SHU vs Rutgers Forum

[20130312]

Wow, thanks Prof. Campos. The law school employment data rabbit hole just got a little deeper for me.

[timbs4339]

Are they allowed to do that? Seems unethical, at the least.

Uh, have you been under a rock for the last couple of years?

I understand them presenting the data in a misleading way such as the median salary example that dingbat gave, but straight up creating data on their own without student consent is really crossing the line.

No it's not. The line is: what is bad enough where a court will deny a motion to dismiss in a suit for fraud?

You're living in a dream world where notions of ethics and morality apply to non-profit institutions of higher learning.

[Rahviveh]

The NALP/ABA data for individual schools should be taken with a huge grain of salt, because of the leeway CSOs are given by the guidelines when reporting data. A tipoff in regard to the reliability of this data is how unrealistically complete it purports to be. Anybody who had done any sort of empirical survey knows that it's extremely difficult to get anything close to complete data. But the ABA data has no holes in it at all. For example, when you look at the 192 SHU 2011 grads with bar admission required jobs, 184 are purportedly in full-time long-term positions, while the other eight are either short-term or part-time or both. In other words, SHU is claiming to know the precise employment status of all 192 of its grads who have (or who SHU claims have) bar admission required jobs. That is extremely improbable to say the least. What happens is that the reporting guidelines allow CSOs to simply use default assumptions for missing data. The default assumption here is that a grad is employed full-time and long-term, unless the CSO has information to the contrary.

This, of course, ends up seriously overstating the number of people who actually have full-time long-term employment. Etc.

I didn't realize this. So if someone doesn't answer a survey they just mark them as FT/LT, instead of "unknown"? Jeez....

[ajax]

The NALP/ABA data for individual schools should be taken with a huge grain of salt, because of the leeway CSOs are given by the guidelines when reporting data. A tipoff in regard to the reliability of this data is how unrealistically complete it purports to be. Anybody who had done any sort of empirical survey knows that it's extremely difficult to get anything close to complete data. But the ABA data has no holes in it at all. For example, when you look at the 192 SHU 2011 grads with bar admission required jobs, 184 are purportedly in full-time long-term positions, while the other eight are either short-term or part-time or both. In other words, SHU is claiming to know the precise employment status of all 192 of its grads who have (or who SHU claims have) bar admission required jobs. That is extremely improbable to say the least. What happens is that the reporting guidelines allow CSOs to simply use default assumptions for missing data. The default assumption here is that a grad is employed full-time and long-term, unless the CSO has information to the contrary.

This, of course, ends up seriously overstating the number of people who actually have full-time long-term employment. Etc.

I didn't realize this. So if someone doesn't answer a survey they just mark them as FT/LT, instead of "unknown"? Jeez....

Wait what? Are you serious???? This is unbelievable. I have been going off of this (ABA) info for some time believing those reports to be accurate. I figured they were, because most schools were around 50% employment for long-term full-time positions, which from everything I heard/read seemed to be relatively accurate. This just f'd my world. WOW!

[exitoptions]

The NALP/ABA data for individual schools should be taken with a huge grain of salt, because of the leeway CSOs are given by the guidelines when reporting data. A tipoff in regard to the reliability of this data is how unrealistically complete it purports to be. Anybody who had done any sort of empirical survey knows that it's extremely difficult to get anything close to complete data. But the ABA data has no holes in it at all. For example, when you look at the 192 SHU 2011 grads with bar admission required jobs, 184 are purportedly in full-time long-term positions, while the other eight are either short-term or part-time or both. In other words, SHU is claiming to know the precise employment status of all 192 of its grads who have (or who SHU claims have) bar admission required jobs. That is extremely improbable to say the least. What happens is that the reporting guidelines allow CSOs to simply use default assumptions for missing data. The default assumption here is that a grad is employed full-time and long-term, unless the CSO has information to the contrary.

This, of course, ends up seriously overstating the number of people who actually have full-time long-term employment. Etc.

I didn't realize this. So if someone doesn't answer a survey they just mark them as FT/LT, instead of "unknown"? Jeez....

Wow... sounds like they have a lot of incentive to find their students...

[timbs4339]

The NALP/ABA data for individual schools should be taken with a huge grain of salt, because of the leeway CSOs are given by the guidelines when reporting data. A tipoff in regard to the reliability of this data is how unrealistically complete it purports to be. Anybody who had done any sort of empirical survey knows that it's extremely difficult to get anything close to complete data. But the ABA data has no holes in it at all. For example, when you look at the 192 SHU 2011 grads with bar admission required jobs, 184 are purportedly in full-time long-term positions, while the other eight are either short-term or part-time or both. In other words, SHU is claiming to know the precise employment status of all 192 of its grads who have (or who SHU claims have) bar admission required jobs. That is extremely improbable to say the least. What happens is that the reporting guidelines allow CSOs to simply use default assumptions for missing data. The default assumption here is that a grad is employed full-time and long-term, unless the CSO has information to the contrary.

