Open letter to BC Law School's dean to leave and get a refund | Hacker News Reader

Open letter to BC Law School's dean to leave and get a refund

eagleionline.com

14 pointsanirudh22 comments

I have sympathy for this guy but look nobody promised you a job when you took on those loans. It is basic risk reward. You took on a lot of loans to get a law degree because lawyers get paid well. You took on risk and it did not work out. Happens. Often too entrepreneurs.

Agreed. Two and a half years of law school and/or a degree are an assest. People are hiring lawyers, so become one of the ones that gets hired; or become one of those guys on TV.

I doubt he will be refunded, nor do I think he should.

Technically true, but many (most?) law schools have indeed, marketed themselves to students using statistics about post-graduation employment. Of course, the reality is that they count any employment, and in some cases have inflated statistics by hiring recent graduates for positions within the school itself, which last only for 6 weeks but happen to include the period ending 3 months after graduation (which is what's measured in the US News & World Report rankings). It's a perfect storm of too many government subsidies (qua student loans), expanding market (bad economy? maybe stay in school), and regulatory capture.

That said, this guy doesn't seem cut out for the trade in the first place, although it's possible that that I'm wrong and this is actually a shrewd exercise in personal branding.

People who take on risk for reward are still entitled to be upset at people who have lied to them about the nature of the risk and reward. There's a difference between taking on risk in an informed manner and getting conned into taking the risk.

On occasion I think HN goes overboard on the reward side of entrepreneurship too, and that's not right when that happens either. Tell the truth, let people make up their minds. (And to be clear, I mean it just happens sometimes. On the whole there's too many people doing it for real for raw cheerleading to go unchallenged for long.)

People have been getting led on about the value of their degree for a while now. The economic situation is bringing things to a head but it's not new.

Also, I doubt this is a serious call for a refund, in the sense that he has even the remote expectation of one. This is a warning to others dressed up with a rhetorical flourish.

Not only do law schools more or less lie about employment stats, the Fed subsidizes the loans so there is no signal to the consumer in the form of borrowing rate as to how risky the undertaking is. Also there is a disconnect between the cultural cachet of law as a profession and the modern reality, and tuition rates have absolutely exploded as a result of schools milking the government teet, all at the detriment of the students. Law is really winner take all. The winners get $160k/yr starting and 60-70 hour workweeks and will pay off their loans in roughly 10 years at ~$1500-$2000 a month. The "losers" will, after 9 months of searching, start at $30k (not necessarily in law) and will die in debt. It's really not as simple as risk/reward, as most things in life are not.

If you fail as an entrepreneur, your debts are wiped. Either because the investors pay them back or you declare bankruptcy. There is no escape from student loans, even if you declare bankruptcy you are still required to pay them back.

So it's quite different than what happens to entrepreneurs, they can fail and comeback several times, tabula rasa. Someone saddled with student debt is forced to live with that choice until they pay it off or they die.

Maybe he should get a refund. Because if part of a law school education is being able to construct a convincing argument based on the evidence you present, then I think he has been shortchanged.

Of course maybe that realization was his ingenious motivation for writing the letter. Which means he did learn to make a convincing arguement, in which case he does not deserve his money back, and it was a dumb arguement to begin with. Which means...

I can't see how he expected this would be accepted. I do sympathize with his situation but until someone invents a memory erasing machine to remove his accrued knowledge, a 'time refund' for all people who invested in his being there, and a method to magically transfer everything to the other person who would have paid to sit in that seat for the last few years, you just can't turn back time.

He would still walk away with knowledge, degree or not, and the school is out the time and effort to have imparted that knowledge. It's like asking for a refund if you don't achieve the degree. "I failed, I didn't get the degree, so can I be refunded?"

When I thought about law school two years ago. I spoke to many lawyers and law students. They all told me the same thing.

1) Do not get into law right now. It is experiencing an outsourcing much like tech did in the early 2000s.

2) ONLY, and seriously ONLY, go if you truly love to study law. You will NOT find a job, and most likely you will have to do crap work for awhile.

What made me decide to hold off law school was the fact that I would accumulate too much debt and not be able to pay it off in a timely matter.

A LOT of law students that I spoke to had his grandiose dream and vision of a top job making hundreds of thousands.

One friend told me up front, he chose not to listen, he thought that everyone was just being pessimistic telling him not to get into law, he like most young students, didnt realize how bad it was, no matter how many warnings they got.

I'm not sure about the loans you get to go to law school, or the loans he got, but I was under the impression that student loans are something that you can't get out of if you declare bankruptcy, just like alimony or something like that. Asking for a refund is the only way out. Though I disagree with the idea that a refund is fair. Schools aren't exactly flush with cash to be handing back to students who leave or fail out...nor should they be. It's just another reason to finish a degree to make yourself THAT much more marketable.

I fail to see how sticking it out and finishing something like a JD is somehow worse in the long run (financially) than leaving with somewhere around 100k (I assume) that you will have to pay back to creditors with interest.

The whole reason for the open letter is for a refund so he can immediately pay off those debts

This was pretty heavily reported (editorialized, in the Business sections non the less) in this past Sunday NYTimes, enough that I blogged it. . .

NYTimes links

Is Law School a Losing Game?: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?_r=1

I Want My Money Back (On Everything): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html

My thoughts: http://jaynesyourway.blogspot.com/2011/01/hear-one-about-law...

The proposed "trade" is so mind-numbingly unbalanced that I am fully convinced this is just a joke and commentary on the job market for law students.

Salaries for Law School graduates are bimodal. Most people will over-estimate the rewards:

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2009/06/th...

Aren't you paying for your professor's time? It's like saying, "thanks for making that website for me, but I don't think I'm going to make any money, so I want my money back". Uh, too bad.

Just default on the loans and move to a deserted island if you don't want to pay them.

just wait for that bubble to pop if this transitions from merely disgruntled graduates to defaulting higher education graduates en masse. If you think it's an unfair risk that you might not get a job _just_ because you have a J.D. wait till it gets bad enough for the loan lenders recalculate their risks. They'll tighten the belt on student loans across the board making them far less accessible.

The guy could still go pass the bar and practice law. So maybe he shouldn't get a full refund... that education is worth something.

BC != BU.

No kidding. I went to BU and taught at BC, and I'll be goddammed if I know who to root for in hockey.

The 2010 national champions, of course!

I like how he says "at the end of this semester", why not immediately?

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