The Price of Standing Still

The price of UMass law school
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By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / February 7, 2010
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 LAST WEEK’S vote by the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education to establish a state-run law school didn’t come close to passing the smell test.
The vote authorized the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth to acquire the Southern New England School of Law, a small private institution that had offered to donate itself to the state. Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville called the offer “an extraordinary gift’’ that for the first time would enable UMass to provide “an affordable, high-quality legal education,’’ all without costing the taxpayers a dime.
In some alternate universe, maybe. In this one, the merger will almost certainly cost Massachusetts taxpayers a small fortune.
Southern New England is nobody’s idea of a first- or even second-rate law school. It has twice been denied accreditation by the American Bar Association. Its admission standards are derisory. Its library is inadequate. Its faculty is modest in both size and reputation. Not surprisingly, a large majority of its graduates fail the Massachusetts bar exam.
UMass officials claim that the school can be transformed into something far better at no public cost, but their plan for achieving that goal is dubious. It calls for sharply increasingly enrollment from 235 to 559, dramatically upgrading academic standards, yet charging less than $24,000 in tuition and fees - 35 percent less than the average per-student expenditure of other public law schools in the Northeast. To pull off such a feat, estimates James White, for 26 years the ABA’s chief consultant on legal education, would require a subsidy of between $92 million and $110 million over the next 10 years. The Pioneer Institute concurs, rating the UMass plan “virtually impossible.’’
“Their financials simply don’t work,’’ John O’Brien, a former chair of the ABA’s Accreditation Committee, told the Boston Globe. “This will bite the taxpayers and bite them big.’’ The rosy scenario laid out by UMass, he said, “is fiction.’’
But because O’Brien is also the dean of the New England School of Law, one of three smaller private law schools strenuously opposed to the UMass takeover of Southern New England - the others were Suffolk University and Western New England School of Law in Springfield - his warning was ignored. Worse than that: He and his counterparts at the other law schools were accused of basely conspiring to crush an innocent competitor.
UMass trustee James Karam, for example, ominously wondered “whether Suffolk and New England are in collusion . . . to try to stop an affordable alternative for a legal education in this state.’’ Jack Wilson, the president of the University of Massachusetts system, labeled the private law schools’ objections “nothing short of shameful.’’ One newspaper commentary charged the schools with having “joined in a holy battle to . . . snuff out a weaker competitor.’’
Again: Maybe in some other universe. In the one the rest of us live in, it is a metastasizing public sector that threatens the existence of private institutions - not the other way around. Once upon a time, Massachusetts boasted a thriving array of private junior colleges, which graduated thousands of students over the years. But few of them could withstand aggressive competition from the government, which, beginning in the 1960s, opened 15 community colleges around the state. Unable to prevent the deep-pocketed new state schools from siphoning away their students, most of the junior colleges died.
A more recent victim of Beacon Hill’s edifice complex is the Bayside Expo Center, the privately-owned Dorchester venue that for years hosted Boston’s most popular gate shows, including the New England Boat Show and the International Auto Show. The Bayside’s death warrant was signed when the state decided to build its own gigantic new convention center in South Boston. Unlike the government-run Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, the Bayside’s losses aren’t covered by annual taxpayer subsidies. So the biggest gate shows in Boston now go to the BCEC, and the Bayside will go out of business in the spring.
With a higher density of lawyers than all but three other states, Massachusetts doesn’t need a government-run law school any more than it needs government-run supermarkets. But need isn’t what drives empires to expand. UMass-Dartmouth’s acquisition of Southern New England will no doubt cost Massachusetts taxpayers millions of dollars they cannot afford. It may cost the state’s smaller private law schools more than just money.
Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

This article appeared as an OP-ED piece in The Boston Globe today. Jeff Jacoby is a well respected columnist for the Globe, and many times takes a conservative's view on most issues, public spending being foremost among them. Certainly he is entitled to his opinion, and there are more than a few people across the state, and even in the Southcoast region, who agree with him on this subject. I am not among them.

I do not believe we do enough to support first class public Colleges and Universities
in this state. And there is certainly nothing wrong with a little competition. These two American ideals, education as indespensible to a strong and free society, and competition to bring forth greater excellence from all in the contest, are part of what has  always made this country and it's people great. Whenever we shy away from these dual pillars of American society, we are a lesser people. Education and competition are the essence of America's strength. Without them we will ever be a second class society. In this, I wish never to share.

