Watchin Obama Sink

[Posted this yesterday. Now watching Obama's press conference -- very weak, aloof, unresponsive.]

Have you ever driven by an independently owned restaurant and estimated how long it would take for it to fold? It actually happens all the time. Having enough money to open a restaurant is apparently unrelated to good judgment and common sense. The roads are littered with these sad efforts.

Just as obvious to me is how badly Obama is handing what is generally known now as his Katrina. Today in the new debate about whether he is doing enough, I actually heard a spokesperson say "he understands how they feel." Now let's suppose there is nothing, absolutely nothing that the government can do. Nothing the Navy could do to stop the spread and no one who could subcontract the clean up process to the Dutch who are fairly good at at.

Assuming all this, would a political adviser with even a ounce of sense really not advise Obama to put on a windbreaker and get his butt down to the Gulf at least one every 10 days. I am not talking about cleaning anything thing up. I am talking about pure politics -- getting reelected even while screwing up. Put him on the news walking among the people. Create photo ops of him listening grimly.

Is this a sign of surrounding himself with "yes" men and women who are afraid to deliver a message he does not want to hear. Is it his personal arrogance based on what increasingly appears to be an ability to get ahead by simply talking? His ship is sinking in a sea of oil.

Virgin Summer Snack

I've never understood what virgin olive oil means. But on top of that you have extra virgin olive oil. Virginity is a yes or no thing, isn't it?

Nevertheless here is a wonder summer snack that will put a smile on your face.

First get some french bread of a 2 inch diameter and slice it in about 1/2 inch slices. Also, round up a cucumber and slice it in about 1/3 inch slices. Put those aside.

In a dish pour some olive oil of any degree of virginity. Add to it a bunch of salt and pepper. In other words just like in some Italian restaurants in the USA. (By the way some of my Italian relatives think USA is one word and they pronounce it OOO-SA. I wish that would catch on.)

Now put a slice of cucumber between two slices of the bread and drag it through the olive oil mixture. Do not dip. I mean drag it so the is massive absorption of the olive oil and a hefty amount of salt and pepper.

Now eat. Yum. You will smile.

Quick Power Breakfast

Here you go. To get you started in the morning.
Take one or two slices of bread. I personally like one thick slice.
Toast it or not, it's up to you.

Spread it with butter, margarine or one of the low cholesterol spreads.

Now sprinkle all over it dry roasted sunflower seed kernels. Lots of them! The stick nicely to the spread.

Finally, jam, jelly, honey or what every you like on top. If you want to you can skip the underlying spread and the jam and just use Nutella and put the sunflower seed kernels on top.

A wonderful breakfast that will supercharge your for the day.

Nutty and sweet -- just like some people I know.

Efficient Pasta

Here is a fool proof way to make great pasta with the minimum time and mess.



First, put your pasta on to boil.



While waiting for it to boil find a bowl and sprinkle the bottom with parmasean cheese.



On top of the cheese pour your favorite sauce.



When the pasta is al dente, take it off the heat, drain it and dump it into the bowl.



The hot pasta heats the sauce and melts the cheese.



Invert the bowl over a plate.



Enjoy.

No Place for the Working Class

The nomination of the Elena Kegan reminds me once again that there is no political party that is comfortable for working class people although they are often fooled into thinking otherwise. Clearly working class people are the new Invisible Men and Women. Now the Democrats appoint another North Eastern elitist to the Supreme Court. The love affair of Clinton and Obama with these people tells you all you need to know about their pandering to the elites. Remember Clinton and Kimba Wood, Zoe Baird and Lani Guinier.

I share the values of more Democrats than Republicans but not for the same reasons. Consequently, I don't trust their values. Take Kagan who was so solidly against military recruiting while at Harvard but evidently not so against it that she would not serve the President who originated it. What's the difference? At Harvard nearly everyone agreed with her. To have the guts to condemn Clinton would have meant a huge career detour. Like so many law professors it is all about self interest. Just watch them when a Supreme Court justice they rail against visits campus.

The Republicans, on the other hand, appoint people who would have the police living in our bedrooms and oil gushing onto our beaches. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans do seem to have some core values but, at the extremes, many are just plain scary. Working class people, to whom they appeal so cynically, are just means to an end. Hopefully working class people will figure this out on their own because Democrats do everything to demonstrate their own indifference to the working class.

