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In the news: a possible Navajo law school; $111 million of alleged contributions from law schools
A NAVAJO LAW SCHOOL?
Diné College, of the Navajo Nation, is considering the establishment of a law school. "In a press release, the tribal college stated that discussion about developing such a program occurred during a symposium on Dec. 12 and Dec. 13, where participants talked about accreditation, core courses and specializations, judicial advocates, traditional Navajo law and names for the law school."
One critical question seems to have been left out of that symposium: money. How much would it cost to set up a law school at Diné College? Where would the money be found? How much would the students pay? Would the school generate sufficient revenue? Exciting though the planning of curricula and the selection of a name may be, these practical questions must be answered first.
I'll surprise everyone by saying that this is one case in which a new law school is justified in principle. The Navajo Nation legitimately needs the educational and other institutions that will support genuine sovereignty. And no existing law school can properly teach Navajo law, despite the pretensions of narcissistic law professors who think that they know everything. Nonetheless, it is not enough to say "We should have a law school", as college president Charles "Monty" Roessel did in a press release. Many localities from southernmost Texas to northern New England, from remote Appalachia to rural Idaho, are saying the same thing. Unless the proposed law school would be viable, it should not be established.
"LAW SCHOOLS GIVE BACK TO THE TUNE OF $111 MILLION"
A ridiculous advertisement masquerading as journalism asserts that despite law schools' "bad rap", "it would be hard to argue that they are not assets to their communities". Why? Because the Association of American Law Schools (Ass'oALS), whose name says it all, claims that "the total value of the students' time" spent on "the delivery of legal services through clinics, other experiential courses and pro bono activities of graduating law students" during their last year at some 105 law schools "is estimated to be in excess of $111.5 million". On the basis of that allegation, the "article" concludes that "[l]aw schools give back" to their communities.
There are several problems with this piece of nonsense. An obvious one is the questionable claim that the students' time is given by the law schools. There might be some justification for that at those schools, most of them über-toilets, that require their students to perform unpaid work and even charge them hefty tuition for the privilege. Even so, the credit that Ass'oALS gives to law schools (surprise!) appears to be misplaced.
The valuation of the allegedly donated time is, quite frankly, idiotic. Our own Dybbuk demolished last year's similar claim that the "legal services" in question were worth $81.8 million. Three years ago, I similarly put paid to a ridiculous claim from tiny über-toilet U Mass Dartmouth that its students' so-called pro bono work since 2010 was worth $4.5 million.
Über-toilet update, Part II: Status of some of the worst law schools in 2019
The annual 509 reports that the ABA requires of law schools that have received its rubber stamp of approval are now in. Our friends at Law School Transparency have already summarized the new data. Here are a few highlights:
Golden Gate has seen its first-year enrollment collapse in a single year from 237 to 127, while the LSAT scores remain at exactly the same dismal levels. What exactly is going on at Golden Gate? Is the über-toilet collapsing?
Cooley has seen a similarly sharp decline, from 541 to 292. But Cooley kicked its LSAT scores up a hair. It is still the worst ABA-accredited law school when measured by LSAT scores. Cooley did recently announce the closure of one campus, but that announcement came after the start of the semester and thus should not have affected enrollment. So why did enrollment fall? In part because of Cooley's wholly inadequate efforts to raise its LSAT scores. But something else must be going on. In any case, enrollment is now so low as to threaten the sustainability of the über-toilet-in-chief. As I have estimated before, 75 new students per year is about the lowest level of enrollment that an ABA-accredited law school can sustain. Cooley's 292 new students were spread over five campuses. That's not even 60 per campus on average. Small wonder that Cooley is closing another campus. Perhaps the whole goddamn chain will vanish in the coming years, thereby making the world a better place.
Also declining in enrollment was Vermont Law School, from 194 to 151. At the same time, Vermont's LSAT scores slipped a couple of points to a level that leaves Vermont among the ten worst schools by LSAT score at the 25th percentile. That's a steep fall for a school that only ten years ago was almost halfway respectable. Vermont Law School is in deep financial trouble, and challenging Cooley for the bottom rank is no way to save the institution.
But the most dramatic decline of all occurred at Western State University, from 162 to 23. Hell, even Indiana Tech had more than 23 students in its inaugural class. What sort of law school can be run with so few students? It can hardly offer very many electives. Then again, similarly placed Indiana Tech offered "Hip-Hop and the American Constitution", plus four specialties (among them "Global Leadership"). But we know what happened to Indiana Tech, and it isn't hard to see where Western State University is going.
Appalachian, one of the best candidates for imminent closure, saw enrollment rise from 50 to 61—still too low for sustainability, especially in light of Appalachian's financial distress. LSAT scores went up slightly, and tuition went up 12%. More than 30% of last year's graduates were unemployed ten months out. Expect the Grim Reaper to harvest an über-toilet in Grundy, Virginia, within the next two years.
Florida Coastal is now all that is left of the InfiLaw scam-chain. Enrollment went up by almost half, from 60 to 87. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has kept track of this über-toilet, LSAT scores fell considerably, from 147/150/153 to 146/147/151. I expect Florida Coastal to announce its closure in a year or two, thereby bringing InfiLaw to a well-deserved death.
If you have read the previous article, you know that La Verne and Thomas Jefferson are both switching to California state accreditation—the former by choice, the latter not. But we may as well give these two über-toilets one last glance. Unemployment in last year's graduating class was 39.6% at La Verne and 50.7% at Thomas Jefferson.
New England School of Law | Boston nearly doubled, from 181 students to 351. It also raised its LSAT scores by a couple of points. Results on the bar exams, however, remain execrable, and more than a quarter of the last graduating class was unemployed ten months out.
A disturbing trend of 2019 is the widespread adoption of the GRE as an alternative to the LSAT for the purpose of admission. Old Guy disapproves. The LSAT is better suited to law school. More importantly, however, a single test affords a good and consistent standard for comparison. I recommend that the ABA put the kibosh on this GRE business by requiring the LSAT at all law schools.
Posted by Old Guy at 02:35 7 comments:
Hasenpfeffer Incorporated, meet slave-raping president: Thomas Jefferson and La Verne go down on the same day
November 21, 2019, was an eventful day in the law-school scam, especially in southern California. Thomas Jefferson Law Skule lost its appeal against the ABA's decision to revoke its accreditation. That's the end of the line for Thomas Jefferson.
Old Guy must admit that Thomas Jefferson may not actually die. Earlier this year it obtained state accreditation from California, apparently in hope of living on in some much-reduced form after the ABA finally gave its jive ass the boot. But law skules not accredited by the ABA are ineligible for the student-loan scam, and Thomas Jefferson can hardly thrive as a state-accredited unter-über-toilet.
On the same day, the University of La Verne College of Law became the first law skule to abandon ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation. Reportedly the board was concerned about "sustainability" in light of the ABA's adoption last year of so-called standards related to the bar exam. Lenny and Squiggy could not be reached for comment.
In the past three years or so, eleven ABA-accredited law schools have gone tits up (if we count two campuses of the Cooley franchise as law schools):
Cooley (one campus)
Mitchell (merged with Hamline—call it a dignified death)
Indiana Tech
Arizona Summit
Cooley (another campus)
This occasion calls for one of Old Guy's commemorative songs:
We're gonna dump 'em…
Give us bar exams, we'll fake 'em;
Read ABA's rules, we'll break 'em.
We're gonna dump our toilet schools
(Dumping 'em our way).
Nothing's gonna save our ass, now,
Though the state gives us a pass, now,
There is no scam we won't try;
Never heard the word integrity.
This time we're dead in our tracks
Since we can't go on probation,
We'll take state accreditation
For our two overpriced cesspools.
And we'll dump 'em our way,
Yes, our way:
Dumping our toilet schools.
Dumping our toilet schools
For goddamn fools.
Onward and Upward...More or Less.
Progress continues, unabated, since 2008.
Well, it has been a long time between postings. Some of it is in part due to slow-news days on the legal education front. Another part of the downtime, for me at least, has been due to the transition to a new position, and that has cut into my time recently for delivering on the "JD-Advantage" perspective.
"Wait, a new job?" I hear the critics say. "That is proof positive that all your whining and belly-aching about how JDs are not worth the time and money is a complete and utter fabrication. Why don't you just buckle down and work hard for once in your Gen-Xer life, and see what actually comes of it."
We've all heard this before, multiple times. Never mind the fact that the Boomer cohort as a whole, from whom this particular criticism often comes, has suffered from significant ageism in the workplace, under-funded investments vehicles for retirement, and the need to continue working because they will be destitute if they don't. Some of this is "their fault," some of it isn't. Given the vagaries of life, however, you would think there would be some solidarity between generations on these difficult issues (sort of a "welcome to how the other-half live, now let's actually stop with the slings and arrows and try to do something productive together" approach), but generally, not really. Lazy Millennials, et. al. still need to get off the lawn, etc., so here we all are.
(In fact, one notable Boomer in particular has concluded that the federal student loan program is a colossal train-wreck and debt needs to be forgiven. And no, not Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren nor similar individuals who have to, in-part, pander to the masses, but a long-serving chief officer at the DOE who ostensibly should know something about the issue. Though, he is getting into politics also, so...)
Some may recall an older post of mine where I ran the numbers, and concluded that the good old JD, outside the law, is not that remunerative. The numbers didn't work for several years, they barely "worked" for a few more, and even now, with some improvement, still are not great – some 15 years after my glorious non-traditional graduation. Considering the fact that I have 20 years to go before I am eligible for any federal benefits, it still seems tenuous and one-disaster-away from ruin. Overall, the cost-benefit analysis says "no."
Why? Because I would argue that the rent for a JD is just too damn high. I think after the last several years of scamblogging, it can probably all be distilled down to this one fact. We can debate the utility (or uselessness) of traditional legal education, the bar'zam hazing ritual, the lack of true clinical and/or apprenticeship models in the profession, the brutal economics for solos, or even newly minted lawyers with no connections having to compete for jobs with legacy lawyers coming from T14 institutions. All these things matter and contribute to the picture, but they would all be a bit more survivable without six-figures-plus of crushing debt at 7%, give or take.
"A bit more survivable," though, is the key phrase. My own "successes," should they be termed that, came very, very slowly, and did not adjust for inflation well at all. Note again that I do not actively practice law (though I maintain the license as a credibility marker), and had to flee from the idea very early on due to my non-traditional status and the inability to break in. "JD-Advantage" was, and still is, a face-saving measure to try to spin the narrative on a bad decision. I won't say it has zero utility, but the utility it does present is very watered-down, and could have been achieved through alternate, less-costly means.
Maybe the K-JDs, in contrast, are rocking their Maseratis and their models-and-bottles, and I don't doubt that a few are. However, my sources say "no" for the majority, even though self-interested parties will say "yes," and it is not clear how it will strongly improve any time soon.
