The Obscure Minority

Watching Heroes last night, I was reminded once again of how great a poet W.B. Yeats was and what a triumph "The Second Coming" is/was. Namedillo is much more qualified to comment on poetry than I am, but I will say that the evocative imagery in that poem has been rarely matched. And I'm not sure if any poem has ever had a better two opening or closing lines. Read the whole thing here (it's short).

Someday soon, VE will write again. Just have to tear myself away from the television... (Oh, and studying for the bar. I do that occasionally too).

I apologize for taking so long to get my take on the meetings with Deans Jones and Crain up on the blog. Between wedding planning, seminar papers, and tax prep it's not easy to do this as frequently as I'd like. That said, here it is. Take it for what it's worth.

Also, for anyone who cares, the big thing to come out of the student meeting was to create a new Facebook group with a much lamer name. I'm pretty sure I made the right decision.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
I am tentatively positive about the meetings with Jones and Crain. Admittedly, there was a little bit of a we're-willing-to-do-whatever-it-takes-to-make-this-school-better-as-long-as-we-don't-have-to-change-anything vibe, and I think that's what a lot of the initial commenters were reacting to. One of the first things the deans said is that they're not willing to openly game the system and they're only interested in things that are going to improve the law school, regardless of rankings impact. However, I think this was just the usual nod at the "Rankings are Worthless" feeling that every academic seems to have. When you actually looked at the (admittedly vague, but promising) details of what they are discussing, there seemed to be a significant focus on improving things that will help our ranking. For that reason, I think we as students and alumni should support this sillily named "Apollo Project," continue to assume good faith, and see where this all goes.

DETAILS:
I will admit that I went into these meetings with a considerable amount of incredulity. I was nearly convinced that these meetings were intended as nothing more than a token nod to the students, which would disappear as soon as the summer break came along to cool everyone's tempers. The initial reviews of the meeting didn't improve this feeling either: commenters throwing around words like "incompetent" and "mendacious" don't do much to inspire confidence. But I was pleasantly surprised with the meeting. Sure, it could have something to do with low expectations, but I leave it to the reader to evaluate that.

Reputation

The meeting began with discussing a few minor things that Carolyn Jones has done since becoming dean that were small steps towards maintaining our good rank and reputation. Regarding the law school's reputation amongst our peers, Dean Jones admits that this is one of the more difficult factors to move, but it is also the one that reaps some of the greatest rewards insofar as rankings are concerned. The Dean is convinced (and rightly so) that our reputation is very dependent on how often our faculty get out of Iowa City to spread their ideas and make a name for themselves. To that end, she has begun using law school funds to pay for travel expenses so professors can more readily travel to symposiums, conferences, etc. to present papers. She also set up a SSRN page for our faculty, to provide a central location for other scholars to get our professors' papers and immediately identify the scholarship with our law school. Further, this year the administration has started sponsoring workshops to help faculty improve their chances of publication. The seminars are held at the law school and cover topics from improving your writing to identifying untapped subjects in your research area to various tricks to help your paper stand out from the pack when journals are making article selections. These seminars are getting excellent reviews from the faculty members I have spoken with and I can only see this as a positive.

Faculty salaries, however, is somewhere we are falling behind. Compared to our peer schools, our faculty salaries are quite low. We used to have the lowest salaries of all the Big 10 law schools. That's no longer the case (though we're still below the median), but the way we've increased salaries is by attrition--when faculty have left, we've apportioned their salaries to current professors instead of hiring someone new. This is clearly not a sustainable strategy. It is important that we keep increasing salaries because that has a bearing on retention, especially with quality scholars like we have who are constantly being tempted by other schools. For example, this year we were able to hold onto faculty members in the face of offers from Duke and North Carolina, partly due those professors' recently increased salaries. But with an aging faculty like we have it is important that we are also hiring young, promising scholars to take the place of people like David Baldus, Sheldon Kurtz, Arthur Bonfield, etc., who are nearing retirement. And it is here that we are failing.

Dean Jones candidly admitted that faculty hiring hasn't been like she expected it and has required a lot of learning on the job. She also admitted that she is very concerned about our performance on the hiring front the past couple years and says this is our biggest challenge right now. So what are they doing to fix it? Two things: First, the law school is imposing a tuition surcharge on students next year that will help add two or three faculty positions, increase salaries a little, and help with financial aid. A tuition surcharge isn't anyone's favorite way to raise funds, but in the face of meager support from the state there aren't many other options. Second, the law school is going to start pursuing non-traditional routes of recruitment. When we follow the usual "meat-market" route, we tend to get beaten out by schools that are more prestigious, pay better, and/or are in more attractive locations. For example, we were down to the final two with a professor this year who ended up taking a position at Michigan instead. To combat this, Dean Jones is now focusing on poaching professors from other schools by luring them here with visiting professorships, getting them hooked on the school and the town, and then dropping a full-time offer. Iowa is not entirely abandoning the usual "meat market" approach, but is pursuing this visiting professor route as an additional way to attract faculty. I think this is a reasonable way to go about things. It's idiocy to keep trying the same thing over and over expecting a different result. We have to try something new. However, this is the area I am most concerned about. If a couple years go by and faculty hiring does not improve we may need to start asking whether the problem isn't the strategy or the process but the person doing the hiring. But for now, I am confident that Dean Jones is doing what she can to find a way to get quality faculty to Iowa.

