Nickg415 wrote:Having contacted an alumnus of my UG, I asked about the school funded jobs. This person goes to UVA and his response was a nice defense of school funded jobs. Obviously his explanation doesn't apply to every school funded job but perhaps many in the T14:
"I'm not sure to what you're referring about the sweetening the numbers, but you may be referring to the post-grad fellowships they offer. If so, you're perhaps seeing deceit where there isn't any. In many jobs, like prosecutors or public defenders, employers won't even look at you until after you have bar exam results back saying you're a real lawyer that can appear in court, usually in October or so. So UVA offers a bridge fellowship to a lot of people where they give them some money to go work somewhere and there's a kind of tacit understanding with many of these places that you will work for free from August to October, but that they will try their best to hire you after bar exam results come in. At least for the group of people that literally have no job prospects until October, these fellowships are invaluable because they provide a valuable bridge for 2-3 months where recent graduates would otherwise have nothing to do. I wouldn't be surprised if all schools had similar programs. I don't know much about the fellowships other than how they affect these people because those are the friends I took the Prosecution Clinic with."
This is just total bull crap. Are you sure you didn't accidentally email the UVA admissions office or maybe its career services? First of all, the 94% figure doesn't include short-term positions like the ones he is describing. If the people in those fellowships obtain bona fide legal employment after the bar results are out, you can bet your bottom dollar that UVA is reporting their real legal jobs in the nine-months-after-graduation figure we are discussing here. In fact, these short-term tide overs he is talking about are totally irrelevant if they end in Oct or Nov bc the employment figures are not calculated until Feb or Mar. Nice try. Any school-funded jobs included in the total are people for whom the Aug-Oct tide over was insufficient....they are still unemployed nine months after graduation, and they graduated from a T10.
The way you can tell these programs at places like UVA are not the desired prestigious PI fellowships is by comparing the number of students who did them in 2007/8 to now. I dont have the numbers but I would eat my hat if more than 3-5% if 2007/8 UVA grads were in school-funded jobs. UVA is not special or different or more insulated. For the vast majority if those students, that outcome is unsatisfactory. I mean think about it for yourself: how happy would you be to have paid six figures and three prime years of your life for a degree only to be paid maybe 15 dollars an hour by your degree-granting school bc no one will hire you despite the fact that you passed the bar months ago?
ETA: all this doesn't prove deceit on UVA's part though (although perhaps that was poor word choice on his part bc I think he means more like self-interested). We don't really know what their motives are, and, regardless, it is helpful for the students to get some legal experience on their résumé trough the volunteer work UVA subsidizes (curious what happens to the loans that can't be paid back at all on 15 bucks an hr...)