The opposition to allowing recruitment by the military services on campus is particularly irksome. What an easy cause for a North Eastern elitist. Few or none of the people opposing those interviews would be caught dead actually being in the military. Why? Because the military has traditionally been the place for working class and minorities to have what is as close to an equal opportunity as can be found in the USA. To be sure it cannot be found on any elitist campus. I don't get it. No one is forced to go to a military recruiter. Just who are people like Kagan protecting? And if people like Kagan want to change the policy then kissing up to the President who signed off on it is hardly the way.

Just once I'd like to see a nomination that shows some imagination.

Lucky Jim: Summer Sequel

I generally prefer Martin Amis to his father Kingsley but no book captures class bias more accurately that Kingsley's 1953 book, Lucky Jim. It is a humorous book and brilliant book. I think brilliant because even those who do not occupy either side in the world of academic class warfare can enjoy it. The book centers around Jim Dixon, woefully out of place in the British upper classes of academia and knowing it. In the edition I have there is an interesting preface by David Lodge. How appropriate.

The photo is from the film version. Can you tell which one is Jim? It was a bit of a flop at the time but deserves a look today. You can find it on Amazon but it's a bit pricey.



My favorite nugget from the book --not sure it is in the film -- is Jim's description what he teaches as "along the knife-edge dividing the conceivably-just-about-relevant from the irreducibly, immitigably, irrelevant." What an admirable use of hyphens and the word immitigably. Actually, I think the most interesting things are on that knife edge because you never know when they may fall into one category or the other.

No More BP

Maybe it is irrational but I have not bought Exxon since the Valdez. Now I am adding BP to my list. It's unfortunate since it is closest to my house and I usually drive around on empty but if the market works at all I will do what I can to signal my anger.

Getting What You Pay For

I think I have seen version of this story before but the condensed very was in the NYT yesterday. Its the basic grade inflation story -- from a 2.5 to over and 3.1 -- and as far as I know no one got smarter. The study reported on establishes that the inflation leaders have been private schools. And, it suggests pretty strongly that inflated grades may lead to the disproportionate number of public school graduates in desireable jobs. So, I guess you can, in part, buy your way to a good paying job which then means so will you children. I am not sure the cycle can be broken.

On a related matterm when I heard the story about sophisticated law firms interviewing people on the basis of their GPAs I scoffed. That is about as knuckleheaded as you can get. If a firm refuses to interview someone with a less than, say, a 3.2, do they not allow for the fact that at some some schools a 3.2 may mean average and at others it means spectacular performance. Yet, my big firm colleagues assure me that it is true. GPA trumps class rank and you could be at the top of you class and not get a call because you did not meet the GPA cut off. Seems crazy.

Covenants not to Compete for Law Professors

Everyone reading this knows that most employment contracts are terminable at will. For the most part this favors employers who can fire someone for any reason or no reason. It is true that employees also can quit for any or no reason but the rule in practice benefits employers far more.

Have you heard of this rule? The contract is terminable at will by the employee but not by the employer. In fact, the employer cannot only terminate for cause but those causes are very narrowly defined. Pretty crazy, right? Maybe, but that is the contract that all tenured law professors have with their schools.

It gets stranger especially when you realize that public schools are spending the money of others. Say a school hires a new teacher. The teacher likely gets a reduced teaching load and summers off with pay in order to write and basically learn how to be a law teacher. If the new teacher prefers, new courses will be created. And, as a teacher becomes more senior he or she can insist on a new Center or a new L.L.M. program because that is more consistent with what strikes his or her fancy at the time. This drives hiring and other investments. These are all investments a School makes in a professor.

You might think of the professor as having gone through an apprenticeship program. Plus, and I know you will think this is petty, but it is not to law professors, the professor racks of tens of thousands of frequent flier miles at the School's expense which then are used for pleasure.

After all this investment the employee/professor can terminate at will and be off to a new school taking all the human capital the old school paid for and leaving the old school holding the bag as far as the courses and programs created to accommodate the newly departed. (There is one place were schools are unwilling to play the role of the dupe. In most instances a professor taking a sabbatical is required to come back for a limited period of time or pay up.)

Sounds like just the place for a covenant not to compete. You say "but law professors do not compete." Hogwash. If a chef moves to a new restaurant, does she compete with the old one? If you do not think there is competition, take a look at US News and World Report and the machinations schools go through to increase their rankings.

So why no covenants not to compete? Maybe they would not be enforceable. If so, why not contracts that bind professors to schools for some period of time with liquidated damages? Please don't say because the professors have all the leverage. For every law professor I think there are ten people at least who could be as effective who are rejected. And if hiring committees would get over their irrational obsession with Harvard and Yale the number would balloon as would the work ethic of those hired.

