Should Wisconsin Stop Subsidizing Law School Tuition?

In a comment on an earlier post, Daniel Suhr suggested that in this time of economic downturn the state of Wisconsin should consider eliminating the tuition subsidy that it provides for students at the University of Wisconsin Law School. As he points out, virtually of all the graduates of the law school begin their careers making higher salaries than the average Wisconsin resident and thus are arguably in a better position to pay for their legal education than the state’s taxpayers. Marquette would obviously benefit from such a policy change, but the proposal has merit above and beyond what it would do to restore the competitive balance between the state’s two law schools.

There is also nothing particularly radical about such a proposal. In fact, several highly regarded state law schools in different parts of the country have already all but abandoned subsidies for in-state students.

At the University of Virginia, where I am currently teaching as a visiting professor, out-of-state students pay tuition of $43,800, while Virginia residents pay almost as much, $38,800 (or 88.6% of out-of-state tuition). The gap is even narrower at the University of Michigan, where the out-of-state/in-state differential is $46,010 vs. $43,010 (or 93.5%). The University of Minnesota is somewhat more generous to Minnesota residents, but such students still pay 73% as much as out-of-staters ($25,324 vs. $34,726).
In contrast, in-state law students at the University of Wisconsin pay only $16,426 in tuition, which is just 45% of the $36,350 paid by most out-of-state students. (Because of the reciprocity compact, Minnesota residents attending the UW law school are charged $26,342.)

If in-state students at the University of Wisconsin Law School were required to pay the 93.5% of out-of-state tuition paid by Michigan residents at the University of Michigan, Marquette would actually have a slight tuition advantage ($32,410 vs. $33,987).

As Daniel Suhr also noted, former state representative Frank Lasee proposed several years ago that the state stop subsidizing public legal education. The idea failed to take hold at that time, but conditions may be right to revive the idea.

Tuition figures for the five law schools mentioned in this post are taken from the law schools’ web pages.

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SAT Scores and Affirmative Action

sunsetIn her majority opinion in the landmark civil rights case Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 342-44 (2003), Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote:

Enshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences would offend this fundamental equal protection principle. We see no reason to exempt race-conscious admissions programs from the requirement that all governmental use of race must have a logical end point. . . . From today’s vantage point, one may hope, but not firmly forecast, that over the next generation’s span, progress toward nondiscrimination and genuinely equal opportunity will make it safe to sunset affirmative action.

Although O’Connor and her colleagues upheld the constitutionality of the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action program at issue in Grutter, her opinion reflected a belief that affirmative action programs would draw to a close at some future point.

Data released by the College Board, the organization that administers the SAT exam, at the end of August suggests, however, that the end date for affirmative action is probably still a long way off.

Once again, Non-Hispanic whites and Asians scored significantly higher on the SAT than African-Americans and Hispanics, and the pattern of scores provides no evidence that the gap is closing.  Over 1.5 million college-bound seniors took the test, the largest number in history.

The SAT now consists of three sections — writing, critical reading, and mathematics — each of which is scored on a scale that ranges from 200 to 800.  Since April 1995, the targeted median score on each test has been 500 (rather than 450 as it was before).  Consequently, the range of combined scores is 600 to 2400, with an “average” score being 1500.  The actual average for the 2008-09 academic year was 1504, essentially the same as it was the previous year.

For the test as a whole, Asian students scored 1633 compared to 1581 for non-Hispanic whites, with most of the disparity resulting from a significantly higher mathematics score.  Other groups did not do nearly as well.  The scores of Native Americans and Eskimos averaged 1448; Hispanics, 1364; and African-Americans, only 1273.  Males of all races, who counted for only 46.5 percent of test takers, outscored females, 1523 to 1496.

Much of the discrepancy in racial performance is due to socio-economic factors that adversely affect black and Hispanic adolescents.  Low family incomes, single-parent homes, low levels of education in the family, and the lack of role models who have achieved academic success all contribute to poor test performance. For example, students of all races with family incomes of $200,000 or more averaged 1702 on the SAT; those with family incomes of below $20,000 scored 1321.  Students whose parents had at least one graduate degree averaged 1683; those who parents had not finished high school scored only 1281.

With this kind of disparity in SAT scores, only affirmative action programs can guarantee that African-Americans and Hispanics will be proportionally represented at America’s more selective colleges and universities.  Although we may reach Justice O’Connor’s sunset at some point, right now we are clearly still in the middle of the day.

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CST and Health Care

I’ve been guesting at PrawfsBlawg this month and, inspired by a paper that I am in the process of completing about subsidiarity and the response to the economic crisis, have posted about the importance of encouraging decentralization in decision making, including in health care reform.

Writing at Mirror of Justice, Rob Vischer responds, arguing that health care is different, perhaps falling into that category – identified by John Paul II in Centesimus Annus – of the “needs and common goods that cannot be satisfied by the market system.”

I am in partical agreement. There is nothing about health care that, in and of itself, frustrates the operation of markets. It is not a natural monopoly and there are no intrinsic externalities or “tragedies” of the commons.

The problem, it seems to me, is that health care is like food. There are many goods that people can do without, but some are necessary for survival. We are reluctant to allow people to starve and we don’t want to simply allow those who get sick to die.

This does, I think, require public and private intervention in the market. My suggestion is that considerations of subsidiarity suggest that increases in subsidies may be preferable to increases in centralized control of the provision of services.

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