Remember Hillsdale College?

I wrote about Hillsdale College back in July. To make a long story short, it's a school that prides itself in not accepting Federal Student Loans. They had an advertisement on 770 am (a conservative New York radio station) where they show off that they are a college that promotes "conservative financial values." I called them out on it because they didn't want to report the racial make-up of the school, so declined federal funding rather than coming clean. I actually found a pic of a bunch of Hillsdale cheerleaders--only one of whom was black. It has since been taken down.

In the many months since I posted, comments have popped up here and there. Many in support of the school, saying that it was a wonderful institution:

Since Hillsdale took it's bold stand, the government's demands have increased far beyond mere data reporting. As a public school student I cannot tell you how much vapid nonsense I am forced, by the requirement or "incentive" of the federal government, to endure on a daily basis. While Hillsdale College isn't perfect and apparently not your particular idea of what a college should be, the students and faculty who teach there are *free*. Free to teach and learn as they please, regardless of what anyone else (including someone like yourself) wants to impose on them. And that, my supposed libertarian friend, is what liberty is all about.

Sincerely,

Andrew

(Someone who actually knows something about Hillsdale College)

P.S.: Before the invective comes, a short biographical note: I applied and was accepted to Hillsdale a couple years ago, but personal circumstances at home prevented me from attending. Nonetheless I maintain friendship with the students whom I've met there, who are a fine set of folks. I wrote this to set the record straight for those unfortunate enough to stumble upon this page in a Google search, as I had.

and

Maybe you should visit the college and see what it is actually about, rather than making hasty judgments based on a website and an outdated picture of cheerleaders. In fact, when is that picture from? Hillsdale actually just brought back the cheerleading program this fall, so I'm pretty sure it's not recent. If Hillsdale is so racist, I'm wondering why Federick Douglass was a supporter....

and

I attended Hillsdale College, and graduated in '02. It is a great private school. Having studied at a variety of public and private schools and in England, Hillsdale remains the great educational experience of my life. Small class sizes, an outstanding classical curriculum, an impressive lecture series (I remember listening to Benazir Bhutto talk there, before her assasination), and incredibly engaged Professors (I remember many weekend parties at professors' houses, and parties to which profs were invited, where we started drinking wine and ended up debating Nietzsche or Cicero or Plato all night. Try that at your average public school). It is true that the student body is largely white, but the great diversity of thought encouraged in the classroom, and the emphasis on fundamental liberties would make anyone feel comfortable there. Hillsdale was one of the first schools in the country to ban in its charter discrimination. I actually did have an openly gay friend at the "Dale, by the way....not a common thing there, but definitely possible. He was a fairly popular student. Thanks for the forum....

Then today... vindication! Thanks for the comment, anon930!

Okay, maybe (and I'm not sure) I was wrong about the race thing. But Hillsdale has come out against Homosexuality on Campus. Once again, I think to myself, "Conservative financial values, my ass."

I wish that a school would open that would adhere to the federal guidelines for race and equality and non-discrimination, but decline the federal funding because of conservative financial values. Hillsdale is obviously not that school. As a libertarian, I resent that conservative financial values and bigotry have joined hands at this institute of higher education or as a party platform at all (i.e. some of the teabaggers). I'm sure the Hillsdale cheerleaders will defend this school again, as they did before. What do you guys have to say about your alma mater?

The picture of racial diversity, right? How many of these pics do I need to find to prove my point?

55,000 Victims Took the LSAT Last Weekend...

Yes, that is 55,000 more people buying into the Ponzi Scheme that is called the American law school system. It took AOL News - not the New York Times - to reiterate everything Angel and I along with the usual folks like Professor Brian Tamanaha and Ellie Mystal have warned our readers about the pitfalls of law school for nearly two years:

You don't need a law degree to know that false advertising is against the law. So why is it that so many law schools appear to be doing just that: inflating job prospects for graduates while jacking up tuition rates?