I'd like to say I know why Schools allow themselves to be robbed like this but I do not. I think what I have describe is true at both public and private schools so it cannot be the lack of accountability that comes for spending money in the public sector.

Dip, Law, Economics and Greed

Photo by Ryan Suffern

One of the things I teach is law and economics and for 8 years I was a economics professor. The last three of those I went to law school and eventually landed a law teaching job because law and economics was an up and coming field. At that time, resistance to an economic approach was fairly strong. If you knew anything about economics the view was that you were likely to be a conservative and even then law teaching was not a profession that was as open to conservatives as it was to so-called liberals. This view still persists but it is not as knee jerk as it once was.

This all seemed odd to me because law professors were far more uptight and humorless than the economists I had worked with. And, if two professors were talking and one was wearing an expensive suit and carrying an expensive briefcase and driving a Mercedes, that was almost always the "liberal" law professor and the one in jeans was the economist. In short, the law professors seemed, and still do seem much more materialistic and greedy than the economists I know.

In fact a pattern seemed to emerge. Some people found law and economics offensive but lived their personal lives like maximizers of self interest. Things were negotiated down to the last nickel and the fewer number of courses and days taught the better. They were the law professors. Others taught economics or law and economics and did not live by efficiency standards at all. To me, at least, they seemed less obsessively self interested.

The law professor greed factor seems to have found a new manifestation. One, of course, is the double dipper. Retire at one school and collect your pension check and get a full time job at another. I am not talking here about the retired professor who teaches as and adjunct or part timer for a small fraction of his or her former income. I have always wonder why schools would pay double dippers as much as their other professors. Unless the double dipper is a star surely he or she would take a reduced salary. Even if the new job offers only a 50% salary, the double dipper is still making more than staying at his old job.

At my school we have the possibility of triple dipping. You can collect a check equal to a year's salary if you agree to resign at the end of the year. At that time you can collect retirement and also get another full salaried job. In fact, if there are few positions for new professors, it is in part because these schemes to get veterans to move on and make room have failed miserably.

I cannot say whether economists are as likely to double and triple dip at law professors but I am willing to bet they are no less greedy (and remember the law professors are already among the highest paid people at a university) than economists and if I really had to bet I would say more greedy. And, remember this is all in the context of people who claim not to wedded to the ideals of capitalism and materialism and for whom the phrase "rational self interest" is an anathema.

I suppose is this all just fine but sometimes I wonder if it goes too far. Suppose you are at a law school and have a sense of entitlement. You teach hardly any students, name your schedule and start a program that is your baby meaning that the school invests gobs of money to keep you happy. And then you get a chance to triple dip and you are gone to another school. I guess you are just a rational maximizer of self interest -- something many economists view as just an assumption.

Adam Smith on Moneylaw

Some of Adam Smith's views of higher education and professors are quite similar to those found over on Moneylaw and on this blog. All are found in the Wealth of Nations:

". . . [T]hey are likely to make a common cause, to be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that is neighbor may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own."

"In the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretense of teaching."

"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters."

My goodness!

Dogs and Cats

I know this is not the usual topic of this blog but I spend a fair amount of time with my dog an cats. It's pretty clear to me that cats have no sense of humor, none at all. But they have a powerful sense of irony.

West Virginia

Watching the news about coal miners in West Virginia is hard. My grandfather arrived at Ellis Island from Italy as a 16 year old and went directly to West Virginia to mine coal until the day he died putting on his work boots. My dad and uncles all spent time in the mines before the family escaped to Massachusetts and eventually Florida. All lived their lives as working class people

Many of them have the same characteristics as the widows and relatives on the TV news -- overweight, poor teeth, weathered, bad grammar and poorly educated. You might find them at Walmart on Friday night. Why Friday night? If you have to ask stop reading and go back to your cushy life. Friday is payday for these folks and on that day they get groceries and buy other things they need.

So what's the point? A tragedy for a law professor is teaching on Friday or having to grade essay questions. The idea of teaching extra classes? You must be kidding! Maybe having a law review editor make an unwarranted change. Do I really think these things are tragedies that they regard as as on a par with the deaths of coal miners. Not really. On the other hand, do I think they regard their petty needs -- new office furniture, a new paint job in the office, getting a full year sabbatical, teaching anytime other than 11-2 M-W -- as comparable to a coal miner's need for dental work, a physical exam, special training for a "slow child?" Absolutely. In fact, if you applied economics to this this, I think law professors experience more disutility from their unmet petty needs and unmet expectations that many working class people feel a result of not having far more basic problems.

