Cheapness, Job Searches, Law Schools, Unemployment

Law School Cuts Stipend On Own Employment Program For Recent Grads; Thinks They Need More 'Incentive' To Find A Job

Law school cuts stipends and insults recent graduates in need of jobs...

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Student reaction has been just as negative as one would expect. Apparently, cutting funding and insinuating that unemployed students aren’t trying hard enough to get jobs is a great way to make sure none of these people ever give money to George Washington. Here are some of the reactions that came into our inbox and text message line:

At $15 per hour, 35 hours per week, and with no benefits, it was a worst case scenario as we all tried to find permanent jobs. I accepted a Pathways position… after calculating how I could possibly pay for food, shelter, loans, and health insurance with a Pathways salary. I’ve kept up my job search for a permanent position. Of course, they made us get all of our paperwork in the day before graduation so they could count us as “employed.” Now, exactly a month later, as we’re trying to prepare for the Bar next month, the Dean hits us with this bombshell of a pay “adjustment” to the program. He justifies it as a response to some rumors he (allegedly) heard. Way to f*ck us over, G-Dubs.

Pretty pissed at a career center (and Dean) I was just starting to respect.

And now we hear that they’ve decided to drop that insulting figure even lower if we’re still in the program after just three months? Because we needed more of an incentive to find a different job? (Not to mention that increasing the “meet with your hapless CDO counselor” requirement was bumped up as well to monthly from “once before December.”) Now we’ll make a positively pathetic $19,600 over the full year. That’s roughly the poverty line for a family of three. It’s barely three grand more than I pay in rent alone…

And, of course, the real elephant in the room … is whether this is even legal. I’m not an employment law guy, so I really don’t know. But I signed documents agreeing to be paid $15/hour for 35 hours/week for a full year. The school being able to unilaterally change that just doesn’t seem kosher.

What really gets me is the hypocrisy. If Dean Berman really thought students needed more of an “incentive” to find work, he could always not have the program. Under this kind of warped logic, there’s no better incentive than the threat of homelessness.

Of course, if Berman cut the program, he’d have to admit the truth of the employment prospects for GW Law graduates. Evidently, he’d rather do anything than that. Even if it means hobbling recent graduates with cushy $19K/year job thingies.

UPDATE (6/20/2012): As noted earlier, Dean Berman has since changed his mind. Click here for additional coverage.

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Click through to the next page to read the full version of Dean Berman’s original memo….

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