform demands more than the Confederacy ever did.
trendisnotdestiny

I see this information as extremely helpful. Funny too, the difference between the website you referenced was not what I experienced. The CMD website was more geared for the stories about ALEC and alecexposed.org stuff was more about organizing all the information they had. So, it is interesting that you may find it hyperbolic. I don’t know about you perplexed, but having a better understanding why certain laws get passed, changed, or written for corporate interests does not represent hyperbole.

Considering that we passed a tepid financial reform bill after the crisis that many within ALEC wanted to gut (CFPB) or having renewed the patriot act or watched as the Citizen’s United case came and went allowing corporate personhood to be used as an argument for the basis of corrupting our political system, I personally do not think this is hyperbolic.

But what I do know about this information (if properly used) is that we can begin institutional analysis of a variety of bills that are on the state dockets. I do know that we can review previously written bills by the political members of ALEC and mine the data for the links in the legislation to their corporate brethren. I do know that we can now exert pressure on the corporations by not buying their products. I do know the names of people who are actually ruining the country I live in. I do know that the scholars who affiliate with them are now subject to increased scrutiny (financially, academically and socially).

One of the things that has prevented resistance is knowing thine enemy (besides ourselves)…
dank48

Let’s see here. Falsifying data and misrepresenting the kinds of jobs and salaries graduates get . . . that almost sounds fraudulent, and fraud is, well, illegal. And, my goodness, law schools “could face fines or even lose their accreditation” if they engage in illegal activity? Horrors! Fines, merely for breaking the law?

Not only do the shoemakers’ children go barefoot, so apparently do the shoemakers themselves.
12080243

If a college administrator hasn’t been hiding under a rock, totally incommunicado for the past several years or is incompetent, surely s/he knows how poor the market is for newly minted law graduates. The six-figure debt many students incur to obtain law degrees is well documented in the popular and academic press. A high percentage of those new lawyers are yet to find a job in their chosen field. However, these well known facts didn’t stop President Martha Saunders at the University of Southern Mississippi hooking her fourth tier university with a fourth tier private law school, Mississippi College School of Law, and encouraging students to take up the study of law.

Given past, current, and future prospects for employment in law, a usmnews’ editorial that ran today could have been entitled, “Incredibly Bad Timing, An Expensive Joke (at the Expense of Gullible Students), or Just Plain Dumb.”

Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., DBA, Professor, School of Accountancy, University of Southern Mississippi