I should note also that hiring visiting professors helps keep the student-faculty ratio down--another factor in the rankings. So even if this new hiring strategy doesn't bear much fruit it will at least have that limited benefit.

Admissions

The admissions profile of the incoming class isn't changing much and we shouldn't expect significant changes in the near future. There are a number of reasons for this, but the most obvious is the fact that we are a state university. As a state university we have a goal/mission/whatever--and a very reasonable and understandable one at that--to serve the residents of the state of Iowa. People who think the College of Law can or should deviate from this mission are being unreasonable and irrational. There is almost no reason why the regents or the law school administration would drop the focus on the state of Iowa. We are in a different position than schools like Berkeley, Michigan, or Texas. When there are multiple state-funded law schools in a state, that frees up one or more schools to pursue some goals beyond merely serving the aspiring lawyers in the state. Such schools can pursue academic quality, reputation, etc. partially (but not entirely) separate from any need to serve their state's citizens. Iowa does not have that luxury; any improvements here must be undertaken with regard to how it will affect in-state students. (Before you start accusing me of being a stupid in-stater, know that I have been an out-of-state student at a state university in both undergrad and law school. My argument here isn't base self-interest. It is reality.) A frontal assault on residency requirements would probably make things worse and prod the legislature or the regents to impose a hard percentage requirement. The best we can do is convince the best Iowans to apply.

Also, we should keep in mind that the numbers used in the rankings are a year or two behind reality. So changes in the profile of the 2008 entering class won't show up in the rankings until March of 2010 or 2011.

With those two things in mind, here's what Dean Jones said: She admitted that there isn't much we can do to change our LSAT scores. However, our LSAT median has always been low, and--as anyone who read that law review article knows--differences in LSAT scores are less and less important the closer you get to the top. Undergraduate GPA is better for moving ranking and has the added bonus of being more indicative of classroom attendance/engagement. Here, though, the deans emphasized that Iowa prefers to look at the "whole person" during the admissions process. And then Dean Jones told a fib: she said that LSAT and GPA "can't [drive the admissions process] under Grutter and Gratz." As anyone who's taken even a cursory glance at these cases knows, however, the Supreme Court never said anything about focusing solely on LSAT or GPA. The Court said that race can't drive the admissions process. When a university decides to consider race as part of its admission process, it cannot be the overriding consideration. But if a university decides not to consider race at all, it is perfectly free to focus only on one piece of an applicant's profile. If a university decides to just admit the top 300 LSAT scores that apply, there is nothing in the Constitution to stop that. So I don't know what Dean Jones was talking about.

To be honest, I think this "whole person," we-can't-change-our-profile stuff is again a nod to the "screw the rankings" crowd. But I could care less what Deans Jones and Crain think of the rankings so long as they take steps to improve how we place. They should feel free to pooh-pooh U.S. News loudly and frequently as long as our numbers are getting better. And I think they aretrying to improve on that front. They are doing that by trying to increase the amount of scholarship money we can throw at applicants. However, this is an arms race that we are losing. Each year, we spend approximately $4.2-4.5 million on scholarships. By comparison, Wash U spends approximately $7 million per year. This gap that can only be remedied by donations, and I encourage all alumni with the means to donate and to focus their donations on scholarships. If a person is deciding between Vanderbilt, Georgetown, and Iowa, they're almost certain to pick one of the first two. But a scholarship offer is an excellent way to tip the scales in our favor. I think the current administration is doing what it can on the scholarship front with limited resources--Collins Byrd (the dean of admissions) has said that we are changing the way we use scholarship money. Formerly, general scholarship money (as opposed to scholarships specifically endowed to benefit a specific group) was used to attract more students from certain groups--mostly in-state students according to Dean Byrd, but other groups were probably a part of that too. As a result, many students were coming to Iowa with no scholarship money but significantly better credentials than classmates with scholarships. But now, the admissions office intends to focus more on simply getting better students in the door.

Career Services

The good news is that hiring numbers nine months out are much improved for the class of 2007 (the numbers that will go in the rankings next year) is at 99.54%. This is an improvement of nearly seven percentage points and is nearly what it was for the class of 2000. This is very reassuring. These numbers coincide with the hiring of Dean Langerud and confirm my confidence that he is the right man for the job in the Career Services office. I'm not sure what the numbers are for employment at graduation, but if there anything like these that bodes well for our ranking in the future.