Last weekend, about 55,000 students took the LSAT -- the standardized test for law school. That's the second highest tally ever, according to exam officials.

Most of these students are aiming for a law degree to get rich. In a 2008 Kaplan survey, 73 percent cited high income potential as a reason for attending law school.

But the legal job market, decimated by the recession, isn't the golden ticket it used to be -- and some legal scholars believe the calamity may be permanent. Law schools are releasing an army of young professionals who will start off with $150,000-plus in non-dischargeable debt and not be able to find work as attorneys and repay their loans.

"Many graduates can't get jobs," Brian Tamanaha, professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis, told The National Jurist. "Many graduates end up as temp attorneys working for $15 to $20 an hour on two-week gigs, with no benefits. The luckier graduates land jobs in government or small firms for maybe $45,000, with limited prospects for improvement. A handful of lottery winners score big firm jobs."

The New York Daily News recently profiled one young lawyer from a good school who is cleaning toilets in Manhattan.

But don't expect to get any of this news from laws schools. They're too busy scamming applicants by advertising deceptively high rates of employment and misleading income figures, critics contend.

"This data is entirely self-reported by schools and should be treated as essentially fiction," said University of Chicago law professor Brian Leiter, a well-known expert on law school rankings. "In addition, we know nothing about the nature of the employment -- it could simply be as a research assistant, which is what Northwestern did a few years ago for its unemployed grads."

Law School Transparency, a nonprofit organization hoping to shed light on the real employment situation, asked law schools in July to provide more detailed job statistics than they now report to the American Bar Association, which regulates law schools, or U.S. News & World Report, which ranks law schools.

Their deadline for committing to cooperate passed last month and only one school out of 199 agreed to provide the information, said executive director Kyle McEntee.

"Everybody is up in arms about Goldman Sachs allegedly selling products it expected to fail," lawyer Elie Mystal wrote in popular law blog Above the Law. "How is that any different than the scam being run by some law schools where the tuition keeps going up while the job prospects disappear?"

t's time to send in auditors to examine what law schools advertise and ensure numbers are being reported accurately, so customers can make an informed decision about whether a law degree will really be a good investment of money, time and energy.

In the meantime, potential law school students need to do their research, temper their expectations and weigh the opportunity costs. Sure, law school is a smart decision for some people, especially if you can get into a top school, attend school for free or are so passionate about law that you don't care how much you earn. It's also a profession with one of the lowest job satisfaction rates and highest depression rates.

But far too many who get their JD will find themselves three years down the road with a mountain of debt, few job prospects and doubts that their law school has any idea what truth in advertising means.

If there is any good news to report, it is that the number of LSAT takers actually dropped from last October. A whopping 61,000 people took the LSAT in October 2009 as reported by the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC). That is about a 10 percent drop in people taking the LSAT. I have no idea what this means. Is it possible that more people are reading the scamblogs and discovering that going to a law school other than Yale no longer ensures a 160k biglaw job or a comfy position with the government? Who knows. Nonetheless, 55k is still too large a number. Clearly, thousands of people aren't doing their research on the law school scam. With every person who enters law school, it makes the legal job market that much more difficult for the rest of us. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight. If you are one of a handful of these test takers who are still in doubt about going to law school, do the smart thing and let go of the law school myth dream. You will only be out of the $136 LSAT fee and maybe a few hundred more for study aids and LSAT courses. That is much better than being out of $136k and unemployed or unhappy in your shitlaw job three years from now. I pray that someone out there is listening.

Thanks to reader A.S. for the tip.

The Old and Uneducated Finding More Jobs Than the Young and Educated. What Does It Mean?

Yesterday, Angel laid out the cold hard facts about the depression and the unemployment statistics for young people. In case you missed it, here is the chart again before I present more depressing employment figures.Over 50 percent of youth are unemployed, underemployed, or working part time. That doesn't include some of us over educated people working in full-time jobs that only pay $10 an hour. This is a catastrophe. We are the damned generation: no jobs, no savings, no future, an unprecedented student loan debt crisis, and probably no social security and medicare by the time we reach our parents' age.

