"If something is immune to the laws of supply and demand, it's usually because someone deliberately set it up to circumvent those rules. Supply and demand should have caused these lower tier schools to lower their costs to entice students away from the better but more expensive schools.  But they don't need to, because all law schools are free.  Read it again.  All law schools are free. Not after you graduate, of course, but right now.  Law schools can charge anything they want because everyone has enough money to pay for it- today.  As long as there are guaranteed government loans available for this, there is no economic incentive to lower the costs.  And as long as the price is zero, demand will always be infinity. If it was true supply and demand, #1 ranked Harvard and #100 ranked Hofstra wouldn't have the same tuition.  But they do, the same as stupid Washington University, which is so stupid it's in Missouri.  "It's underrated."  Bite me.  Are we saying that Hofstra's worth the same money as Harvard?  That people would pay anything to go to Hofstra?  No, they don't have to pay anything to go to Hofstra.  That's the point.  You cannot, on the one hand, say you want to lower the number of students while on the other hand incentivizing them to go.  But you're not incentivizing the students, are you?  It's a wealth transfer to universities.  That's why you want to directly limit the number of schools  while keeping the payments to the rest of them intact.  More for you.  And if you have to throw Mr. Wallerstein under the bus to hide this truth, well, sacrifices have to be made." - Paul Buchheit

+2! - Alex Scrivener

You're back to reading TLP, I see :) - Tudor Bosman

"He didn't study to become an attorney, he bought a back-up identity. It's worth asking why Wallerstein chose a JD as a back-up identity, and not an MD or a PhD. Can we agree it was easier? Why not an MBA? Because an MBA is for something else; a law degree is a brand in itself. You can get an MBA and still be nothing unless you find a job. Get a law degree, you're always a lawyer. It's probably the same reason he didn't try some other hail mary like, say, borrow $200k and just open up a coffeeshop or become a daytrader. You could fail at those. Graduate from law school-- and everybody does-- and you can't possibly fail. (Surprise.)" - Alex Scrivener

I kind of feel like the quoted passages don't really capture the gist of the TLP post, about why the guy the NYT article is about is kind of a douche, and why there are no jobs for lawyers right now, though. The diploma-mill nature of our higher education is just kind of a side issue :) - Victor Ganata

No jobs for lawyers right now? I see a fair number. I mean, not as many as paralegal jobs, but still. - edythe

Maybe not as many as there used to be? All I know is what my sister tells me. - Victor Ganata