One hiring concern Dean Jones voiced was that Iowa has trouble penetrating medium-sized and small firms outside Iowa--even in locations like Chicago, Minneapolis, etc. where a good number of our grads end up. Big firm hiring in those locations is easy for Iowa grads, but in Chicago, for example, graduates of Chicago-Kent, DePaul, and Illinois have a much easier time beyond BigLaw. But because only a certain subset of students really has a chance at those bigger firms, it's difficult for someone not in the top 25% to land a job in Chicago. The career services office is trying to remedy this with a Career Services Day (essentially a job fair) in Chicago. The thought is that the smaller firms don't have the time or resources to interview in Iowa City but if we could go to them they'd be very interested. This year was apparently the first year this was tried, and reviews were mixed.

At the meeting, I voiced my concerns that I've put down on this blog before--namely that there's not enough being done to connect students to alumni in locations outside of Iowa and the states that border it. Who knows what will happen on that front, though I have expressed the same concern to Dean Langerud and I have confidence that he'll work to improve this. I should put in a plug for the Class of 2008 class gift here, which will help a little bit on this front. They are trying to fund a Facebook/LinkedIn type website solely for College of Law students and alums that could be a big help getting people connected. For anyone who's interested in more details, Ryan Howell is the man to contact. But I can say I was impressed by the presentation the the class earlier this semester (despite the weird sabotage some in the faculty/staff tried to perform--what was going on there?) and it seems like a good gift if people use it in the right way. I plan to talk to my fiancee about a pledge and you should think about it as well.

With alumni communication in general, however--which feeds into this jobs thing--Dean Jones admits that we're not where she'd like to be (which makes the performance at the class gift meeting all the weirder). She wants to hire an alumni coordinator, but we don't have the money. Her priority was new deans of career services and admissions, so that's what we spent money on the past two years. I think this focus is right, but I do wish we had the resources to get an alumni coordinator as well. One of the commenters in a previous post noted that at George Washington the development office has a significant plan for communicating with alumni and turning them into donors (I encourage you to take a look). We need something similar.

WRAP UP:
Generally, I would say from the meeting that it's clear that Dean Jones cares about this law school. As a fellow alum, she is invested in this school's reputation just as much as the rest of us are. Because of that, she seems willing and able to take steps to improve the school even if she's doing it while muttering under her breath and cursing the rankings every step of the way. She's also outlined a few things that we are or will soon be doing to help us up the ladder. I think we need to give her plans a year or two to work themselves out. Nothing a law school dean does is going to have much if an immediate effect. Rather, the effects of a deanship are felt years out. What's important is that we do things now that four or five years from now will have a positive effect.

However, it's clear that a lot of the things that would help (more scholarships, alumni coordinator, faculty hiring) cannot be done without money. Some money will be coming in over the next few years that left over from the last capital campaign. This is because several of the pledges were for testate gifts. These types of gifts will be trickling in over the next few years. Also, the administration and the foundation are in the early stages of planning a new capital campaign that will likely last about seven years and is intended to raise in excess of $50 million. Students and alumni who care about the rankings and have the means need to get on board with these fundraising efforts now. It's obvious, but true: the more money we have, the more we can do. As I wrote earlier, the positive movement of schools like George Mason, Wash U, Alabama, etc. can be traced to a willingness to spend money to improve the school's standing. I think our current administration has that same willingness. They just lack the resources.

Of course, there's the question of how Dean Jones' plans stack up with what other law schools are doing. Nearly every school in the nation is working to improve how it's viewed in U.S. News. So the question has to be not "What are we doing?" but "What are we doing better/different than everyone else?" On this front, it's hard to know the answer. I was surprised to find out that we didn't have an SSRN page and weren't paying for faculty travel until very recently, and Dean Jones admitted these are both things we were behind the curve on. The rankings game is very much a "running to stand still" exercise. If we aren't making significant strides, we're losing ground. But I think only time will tell whether the plans Dean Jones outlined are going to move us forward or just keep us in place. Given more money, I have confidence that we will move forward. But if our resources remain the same, that's unlikely. If Dean Jones' plans don't work, or if she's unable to raise the money to support them, then it may be time to call for her resignation. But all those people who have been calling for her to step down at this point are acting prematurely and should instead reason things out and give the administration a chance to try to remedy this.

I had my meeting with Deans Jones and Crain yesterday. I'll get comments and info up as soon as I get a chance.

In other news, if the World Cup was more like this, I might actually watch it.

Several people have asked why, if I'm so worried about the rankings slide over the past few years, I'm not first on the list to attend the student meeting this evening. There are a couple different answers to that, and I think it's important to flesh some of them out because I know there are at least a few Iowa Law students who feel the same way I do. Certainly, everyone should make their own decision, but I hope some of you will at least take these things into consideration.

