law school costs too much Forum

[Borhas]

My whole point is that for economists a serial killer can be rational. If the serial killer's objective is to kill person x, has only available modes of behavior X,Y, Z, and X costs the least of the three, and if the serial killer choose mode X, killing someone, the serial killer is "rational" according to economic choice theory. Very few people would think that a serial killer can be rational.

oh I see

Rationality refers to achieving your objective in the most efficient manner. Economists generally care more about the direction of the behavior rather than the magnitude (though there are obviously cases where we care about the magnitude and we might try to measure the magnitude in cases where we might not care about it so much). Say we increase the price of good x, assuming "rational behavior", we economists think that the consumption of good x will go down. How much is an empirical question - which we can try to answer, but the models will tell us the direction (that consumption will go down.. not up). Iono, I think it's a useful way of analyzing behavior .. and, on the margins, is accurate.

well that gets to the problem I have with economics in general... decision making is complex and subjective... even if you take out the individual subjectivity and take it to the population level it is still subjective. Choices are always based on costs and benefits (and I guess sometimes categorical imperatives) but costs and benefits are kind of like directions too, one goes one way the other goes in the opposite, without knowing magnitude you don't know the resultant direction...

and economics has no good answer for figuring out the magnitude of any of these directions and so ultimately it doesn't do a whole lot of good anyway.

[romothesavior]

There are three - four basic assumptions. 1. completeness - all choices can be ranked in order of preference. 2. transitivity of preferences 3. individuals prefer more of some good e.g. the bundle of (x+1, y) will be preferred over (x,y) and 4. people have convex utility curves which implies that people prefer having mixtures of bundles (rather than having a 100 apples and 0 oranges, or a 100 oranges and 0 apples, people prefer to have 50 apples and 50 oranges .. or some combination). The combination of these assumptions is what economists mean when we assume that people are acting "rationally."

Sure, we can argue over each one of these assumptions or all of them together, but there's a difference between this and what lay people mean when talking about rationality. I just hate it when people critique rational choice economics because people aren't "rational" but when we aren't really talking about the same thing.

Anyways, carry on.

man, economists are dumb

preferences determine what is rational, everyone has preferences therefore everyone is rational

economists take the word "rational" suck all of its meaning out, and then insert some intuitively obvious bullshit like "people choose what they prefer" wow...what insight!

btw some of those assumptions are assumptions of what is preferred not what rationality is...(#3, and #4) though I guess they added them to the term "rational" so that it wasn't completely empty.

^^^Everything he said.

[romothesavior]

Also, Borhas... I enjoy reading your posts and all, but they are annoying to read sometimes. Capital letters are your friend.

[GATORTIM]

how can you really put a price tag on something that opens so many doors?

sorry Romo about the lack of caps...i have keyboard laziness

[Borhas]

Also, Borhas... I enjoy reading your posts and all, but they are annoying to read sometimes. Capital letters are your friend.

MY SHRINK TOLD ME THAT I COULD MAKE MORE FRIENDS IF I STOPPED YELLING SO MUCH

[romothesavior]

how can you really put a price tag on something that opens so many doors?

sorry Romo about the lack of caps...i have keyboard laziness

Its okay, your really good jokes like the bolded make up for it.

[robin600]

Why is the Social Work school program that's 1.5 years as much as one semester of my tuition?

[dailygrind]

the interesting thing about law school is that at a lot of our schools, tuition doesn't even cover the full cost of the bill. it actually costs them more to train us than we pay them. and it isn't like med school where they're buyin tons of fancy equipment and cadavers, we learn with chalkboards and teachers. although to be fair, lexis and westlaw apparently cost an arm and a leg to search on.

[Renzo]

the interesting thing about law school is that at a lot of our schools, tuition doesn't even cover the full cost of the bill. it actually costs them more to train us than we pay them.

Did the dean of a TTT hijack your account? Law schools are some of the highest profit schools there are, outside of those scam-schools on late night tv. Many of the ABA rules about library resources, office space, etc., are intended to keep universities from funneling huge amounts of money out of law schools and into other programs.

[dailygrind]

that's what i thought, but i was talking with an admin the other day who told me it was otherwise at uva, and i remember reading an ATL article saying that harvard also had higher costs per student than they brought in through tuition - a lot more actually. i extrapolated outwards, which i don't think is unfair. it may be the case that a part of the higher cost per student is the money they funnel outwards, though, which would mess with the interestingness of the question.

[Renzo]

that's what i thought, but i was talking with an admin the other day who told me it was otherwise at uva, and i remember reading an ATL article saying that harvard also had higher costs per student than they brought in through tuition - a lot more actually. i extrapolated outwards, which i don't think is unfair. it may be the case that a part of the higher cost per student is the money they funnel outwards, though, which would mess with the interestingness of the question.