Too many law professors I know would not know justice if it bit them on the ass.

Letter From Reader

With permission I am posting this letter from a reader both because it is interesting and he would like comments from others.

"Dr. Harrison;

I came across your blog while doing some research on the relationship between SES and higher ed. I am Phd candidate. . . in political science and public policy. Coming from a working class background I have always been interest in how class factors in both to student and faculty existence. Depending upon my career trajectory I would like to eventually conduct some type of research related to this topic. From what I can tell this topics is sort of an 800 lb gorilla in the room that no one bothers to recognize. Relative to what I have read of your work thus far I have a few comment and a few questions.

First, based upon what I have seen your analysis and perspective is almost completely accurate in most of academia outside of law. Frankly, I found it uncanny how many of the topics you have discussed I have seen first hand.

Second, you had mentioned considering SES in terms of hiring etc especially relative to administrative positions. Have you ever considered the civil service model of hiring and promotion as a method of resolving what essentially is corruption in academic hiring? For instance, academics might be required to actually be trained to teach much like k-12 teachers (which presumably would include a union or professional organization to set standards) in addition to the hiring process being more transparent and formal, (as found in federal and state govt. hiring)

Third, One of the larger issues in many non-professional disciplines is the issue of the casualization of the work force. As it stands the majority of teaching now is done by grad students and adjuncts who tend to be underpaid and lack job security, in addition to possessing disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged groups. Is there such a trend in legal education or in law in general? Also, you might, if you already have not done so, check out Mark Bousquete's website on academic labor: www.Howtheuniversityworks.com

Fourth, I am curious to hear your take on the rationale of the elite for ignoring job applicants from non-elite institutions. Specifically, if there is a good if not superior candidate from a lower tier school how is the justification for not hiring them constructed? This, incidentially is something that is quite prolific in most academic disciplines often to the point where inferior candidates will be hired almost soley on the basis of their pedigree. A good article on this was done a couple of years ago by Val Burris at the University of Oregon.


Thanks, and I enjoyed reading your work."

Two quick comments in response to the writer. The most important authority I know of on the issue of class and administrative posts is Ken Oldfield. On the rationale for excluding non elites, at least in law, the issue is not addressed directly. Instead a committee composed largely of elites, filters them out. As far as I know they have never been challenged enough to offer a rationale but there are many codes law professors use to elevate people that are socially and politically comfortable above those they are not. Usually in comes in the form of criticism of a job talk or applying an higher standard to non elites than to elites in other ways. The number of pretenses is limitless and quite transparent because there is very little opposition.

No Comment

Please watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLC7Q3DTzi4

Rules or No Rules: Maybe Rawls Really Was Wrong

Recently at my school a proposal was made to alter the sabbatical policy in a minor way. A faculty member would qualify for the alternation by meeting fairly specific conditions. I liked the proposal and the conditions because it seemed to create some level of certainty. In short, you knew where you stood. Your standing might be good or bad but you probably would not know until the time for your sabbatical arrived.

I would say that half or maybe most of the faculty had the opposite reaction. They preferred less precise rules and more discretion for the decision makers. In a way the whole thing had a Rawlsian feel to it almost like creating the rules behind the veil of ignorance.

As I thought about it, you were most likely to oppose the rules -- even ones you thought were fair-- if you felt you could make a better deal without them. In the case of the sabbatical plan, it seemed clear that most people felt they could cut a better deal if there were no rules that applied to all.

So what would explain a person's believe that they could do better than a pre set rule. One possibility is they they learned this to be the case. In other words, they have been able in the past to cut a deal that was better that following the rules. Another possibility is not seeing themselves and equals with respect to other faculty. This is along the line of "Those rule are suitable for the average Joe but not for me." It's that old sense of entitlement rearing its head once again. When you combine that sense of entitlement with experiences that suggest you really are special, it creates the type of chaos and stress that is found among academics.

Tiger, Amy and Entitlement

There have been two entitlement stories in the news lately. Tiger Woods explained his behavior as a consequence of money and fame that meant he did not have to follow the usual rules.

And in the case of Amy Bishop, according to a news story and her attorney:

". . . Bishop's failure to get tenure at the university was likely a key to the shootings. Bishop, who has a doctorate from Harvard University and has taught at University of Alabama in Huntsville since 2003, apparently was incensed that a lesser-known school rejected her for what amounted to a lifetime job.