0Ls, make sure you are considering alternate career paths, and not just choosing law as a default. Sadly, many do, and some (like me) thought they were making a good decision back in 2002 or so, before the "word got out" on the now-ubiquitous internet. I'm not saying the world doesn't need lawyers, but clearly the world does not need that many of them now or in the future.
The Zen of Scam: Suffolk Law Prof. Shailini George promotes mindfulness training as a "core concept in the legal curriculum."
Suffolk University School of Law students have a lot to worry about. The non-discounted interest-accruing cost of attendance at this school is $264,394, or about $30,000 above the median. However, Suffolk Law's placement result for its most recent crop of grads was in the bottom quintile of law schools in the country, with a mere 52.9% obtaining a non-solo full-time law job within nine months of graduation. A few years ago, the University offered a buy-out to all law school faculty (whether with or without tenure), an apparently unprecedented cost-cutting move by a law school, and an extremely public indication that the University is less than vigorous in its commitment to the law school's future.
Thankfully, Suffolk law professor Shailini George has scholarly balm with which to soothe the troubled law student soul, in the healing guise of a 30-page law review article which promotes the teaching of "mindfulness" in law school classrooms. See George, Shailini, The Cure for the Distracted Mind: Why Law Schools Should Teach Mindfulness, 53 Duquesne L. Rev. 215 (2015) (hereafter: "Cure").
Prof. George opens her article with a fictional vignette about "Ian the Intern" who is stressed out because he does not have job, has no way of paying his law school student debts, and the supervisor of his internship thinks he is a clueless nitwit.
"Ian the intern is working on answers to interrogatories. The supervising attorney asked him to get these done as soon as possible. This particular attorney makes him nervous, in fact, Ian gets a stomachache whenever the attorney comes into his cubicle. The attorney has never been happy with anything Ian has done. Ian is not sure if what the attorney wants him to say is accurate and he does not know what to do. No law school class prepared him for this! Ian spins the answer around and around, when ding!: he receives a text message from his roommate reminding him to upload his resume to the law school career center for an upcoming interview. He logs in and sees two rejection letters from the last interviews. His heart sinks. How will he repay his loans without a high paying job? Then he notices an email from the attorney, subject: "are you done yet????" and the stomachache is back. He knows his supervisor won't be happy."
Cure at 216.
According to Professor George, law schools have the means to rescue Ian the Intern from his terrible predicament. By allowing Ian to turn in his JD in exchange for a tuition refund? Well, no. What Ian's law school can offer him is training in "mindfulness." See Cure at 216 ("If Ian had learned mindfulness techniques allowing him to focus, concentrate, and deal with this stress and anxiety, he may have avoided this scenario. . . . By making mindfulness training a core concept in the law school curriculum, law schools will enable and empower their students to better handle the pressures of working in a distracted society where complex situations are the norm").
Prof. George's law review article does not really describe what mindfulness meditation training involves-- something about breathing properly, and learning, through interludes of quiet contemplation, to be emotionally present in the here-and-now. But the article is emphatic about its enormous benefits-- indeed most of the article is devoted to describing these benefits, and how they have been recognized by this-and-that study and by this-and-that organization.
Here are only some of the benefits she mentions: lower anxiety, reduced depression, reduced anger, reduced fatigue, improved attention skills, empathy, creativity, equanimity, self-compassion, a deeper understanding of oneself, others, and of the nature of reality, development of emotional intelligence competencies, ability to stay connected to one's sense of humor and one's deepest ethical and professional ideals, and "spiritual enlightenment or just lightening up." So even if trapped in the typically toxic environment of a law office, Ian and his lowly fellows can journey at will to an inner Shangi-La.
The article even asserts that mindfulness meditation can even improve your favorite basketball team's zone defense."The Chicago Bulls and L.A. Lakers basketball teams use mindfulness to improve focus and work on the team aspect of the game." Cure at 237-238. (n. I do not follow professional basketball closely, but haven't the Bulls and Lakers performed miserably the last few seasons?)
Though but a humble law intern, and not a Chicago Bull, mindfulness proves to be a slam dunk success for fictional Ian the legal intern, to whom George returns at the end of her article.
Ian takes a deep breath after the supervising attorney leaves his office before he begins to work on the answers to interrogatories. He notes the time and contemplates what he was asked to do. As he breathes, he reminds himself that this attorney can be brusque but that this attitude is not directed at Ian. Ian must only do what he was asked to the best of his ability. He begins reviewing the file in order to draft the answers. He hears his phone: ding! But he does not take it out of his desk or look at it. He knows it can wait the half an hour it will take him to work on this discovery. Ian is not sure what the attorney wants him to say is accurate, so he does his best to work with what the client said and what he knows the attorney wants. In half an hour, the attorney calls to ask if the answer is done, and Ian is happy to respond that it is. While he knows the attorney may not be completely pleased with the answer, Ian is satisfied that he did the best he could. He hands the work off to the attorney, and checks his phone. Time to work on his resume before anyone asks for him! Ian is thankful that he learned to focus his attention in a law school class that prepared him for such situations.
George promotes the benefits of mindfulness so enthusiastically that she reminds me of a cult member or even a faith healer. See e.g. Cure at 230 ("Mindfulness training may benefit people suffering from a variety of ailments, including chronic pain, fibromyalgia, cancer, heart disease, anxiety, binge eating disorder, psoriasis, borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, and stress.")
Troublingly, and unlike what I hope she is teaching her legal writing students, George does not hint at the existence of skeptics, even for the purpose of countering their arguments. The skeptics are out there, however, and not only among disappointed Bulls fans. See Farias, M., & Wikholm, C. (2016). Has the science of mindfulness lost its mind?, BJPsych Bulletin, 40(6), 329 ("Academic articles describe weak results as 'encouraging' and 'exciting'. . .The replacement of orange-robed gurus by white-collared academics who speak of the benefits of 'being in the present moment' is a powerful social phenomenon, which is probably rooted in our culture's desire for quick fixes and its attraction to spiritual ideas divested of supernatural elements.")
While I am in favor of anything that helps law students, quick fix or not, perhaps law school professors would do better to stick to providing instruction in legal practice, which is what they are being overpaid to do. I mean, interested law school students could pick up mindfulness techniques from a local yoga teacher or spiritual healer. Or perhaps mindfulness training could be offered by the University's counseling center, as opposed to making it a "core concept in the law school curriculum." Cure, at 216.
There is nothing wrong with adopting a mental habit or routine of concentrating on the present moment and to avoid dwelling on the traumas of the past or what the future may hold. This is a good goal, a good lesson. But what if the enlightened pedagogues who offer this wisdom are the very persons responsible for traumatizing you by scamming you into massive debt and wasting three years of your time? What if they have destroyed your future and enriched themselves by doing so? Even if their advice is anodyne, it is still tainted with odious hypocrisy and chutzpah.
Moreover, there are limits to the benefits of mindfulness, limits imposed by objective reality. Even in Prof. George's second fictional vignette, Ian the Intern does not have a job, just good breathing techniques, improved time-management skills, and a better attitude. Maybe mindfulness is a stress-reliever for some, but it will not make a law grad's educational debt disappear or feed and house his or her family, nor will it provide fulfillment within a very difficult profession, which is undergoing structural change that is curtailing opportunities at every level, but especially the entry level.
"Being a Law Firm Partner Was Once a Job for Life. That Culture Is All but Dead."
An interesting article from the Wall Street Journal, from August 9, 2019. This headline will surprise virtually no one except K-JD gunners, but it still bears reading for those who still think law school is a done-deal. It also echoes many, many prior comments on this blog alone from seasoned practitioners that warn that the Law School sugar-plum-fairy pipedreams of Big Law (or Mid-Law, or Small Law) should not be taken without copious amounts of salt.
Being named a partner once meant joining a band of lawyers who jointly tended to longtime clients and took home comfortable, and roughly equal, paychecks. Job security was virtually guaranteed and partners rarely jumped ship.
That model, and the culture that grew up around it, is all but dead. Law firms are now often partnerships in name only. Full-time chief executives, some without law degrees, have replaced the senior partner running human resources and accounting. Law firm names have trended toward the shorter and snappier, more befitting a tote bag than a law library.
Many firms have expanded rapidly to mirror the growth of their corporate clients, with hundreds of partners spread around the world. The largest, Dentons, recently hit 10,000 lawyers in 78 countries, around a third of them partners.
"Can you be partners with someone you don't even know?" said legal consultant Aric Press.
In the new paradigm, lawyers are expendable, and partners may jump to a competitor for the right amount of money, taking as many clients as possible with them on the way out.
One criticism I have is the discussion of top partners making $1.75 million to $15 million, while the lower-caste partners "only" make $800,000.00 at someplace like a Kirkland & Ellis. All too many gunners and Law School Deans alike look at that and say, "well, that's a problem I'd like to have, ha ha," which completely misconstrues the point:
As firms compete to keep profits rising for those at the top, lawyers further down the ladder are sometimes getting left behind. Promising associates who could once expect to be named a partner within seven or eight years are waiting 10 years or more.
Firms have created new steppingstones along the way to appease them—and keep them grinding.
One newly promoted partner at a big firm said he was shocked to learn he would have to spend a year as counsel, an increasingly popular interim title. The firm told him it was to prepare him for the bigger change of being partner. "I wouldn't be a cynical lawyer if I didn't think there were other profit-motive reasons," he said.
Another popular stop-off is "non-equity partner," the title held by those 560 Kirkland lawyers not invited to the California retreat. They earn a salary rather than sharing firm profits.
And, of course, the model has changed since the 80s (or 70s, or 60s):
Making partner doesn't just take longer. It takes hustle. A few decades ago, partner titles were handed out largely on the basis of being technically proficient. Now, being a business generator is a crucial component.
Janice Mac Avoy, a Fried Frank partner, said when she earned the partner title 23 years ago, the business model was "wait for the phone to ring" and do a good job for the client on the other end.
When a partner suggested a lawyer being considered for promotion had great contacts and could generate new business, she recalls a fellow partner saying, "You know that's not an appropriate consideration."
Those who do make the cut encounter a new set of stressors. Bureaucratic tasks pile on top of the same billable-hour expectations. New partners face pressure to bring in enough new business to cover their own salary, plus those beneath them.
Kevin Smith went to law school in the early 2000s because he had lawyers in his family and wasn't sure what else to do. After graduating, he clerked for two federal judges then joined an international law firm.
Making partner five years later was one of the best days of his life, he says. He soon realized the new title "makes all the bad things worse" about working in a law firm. "There's more email, more of the blame if anything goes wrong, just more stress in general," he said.