My main concern is the purpose of the meeting. Everyone talking about it seems to think it's a time for us to "brainstorm." But the more I hear certain people comment on the situation, the more I realize they haven't the vaguest idea what types of things go into the ranking system at all. It's not like the information isn't out there: I covered some of it in my last blog post, and Dean Jones sent out an article that goes over the rankings with a fine-toothed comb to find what types of things are the easiest to control and give you the most bang for your buck, as measured by a move up the rankings ladder. (For those who care, the article is Theodore P. Seto, Understanding the U.S. News Law School Rankings, 60 S.M.U. L. Rev. 493 (2007).) Rather, people have instead opted to use the rankings slide as an excuse to beat up on whatever their favorite whipping boy happens to be, no matter how attenuated the connection between their supposed "cause" of the slide and anything actually measured by the rankings. When you have no idea how the rankings work, how in the world are you supposed to come up with a solution to our current problem?

But even if students were willing to put in the effort to familiarize themselves with the ranking system (rather than merely spew vitriol in blog comments), the idea that a bunch of 25-year-olds are going to spend two hours in Levitt Auditorium and emerge with a magical plan to stop our rankings slide is silly at best and arrogant at worst. The whole thing is likely to be little more than an extensive Monday-morning-quarterbacking session. A plan to move up the rankings, such as the ones Wash U and George Mason have implemented, requires significantly more time and energy than most law students have the time or energy to put into it. Therefore, we should, at least at first, defer to those who have been studying things longer than us and supposedly have a plan to fix things.

This leads me to what the purpose of students and alumni should be in this process: Our main purpose should be, and the only thing we're likely to be effective at doing is, holding the administration's feet to the fire. As I mentioned in my last post, we must demand that the administration take proactive efforts to solve our problem. Although there are certainly a good number who don't fit this mold, as a general rule law school faculty and administrators look on the U.S. News rankings with disdain. They hope that they never have to think about or address the rankings at all, and anything they do do in that direction is usually just a sop to vocal students and alumni, who are strung along just long enough for the ruckus to die down. Then the faculty go back to applying critical race theory to the decision to wear a speedo rather than board shorts, or whatever other extremely important thing they were doing before the students got all uppity. This is the case not just at Iowa, but nearly everywhere. We cannot allow this to happen. The "downward spiral" Prof. Sauder has identified is very real and we must stop the rankings slide before this begins to happen to us. As students and future alumni, we have significant power here, so long as we act in a unified manner. Law schools live and die on private donations. If the administration is unable to come up with a good plan, or if they only toss it out there long enough to pacify us, current students and sympathetic alumni should flex their significant monetary muscles. We would be perfectly justified in doing so, of course, because students and alumni are a law school's most important stakeholders.

Thus, the purpose of any student meeting should be twofold: First, it should give students a chance to vent and get it out of their system. The anonymous commenting on this blog and others has gotten absolutely out of hand and has devolved into a series of ad hominem attacks that have absolutely zero bearing on the issue at hand. (To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, the ad hominem, and especially the anonymous ad hominem, is the last refuge of a scoundrel.) If you feel strongly about something, have the guts to say it out loud and where everyone knows it's you who's saying it. If the only way you can voice your true feelings is in an anonymous internet forum, you are a coward. Thus, any student meeting should give people a chance to air whatever complaints they have.

Second, any student meeting has to involve evaluating the administration's plan and contemplating a student response, if one is necessary. But given the timing of the current meeting, this is impossible. Hardly anyone has been able to meet with the Dean yet--those meetings are taking place over the next two weeks. We should wait at least until most students have had a chance to attend one of these meetings. Then we should meet to take it all in.

In doing this, however, we must assume good faith. We must listen to what Dean Jones and others have to say about their plan--the so-called "Apollo Project"--to fix what seems to be going wrong. Then, we need to evaluate it. If it's a good plan, we should support it vocally and with our wallets. If it's a bad plan, we must demand something legitimate and refuse to donate even a dime until a significant, effective plan is in place. But it's impossible to evaluate the plan if we don't even know what it is. We can't just assume it's a bad plan because we don't like the messenger. This "Carolyn Jones derangement syndrome" that's taken over certain corners of the law school recently has to end. If we're going to be effective, and if we're going to be taken seriously, our actions must be measured and rational.

The annual U.S. News law school rankings have leaked and are causing quite a stir at the Iowa College of Law. That's because Iowa is, for what appears to be the first time since U.S. News started this whole thing in 1990, out of the top 25. So, with a little help from Facebook, many students have begun voicing their considerable displeasure with the current state of things in the BLB.

I. The Setup

People on the Facebook page have been throwing around a lot of "I think" and "I seem to remember" numbers, so I thought the whole thing could use an injection of fact. So I plodded over to the main library and, after about 40 minutes wandering through the journal stacks and thumbing through bound copies of old U.S. News issues (it takes a while to find the exact issue because it's not consistent every year--it ranges from late February to mid April) I emerged with some facts and some thoughts:

1. In 2002, Iowa was #18. This year they're going to be #27. This amounts to a drop of nine spots in six years.
2. The intervening rankings were as follows: #23 (2004), #22 (2005, 2006), #24 (2007). I don't have the ranking for 2003 because the Main library is missing that issue.
3. I'd forgotten how much younger Al Gore used to look.
4. The Marlins won a World Series? What bizzaro-world alternate universe did that happen in?

