Stetson Law School Wants You

Are you currently considering enrolling in a certified program of legal education at an outstanding university located in an outstanding city in an outstanding state?  If  so and things don't work out you might consider the Stetson College of Law in Tampa Bay, FLA, which it would be fair to say is very interested in speaking with you at your earliest convenience.  But even if it's not convenient for you to apply for admission this week or this month or this spring that's OK, because if you don't act now you can apply as late as July 1st for admission to the Fall 2012 class. Classes start just 47 days later, but I'm pretty sure that will give the Admissions Office more than enough time to determine if you are not currently an involuntary resident of a correctional facility meet the school's entrance requirements.

Now if you should happen to be a member of cynical lazy Generation Y, that is, somebody who has an Entitlement Mentality, you may be prone to ask cynical lazy questions such as "is going to the Stetson College of Law a good idea?" If so, you're probably not the kind of person they're looking for.  No, Stetson is looking for people who want to "effectively seek justice in the world," not people obsessed with crass questions of that nature.  For example, if you want to know what the chances are that you'll get a job as a lawyer if you go to Stetson you won't find a single piece of information anywhere on the school's web site that will give you the slightest hint as to what the odds are that you'll achieve that goal after going to this law school.

The cynical lazy entitled compilers of the Law School Transparency Index ask 18 questions regarding the employment and salary data each of the nation's ABA-accredited law schools provide to prospective students. Some schools actually provide prospective students with most of the answers -- for example Michigan State's web site allows 0Ls to learn the answers to 15 of the 18 questions. Stetson answers none of the questions. That's right, Stetson wants you to apply for admission without knowing literally anything about employment outcomes for its graduates, other than that 84% of its 2010 graduates were "employed" nine months after graduation.  Now cynical lazy entitled etc. G-Yers might note that this (un)employment rate is actually double the current national unemployment rate -- a rate which is calculated using a denominator that includes graduates of genuine ABA-accredited Colleges of Law, but also includes high school dropouts, certifiably crazy people, Rick Santorum, etc.

One thing our cynical lazy potential applicant can figure out without filing a class action law suit first is how much it costs to go to Stetson, and how much debt its recent graduates have incurred.  Stetson is charging $36,168 for full-time attendance this fall, which is actually about 11% less than average tuition was at the average private ABA law school last fall.   It's telling, however, that this "bargain" price still managed to leave the school's class of 2011 with an average of $133,082 in high-interest, non-dischargeable law school debt. (This figure doesn't include undergraduate or other educational debt, or consumer debt).

A lot of progress has been made in the last couple of years in regard to raising consciousness about the extent to which law schools are trying to get away with behavior that wouldn't be tolerated if they were ordinary businesses as opposed to centers of higher learning.  Something like this is a reminder of how far we still have to go. In all candor, if you're on the Stetson faculty, does this seem like an acceptable situation to you? Do you think it's OK to represent to your students that it's a wise decision for them to incur six figures of (high interest non-dischargeable) debt to go to your school? If so, what's your basis for that belief?  Because that is in fact what you are representing to your students, implicitly if not explicitly, every single day that you "do your job."  Are you comfortable making that representation?  If you're not, maybe you should do something about that.

Update:  It's worth emphasizing that Stetson is not a "bad" law school, in the sense of being significantly below average.  First, it's more or less in the middle of the USNWR rankings (41st percentile).  More significantly, as a commenter notes, in the context of Florida law schools in particular it's actually one of the better law schools in the state, ranking behind UF, Miami, and FSU, but ahead of a half dozen other ABA schools. In terms of expected return on investment it's also "average" -- which is to say the modal student there can anticipate a fairly catastrophic outcome.  It is, in other words, a typical American law school in 2012.