After 6½ years, he quit the partnership to travel abroad while working part time for the firm.
Of course, the Law School Cartel mentions none of this. Often, it is these same attorneys who leave these same realities in order to become Law School Professors, thereby indirectly encouraging others to make the same errors they made. But no one really talks about this except the scamblogs, who are largely comprised of people who know.
So, yes, back in the "halcyon" days of law practice (if there ever truly was such a thing), working for a large firm was likely the correct way to go, and if you can somehow manage to get the Golden Ticket, perhaps even now. That is rarely the case today, and as indicated above has little to do with being technically proficient and "waiting for the phone to ring", or in some cases even being able to generate some business. As is the case with many things, a few get spectacular results, more get good but profoundly difficult results, and many, many more are shown the door. Like many things in life it is a numbers game, and when a firm has thousands of lawyers with a multiple-caste system, the odds are not good.
0Ls, pay heed to this. The Cartel wants you to sign on the dotted line, and they are loathe to talk about the realities on the ground because the same realities would give any reasonable person pause, especially when the alternative is hanging a shingle Day One. The world has changed a bit since 1960 or 1980, yet the Cartel pretends that everything is the same as it ever was.
Posted by dupednontraditional at 07:12 115 comments:
"America's $70,000/Year Liberal Arts Colleges Are Like Headless Zombies That Just Won't Die"
With a title like that, you have to have an image to go with the story.
Small liberal arts colleges in the U.S. simply refuse to die, despite a torrent of bad news about the U.S. higher education marketplace and the increasing uselessness of their degrees.
Bennington College in Vermont is one such example, according to Bloomberg. It sports famous alumni like Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis and charges $73,000 per year for admission. Located at the foot of Vermont's green mountains, it nearly went out of business in the 1990's and was still under duress at the beginning of this decade.
But the school - and its 700 undergraduates - have hung on. It's a microcosm of how these types of schools continue to defy the odds nationwide. Massachusetts' Hampshire College was another institution known for its artisiness than has somehow still hung on.
So, what does that have to do with the law school scam? Perhaps nothing directly - except it is pointing out the continued pressure on higher-education as the weather gauge continues to drift, along with answering "why do the scamblogs keep complaining about law school when so few in particular have closed?" As indicated, many schools are fighting to survive, and are pulling out the stops to stay afloat. Law Schools, in many respects, are no different on the whole.
Though, while I have enjoyed the skewering of "liberal artists," often by other liberal artists, concerning the utility of law school over the years (RIP, JDUnderground), I do have to say that I hate to see such degrees being described with "increasing uselessness." Cynical as I am, and even as an ex-STEMer myself, I do believe a liberal arts education has value, assuming one is taught critical thinking, rhetoric, logic, and composition skills (what law school got away with for so long lumping together as "analysis"). Plus, a strong alumni network never hurts.
These skills are increasingly critical in every field, even now in this "AI-does-scut-work" world, and have never really "gone away" - it does no good to be the smartest coder, engineer, historian, curator, business person (or even lawyer) in the world, but unable to communicate your findings effectively to others, argue for a position in a principled fashion, or be adaptable - y'know, the things that tend to be uniquely human.
Perhaps those sound like platitudes, and it is all too easy to pick on the stories where people spent $300k on the proverbial underwater basket-weaving degree. But I think readers of this blog understand what I am talking about. The issue is (1) so many institutions don't actually deliver on these ideals (hello, most law schools), and (2) they charge way too damn much money for something that shouldn't cost NEAR what is being charged. I mean, come on, really.
I would be all for more liberal arts education (and, heck, other kinds, too) for a reasonable price. That would solve multiple problems simultaneously - having an "educated" populace (what people say they want until cost comes up), a not-buried-by-debt populace, and a leaner education system that "delivers" to its graduates. There is more impetus for growth when people aren't crushed.
As it stands, all you have to do is look at Law School as an example for how it can go off the rails. The "problem" is other schools are following suit, perhaps to our greater detriment in the short-term. The only good news is that the market can't be ignored when it is allowed to operate properly in the long-term, and even higher-education may have to finally be competitive in ways it never had to be before.
Anyway. TL;DR is - 0Ls, think twice.
Teacher's Union Sues the Department of Education over PSLF Denials
In a development that surprises absolutely no one who is a follower of the scamblogs:
For 10 years, Baker, who was a public school teacher in Tulsa, Okla., checked in with loan servicing companies and was told she was on track...[b]ut it turns out that her $76,000 in student loans didn't get forgiven. Baker was finally told she was in the wrong type of loan. If she'd known that at the beginning, she could have switched loans and ended up qualifying. But she says nobody ever told her.
Whelp, it looks like a lot of people don't get told a lot of things, be they teachers, police offices, or even lawyers, for that matter (unfortunately, the plight of attorneys involved in public service jobs did not seem to figure into the story, probably due to the fact that teachers, fire-fighters, and police officers probably garner more sympathy). And $76,000 is no small sum of money, let alone the six-figures many law graduates carry. I wonder if the courts will consider public school teachers "sophisticated consumers" as well in the ongoing litigation.
The teachers union lawsuit alleges that the Department of Education "knows of — but completely disregards — repeated misrepresentations made by [student loan] servicers to borrowers who are attempting to qualify ... resulting in unwarranted denials of loan forgiveness." In other words, people like Baker aren't given the right information or advice, and many end up in the wrong types of loans or repayment plans and get unfairly disqualified...Navient, one of the nation's largest loan servicer companies, is not commenting on the lawsuit. But the company said in a statement to NPR, "We understand the frustration borrowers face in navigating a complex federal loan program, which is why we consistently advocate for policy reforms to simplify the system."
And so the finger-pointing begins in earnest between bureaucratic government agencies and their quasi-governmental-sub-contractors. If only people had known that PSLF was not a "done deal" at the time it was instituted, perhaps warned others to not bank on this in making their decisions to attend higher education...
Oh, wait. Our own Antiro at the time was bringing up this issue and the other sources that were commenting on it, back in 2014, a good five years before PSLF was to "come due":
Hilariously, the WSJ reports that the Dean of Georgetown Law, Bill Traenor, says that the government's forgiveness programs are not influencing G-town's tuition, which is approximately $50,000 (don't forget the high CoL that comes along with living in Washington D.C.). Georgetown once proclaimed that "public interest borrowers might not pay a single penny on their loans—ever!", on their website. According to the WSJ, G-Town has been "steering" its graduates into public-service jobs "as part of its Jesuit mission." We have data on how many people are in G-Town's public-interest program: 432, up 60% from 2 years ago.
Yep. This was just one of many examples of the Law School Cartel handing out PSLF pipe-dreams like candy. Don't worry about the debt, kids, Uncle Sam will take care of all that for you (somehow, someway...), especially when there is liberty and justice that needs doing! Now, sign here.
Here's hoping that this suit will finally bring attention to these programs, and, as Navient so graciously stated, help "simplify the system." Because nothing says loan forgiveness is here for you like having to sue to properly administer and enforce the program.
Snake oil that the Cartel was more than happy to advertise at the time, so long as it brought people in. Odd that the Cartel does not appear to be falling all over itself to help fix this issue. As teachers and others are now learning what law grads learned the hard way, the attitude is "Let the graduates make their claims and chase a broken system, we got ours."
0Ls, pay heed.
The Trojan horse of "diversity": scamsters win, racialized people lose
Not so long ago, many law schools would not admit racialized people at all. Texas Southern University was hastily founded in 1946 as the "Texas State University for Negroes" so as to create a pretense of a "separate but equal" university for Black people alongside the white University of Texas (see Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950)). The Supreme Court unanimously saw through the ruse and refused to countenance it. (Today, incidentally, Texas Southern still has not strayed far from its Jim Crow roots: most of the class is Black, only 10% is white, the median LSAT score for last year's entering class was an appalling 144, and for the past two years the law school has been subject to the ABA's censure and directives for remedial action.)
Long after formal segregation was abolished, many law schools showed little interest in racialized people. But the spate of toilet law schools over the past decade has changed that. Nowadays scamsters from toilet law schools today portray themselves as champions of "diversity". They would have us believe that the toilet schools' abysmal, if not non-existent, standards of admission afford racialized people an opportunity to enter the legal profession. That so-called opportunity, however, comes with a poor chance of passing the bar exams, dreadfully low rates of employment, and a whopping price tag.
A Black lawyer with a JD from Michigan lifts the lid on the scamsters' invocation of "diversity" as grounds for lowering the passing score on California's bar exam. As he says, any sincere effort to increase the diversity of the legal profession must start with analysis of the causes of the problem and the best ways to address it, not with scam-fostering proposals such as "Let's lower the passing score!".
It's true that the bar is insufficiently diverse in terms of race and certain other criteria. But that does not imply that the passing score is too high. The whiteness of the bar stems from systemic inequalities and racial injustice—the same factors that have led to the monstrous racialization of the prisons and many other manifestations of racial oppression. Address it by correcting those inequalities, not by persuading the authorities in California to license more toileteers of whatsoever race.
Nor is it appropriate to lower the passing score on the test just because few people taking the test are passing. The score should be set at an appropriate level, and anyone arguing to lower it bears the burden of giving sound reasons. The scamsters seem to "argue" that the various Black people upon whom they have been preying should be admitted to the bar just because they are there. But that's no argument at all. The very purpose of the bar exam is to protect the public by ensuring a minimum level of competence. There may be nothing wrong with the passing score even if every single candidate fails.
Nor should California be played against other states. That's the child's tactic of going to Daddy in hope of a "yes" after Mommy said "no". Why should it matter that West Virginia or Missouri has a lower score? Perhaps California is the only state with a proper standard. Or perhaps even California's score is too low.
White scamsters are cynically perverting "diversity" for their own profit (figurative and literal). Racialized people, don't fall for their ploy.
On Student Loan Journalism, the Warren/Sanders Proposals, and the LSTC's Private Hell
We know what has caused the student loan problem: college (and, as relevant here, law school) tuition costs have increased dramatically faster than indicated by CPI, post-degree wage growth, or any other comparable measure of inflation; the federal government carelessly writes loans without realistic underwriting criteria; and consumers have been stripped of bankruptcy as an option for a poor financial decision.
Given that reality, the best political solution we've come up with is income-based repayment, which is basically a softened Chapter 13-style repayment plan for one debt in that you pay what you can and the remainder is eventually discharged. A better solution might be simply restoring bankruptcy rights as people have suggested for some time. Another prospective solution might be to either regulate loan origination by limiting tuition increases or by removing the government entirely and letting the free market scoff at paying ludicrous tuition rates for lackluster degrees.
