Is Your Law School Tuition Being Wasted?
Another law student I know recently showed me some random pictures from his school and I couldn’t help but notice a few things.
1. The room the picture was taken in looked very very professional. I hadn’t seen many corporate offices that nice.
2. All the chairs were the same Herman-Miller Aeron brand models.
My first question was: wow, that must be a new mock courtroom, right? I was told one of the rooms was a mock courtroom, another was just a conference room, and the third was actually a classroom. And all of these rooms had the same furnishing? Yep. In fact every chair, whether it was a conference room, class room, or study room, contained these same chairs.
Now, for those who are unfamiliar with the Herman Miller Aeron chair, it’s often deemed the elite of elite chairs. Rising to popularity during the dot com days, the retail prices for them still fluctuate between $550 and $750 per chair.
How many chairs are there at this school? Given the entering class size is approximately 150, I would wager there are quite a number. Even at a discount, 300 of those chairs will run $150,000!
Now, as I go back to my humble classroom and realize that each and every room in the entire building is a generic foldout table and folding chair, I sometimes wonder where the costs of tuition are really going. Sure, it’s super nice to be pampered and have uber nice luxuries at school–but at what cost? Would you be willing to live with subpar desks and chairs if it meant having a smaller student loan? On what other frivolities does your school spend your tuition?
Just something to think about as you write your next tuition check.
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So I’m not saying that $150,000 is cheap. I’d guess it could support a full-time faculty member for a year. But in the scheme of things, I’ll almost cover that alone in tuition costs by the time I graduate. Take me and my three closest friends and we’ve already outfitted the entire school in awesome chairs that are going to last for quite a long time.
As an aside, I believe that I am in a minority of students that actually hates these chairs in the lecture halls. I like the wheeled versions, but the ones attached to tables don’t have any knobs for back support.
One day I’ll show you our uber techy seminar room. You’ll probably have an aneurysm and die.
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Ask if those classrooms are named for law firms. More and more law schools are accepting large donations to name mock courtrooms, conference rooms, even standard classrooms.
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I visited a (private) law school last spring with those aero chairs, and thought the same thing as you basically: “Oh, this is why it’s going to cost me $140K to go here.” I later visted a cheap, in-state, lower-ranked school, where my tour guide (a student in the top 10%) said, “Hey, you get what you pay for. This building [and the chairs too] kinda stinks, but think about what effect that will have on your actual legal education and the kind of lawyer you will be someday.”
I opted for the cheap school, and I’m no worse the wear. Definitely not as comfy now, but when I come out with a hundred thousand less in debt, I will be be more comfortable then because of it.
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I had a similar feeling about ridiculous costs at Oberlin College one time. Upon returning from a lazy summer I walked into the newly renovated computer science lab. Every chair in there was one of the wheeled versions that Josh mentioned. I was pretty pumped. These are VERY comfy chairs. The hype is warranted. Then I looked around at the computers. I noticed that they all had the same names (half LOTR characters and half famous computers) which was confusing. I guess I thought that they would have made sure to have brand new tricked out computers before they spent the entire budget on sweet cosmetic stuff.
I can’t really complain though. The renovation was sweet. They took the lab from something like the basement office in “The IT Crowd” to the bridge of the NEW Star Ship Enterprise.
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Clearly, there’s a bit of waste going on at law schools.
The furniture shouldn’t be cheap, but this is ridiculous
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I go to law school in Canada.
We also have the chairs, but as one student mentioned earlier, we also have plaques in front of each classroom listing a firm’s name, indicated that the firm paid for said classroom. We also have one in front of our library.
Our student lounge has satellite TV and a variety of video game consoles. Which is actually pretty freaking sweet. Oh, and a cappuccino machine. I love our student lounge, but I think it was paid for by the student’s society, not the faculty (though the fees are in our tuition…sooo)
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