I have always found it suspect that many forces push and pull the Fourth (4th) Estate to it's views. Sometimes various columnists do the work of one party to the argument more than the other, and I think this article is a case in point. Reporting and Opinion expression, at this level of a national newspaper with a great reputation of journalism standards, obviously reflect the nature of news journals of any type as political entities which are occassionally captured by the forces backing a particular point of view. It happens and we must recognize the fact. And I am not pointing to popular beliefs that newspaper 'X" is a liberal journal, or "Y" is conservative. I am directly aiming at the the individuals writing the posts which help form popular opinion of the man on the street. It is usually more subtle than it is in this OP-ED entry. So whenever reading any newspaper story, always try to use an "opinion filter" while you read whatever is being reported, to cull as much true and unbiased fact out of what is written as you can. Because no one who writes a news story or OP-ED column is devoid of opinion or personal prejudice over and above what you read on the surface. What I am suggesting seems almost counter intuitive, and it is, somewhat. But not to actively do so leaves you open to confusion and that baffling feeling that after reading a series of articles on a story or subject, you still cannot make up your mind of what is REALLY happening. This is one of the costs of being a fully informed citizen in democratic American soiciety. It is one of the most important burdens of citizenship.

It is obvious that Jacoby sides with the smaller independent Law Schools who fought to prevent the Board of Higher education from approving the adoption of a UMASS/Dartmouth Law School. They fought with the help of lobbyists of one sort or the other, most of them acting sub-rosa, with a whispering campaign, and through negative newspaper articles like the one written today, but  before the fact. That's just the process working it's way to a logical conclusion. Sometimes, politics is just plain ugly, especially when it's played by the private sector. Folks, politics exisits in every human endeavor. That's just a fact of life.

Why do I support the UMASS/Dartmouth Law School? The reasonable tuition cost making it possible for more smart kids from Massachusetts and OTHER states, especially in New England, to obtain a solid legal education. Similar arguments were made by private Medical Schools in the region when the  UMASS/Worcester Medical School was being proposed. Have you ever heard of having too many well trained phycisians? What utter nonsense! And it's not like more lawyers would be THAT bad of an idea (talk about counter intuitive!) when this law school would have a distinct public interest outlook. You can never have enough well trained legal minds on the Southcoast with the depth and breadth of crime occurring here everyday. Who says all these attorney's will work solely as public defenders? Some could specialize in municipal law. Some in public interest law. Maybe some in intellectual property law or immigtion law. What, are local lawyers afraid of competition? Based on what I've experienced personally, and what I've read about this past year of what happened at City Hall, we could use a bit of competition to push all lawyers to better performance! Just because you graduate from law school and pass the bar on the first try doesn't mean you get to cruise for the rest of your life. If no one told you lawyers that before today, I am, so WAKE UP!

UMASS/Worcester has a world class Med School. UMASS/Amherst has a world class Business School, and there are more graduates from it's MBA program who are heads of Fortune 500 companies THAN ANY OTHER MBA PROGRAM IN THE COUNTRY, INCLUDING HARVARD AND STANFORD! Why shouldn't UMASS/Dartmouth develop a world class Law School? As long as they make a committment to excellence and aim to have the most students passing the bar on their first try than any other law school in New England I don't care what it costs!

I think it's obvious what is happening here. Governor Romney used to slash the higher education budget, saying we had so many great private institutions in the immediate area that we didn't need to fund public higher education to the extent we did. Again, what utter elitist hogwash! Just the opposite should occur.
The overwhelming majority of students seeking  a college or university education are quite bright and simply need a chance to grow into their innate excellence. However, not everyone can afford Harvard, or MIT, or BC, or BU, or Tufts. We absolutely need a public alternative for all academic areas that is excellent, committed to even more excellence and at a cost the average citizen can afford. To not do so brands us as a society where only the wealthy can enjoy the entirety of  America's opportunities. We're a bigger people than that. We're a better people than that.
Sorry Jeff.....even you, a conservative,  should understand that a bit of competition is a good thing, that it brings about even greater levels of excellence everywhere. And to that end, I have an idea......if the small Boston Law Schools can't compete with a state funded school....maybe they should MERGE to survive...if anything has been brought home in this economy it is the idea that no instutution should be too big to fail. It's competition, and the American way. It might be the price those law schools pay for standing still.