(The LSTC would also propose retroactively recalculating due student loan balances based on CPI, issuing credits and taxing educational endowments for the deficiencies, but that would be, one suspects, politically unfeasible.)
I was all set to rip on Elizabeth Warren's unnecessarily convoluted and weirdly devoid of rational justice plan when, this morning, Bernie Sanders went whole hog and suggested a freaking student debt jubilee.
Lord, what did we do to deserve this fresh hell?
Do I want student debt relief? Yes, and I would benefit to varying degrees under either plan (tax issues aside for a second), but what the hell? The system as it exists needs rational, forward-looking, cohesive reform, not ludicrous, empty headed hip-thrusts at vacuous Millennial populism by elder statespersons who should know better.
We need bankruptcy rights. We need IBR free of any tax bombs. We need lower interest rates. We need credit bureaus and financial institutions to feel security that the full amount isn't going to ever come due because Congress changed its mind. We need an out when the government's been paid its fair share. We need educational institutions to bear the systemic costs of what we all know but the law can't say was fraud...
At the same time, Warren and Sanders are just playing the hands dealt to them. The arguments around student loans have become so polarized that the second any kind of reform idea emerges forth, one of two results invariably happens:
Some jackass who owes like $15k won't shut up about how oppressive their student loans are and cheers wildly; and/or
Some jackass whines that money borrowed has to be repaid, students knew what they were doing, the taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook, "but I ate canned soup for 5 years to pay mine ASAP," etc.
My private hell is populated with nothing but people from both camps and then I spend eternity trying to reason with them while "Come On Eileen" and "You Can Call Me Al" play on constant loop.
As with many issues, our journalism about the student debt crisis blows. When they focus on the debtor side, it's almost invariably Boomer-triggering anecdotes, often with gaudy headlines that bury the lede. Then there's the pie-in-the-sky solution subgenre and the ubiquitous live-at-home-and-give-up-coffee subgenre.
Screw these people.
The problem with all of these sub-styles of journalism is that they take what we know is a systemic problem caused by the intersection of well-meaning policies creating a bad outcome and transform it - or reduce it - to a personalized, dig-your-own-hole, bootstraps, etc. problem. Journalists, both educated and amateur, often deliberately seek the personalization, the pathos, the Dickensian aspect or whatever. This situation calls for more, or, at least something different. At a minimum, journalism should've learned from the housing crisis how to report on broken financial systems that incentivize bad consumer behavior.
That financial crisis wasn't about Raynette buying a 500k home in Vegas with no income any more than this one is about Raynette's kid spending $300k on a social work degree.
There are decent deep dives out there, but too often they seem to get bogged down in partisan politics or pandering to the audience; e.g., the WSJ article I just linked has the following paragraph:
The Obama administration also heavily promoted income-based repayment programs...This severed the link between the value of students' education and how much they could borrow, providing a huge incentive for schools to raise tuition, since taxpayers would pick up more of the tab. Enrollment in these programs is one big reason that the government's costs for student loans are exploding.
Yeah, Bub....this is an political issue, for starters. That link between value and borrowing was already severed and schools don't care about repayment because they get the money upfront. Enrollment in IBR-style programs is irrelevant to the government's costs (which are dynamic projections, anyway, that change if current outlays on tuition were brought down or income to people in repayment would increase...as it often does over time) because the alternative, generally, is default, which means higher administrative costs being thrown at debts that would likely go uncollected - the funds simply aren't there. If these idiots think IBR "costs" the government any money, someone should actually report on what the default rate would look like if IBR went away.
Anyone want to report on that? Anyone?
The real frustration, of course, is that the Dickensian portraits, when they come, are only one-sided, like reading Great Expectations with half the subplots missing. Only rarely do these articles actually go after that group of antagonists, the policy-makers and the school administrators, many of whom absolutely knew what they were doing.
Because despite saddling millions of people with funny-money debts, no one wants to even suggest the f-word outside of those few truly awful for-profit colleges. It's a shame, because the real story of student debt isn't that Johnny carries $250k - it's that an American college or two had the audacity to charge Johnny $250k and he's not licensed to perform niche surgery.
Why don't the anecdote articles ever call out the schools that bilked the subject sucker? Why don't the "I gave up utilities to pay my loans" pieces not typically mention the institution partly responsible for lowering the standard of living of alumni? Why are people proud of paying off student debt like it's a race, anyway, and why are those articles newsworthy? Why, when the federal government took over loans, did it not heavily regulate the costs of attendance or the marketing of admissions materials?
Oh, and here's one: How can Bernie call out Wall Street while proposing what is, in effect, a massive bail-out of Big Education's malfeasance and, in many cases, fraud on the federal taxpayer?
It's regrettable that Warren and Sanders go straight to these bandage-style post-hoc debt forgiveness solutions that play directly into the well-worn "personal responsibility, ddddderp!" narrative so easy for journalists and editors to exploit for hits and social interaction. They could lead in awareness regarding the root of the problem in the event "free college" doesn't pan out (and it won't).
But successful politicians also need a partner in the media and it would sure be nice if the press high and low quit leading readers down a primrose path of reinforcing the lazy readers' preconceived notions. When framed correctly, there is a lot we could agree on (like if you owe $20k and make $60k+, get bent), just as with the underlying issues of the housing crisis, but it means we need journalistic skepticism towards not only the weary debtor but the institutions that created the debt, and loud enough for the butthurt ramen-eaters to hear.
You would hope that good journalism wouldn't even be necessary to stop the nonsense and discuss real, plausible solutions that Republicans may get behind - things like qualified Ch. 13 bankruptcy or making all student loan interest tax deductible - but we live in the world we've created and damn it I think I hear "It's Raining Men" and it's kinda hot, now that I think about it.
Posted by Law School Truth Center at 00:00 38 comments:
Thomas Jefferson School of Law loses accreditation
Today the ABA revoked the accreditation of Thomas Jefferson School of Law. The notorious über-toilet had long been in the throes of death. More than half of its graduates last year were unemployed ten months after graduation, and another sixth or so were marginally or tenuously employed. Enrollment of first-year students plummeted last year to 59, an unsustainably low level. Students paid $50k per year in tuition, but only a quarter of those taking the bar exam last year passed. The school had even lost its financial stability, thanks to declining enrollment and such foolish decisions as the construction several years ago of a ridiculous $90M building that it had to vacate last year in favor of cheap rented office space.
The ABA has demanded a "teach-out" plan whereby those few students still at Thomas Jefferson may complete their degrees. Reportedly Thomas Jefferson intends to appeal against the decision. By doing so, it may be able to defer the submission of a "teach-out" plan. The appellate process could extend into the autumn.
Nonetheless, Thomas Jefferson is done for. It would not have been viable even with another class of 59 first-year students, and now presumably most of those few people who may have been admitted for the coming academic year will look elsewhere rather than gambling on the highly improbable survival of a toilet law school that has lost its accreditation on multiple grounds. Thomas Jefferson has apparently obtained accreditation from the state of California, but that is far less attractive than ABA accreditation. A state-accredited (or unaccredited) Thomas Jefferson would probably attract even fewer students and would certainly have to lower tuition dramatically from the current sky-high level of $50k per year, in part because its students would have less access to student loans or other financial aid. Thus Thomas Jefferson has little hope, with or without ABA accreditation. Count it dead.
I expect Thomas Jefferson to cancel the entering class à la Arizona Summit. Then it will quietly close, whether it carries on with the threatened appeal or not.
Which law school will be the next to die? I'm betting on the Western State College of Law, but Florida Coastal and Appalachian are other strong contenders.
The real Thomas Jefferson was a fan of French wine. Old Guy is going to open a bottle of good Bordeaux tonight in celebration of the demise of another über-toilet law school. My colleagues in the anti-scam movement are welcome to come over for a glass.
Why tiny law schools cannot survive—and what that means for many an über-toilet
A law school needs a certain minimum level of enrollment. One study of the feasibility of a law school in Alaska (kudos to Law School Truth Center for the reference) cited an estimate of 75 students per year, which was more than twice as many as any law school in Alaska would attract.
Indeed, 75 is probably close to the minimum for any law school pursuing or maintaining ABA accreditation. A law school of that size might bring in $6M or $7M per year and would probably spend that much or more. Without a hefty subsidy (possible for a public law school), large donations (unlikely), or an unusual source of income (bake sale, anyone?), it could not operate for long with substantially lower enrollment.
Quite a few law schools enrolled fewer than 75 new students last year:
Appalachian, 50
Ohio Northern, 51
Concordia, 59
Faulkner, 59
Thomas Jefferson, 59
Florida Coastal, 60
North Dakota, 62
District of Columbia, 64
South Dakota, 71
Liberty, 72
(In addition, Penn State Dickinson and Southern Illinois each enrolled 76.)
Of the ten law schools listed above, all are toilets: nine are in Tier 6, by Old Guy's standard, and the other (Liberty) is in Tier 5. Seven of them have seen enrollment plummet from more than 100 new students per year earlier in the decade. Just a few years ago, therefore, all of them should have been financially viable; a few were even big profit centers, such as Florida Coastal, with 808 students in 2010, and Thomas Jefferson, with 422. Today, however, they are all marginal at best, and some of them are known to dip deep into the red ink.
The three law schools that have not suffered sharp declines from manageably high levels of enrollment all have special circumstances. North Dakota and South Dakota receive subsidies from their respective states. Concordia was established only in 2012 and never has had more than 75 students. Its parent university expected much higher enrollment. Perhaps the governments of the Dakotas will continue to waste money on their respective über-toilet law schools, but Concordia University cannot afford to sustain its über-toilet at a loss for many more years.
To consider the viability of these tiny law schools, let's look at an example. At Appalachian in 2017, total revenue was only $3.5M, with 128 students. Tuition that year brought in $2.3M; the rest came from gifts, grants, contracts, and investments. Expenditures, however, stood at $5.4M, which is more than half again as much as income. That spells bad news, particularly in light of Appalachian's endowment, which was only $4.23M at the end of fiscal 2015 (down 7.55% from the previous year).
How can Appalachian make up an annual shortfall that two years ago came to $1.9M? Consider that the average tuition paid was only $18k per student, although the nominal rate was over $30k. It would thus take well over 100 additional students, or some 35 per class, to save Appalachian. That represents a sudden 70% increase in enrollment. Even with that dramatic and unrealistic increase, Appalachian would not be in the black for three years to come.