Now before everyone starts throwing the hackneyed "These rankings are completely arbitrary and don't mean anything" line at me (which almost certainly is the administration's position) let me state this: The rankings have been criticized many times by many different people. I am entirely aware that the rankings are manipulable and take into account somewhat arbitrary factors. But just because the rankings are meaningless, that does not make them unimportant. In fact, the U.S. News rankings are amazingly important and amazingly influential--and anyone who says otherwise is denying reality. We can debate all day about whether they should be important and that argument has its place. But we also have to deal with the world as it is, not as we might like it to be. Here's why they're important:

First, for many (and perhaps most) law students, the U.S. News rankings are the single most important factor in deciding where to attend school, and they are a heavy consideration in deciding where to even apply in the first place. I have many, many classmates who finally decided on Iowa because it was the highest-ranked school they got into--heck, I'm one of those people. So the rankings have a profound affect on who goes where for law school.

Second, the legal world is stratified to an extent that is probably unimaginable to anyone outside the legal community and to an extent that I think most people applying to law school don't even realize (I certainly didn't). The stratification goes like this: First is the top three schools, Yale, Harvard, and Stanford. There's pretty much zero argument about these being the best law schools in the country. If you graduate from here in the top half of the class you can pretty much write your ticket to a job almost anywhere you want to work, and even the bottom half has no trouble finding jobs. Heck, Yale doesn't even give real grades. Then there's the schools that generally end up somewhere between #4 and #14--Columbia, Berkeley, Penn, and others. These schools also have very good job prospects, but being in the bottom of the class might shut you out from a few of the most prestigious firms or government jobs. The next group is the schools from #15 down to approximately #30, give or take a few (Boston U, Minnesota, Washington & Lee, etc.). The students here are just as smart as the ones one stratum up but the competition is fierce because while being in the top 25% makes getting a decent job relatively easy (but not a guarantee--just look around at the jobless masses in the 3L class at Iowa right now), the rest of the class has a tougher time at it. So you have to work even harder to make sure you're in that top quartile. Then comes #31-#50 (Tulane, American, SMU, etc.). Then there's everybody else. It really is a caste system. And it affects you for your entire career. Don't believe me? Just look at where the current Supreme Court went to school: there's Yale (Thomas, Alito), Harvard (Roberts, Scalia, Souter, Breyer), Stanford (Kennedy), Columbia (Ginsburg), and Northwestern (Stevens). Right now those schools are ranked 1st, 2nd (tie), 2nd (tie), 4th, and 9th, respectively. Oh, and here's a bonus: Rehnquist and O'Connor were classmates at Stanford. And the stratification's getting worse: Charles Evans Whittaker went to what's now UMKC, Thurgood Marshall went to Howard, and Warren Burger went to what's now William Mitchell. But when Harriet Miers was appointed, one of the (many) criticisms that was raised against her was that she'd only gone to SMU; and when Monica Goodling became part of the national news cycle it was assumed she was incompetent before she'd even testified, almost entirely because she'd gone to Regent.

These are the facts of life. Whether we like them or not is secondary to their undeniable existence.

II. The Problem

So why is Iowa's drop this year a problem? And why are we students just now getting angry about it? Heck, in 1999 Iowa was #24 and we're only 3 spots below that now.

I think the answer here is multi-faceted. First, this is not just a one-time hiccup. Minor fluctuations will of course occur from year to year, but this is the sixth year of a consistent downward trend that has seen us now fall to the nadir of our rankings thus far. Let me repeat that: Iowa is now ranked lower than it has ever been ranked before. (This is of course subject to the caveat that there were a few rankings issues missing between 1990 and now. It's possible--though unlikely based on where we were ranked on either side of the missing years--that we dipped below 27 at some point).

Second, we're now no longer a top-25 law school. While it's true that the real cutoff for Iowa's current cohort is somewhere around #30, the number 25 has a significant psychological value--there's a reason we rank the top-25 football teams. And 30 isn't that far from 27 either--all we have to do is drop the same number of spots we did this year and we're on the cusp of a significant loss in prestige.