I have more bad news that probably won't surprise most BIDER readers but will at least shut up the shills who come here and try to tell us that college educated youth are doing a-okay at only 4 percent unemployment. I came across job data at the Center for Economic and Policy Research that shows African Americans and the college educated hit especially hard by job losses. Again, not surprising but here is the proof (emphasis mine):

African Americans were also hit especially hard. The EPOP for African Americans is back at its low point for the downturn and the EPOP for African American women hit a new low at 54.4 percent, 0.1 percentage points lower than the December ratio.

By education level, the less educated appear to be the big gainers, with a 1.8 percentage-point increase in the EPOP for those without a high school degree. Those with some college had a 0.8 percentage-point decline in their EPOP and those with college degrees had a 1.1 percentage-point drop to 72.7 percent, the lowest level of the downturn.

By age group, the big gainers continued to be the over-55 cohort, which added 54,000 jobs in July, bringing the 3-month gain to 182,000. Older women accounted for 167,000 of this rise in employment. By contrast, employment for women between the ages of 35-44 fell by 253,000 (1.8%) and for women between 45-54 by 186,000 (1.2%) since May.
There were substantial declines in all the measures of duration of unemployment. This likely reflects many long-term unemployed dropping out of the workforce after losing benefits. The percent of multiple jobholders dropped by 0.3 percentage points to the lowest on record. This presumably reflects difficulty in getting jobs.

Let me first say it amazes me that Washington does not seem to care enough to make drastic changes to stop the bleeding given that the current administration got into office riding on a huge wave of support from the young and minorities. The 22-year-old who voted in 2008 won't be the same voter in 2012 as a 26-year-old welfare recipient still unemployed four years after graduating from college with $100k loans. We are going to see that affect on the electorate in 2010 and 2012.

This doesn't mean life is good for the old and the uneducated, far from it, but it does point to a lack of real jobs with good wages and benefits being created. What kind of jobs do you think older women and high school drop outs are getting in this economy? Likely retail and restaurant work and a few manufacturing jobs that the majority of our college educated readership are considered overqualified for.

No one other than the political elite and the CEOs are coming out winners in this depression, but at least the uneducated have a better chance at the few service sector and manufacturing jobs. When there are no jobs, you have educated people willing to take practically anything for extra money to stay afloat even if it means driving a taxi or working at the shopping mall or grocery store.

Unfortunately for the damned generation, being educated is a curse because not only do you have student loans, you will be passed over for the less educated candidate for most of the new jobs created. Nearly every job I hear about on the local news is in the manufacturing or service industry. What are the chances that a 20-something female with a college degree and JD such as myself will get one of these $10-20/hour jobs over the recently laid off man with 20 years of experience on the factory line? Slim to none. That means the person with the $15 hourly job is still doing better, however small, than the unemployed JD or PhD making nothing to pay the rent and buy groceries.

In the end it is all about just hustling to survive and the 18 to 29 educated crowd clearly isn't doing well in that area. For example, I am single and have a current net worth of zero while the neighbor who bypassed college to get a masseuse certificate just bought a new house with her husband and has no student debt. Remind me again why I worked my ass off to get into the best schools?

I Need A Freakin' Job

This is amusing.

"I need a freakin' job." That's the message President Obama saw as he arrived in Buffalo, N.Y., this afternoon for an event talking up the administration's success in creating new jobs. He also pitched Congress on approving a $30 billion credit for small-business growth.

Yet critics say Obama has been focusing his recovery efforts too narrowly and hasn't done enough to help people find work. After all, the latest job figures show 9.9 percent of the country still out of work. That inspired a group of unemployed Buffalo residents — who also have a website called INAFJ.org — to appeal to the president in the form of a billboard along the route his motorcade took into town.

