Served

I actually spend time trying to devise cutesy titles for my posTTTs. It comes from a desire for something attention grabbing and years of submitting headlines to Fark, mostly unsuccessfully.

Headlines are an art. I know a former NY Daily News headline writer and they come to him naturally. His terse e-mail responses often require a second (or third) look lest they sail over my head.

Sometimes an article's headline is so good that it needs no embellishment; it's perfect as is. Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado, handed me the title for this post. His article, Served How law schools completely misrepresent their job numbers, is one more nail in the law school carTTTel's coffin.

"Served," "owned," and "pwned" all mean the same thing to me: To be obliterated in a contest, usually publically. It's a succinct description of the fate awaiting lemmings heading off to law school. Campos probably used "served" because of its legal connotation. I prefer pwned, myself.

Follwing the incendiary subtitle, Campos trods familiar ground, noting that schools claim almost all their graduates get jobs as lawyers and that US Snooze has revised its employment rate calculations to make them "somewhat less inaccurate."

He hits his stride when he begins analyzing National Association for Law Placement (NALP) data. NALP reports that 63% of graduates of ABA schools have full-time legal positions within 9 months of graduating. Campos points out that NALP does not distinguish between permanent and temporary jobs. While the latter are typically low-status, low-paid clerical and document review, he also includes state trial-level clerkships as temporary positions.

Based on a T50 he analyzed, the true 9-month employment rate is 45%; lower-ranked schools fare worse.

In other news that will surprise only Ric Romero, he notes that employment figures are self-reported and that neither the schools nor NALP audit them. Unemployed and underemployed graduates tend not to report back to the school. Campos further "found several instances of people describing themselves as employed permanently or full-time, when in fact they had temporary or part-time jobs (I found no instances of inaccuracies running in the other direction)." Even T14s game their ranking by hiring alumni temporarily.

So, life after T50 is mostly for losers? What happens to the winners? They "often accept jobs that make them miserable, featuring insane hours and unfulfilling work, but which these graduates conclude they must take in order to pay their often astronomical educational debt."

Served. Indeed.

Born too late

Most of you know that TTT is an abbreviation of Third Tier Toilet. It used to connote a low-ranked institution but has become an all-purpose pejorative used either sarcastically or derisively or both.

The term comes from the moribund US News & World Report's system of ranking schools, particulary law schools, by splitting them into tiers and ranking only the top schools. USNWR's annual ratings issue is like catnip to the prestige-addled legal academy, immediately seized upon and parsed and agonized over. The influence a single, private company has over the ABA-accredited schools and their applicants is awe-inspiring; its headquarters might as well be at the summit of Mount Sinai.

Back in the good old days, prior to March 15, 2011, both USNWR and conventional wisdom spread the approximately 200 ABA schools evenly among four tiers. The top 100 schools comprising Tiers 1 and 2 were numerically ranked. The next groups were split into Tiers 3 and 4 and deemed worthy only of being listed alphabetically within their tier.

The ABA wastes much breath propounding what a noble, dignified, and progressive profession law is. The fact is that lax accreditation standards ensure there are many more graduates than legal jobs. The sole reason for Tier 3 and 4 schools to exist is to separate ignorant and greedy students from their money while providing comfortable livings to the faculty and administration. But, I digress.

Had I started this blog two weeks earlier its title wouldn't have been archaic. In one fell swoop, USNWR began ranking the top 75% schools numerically and reserved its undistinguished alphabetical listing for the absolute toilets that now make up the second tier. Bye bye, Third Tier. Overnight, prestttigious schools such as Wayne State became merely prestigious. Nando addressed the new rankings with his usual subtlety.

Eventually, which won't be long, the useful concept of the third tier will fade into obscurity. It was good while it lasted. Keep in mind that the numerical rankings are mostly meaningless and, except for elite schools, distinctions without a difference. Yale or fail.

Finally, my own alma mater has been in continual decline and is currently ranked #84. I was waiting for it to fall into the Third Tier but fate intervened.