Third, a lot of students--and I would certainly include myself in this group--see this as just one more abuse handed to them by an incompetent career services office and an out-of-touch administration. This is not to say that every dean at the Iowa College of Law is a buffoon. Eric Andersen, Linda McGuire, and Arthur Bonfield have all proved themselves exceedingly competent in the three years that I've been here. And Steve Langerud and Carin Crain have at least shown some promise in the short time they've been in their positions. But too many people in the administration seem to have been put in their position to satisfy some political subgroup in the faculty or in pursuit of some diversity goal. Furthermore, much of the non-dean-level staff--and here I am speaking almost entirely about career services, but also to a lesser extent a few other divisions--are bungling and amateurish. The bush-league nature of career services is obvious in the info they feed to students. From day one, everything is skittles and gumdrops and rainbows shooting out from between your butt cheeks. They lead you to believe that everyone will have jobs making $180k or a Supreme Court Clerkship or a spot in the Solicitor General's office before you even graduate. And then when that farce is outed they turn to the whole "you didn't really want any of those jobs anyway, they're awful" theme. It's true--at least as applied to BigLaw--but that should be my own realization, not an excuse from the career services office. The truth of the matter is that outside of Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and perhaps (to a lesser extent) St. Louis and Milwaukee, getting a job from Iowa is a chore. Denver and Phoenix are difficult, and if you're not in the top 10 or 15% you can pretty much forget about New York, Washington, Boston, Atlanta, LA, or San Francisco. But no one in the career services office is ever up front with you about the fact that Iowa places well regionally and that's about it. Furthermore, even when you have great credentials and are applying for things that will help the school's prestige, their advice is borderline worthless (NOTE: this criticism does not necessarily apply to clerkships. The process there has some kinks but for the most part the clerkship coordinator works hard and is very helpful). For example: when I applied for DOJ honors I got a sheet of paper with the website address, a "Good luck!," and was ushered out the door. Result? Not even an interview. In fact, I don't know a single person in the 3L class who got an interview. Given what I know about my own resume/credentials and the resume/credentials of others who applied, the fact that not one of us was even interviewed is surprising. Certainly, not every problem at the career services office or silly move by the administration shows up in the U.S. News rankings. But the rankings drop is really the straw (or, given their importance, the ten-ton weight) that broke the camel's back.

So that's why people are angry. So why did we drop? Before you start blaming the Bush administration (heck, people in Johnson County manage to blame GWB for every other thing that's wrong with the world--why not this?), we should look at some data. The U.S. News rankings aren't completely transparent, but here's a few indicators, comparing 2002 to this year:

• our peer assessment score slipped from 3.6 to 3.5 (lawyer/judge score stayed the same)
  
• the student-faculty ratio has increased from 12.0 to 13.0
• here's the big one: of 2000 graduates (the data used in the 2002 rankings), 90% were employed at graduation and 100% were employed 9 months after graduation; for 2006 graduates (used in 2008 rankings), those numbers are 79.9% and 92.8%, respectively.

And for added emphasis, let me mention this: U.S. News calculates an "overall score," which is a rough way of calculating the distance between your school and Yale (which gets 100). In this year's rankings, Iowa's overall score is 60. In 2002, a 60 would have landed us at 36th (tied with Wake Forest). So, in some sense, this rankings drop is even worse than it appears.

And try this on for size as well--one of the factors U.S. News takes into account is the size of a school's library. That means if it weren't for the enormous size of our collection, we would be behind Illinois. This is especially distressing because the common feeling around here has always been that if you're from Illinois and you don't get into Chicago or Northwestern you turn to Iowa looooooong before you start looking Champaign-Urbana's way. Now, I'm about as proud as someone can be about the impressive job Arthur Bonfield has done building the library, but it seems a pretty tenuous thread to be hanging on by.

I think it's clear why the employment numbers have taken such a hit (see above). As for the student-faculty ratio, I've noticed that we've been losing professors and not replacing them so I'm not surprised to see that tick up a point.

As to the peer assessment score, I should mention that it was even lower last year (3.4). I think at least some of that has to do with the fact that well-respected faculty have left and Iowa has neither replaced them with comparable hires nor attracted impressive, promising young scholars. Between 1995 and 2004, we hired Randy Bezanson from W&L, Margaret Brinig from George Mason, and Ann Estin from Colorado. But we lost seven faculty members in that same period--some to schools ranked well below us, such as Arizona, Arizona State, and Wake Forest. Compare this to 1980-1994, when we were able to lure Cain from Texas and Stensvaag from Vanderbilt--both usually considered better schools--as well as Hovenkamp from UC-Hastings, Love from UC-Davis, and Osiel from Tulane. Also, these salary numbers are certainly not helping things--we're considerably behind Minnesota, Michigan, and Ohio State.

Also of note is the fact that one, count 'em, one Iowa Law grad was hired to a tenure-track faculty position by a top-50 law school between 1996 and 2002, and she had a PhD from Stanford helping her along. Although I can't find data for some recent years, the data from the years I can find isn't promising: zero in 2004, zero in 2005, zero in 2006, and zero in 2007. Apparently, other academics find Iowa lacking.

I worry as well that the lawyer/judge score may start to drop soon if recent developments are any indication. Although a recent Vault survey of hiring partners at big law firms had us at 19th, that is almost certainly a lagging indicator because those partners are taking into account every attorney they've worked with over their 20-year career. A more timely indicator might be how we're faring in clerkships. And lucky for you, dear reader, I've got that info.