Appalachian could instead increase tuition by 70%—to more than $60k, a level surpassed by only a dozen law schools of the Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, and Cornell variety. That strategy too seems unrealistic, although Cooley, charging $53k per year (and most students pay full fare), seems to be getting away with it.
How about borrowing the money? No creditor would lend it when Appalachian obviously could not pay it back.
Can Appalachian sell assets, such as its campus? After all, it does have a pretty brick building, complete with billiard tables in the basement. I haven't bothered to investigate the title to that land, but anyway I find it hard to see who would buy it. What, after all, could be done with it? It's located in tiny Grundy, Virginia, four hours' drive from even a small city such as Asheville, North Carolina. And if a buyer were found, the law school would need new quarters, which would also cost money—and entail a costly an inconvenient move, almost certainly out of the area.
Is there any other way to come up with $1.9M? Selling souvenirs at the bookstore can hardly bring in that much. Appalachian might pray for a donation, but its relatively unaccomplished alumni might not have much money and in any event might be disinclined to give much to their dying über-toilet law school. Might the state give privately held Appalachian a grant? I doubt it. Appalachian appears to be controlled largely by the McGlothlin family, one of whose members is the dean. It would be a poor, and suspicious, recipient of public funding.
Would any institution take Appalachian over? Appalachian has made overtures to various obscure colleges. But why should they want a failed law school that loses a couple of million dollars a year?
I conclude that Appalachian has one foot in the grave. Only a miracle could save it. I doubt whether it can last even two more years.
And much the same is true of most of the other schools on that list. Florida Coastal and Thomas Jefferson have shown signs of imminent shuttering, and some of the others must not be far behind. Liberty, with 72 1Ls last year, may appear to be an outlier on this list; however, it actually brings in very little money: 12% of the students get free tuition (some are even paid to attend!), 74% get discounts of 50% or more, and most of the rest also get a discount. Even by very generous estimates (using discounts of 50% and 10%, respectively, and ignoring the payments made to some students), revenue from tuition cannot exceed $1.3M per year for the entering class, or about $3.9M for all students. That does not cover payroll and benefits for a dean, 23 other full-time professors, 9 adjuncts, and the rest of the staff, never mind Liberty's other expenses.
North Dakota and South Dakota can last indefinitely, if their respective state governments are willing to sustain them at a loss. Better would be to admit that neither of those two large, sparsely populated states needs a law school of its own. Merge them and call them Dakota Law School. Build the school to straddle the border if necessary, perhaps between Ellendale, North Dakota, and Frederick, South Dakota; then each state can lay claim to it. Better yet, close both law schools down and cut a deal with the government of Minnesota so that students from the Dakotas can get their tuition their subsidized by their respective states. The law school at the U of Minnesota also depends on subsidies that the state is tired of paying, so this sort of deal might benefit all three states.
Here's Your Feasibility Study, Shreveport
To make up for posting to the wrong blog yesterday, I'm now going to rip on the idea of a law school in a third-tier metro area, which is somehow an idea people are still discussing in 2019.
As Old Guy mentioned earlier this month, Shreveport, Louisiana, is actively exploring getting a new law school, or maybe a branch of Southern, whatever, who cares. Earlier this week, the Louisiana House voted - 98-0 - for the Board of Regents to study the viability of a law school in Shreveport.
In other words, for now at least, they're seeking a feasibility study. Well, why can't we do that here and simply save the legislature some money?
As we know from the Indiana Tech experience, feasibility studies can be rigged by white collar salespeople desperate for a law school, leading well-meaning idiots down a path of disastrous idiocy. Okay ideas go 50-48. Atrocious ones, 98-0.
In contrast, consider this well-reasoned feasibility study for a potential law school in Alaska from 2004, which found that the entire state would only produce about 56 qualified law school applicants each year, not all of whom would necessarily want to attend law school in Alaska since Harvard is still in Massachusetts and people still want to go to places like USC.
Rounding up for convenience, Alaska has approximately 740,000 people. At the 2000 census, it had 630,000, so it is gaining about 6k a year and the estimated population in 2004 would be around 654,000. Using crude math, that means one qualified applicant for every 11,500 residents or so. Nationwide, incidentally, there's currently about one admitted law student for every 8,000 or so people in the general population. As we all know, however, there's too many darn people going to law school, so that number is probably high.
In any event, using the 75-student minimum number cited by the Alaska report, to support a law school, there would need to be an untapped population of 600,000 at an absolute minimum (this is approximately Wyoming's population, and it barely supports a law school dedicated to one single state) and more like 850,000 to a million.
Do we have that in Shreveport? Nope. The metro population for Shreveport, Louisiana, is around 450,000. To get into the range of even minimum law school demand, you have to expand the population radius to include places like Longview, Texas (65 mi., 45k) or Texarkana (70 mi, 40k).
But neither of those places will really feed directly into a new 5th-tier school in Shreveport. Longview residents can get in-state tuition at Texas public schools and Dallas (a two-hour drive away) fills most law school demand by itself with Southern Methodist, Texas A&M, and - now - UNT-Dallas (which was built in 2009, in part, to serve this area!). Texarkana is similar but on the Arkansas side it is just two hours to a state school that is more established and in a better location.
No one is moving from a nicer city to attend law school in freaking Shreveport and no one is fretting about driving two hours to law school instead of one. It's not keeping a single person from going to law school currently, so building a law school in Shreveport would suck demand from schools like UNT-Dallas, UA-Little Rock, Southern U., Loyola-New Orleans, Mississippi COL, and similar places.
It's particularly egregious when you look at the in-state competition's admission scores. In 2018, LSU's hypothetical 25th percentile student is at a 150 LSAT/3.16 GPA. Loyola's is at 148/2.89. Southern's is at an offensive 142/2.55. If there's anyone in Shreveport (or Monroe or Alexandria) with the chops for law school, they can currently get more than enough in scholarship money to make attending one of these places worthwhile and that's before we consider the Texas schools. At a minimum, these paltry scores tell us there's no qualified in-state candidates being rejected or anything; that teat is milked..
"If you look at points south between Baton Rouge and Shreveport and west between Dallas and Shreveport and north between Little Rock and Shreveport and east between Jackson and Shreveport we have one of the largest geographic regions in the country without a law school," Glover said.
Good God. Alaska (663 sq. mi.) has no law school. There's no law school anywhere in eastern Montana or northern Wyoming. There's no law school in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, or Minnesota. There's no law school in Nevada outside of the very southern tip. A large swath of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas is completely devoid of any law school. Western Texas has no law schoolat all.
Yet El Paso survives, same as Reno/Carson City, Mobile/Pensacola, and - yes - Shreveport. Colorado and Wisconsin - these are sizable states with more than 5 million people each, okay? - do just fine with two law schools. Arizona, at 7 million, should have only two. Louisiana doesn't even have five million and it's already got four law schools, two of which objectively suck and a two of which are weak sisters to their southern peers.
Shreveport? Shritttttt. The city's not really growing and if it's made it this long 2019 is not the time to build. If you come up with a feasibility study that says otherwise as to organic law school demand, the countdown to an Indiana Tech-like fate is on, because you're boarding a cruise speeding towards an iceberg even faster than the one boarded by the sophisticated consumers enrolling at Loyola or Southern with a 145 LSAT.
So I'm looking forward to this feasibility report and its exorbitant price tag, because it's either going to take 30 pages to repeat the above or be an incredibly, stupendously expensive lie. And you know, that's sorta fun either way.
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Risks of genetically modified maize for butterflies and moths in field margins
Dutch Butterfly Conservation
08-MAR-2018 - In agricultural production, a globally growing area is cultivated with insect resistant, genetically modified (GM) crops, such as Bt-maize. In the Netherlands Bt-crops are not allowed. But with increasing pressure from society to develop alternative methods, it could be one of the future options. This might result in risks for butterflies and moths, not targeted as pest species.
It often remains unclear whether non pest species are present in the vicinity of crop fields, and to what extent this could pose a significant problem. Therefore, the Netherlands Commission on Genetic Modification (COGEM) asked the Dutch Butterfly Conservation (De Vlinderstichting) to compile an overview of the evidence. In many GM crops that are cultivated worldwide, insect resistance has been incorporated. These crops, such as maize, contain Bt toxins that are poisonous to certain pest insects. The toxins are produced by naturally widespread soil bacteria. They are also used as pesticides in organic farming. Through genetic modification, the capacity to produce these toxins has been built into agricultural crops. Thus, Bt-maize varieties have been developed targeting caterpillars of certain moths, the corn borers. They die when they eat from the crop. But the toxins may be dispersed to areas bordering on the fields, especially via pollen. This could pose potential risks for exposure to other, non-target moths and butterflies, if these are vulnerable to the Bt-toxin as well.
The question was which species actually occur in these neighbouring areas and could be exposed to maize pollen during their development as caterpillars. Using data on the distribution of both agricultural fields and Lepidopterans, it is now known for all species of butterflies and macro-moths in The Netherlands, which proportion of their range or population falls within a 30 metre radius of maize fields. This concerns a substantial proportion of The Netherlands: 13 percent of the land area and even 20 percent in the region of sandy soils from Pleistocene origins! The most remarkable outcome was that the species with the highest proportion of records in maize field margins (38 percent) is also one of the most threatened: the Dusky Large Blue, a species protected under the European Habitats Directive. In total, 10 butterfly species and 28 macro-moth species occurred more than expected in maize field margins and could be exposed to maize pollen during the caterpillar stage. For butterflies, an additional 9 Red Listed species may be exposed during dispersal, when they may find suitable larval habitat in maize field margins.
"Given the decline of butterfly populations in The Netherlands, any addition to the existing pressures from land use may contribute to further declines and possibly leading to extinction", says senior scientist Michiel Wallis de Vries from Dutch Butterfly Conservation. "It is therefore of vital importance to keep the surroundings of arable fields 'Lepidoptera-friendly', not only in relation to the possible admission of GM crops, but also seen in a broader perspective of crop protection, fertilisation and further management practices." The insights of the study are relevant for improving environmental risk assessment, also in a European context. The report has therefore been published in English. The COGEM stresses the significance of the study in assessing the risks for Lepidopteran species and identifies, based on the research carried out by Dutch Butterfly Conservation, three butterfly species occurring in field margins that could be used in such assessments: wall brown, swallowtail and Queen of Spain fritillary. Furthermore, the COGEM notes that, in considering a possible future admission of a Bt-crop, it is advisable to compare the effects on Lepidopteran populations between both regular and alternative methods of insect pest management.
The report is available here.
Text: Kars Veling & Michiel Wallis de Vries, Dutch Butterfly Conservation
Photo's: Kim Huskens; Sergej Jansen; Kars Veling
Food and energy demand drives 58 percent decline in global wildlife populations 31-Oct-2016