Unfortunately for those who need a freakin' job immediately, neither of the major political parties think job creation is the number one issue for midterm elections. Why do we vote for these people again?

Yet jobs aren't a huge priority for either party heading into the midterm campaigns, as Politics Daily's Jill Lawrence notes. That might be because other issues have taken precedence. A new Gallup poll finds that for the first time in two months, the issue of "jobs" has fallen to No. 2 on the list of issues Americans are most concerned about. The new No. 1 issue: The economy in general. White House officials defend their efforts on jobs, saying the president has been focused as much on creating new jobs as on "saving" current positions.

Meanwhile, in the real world outside of lalaland DC where everyone gets paid by the health insurance industry and Sallie Mae, millions of people are suffering and the higher education scam continues. The New York Times interviewed a woman who took out a $17,000 student loan for an eight-month course to become a medical assistant after losing her adminsitrative assistant job two years ago. The program sounds like another for-profit college scam to me.

Ms. Norton, for her part, may be reluctant to acknowledge that many of her traditional administrative assistant skills are obsolete, but she has tried to retrain — or as she puts it, adapt her existing skills — to a new career in the expanding health care industry.

Even that has proved difficult.

She attended an eight-month course last year, on a $17,000 student loan, to obtain certification as a medical assistant. She was trained to do front-office work, like billing, as well as back-office work, like giving injections and drawing blood.


The school that trained her, though, neglected to inform her that local employers require at least a year’s worth of experience — generally done through volunteering at a clinic — before hiring someone for a paid job in the field.

She says she cannot afford to spend a year volunteering, especially with her student loan coming due soon. She has one prospect for part-time administrative work in Los Angeles — where she once had her own administrative support and secretarial services business, SilverKeys — but she does not have the money to relocate.

“If I had $3,000 in my pocket right now, I would pack up my S.U.V., grab my dog and go straight back,” she says. “That’s my only answer.”

With so few local job prospects and most of her possessions of value already liquidated she has considered selling her blood to help pay for the move. But she says she cannot find a market for that, either; blood collection agencies, she said, told her they do not buy her blood type.

“Sometimes I think I’d be better off in jail,” she says, only half joking. “I’d have three meals a day and structure in my life. I’d be able to go to school. I’d have more opportunities if I were an inmate than I do here trying to be a contributing member of society.”

My suggestion to flee the country might sound drastic to some of you, but when educated professionals who have done everything right are selling their blood to pay the bills or would rather commit suicide or be thrown in jail, that is when you have to consider other options. Oh, and as I mentioned last week, this won't be ending any time soon.

Millions of workers who have already been unemployed for months, if not years, will most likely remain that way even as the overall job market continues to improve, economists say. The occupations they worked in, and the skills they currently possess, are never coming back in style. And the demand for new types of skills moves a lot more quickly than workers — especially older and less mobile workers — are able to retrain and gain those skills.


There is no easy policy solution for helping the people left behind. The usual unemployment measures — like jobless benefits and food stamps — can serve as temporary palliatives, but they cannot make workers’ skills relevant again.


Ms. Norton has sent out hundreds of résumés without luck. Twice, the openings she interviewed for were eliminated by employers who decided, upon further reflection, that redistributing administrative tasks among existing employees made more sense than replacing the outgoing secretary.


One employer decided this shortly after Ms. Norton had already started showing up for work.

The Lost Generation of Scholars Who Did Everything Right.

A comment on the last post alerted me to this insightful Youtube video about a woman who is a Ph.D. and a published author, but cannot get a job.  I've heard that Ph.Ds have it worse than lawyers and it has been that way for a long while.  In any case, parts one and two are worth watching.

Enjoy!





Remember that this video was from 2008 and she mentions that lawyers go on to practice jurisprudence, whereas Humanities Scholars go onto wage slavery.  Well, we are about there right now.