That spending is greater than tuition is true across the board at schools like Harvard. More of the University's funding comes from endowment than from tuition (Harvard even briefly considered going tuition-free before the bottom fell out of the economy). But this doesn't mean law schools aren't cash-cows.

It's less true at the super-elite schools, which pay the kind of salaries which would lure Arthur Miller, Allan Dershowitz, et al away from very lucrative private practices, and thus drive up their own costs. But no one at a T2 school is commanding that kind of salary, and the tuition rates are basically the same (so that money is going somewhere).

[Aberzombie1892]

that's what i thought, but i was talking with an admin the other day who told me it was otherwise at uva, and i remember reading an ATL article saying that harvard also had higher costs per student than they brought in through tuition - a lot more actually. i extrapolated outwards, which i don't think is unfair. it may be the case that a part of the higher cost per student is the money they funnel outwards, though, which would mess with the interestingness of the question.

That spending is greater than tuition is true across the board at schools like Harvard. More of the University's funding comes from endowment than from tuition (Harvard even briefly considered going tuition-free before the bottom fell out of the economy). But this doesn't mean law schools aren't cash-cows.

It's less true at the super-elite schools, which pay the kind of salaries which would lure Arthur Miller, Allan Dershowitz, et al away from very lucrative private practices, and thus drive up their own costs. But no one at a T2 school is commanding that kind of salary, and the tuition rates are basically the same (so that money is going somewhere).

They had a chart come out with the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at all of the law schools. Michigan actually pays its professors higher on average than Harvard (although not by much ~ $254,000 vs. $252,000). So if Harvard does indeed pay some law professors way more than that, then some law professors there must make nothing - which is likely not true because Harvard's assistant and associate professor salaries are still significantly above $100,000.

On a side note, the salaries overall don't change that much across the board. Only a handful of law schools pay assistant professors less than $120,000 on average and only a handful pay full professors much more than $200,000 on average.

[Veyron]

I would bet that these #s are cash only. Leete schools provide many other forms of non-financial renumeration - real estate, airline tickets, etc. to top profs. Also, research funding.

[Renzo]

They had a chart come out with the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at all of the law schools. Michigan actually pays its professors higher on average than Harvard (although not by much ~ $254,000 vs. $252,000). So if Harvard does indeed pay some law professors way more than that, then some law professors there must make nothing - which is likely not true because Harvard's assistant and associate professor salaries are still significantly above $100,000.

On a side note, the salaries overall don't change that much across the board. Only a handful of law schools pay assistant professors less than $120,000 on average and only a handful pay full professors much more than $200,000 on average.

I would include Michigan in that "competing for top professorial talent" bracket, FWIW. I don't know about the study, but I would be curious to see if it accounted for endowed chairs, which are proliferate at that caliber of school, and can be substantial.

[robin600]

They had a chart come out with the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at all of the law schools. Michigan actually pays its professors higher on average than Harvard (although not by much ~ $254,000 vs. $252,000). So if Harvard does indeed pay some law professors way more than that, then some law professors there must make nothing - which is likely not true because Harvard's assistant and associate professor salaries are still significantly above $100,000.

On a side note, the salaries overall don't change that much across the board. Only a handful of law schools pay assistant professors less than $120,000 on average and only a handful pay full professors much more than $200,000 on average.

I would include Michigan in that "competing for top professorial talent" bracket, FWIW. I don't know about the study, but I would be curious to see if it accounted for endowed chairs, which are proliferate at that caliber of school, and can be substantial.

Which is bullshit because MI is supposed to be a public school. Why then do in-state students only 4k less a year than out of state students. complete bs (not on your comment on MI's practices)

[Veyron]

They had a chart come out with the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at all of the law schools. Michigan actually pays its professors higher on average than Harvard (although not by much ~ $254,000 vs. $252,000). So if Harvard does indeed pay some law professors way more than that, then some law professors there must make nothing - which is likely not true because Harvard's assistant and associate professor salaries are still significantly above $100,000.

On a side note, the salaries overall don't change that much across the board. Only a handful of law schools pay assistant professors less than $120,000 on average and only a handful pay full professors much more than $200,000 on average.

I would include Michigan in that "competing for top professorial talent" bracket, FWIW. I don't know about the study, but I would be curious to see if it accounted for endowed chairs, which are proliferate at that caliber of school, and can be substantial.

Which is bullshit because MI is supposed to be a public school. Why then do in-state students only 4k less a year than out of state students. complete bs (not on your comment on MI's practices)

*Complains that Michigan is a rip-off*
*Attends Wash U*
*Smirks condescendingly*

[dood]

...

[robin600]

They had a chart come out with the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at all of the law schools. Michigan actually pays its professors higher on average than Harvard (although not by much ~ $254,000 vs. $252,000). So if Harvard does indeed pay some law professors way more than that, then some law professors there must make nothing - which is likely not true because Harvard's assistant and associate professor salaries are still significantly above $100,000.