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Assembly Machinery
Evana Automation to Streamline Manufacturing Process for Tier 1 Automotive Supplier with Multi-Cell Assembly System
Preh IMA Automation (formerly Evana Automation) Nov 22, 2013
Automated solution will simplify the process of manufacturing steering gear sub-assemblies
Evansville, Indiana – Evana Automation Specialists, a subsidiary of Phillips Service Industries (PSI) and leading Systems Integrator and builder of custom, automated assembly and test systems, recently received a contract from a Tier 1 automotive supplier to provide a multi-cell assembly system to simplify the process of manufacturing steering gear sub-assemblies.
The system will consist of five lean assembly cells that automatically feed components to stations where the sector shafts are assembled to the side cover, piston end caps are torqued into place, valve housings are assembled to the worm rack, and the gear balls are installed. The system has complete component traceability, including data collection of torque values, ball selections and running torque. All items are tagged to the serial number of the part and saved in a database for future accessibility. The system is scheduled for delivery in February 2014.
"This is the second system that Evana will provide to this facility," said Randy Wire, General Manager of Evana Automation Specialists. "The customer knows that they can count on Evana to delivery an efficient solution to meet their objectives."
Evana utilizes diverse technologies to specialize in motion control, robotics integration and system architecture by linking production equipment, material handling systems, data collection, networking, as well as computer hardware and software into flexible, unified technology. Test equipment can be integrated into assembly systems, stand alone systems for automatic testing, or manual test benches. Overall, Evana's custom assembly and test solutions improve efficiency for manufacturers all over the world in industries like automotive, aerospace, defense, healthcare, alternative energy, and mining, as well as commercial and consumer products.
For more information about Evana Automation Specialists, visit www.evana-online.com. You can also follow Evana on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube.
About Evana Automation Specialists (www.evana-online.com)
About Phillips Service Industries (www.psi-online.com)
Established in 1967, Phillips Service Industries, Inc. (PSI) is a privately-held global manufacturing and services holding company, which oversees a diverse collection of innovative subsidiaries: Beaver Aerospace & Defense, Inc., Evana Automation Specialists, Mountain Secure Systems, POWERTHRU, PSI Repair Services, Inc., PSI Semicon Services, Sciaky, Inc., and Skytronics, Inc. We serve a wide range of high-tech industries like aerospace, defense, automotive, alternative energy, healthcare, security and semiconductor. Our award-winning products and services help reduce costs and maximize efficiency for many Fortune 500 companies around the globe, as well as the U.S. Military. We push the boundaries of technology on critical programs like Homeland Security, Defense research and space exploration, delivering innovative solutions for land, sea, air and space. We're PSI: Always innovating. Everywhere.™
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Stencil Frame Tensioning System streamlines SMT assembly.