"Obviously she was very distraught and concerned over that tenure," Miller said. "It insulted her and slapped her in the face, and it's probably tied in with the Harvard mentality.""

One has to be careful to fold the Bishop case into this and I have thought it is inappropriate given that what ails Ms. Bishop goes far beyond her apparent Harvard fixation.

Nevertheless it does appear that, whatever her mental illness, somewhere in there she had developed a sense that because she had gone to Harvard she "deserved" certain things in life.

After watching the Woods' press conference I think it is possible that he does understand what it means to have a sense of entitlement. Whether it affect his future behavior is another question. And, the the case of Ms. Bishop, at least we know that observers regard her tragic deeds as a result of the dangerous mix of serious mental illness and a sense of entitlement.

In legal education, a sense of entitlement is principally dangerous only to the students and tax payers paying the bills. Many teachers want to teaching the minimum number of courses to the minimum of students. They want to teach what they are interested it whether or not it generates student interest. They want special teaching schedules and customized leaves. When you combine those wants with a sense of entitlement you begin to enter the realm not just of selfishness but irrationality. By that I mean those with a sense of entitlement seem incapable of understanding how that sense affects their behavior.

They either do not get it or they cannot afford to get it. In any case, they have no interest in trying.

59 Seconds

59 Seconds is a nifty little book by Richard Wiseman. It is not quite a self-help book. Those books usually have 150 pages of trite testimonials and then 20 on how to lose weight, be happier, or grow taller. Wiseman takes the quirky results from various social science experiments about human behavior and describes how the result might be applied to real life.

I wonder if law faculties can learn anything from his book. For example, if a person is in distress in a crowd they are less likely to find assistance than if he or she was with one or two people. Similar, when like people gather together and share the same views, those views become even more extreme. To me, it's kind of a mob mentality. Everyone get tougher when with their political clones.

When I read about the distress in a crowd I wondered if small faculties are somehow more caring about each other than large ones. Or, is it possible that in a faculty meeting, as opposed to a small committee meeting, people are more likely to listen and pay attention to the views of others. I know the connection seems slim but it seems easier to ignore a person stating a reasonable position when the statement takes place in a crowd than in a smaller setting.

On his second point, I immediately thought of faculty meetings and faculty lounges. These are places where people gather and talk about issues. On my faculty there is little or no ideological diversity so the net result of getting together in a faculty meeting or in the faculty lounge is the development of views that are extreme not because people believe them but because of the crowd effect and the ease of ignoring those who dissent.

I have written before about the danger of faculty lounges. The gatherings there can become small faculty meetings with the handful of people then deciding they represent others and then speeding off to the dean to say how "the faculty" feels. In fact, I once saw a faculty candidate with a very high positive vote get undermined by a few busy bees in the lounge.

All of this suggests to me at least that it makes sense to minimize the instances in which law faculties, especially large ones, are permitted to interact. And, I'd turn faculty lounges into reading rooms that are open to students and where no talking is allowed.

It is most important to do this in small towns with large law faculties where the line between social and professional is blurred.

The Backwards World

Margaret Mead where are you when we need you. Help me understand the strange rituals practiced by a tribe I have discovered.

1. The subjects speak to each other using informal names and the hang out together. Then they have meetings monitored by the chief of the tribe. Now they take on a completely different tone. People who were calling each other Phil or Jane before the meeting now use much more formal terms -- referring to their pals as Professor Jones and Professor Smith.

2. They make formal speeches at these meeting using codes that are know by some but not by all. A new visitor to these meeting would be misled if he only relied on the words spoken. For example, "I am concerned" means "I disagree with you."

3. Very often in these meetings a speaking contest breaks out. To the outsider it seems to be a competition to determine who can speak the longest or repeat the same things the highest number of times.

4. Just before the chief calls the meeting to order, there is usually much laughter. The problem is that nothing funny is being said. The silliest statements draw howls. It's like they are so nervous about the combat to come in the meeting that they are trying to hide the tension.

5. Sometimes they do the cruelest things to each other. They will lie about someone or disparage them to others. Sometimes they take things from each other. Yet, in public they act like they like each other and make a big show of their mutual affection. This is especially true when it comes ot the chief. They will be very critical of the chief and then fall over themselves to display their great love of the chief.