On a side note, the salaries overall don't change that much across the board. Only a handful of law schools pay assistant professors less than $120,000 on average and only a handful pay full professors much more than $200,000 on average.

I would include Michigan in that "competing for top professorial talent" bracket, FWIW. I don't know about the study, but I would be curious to see if it accounted for endowed chairs, which are proliferate at that caliber of school, and can be substantial.

Which is bullshit because MI is supposed to be a public school. Why then do in-state students only 4k less a year than out of state students. complete bs (not on your comment on MI's practices)

*Complains that Michigan is a rip-off*
*Attends Wash U*
*Smirks condescendingly*

I only rip on MI not because they aren't a great school, because they are. But they charge way too fucking much for residents for a PUBLIC school. WashU is private, I expected high tuition. Are you sleeping with MI or something?

[Veyron]

[/quote]
I would include Michigan in that "competing for top professorial talent" bracket, FWIW. I don't know about the study, but I would be curious to see if it accounted for endowed chairs, which are proliferate at that caliber of school, and can be substantial.[/quote]
Which is bullshit because MI is supposed to be a public school. Why then do in-state students only 4k less a year than out of state students. complete bs (not on your comment on MI's practices)[/quote]

*Complains that Michigan is a rip-off*
*Attends Wash U*
*Smirks condescendingly*[/quote]
I only rip on MI not because they aren't a great school, because they are. But they charge way too fucking much for residents for a PUBLIC school. WashU is private, I expected high tuition.[/quote]

Yes, but unlike 99% of the law schools in this country, Michigan grants a degree with value. Considering the great differences in earning power between your median Mich grad and your median grad of your school (or many other private schools), its still a v-good deal by law school standards.

[romothesavior]

IIRC, one of my profs from undergrad said that the reason that Michigan charges so much (across the board, not just for LS) is because the state doesn't fund it very well. The school doesn't get as much funding from the state as it should, so it has to compensate for it by jacking up tuition and turning to private funds (which, thankfully, it gets a lot of). While I'm sure the school shouldn't be absolved of blame, a lot of it should also fall on the festering shit hole of a state that it is located in. My prof (who went there, btw) told me that a few years ago there were some rumblings about possibly moving to become a private institution at some point, which might make some sense. But I don't know a whole lot about it.

Also, veyron... the swipe at Wash U was completely uncalled for, completely unnecessary, and completely dick-ish.

[bk1]

IIRC, one of my profs from undergrad said that the reason that Michigan charges so much (across the board, not just for LS) is because the state doesn't fund it very well. The school doesn't get as much funding from the state as it should, so it has to compensate for it by jacking up tuition and turning to private funds (which, thankfully, it gets a lot of). While I'm sure the school shouldn't be absolved of blame, a lot of it should also fall on the festering shit hole of a state that it is located in. My prof (who went there, btw) told me that a few years ago there were some rumblings about possibly moving to become a private institution at some point, which might make some sense. But I don't know a whole lot about it.

Also, veyron... the swipe at Wash U was completely uncalled for, completely unnecessary, and completely dick-ish.

I think someone said that only 4% or so of UMich's funding came from the state. Might as well be private at that point.

[robin600]

Yeah there's no lying that MI's funding sucks. It just sucks that they take it out on in-state tuition and not more on out of state.

[Veyron]

IIRC, one of my profs from undergrad said that the reason that Michigan charges so much (across the board, not just for LS) is because the state doesn't fund it very well. The school doesn't get as much funding from the state as it should, so it has to compensate for it by jacking up tuition and turning to private funds (which, thankfully, it gets a lot of). While I'm sure the school shouldn't be absolved of blame, a lot of it should also fall on the festering shit hole of a state that it is located in. My prof (who went there, btw) told me that a few years ago there were some rumblings about possibly moving to become a private institution at some point, which might make some sense. But I don't know a whole lot about it.

Also, veyron... the swipe at Wash U was completely uncalled for, completely unnecessary, and completely dick-ish.

Just pointing out the latent hypocracy, wouldn't have made the swipe if he haden't been an idiot.

Besides, truth is an absolute defense to libel.

[IAFG]

IIRC, one of my profs from undergrad said that the reason that Michigan charges so much (across the board, not just for LS) is because the state doesn't fund it very well. The school doesn't get as much funding from the state as it should, so it has to compensate for it by jacking up tuition and turning to private funds (which, thankfully, it gets a lot of). While I'm sure the school shouldn't be absolved of blame, a lot of it should also fall on the festering shit hole of a state that it is located in. My prof (who went there, btw) told me that a few years ago there were some rumblings about possibly moving to become a private institution at some point, which might make some sense. But I don't know a whole lot about it.

Also, veyron... the swipe at Wash U was completely uncalled for, completely unnecessary, and completely dick-ish.

Just pointing out the latent hypocracy, wouldn't have made the swipe if he haden't been an idiot.

Besides, truth is an absolute defense to libel.

[Veyron]

[/quote]
[/quote]

Glad we agree.