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UPS and Gnewt scoop share of £20m low emissions funding
By Natalie Middleton / 4 years ago / UK News / 1 Comment
Firms including global package delivery company UPS and Gnewt Cargo have won a share of £20m Government funding to reduce fleet emissions.
Gnewt Cargo has been granted £1.1m to lease 33 electric vehicles.
The firm is one of the winners of funding for the Government's Low Emission Freight and Logistics Trial, which seeks to cut emissions and improve air quality.
Announced by Transport Minister John Hayes today, the total of £20m in funding is being shared between 20 firms that have set out plans for innovative ways to deploy low and zero emission vehicles.
The funding is being delivered by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and Innovate UK.
The aim of the competition is to demonstrate new technologies and to encourage the widespread introduction of low and zero emission vehicles to UK fleets.
The UPS project will be carried out in central London and will design, tender and implement an innovative smart charging system that, together with an energy storage system, enabling UPS to exceed the current maximum number of vehicles to be charged in a depot.
Meanwhile Gnewt Cargo in Southwark, London, is being granted £1.1m to lease 33 electric vehicles to perform last-mile logistics.
And Kuehne + Nagel is awarded £1.1m for clients Whitbread, which will operate four fully electric, two range extended electric and two liquid nitrogen-cooled refrigeration vehicles on temperature controlled transport routes.
Other winning projects include from Tevva Motors, which receives £1.1m towards proving new battery range extending technology and develop a universal battery cassette.
Innovate UK's manufacturing and materials director Simon Edmonds said: "These 20 projects around the UK will spearhead the uptake of the next generation of innovative low emission freight and fleet vehicles.
"The impact will benefit the environment, particularly in our big cities. It builds on the results of previous low carbon projects with OLEV, and the data collected from this new trial will be invaluable to future development and commercialisation of these vital technologies."
The programme will help the UK meet its CO2 reduction targets – and represents another step towards the government's target for all new cars and vans to be zero emission by 2040.
Natalie Middleton
Natalie has worked as a fleet journalist for nearly 20 years, previously as assistant editor on the former Company Car magazine before joining Fleet World in 2006. Prior to this, she worked on a range of B2B titles, including Insurance Age and Insurance Day. Natalie edits all the Fleet World websites and newsletters, and loves to hear about any latest industry news - or gossip.
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Shin Indo es una  variedad cultivar de manzano (Malus domestica).
Un híbrido de manzana del cruce de 'Indo' x 'Golden Delicious'. Criado en 1930 en la Estación Experimental de Manzanas de Aomori Japón. Fue descrito y nombrado en 1948. Las frutas tienen una pulpa verde firme, seca y teñida de crema con un sabor dulce.