This, of course, ends up seriously overstating the number of people who actually have full-time long-term employment. Etc.

I didn't realize this. So if someone doesn't answer a survey they just mark them as FT/LT, instead of "unknown"? Jeez....

Wait what? Are you serious???? This is unbelievable. I have been going off of this (ABA) info for some time believing those reports to be accurate. I figured they were, because most schools were around 50% employment for long-term full-time positions, which from everything I heard/read seemed to be relatively accurate. This just f'd my world. WOW!

Yeah just assume that is a best-case scenario and you understand why RETAKE is the CR in most situations.

[dingbat]

What happens is that the reporting guidelines allow CSOs to simply use default assumptions for missing data. The default assumption here is that a grad is employed full-time and long-term, unless the CSO has information to the contrary.

Then why do schools have an "employment status unknown" category? I understand the leeway in filling in data that can be reasonably ascertained, e.g. salary for someone who is known to be working at a firm that pays scale, but your default assumption is illogical and contrary to the results published by career services

[Tiago Splitter]

The NALP/ABA data for individual schools should be taken with a huge grain of salt, because of the leeway CSOs are given by the guidelines when reporting data. A tipoff in regard to the reliability of this data is how unrealistically complete it purports to be. Anybody who had done any sort of empirical survey knows that it's extremely difficult to get anything close to complete data. But the ABA data has no holes in it at all. For example, when you look at the 192 SHU 2011 grads with bar admission required jobs, 184 are purportedly in full-time long-term positions, while the other eight are either short-term or part-time or both. In other words, SHU is claiming to know the precise employment status of all 192 of its grads who have (or who SHU claims have) bar admission required jobs. That is extremely improbable to say the least. What happens is that the reporting guidelines allow CSOs to simply use default assumptions for missing data. The default assumption here is that a grad is employed full-time and long-term, unless the CSO has information to the contrary.

This, of course, ends up seriously overstating the number of people who actually have full-time long-term employment. Etc.

I didn't realize this. So if someone doesn't answer a survey they just mark them as FT/LT, instead of "unknown"? Jeez....

LOL no. The only thing one might conclude is that if you find someone working in a bar-admission required job you can assume it's full time unless you find out otherwise. SHU has 15 people in the unknown category and other schools have much bigger numbers there. As dingbat pointed out, any further conclusion is irresponsible.

[dingbat]

LOL no. The only thing one might conclude is that if you find someone working in a bar-admission required job you can assume it's full time unless you find out otherwise. SHU has 15 people in the unknown category and other schools have much bigger numbers there. As dingbat pointed out, any further conclusion is irresponsibleindefensible.

fixed

[stillwater]

go to SHU to definitely score biglaw.

[Paul Campos]

Just to clarify: What NALP/ABA guidelines allow schools to do is assume that missing data regarding the jobs graduates have track the known data for graduates for whom that data is known regarding those kinds of jobs.

For example, most bar-required jobs are both full-time and long-term. So if a school determines a graduate has a bar-required job, it will characterize that job as full time and long-term unless it has been told otherwise (by the graduate, of course). But many graduates don't report this data, or indeed any data, to their schools. So the schools hunt them down on the internet and "fill in the blanks." They can even do this with salary, if the starting salary for associates at a firm is public information (this can get pretty tricky -- for example I bet you most if not all of the six 2011 Capital grads who are listed as having jobs with firms of 500+ are actually staff attorneys in Wheeling getting paid $60K not $160K.)

This explains how schools can claim to report complete job data (other than salaries) for all graduates who they know are employed. There's no "unknown" category for full-time v. part-time or long-term v. short-term. Caveat emptor.

[suralin]

Just to clarify: What NALP/ABA guidelines allow schools to do is assume that missing data regarding the jobs graduates have track the known data for graduates for whom that data is known regarding those kinds of jobs.

For example, most bar-required jobs are both full-time and long-term. So if a school determines a graduate has a bar-required job, it will characterize that job as full time and long-term unless it has been told otherwise (by the graduate, of course). But many graduates don't report this data, or indeed any data, to their schools. So the schools hunt them down on the internet and "fill in the blanks." They can even do this with salary, if the starting salary for associates at a firm is public information (this can get pretty tricky -- for example I bet you most if not all of the six 2011 Capital grads who are listed as having jobs with firms of 500+ are actually staff attorneys in Wheeling getting paid $60K not $160K.)

This explains how schools can claim to report complete job data (other than salaries) for all graduates who they know are employed. There's no "unknown" category for full-time v. part-time or long-term v. short-term. Caveat emptor.

Thanks for the clarification; explains a lot.