Learn more about the current trends and issues that face Professionals in Law, Health and Med

The Shrinking Law School

By Mitch Smith

Published: May 1, 2012

Inside HigherEd

Frank Wu doesn’t mince words.

“The critics of legal education are right,” said Wu, the chancellor and dean of the University of California Hastings College of the Law. “There are too many law schools and there are too many law students and we need to do something about that.”

So he is. Starting this fall, Hastings will admit 20 percent fewer students than in years past, a decision that required the college to eliminate several staff positions. No faculty members lost their jobs.

It’s not that no one wants to go to Hastings — the freestanding law college in San Francisco rejects three-quarters of its applicants. And Hastings is arguably the most prestigious law school to announce such a plan, joining a trio of law colleges that rolled out reductions last year. Nationally, far fewer students are taking admissions tests and applying to law schools (applications were down about 15 percent last year countrywide and down 7 percent at Hastings). That trend is projected to continue for the foreseeable future, while those who do attend often graduate with plenty of debt but few job opportunities.

The remedy, Wu believes, is to “reboot the system.” The shift comes at a time when law schools are confronting an upending of their business model and a public relations disaster.

Vet School Surge

By Mitch Smith

Published: February 8, 2012

Inside HigherEd

Schuyler County — in New York’s Finger Lakes region — is home to 18,000 people; 14,000 farm animals; one NASCAR track and exactly zero livestock veterinarians.

That dearth of vets is a common problem in rural America, and one reason behind a push by the country’s veterinary colleges to admit more students.

Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine is launching a $22 million project that sustains its class size at 102 students, up from 90 a few years ago. The college is seeking an additional $34 million that would allow it to enroll 120 of its annual 1,000 applicants by 2017. The two-phase project would also help Cornell improve its facilities and train more students to treat livestock.

(The previous paragraph was changed to accurately reflect the financial status of Cornell's efforts to increase its number of veterinary students.)

If the plans are approved, Dean Michael Kotlikoff said, Cornell hopes to increase enrollment in its food animal program from 20 in each entering class to 30.

Those extra vets – as many as 100 graduating every decade – could help ease a well-documented trend of veterinarians in New York and elsewhere leaving food animal practices for more lucrative careers treating domestic pets.

Learn More About the Newly Accredited USC School of Medicine – Greenville

http://greenvillemed.sc.edu/

There's More to the Law Than 'Practice-Ready' 1

There's More to the Law Than "Practice Ready"

By Alfred Konefsky and Barry Sullivan, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Published: October 23, 2011

Law graduates must be practice-ready, not simply in the sense of being ready for the first stage of practice, but by being equipped for a lifetime of professional growth and service under conditions of challenge and uncertainty. Those who are practice-ready only in the narrow sense may have an initial advantage, but that will soon evaporate. Even today, a small-town business lawyer in upstate New York or downstate Illinois will have clients doing business in China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, or Mexico. She may be able to draft a contract, but her advice will be more useful if she has some basic appreciation of the differences between the civil and common law systems….Read more here! http://chronicle.com/article/Theres-More-to-the-Law-Than/129493/

Law Schools on the Defensive Over Job Placement Data

By Katherine Mangan, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Published: October

Kyle McEntee graduated from Vanderbilt University Law School in May with $150,000 in debt and a pit in his stomach. After passing the bar in North Carolina, his home state, he began applying for the few jobs he found posted but was competing with laid-off lawyers with at least a year or two of experience.

"Everyone I talked to was beaten down and depressed about their job prospects," he says.

Today Mr. McEntee's career is on something of a roll, but hardly in the way he'd expected…Read more at http://chronicle.com/article/Crisis-of-Confidence-in-Law/129425/

Why Medical School Should Be Free

By PETER B. BACH and ROBERT KOCHER, Op-Ed Contributors – NY TIMES

Published: May 28, 2011

DOCTORS are among the most richly rewarded professionals in the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that of the 15 highest-paid professions in the United States, all but two are in medicine or dentistry.

Why, then, are we proposing to make medical school free?

Huge medical school debts — doctors now graduate owing more than $155,000 on average, and 86 percent have some debt — are why so many doctors shun primary care in favor of highly paid specialties, where there are incentives to give expensive treatments and order expensive tests, an important driver of rising health care costs.

How Law Students Lose The Grant Game As Schools Win

Peter and Maria Hoey

By DAVID SEGAL

Published: April 30, 2011, NY TIMES

LIKE a lot of other college seniors, Alexandra Leumer got her introduction to the heady and hazardous world of law school scholarships in the form of a letter bearing very good news. The Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco had admitted her, the letter stated, and it had awarded her a merit scholarship of $30,000 a year — enough to cover the full cost of tuition.

To keep her grant, all that Ms. Leumer had to do was maintain a grade-point average of 3.0 or above — a B or better. If she dipped below that number at the end of either the first or the second year, the letter explained, she would lose her scholarship for good…

How hard could a 3.0 be? Really hard, it turned out. That might have been obvious if Golden Gate published a statistic that law schools are loath to share: the number of first-year students who lose their merit scholarships. That figure is not in the literature sent to prospective Golden Gate students or on its Web site….