Historia

'Shin Indo' es una variedad de manzana, híbrido del cruce de 'Indo' x 'Golden Delicious'. Desarrollado y criado a partir de Parental-Madre 'Indo' mediante una polinización por Parental-Padre la variedad 'Golden Delicious'. Criado en 1930 en la Estación Experimental de Manzanas de Aomori Japón. Fue descrito y nombrado en 1948.

'Shin Indo' está cultivada en diversos bancos de germoplasma de cultivos vivos tales como en National Fruit Collection (Colección Nacional de Fruta) de Reino Unido con el número de accesión: 1953-005 y Nombre Accesión : Shin Indo.

Características

'Shin Indo' árbol de extensión erguida, de vigor moderadamente vigoroso, portador de espuela. Tiene un tiempo de floración que comienza a partir del 6 de mayo con el 10% de floración, para el 11 de mayo tiene un floración completa (80%), y para el 18 de mayo tiene un 90% caída de pétalos.

'Shin Indo' tiene una talla de fruto medio; forma truncado cónica con tendencia a cónica, con altura 57.00mm y anchura 57.00mm; con nervaduras fuertes; epidermis con color de fondo es verde blancuzco, con un sobre color marrón, importancia del sobre color medio-alto, y patrón del sobre color chapa / moteado, presentando un rubor rojo pardusco que cubre las dos cuartas partes de la superficie, las lenticelas blanquecinas son abundantes, aunque apenas visibles en el lado sombreado, "russeting" (pardeamiento áspero superficial que presentan algunas variedades) muy bajo; cáliz pequeño y ligeramente abierto, ubicado en una cuenca de profundidad media y estriada; pedúnculo largo y delgado, colocado en una cavidad en forma de embudo; carne de color crema con reflejos verdosos y firme, algo seca pero muy dulce.

Su tiempo de recogida de cosecha se inicia a finales de octubre. Se mantiene bien durante dos meses en cámara frigorífica.

Usos

Una excelente manzana para comer en postre de mesa.

Ploidismo

Diploide, auto estéril. Grupo de polinización: C, Día 11.

Véase también

Referencias

Bibliografía

Enlaces externos

 The world's most extensive apples (pommes) database.
 Nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=3905&&fruit=apple Jonagold
Nutritional information

Malus domestica
Shin Indo
Shin Indo
Shin Indo
Shin Indo

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text:
Q: How to publish azure pipeline test result to SonarCloud I need to publish my test coverage results into SonarCloud. My current pipeline is this
Update: - In run code analysis step this log can be found. But in SonarCloud coverage result is not displayed.
INFO: Parsing the Visual Studio coverage XML report D:\a\1\.\TestResults\VssAdministrator_fv-az185_2019-11-13_11_15_46\In\fv-az185\VssAdministrator_fv-az185 2019-11-13 11_15_34.coveragexml
INFO: Adding this code coverage report to the cache for later reuse: D:\a\1\.\TestResults\VssAdministrator_fv-az185_2019-11-13_11_15_46\In\fv-az185\VssAdministrator_fv-az185 2019-11-13 11_15_34.coveragexml
INFO: Coverage Report Statistics: 21 files, 20 main files, 20 main files with coverage, 1 test files, 0 project excluded files, 0 other language files.

A:
How to publish azure pipeline test result to SonarCloud

According to the document:
From Team Foundation Server 2015 or Visual Studio Team Services

*Optional: To import code coverage into SonarQube, add the Visual Studio Test build task after the build one and tick Code Coverage
  Enabled

So, make sure you have checked Code coverage enabled in the VsTest task.
Besides, if you already checked that option, you can check if the version of your SonarQube is 6.5, there is an issue on that version:
SonarQube 6.5 – Code Coverage Result is not displayed
And, if you can get the Code Coverage in Azure devops but not in SonarCloud, check if this thread give any helps.
Hope this helps.

A: https://medium.com/@chameeradulanga87/running-asp-net-nunit-tests-in-azure-devops-build-pipeline-and-publishing-results-to-sonar-cloud-20d14dccf275
Complete Guide to publishing test results

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