5. A very odd trait is volunteering when they want something. Several tribe members may want to visit a neighboring village. They do not ask to go but "volunteer" to go. They place great value on getting things without appearing to have asked. Instead, they want it to appear that either someone asked them or that they are actually doing a favor for the tribe. It's like what they do and say is designed to appear to be the opposite.

6. The theme of opposites also comes up in their work. They conduct what the refer to as "research." Unlike other cultures that conduct research they do not look for answers to questions. For example, in regular research one might as "Do green apples make you sick?" and then attempt to find the answer. In his tribe they do the opposite -- they start with the answer and then their research is devoted to explaining why their preconceived answer is the correct one whether it is or not.

7. One other odd trait is how they assess the accomplishments of each other. The value each other not so much by how hard they work or what they produce but sometimes on the basis of how much they are alike. In fact, in finding new tribe members they often search very hard for those who are the most like.

Don't Hold Your Breath

Don't hold your breath if you expect to hear or even think these thoughts may occur on a law faculty:

1. I've talked enough. I'll be quiet and let someone else speak.

2. It does not seem fair that I teach so few students while others teach so many.

3. This seminar topic is really interesting to me but it would be better if I taught something the students need more.

4. That article you wrote was so interesting!

5. Maybe it is not right for me to vote against hiring or tenure candidates because they do not agree with me politically.

6. I should probably pay for this trip with my own money.

7. Maybe it is not right to vote to give someone tenure who has not done much but is my friend.

8. Maybe the Dean will catch on to the fact that my office visits and phone calls are just a way of kissing ass.

9. Maybe I am not the smartest person on the faculty.

10. Maybe this article is too much like the last one I wrote.

Diverisity, Capture, and the Latest by Ken Oldfield

Ken Oldfield, one of the editors of Resilience: Queer Professors from the Working Class, has published yet another insightful piece about the downside of elite hiring. "Our Cutting Edge Isn’t Cutting It: Why Public Administration Should Be the First Discipline to Implement a Social Class-Based Affirmative Action Plan for Hiring Professors"

It is in the latest issue of Administration and Society.

Here is the abstract: "Over the last several years, various writers and commentators have argued that as part of their affirmative action efforts, universities should enroll more students of working class origins because socioeconomic integration ensures greater social equity, democracy, and intellectual diversity. The present study shows that the justifications applied to student diversity pertain equally well to professors. This discussion proposes that if public administration were first to use socioeconomic-based affirmative action in faculty hiring, it would prove the discipline’s willingness to meet its self-imposed obligation to be “cutting edge,” a promise studies have shown it has yet to fulfill."

I do not know much about Public Administration but before Ken decides that field is far from "cutting edge," I'd suggest he check out Law School administration and hiring. By the way, Ken is also working on a long term project, Hypocricy Studies. My own efforts to cover some of this ground are found at "Confess'n the Blues: Some Thoughts on the Class Bias in Law School Hiring," 42 JOURNAL OF LEGAL EDUCATION 119 (1992) and "Law Faculty Ethics: Shirking, Capture and “The Matrix,”" 82 DETROIT MERCY LAW REVIEW 397 (2005).

Public Service and Harvard and the Students Admitted

In this blog I have been tough on what I label elitist law professors. To some extent this carries over to students at elite schools. I am aware, though, that many of those students are piling up massive debt and forgong substantial income to attend those schools. There students, not their well-heeled counterparts, have a chance not to become part of the elites. I know several people who attended these fancy schools who I do not regard as elitists.


I was thinking about this for the first time in a long time when I read that Harvard was abandoning a program that waived a year's tuition for those committed to doing public service work. The theory is that public service work means less income and greater difficulty paying off loans.


The article I read, here suggests the move is to deal with financial problems. Maybe that is the case. But there is other interesting information. Harvard admits 550 students a year. According to the article 50-60 students of a graduating class of presumably close to 550 entered public service before the tuition waiver program. After the program the number signing up was 58. Of course some may enter public service without applying for the waiver but these numbers seem quite low. It also tells me something about the wealth and income of Harvard grads. The program, if I understand it correctly mean what amounted to a $40,000 payment to Harvard students if they would agree to do five years of public service. Or you could say that Harvard was adding $8000 a year to whatever income the grads would make in public service jobs. Yet it appears there were virtually no takers. By that I mean there were no people lured to public service by the $8,000 a year payment. If the money simply went to people who were destined for public service already, it was a waste of money.

Nice try Harvard, I guess. But I would suggest you are paying too much attention to economic theory and not enough to the types of students you admit. If you are serious about a public service committment, why not make the committment a condition of admission for a certain percentage of the class.