For 2008, we landed five appeals court clerkships: Three on the 8th Circuit and two on the Federal. In 2007 it was six: one on the 2nd Circuit, four on the 8th, and one on the 9th. Not bad showings until you realize what other schools in our cohort did: George Washington managed 7 in 2007 and 10 in 2008. Minnesota managed 6 in 2007 and 7 in 2008. (data here and here--also, for those of you who doubt the stratification I mentioned earlier, take a gander at how many clerks Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Columbia managed over that same stretch). Furthermore, Iowa grads land heavily in the 8th Circuit--our home court. George Washington, on the other hand, only placed four of their 2008 clerks in one of their three home circuits (Fed, DC, and 4th); the other six were scattered across the country. Minnesota only placed one in their home circuit (the 8th). GW's numbers were similar for 2007--only one of seven playing for the home team (Minnesota landed four of six in the 8th that year).

The Supreme Court clerkship figures are worse. Much worse. If you'll click on those links you'll see that between 1991 and 2005 Iowa has not had a single graduate as a Supreme Court clerk. Shift the frame of reference slightly to the period from 2000 to 2007 and the result is the same. But George Washington managed five SCt clerks from 91-05, three from 00-07. Illinois landed two in both those periods (probably the same two people). Notre Dame had 6 from 91 to 05 and three in 00-07. Even schools that aren't generally on Iowa's level in the rankings are faring better: witness Kansas, which managed three clerks in the first data set and two in the second; or BYU with three clerks in both data sets; or Georgia, with one and three respectively. Heck, even Arizona, Rutgers, Cardozo, and SUNY-Buffalo managed to score a clerk at some point between 1991 and 2007. Perhaps this means nothing. But it could also mean that the judge/lawyer assessment is due for some slipping.

III. The Solution

Before I get into a few tentative solutions, let me first address a few things that someone else is bound to mention. I know that in law school they teach you to not address your opponent's points first thing, but I'm gonna violate that:

1. "But we're a public school!" So is Berkeley. So is Michigan. So is Virginia. So are Texas, UCLA, and Minnesota. Your point?
2. "There's nothing we can do." Tell that to Alabama, which moved up 15 spots in the time we've moved down nine. Tell that to George Mason, which moved up 9 spots in that same period. Or Wash U, which moved up six (and they were further up, making the move more difficult). Based on what I've heard, all three of those schools--especially Wash U and Mason--have made concerted efforts to move up the rankings. They also put their money where their mouths are and spent serious dough on faculty hiring, alumni networking, and facilities upgrades.
3. "It's the location." Admittedly, this is a problem. But not a big one. We're only about an hour further from Chicago than Virginia is from Washington or Cornell is from Buffalo. And we're about the same distance as Cornell is from New York. Also, as far as environment goes, have you ever been to Lexington, VA (home of Washington & Lee)? It's a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. And yet, W&L consistently manages to rank ahead of Iowa. It IS possible to attract students with more than environment, especially in law school. You do it with reputation and you do it with jobs.

Now to solutions: Someone has mentioned on the Facebook page that Professor/Dean Andersen (once again showing his competence) and a member of the Foundation board have authored a report on how to address our rankings slide. The main feature is raising $50 million dollars and then spending it. This is good and this is necessary. But I am committing right now not to pledge a dime until I see a coherent plan as to how this is going to be used to help our ranking and not just to create a endowed chair in Zoning on the Moon or to study flooding New Orleans' 9th ward and giving everyone houseboats. I hope other students and alums will make the same commitment. It is imperative that the administration address the problems that have led to our decline. As Austin Frost wrote on the Facebook page, "Cognizance and ability to adequately address the problem are two separate issues. While I'm confident the administration has the former, I have little confidence that they have the latter." We must demand that the administration must show some ability to stop the bleeding.

So, what should the money be spent on? First and foremost, we must address how dismal our salaries appear compared to our peer schools. Second, we absolutely, positively must deal with what's going on in career services. It seems like hiring Dean Langerud was a step in the right direction on that front but we must do more to connect current students with alumni during their job searches and to draw interest from firms outside a six-state area. There are considerable numbers of alumni in Denver and Phoenix--these markets should be where we look to first. Salt Lake City is also starting to develop a good (although, at this point, small) alumni base--partially because of the hefty number of BYU grads we've had coming to Iowa Law recently. Also, we must do more than just throw money at career services--fixing it will require fundamentally altering the way they do business in there.

I am certain there is more that can and should be done. These are just the main things that come to mind. (Feel free to leave more ideas in the comments.) But if at least these minimal things are not pursued vigorously then I think it will be clear that the current law school administration has failed its most important constituents: students and alumni.

There is a Law School Foundation meeting this weekend. I hope someone brings this up and makes it clear (1) that the current state of things is unacceptable and (2) that something absolutely must be done to bring our rankings slide to a screeching halt.

EDIT: I've been told that Virginia's law school went private recently. I think I heard that somewhere, but it is sad that as a very proud (some might say obnoxious) alum of their fine College of Arts and Sciences I didn't remember it. Also, apparently at least one 3L managed to snag a DOJ honors interview. But the general thrust of my comments about career services still stand.

EDIT 2: In the faculty attrition portion, I forgot to mention Stephanos Bibas--possibly our most high-profile recent departure--who left in 2006. This is after the time period addressed by the data I linked to but tends to support my point that it's not getting any better.

