Recession Finally Reaches Law School Professors
Law school, long a cushy institution that charged steep prices in exchange for steeper rewards, is seeing its popularity crumble along with the job prospects of law school graduates. Now, it seems, the crisis's claws are sinking into the most vulnerable victims: law school professors.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the American Bar Association may soon end its requirement that law schools "grant tenure to certain full-time faculty as a condition of accreditation." The problem, see, is that all those tenured law professors are one of the biggest costs for law schools, and when it's time to start slashing staff, all those tenured law professors are big, expensive, unnecessary pain in the ass. Is there one honest man left in the law school administration profession? Indeed!
"Law professors and law deans are paid too much," said Kent Syverud, dean of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, told the ABA's task force on the future of legal education. "Either we have to be paid less, or we have to do more…. The whole problem of costs probably would go away if our salaries were halved."
Law school professors seem to be raising less of a ruckus over this change than, say, J-school professors would, probably because law school professors keep some money in their savings accounts.
