Minnesota Lawyer
For those of you who think there are too many lawyers, the University of Minnesota Law School is doing its part to correct the situation. From the Minnesota Daily, we get this article on the U raising its law school tuition by a hefty 13.5 percent.
Dean David Wippman revealed all this in the State of the Law School address to about 60 students yesterday at Mondale Hall, the Minnesota Daily reports.
Wippman explained how the Law School plans to maintain quality through difficult times by focusing on alumni outreach, namely for fundraising purposes and mentoring current students, according to the Minnesota Daily.
Professors are also feeling the pain. The article reports they will experience a 1.5 percent pay cut.
Higher tuition doesn’t affect juris doctor oversupply in Minnesota or anywhere else. In fact, the U’s in-state tuition will still be lower than at Minnesota’s other three law schools.
However, by reducing state funding to the law school, state taxpayers’ subsidies to the law school tuition bubble will decrease.
I just meant that the higher you push up the costs, the more people you dissuade at the margins. But, because of the amount of loans available to law students, the most likely result is that you just further indebt those who do go. To have a meaningful impact, I think you’d have to cut loan funding — but then the folks you’d be eliminating are those from less-advantaged backgrounds. It’s quite a conundrum.
High tuition won’t do a thing to discourage the lemmings from applying to law school. They’re still eligible for a truckload of federal student loan money, so they’re not themselves feeling the pain of these hikes…at least not until graduation. And when most clueless prospective law students still believe they will be making a decent salary, or even be employed, it’s easy for them to write off these exorbitant yearly tuition hikes.
UMN Law’s incoming class next year will not be any smaller, that’s for certain.
There is your issue. The U, St. T and WM need to cut their class sizes (ignoring Hamline, as I think the best option for that school would be to close their doors altogether). The issue is how many law students are graduating every year in this state. Cutting each school’s graduating class in half would help a little. Closing down Hamline would help a little. Together, they would help a lot, especially after four years. I’d love to see a data report on the effects on employment in this state over 1, 5, and 10 years if this occurred. Cohen, get on this.
I am certain all four school graduate JD’s with roughly the same talent and preparation to practice; granted reputation and ranking count for perception and hiring, but talent is not that different amongst the schools.
I am, however, dismayed to find that my alma mater went from a class size of 250 when I started in 2004, to admitting mid-300’s now. There is no excuse for this considering the concurrent rise in tuition by a third.
We are seeing similar issues here with state universities in Washington. Weird how even though tuition is rising at ridiculous rates, there are more students applying to law school than ever before
UST is about as small as a law school can get. There is no excuse for WM being as large as it is when its placement rates are pretty much the worst of the three (also ignoring Hamline).