EDIT 3: Thanks to a helpful commenter, we've managed to dig up some additional historical info. Apparently, in the 1996 rankings (which would be the ones released in 1995) we were #33. This was one of the issues the main library was missing so I'm appreciative for the extra info. That means this year's rank is the second-lowest ever and the lowest in twelve years.

Say what you will about the Foo Fighters, but they sure know how to pick cover songs, and they're nearly always excellent at it. They've released Prince's "Darling Nikki" as an excellent b-side before, and now I've found a video of them doing the Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia" with System of a Down's Serj Tankian to equally stellar results.

Caveat: When Cee-Lo does the singing for Darling Nikki it's not nearly as good. Strike that--it's borderline horrible.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the best albums of 2007 were as follows:
1. Project 86 - Rival Factions (one of the best albums released this entire decade--it's that amazing) listen watch
2. Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris listen watch 1, 2, 3
3. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga listen watch
4. The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works listen watch
5. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full watch
6. Earthless - Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky watch
7. Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero listen watch
8. Monster in the Machine - Butterfly Pinned listen watch
9. Third Day - Chronology, Vol. 2 watch
10. Sullivan - Cover Your Eyes (unfortunately, they broke up only a few months after releasing this) listen watch

From what I hear, these have been around for a while, but this is the first we've seen of them. We're behind the times--so sue us.




Who knew Alanis had such a sense of humor? She always seems so deathly serious all the time. Also, it highlights just how awful the lyrics of this song are. UNBELIEVABLY AWFUL.

Second:


If I ever get sent to prison, I hope it's in the Phillippines. I wonder: does this set the stage for a musical episode of Prison break, ala Buffy and Scrubs?

Why is it okay to listen to and respect Jimmy Eat World for their pop sensibilities, but not Fall Out Boy?

Dreams of many summer posts have been dashed by staying in a home with only dial-up internet. However, Velvet Elvis did find something of note:

Stylus has an interesting article/interview on art/iconography in metal. It's sort of a work in progress and more interviews are supposedly being added. I must say I'm a little surprised that Don Clark/Asterik Studios hasn't been mentioned. They've/he's done some fantastic work in the metal world, including Norma Jean's "O God, the Aftermath" artwork, which I believe was Grammy nominated (yes, they give those in the artwork category). Also of note are posters for Zao, Isis, and Queens of the Stone Age, the fantastic artwork for He Is Legend's fantastic album "I Am Hollywood," the very metal artwork for Poison the Well's "You Come Before You," and some t-shirts for Chimaira, and God Forbid. Perhaps Asterik is just not metal enough, since they've apparently done stuff for Black Eyed Peas and All-American Rejects. Namedillo will like this one, though: Kurt Cobain shirts.

Dear Everyone,

I don't hate that feeling you get after the 20th mile. I don't hate the things that keep my space separated from yours. I don't hate walls, even if "something there is that doesn't love a wall," but I DO fucking hate the Facebook Wall.
I hate the idea that you're supposed to have conversations with people in public. It's so fucking weird and unnecessary. Why do we feel in this day and age that we can display ourselves at all times to all people? The internet makes us do strange things. Notes are dead. Letters are dead, too. I'm not a Luddite, but I think people should give the stupid Facebook wall a break. It's really not easier than just typing a message. It's just stupid that we feel we have to ask and answer questions or make stupid comments that are lame and directed at one person but also meant for an imaginary (but also kind of real) mass audience.
The Comments section on myspace and its abuse is the same.

People need to stop this strange internet behavior at once, not for some overriding moral reason but because it's stupid. It's just showing how lame and unnecessary most human communication is. And so I guess I do return to some overriding moral reason: let us at least hope that vapidity and cutesiness and two second blasts of thought aren't the only things left of interpersonal communication. Blech.

Monkeys.

Regarding the screenshot from the Neon Horse video that VE talked about a couple days ago: the entire video is now online. Windows Media, Quicktime

It's quite odd, but entertaining nonetheless.

Kate Bush: Kate Bush: Kate Bush?

Velvet Elvis just recently discovered this new band on Myspace: Neon Horse. Click on the link, listen to the music. VE is especially partial to "Cuckoo." Album releases on May 8. It's a pretty odd amalgamation of sounds--sort of Oingo Boingo mixed with The Cure, Judas Priest, and The Cars. Perhaps just a drop of The Strokes and The Hold Steady thrown in to make it retro-modern.

Apparently, the band is some type of unknown So-Cal band "supergroup," but it's unclear exactly WHO is in the band and Neon Horse is apparently trying to keep it that way (see this interview). Rumors on the internets are pointing to Mark Salomon (The Crucified, Stavesacre) and Jason Martin (Starflyer 59), but the third member hasn't been pinned down. The rumors seem to hold some truth to them--the guitar sound is definitely reminiscent of SF59 and Salomon's vocals are pretty distinctive (although it's an open question whether he's also doing the weird, higher-pitched ones). But there's no proof--this supposed video still leaves it an open question.

Also, there's a teaser video.