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

Law School Is Worth the Money

By LAWRENCE E. MITCHELL

Published: November 28, 2012, New York Times Op-Ed

I’M a law dean, and I’m proud. And I think it’s time to stop the nonsense. After two years of almost relentless attacks on law schools, a bit of perspective would be nice.

For at least two years, the popular press, bloggers and a few sensationalist law professors have turned American law schools into the new investment banks. We entice bright young students into our academic clutches. Succubus-like, when we’ve taken what we want from them, we return them to the mean and barren streets to fend for themselves.

The hysteria has masked some important realities and created an environment in which some of the brightest potential lawyers are, largely irrationally, forgoing the possibility of a rich, rewarding and, yes, profitable, career.

The starting point is the job market. It’s bad. It’s bad in many industries. “Bad,” in law, means that most students will have trouble finding a first job, especially at law firms. But a little historical perspective will reveal that the law job market has been bad — very bad — before. To take the most recent low before this era, in 1998, 55 percent of law graduates started in law firms. In 2011, that number was 50 percent. A 9 percent decline from a previous low during the worst economic conditions in decades hardly seems catastrophic. And this statistic ignores the other jobs lawyers do.

What It Means To Be A "Disadvantaged" Medical School

By SIbrahim Busnaina, M.D.

July 2, 2012

US News

Many premedical students have encountered some form of hardship. So when medical school applicants see the category "Disadvantaged status" on the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS), they may wonder what a disadvantaged status really means.

Officially, AMCAS states that applicants determine whether to designate themselves as disadvantaged. Each medical school has its own policies on how it handles applicants who self-declare the disadvantaged status, or whether it treats those applications differently.

A Cadaver, Facebook, Free Speech

By Scott Jaschik

June 21, 2012

Inside Higher Ed

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the right of the University of Minnesota to punish a mortuary science student for posts on Facebook that made fun of a cadaver.

The court's ruling said that because of the nature of the student's career-related academic program, the university did not violate the student's rights in failing her in an anatomy laboratory course.

In a technical sense, the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the finding of a state appeals court that also found no First Amendment violations by the university. But the appeals court's ruling was broad, suggesting that the university could punish off-campus speech that "materially and substantially disrupted the work and discipline of the university." Advocates for student speech rights said that the breadth of the appeals court's ruling created the ability for public universities to punish all kinds of off-campus student activity…

In the Minnesota case, Amanda Tatro was a junior in the mortuary science program. The program's rules specifically require students to be "respectful and discreet" in dealing with cadavers, and not to blog about their cadavers. The university said that Tatro violated these rules with four Facebook status updates in which she talked about her cadaver, whom she named "Bernie."

Journalists and supporters and protesters of the health care law gather outside the Supreme Court after the justices ruled in favor of its constitutionality in a narrow decision.

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare 5 – 4

By Bill Mears and Tom Cohen, CNN

updated 11:29 AM EDT, Thu June 28, 2012

CNN.com

Washington (CNN) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the controversial health care law championed by President Barack Obama in a landmark decision that will impact the November election and the lives of every American.

In a 5-4 ruling, the high court decided the individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance is valid as a tax, even though it is impermissible under the Constitution's commerce clause.

"In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. "Such legislation is within Congress's power to tax."

The importance of the decision cannot be overstated: It will have an immediate and long-term impact on all Americans, both in how they get medicine and health care, and also in vast, yet-unknown areas of "commerce."

The most anticipated Supreme Court ruling in years allows the government to continue implementing the health care law, which doesn't take full effect until 2014.

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.