Congress Finally Cracking Down On Foreign Medical School TTT's

This is very encouraging news. Expect a long drawn out lobbying fight from the Caribbean scammers. It's only a matter of time before the corrupt law school TTT's find themselves in the regulatory crosshairs. The fat cat administrators are padding their pensions and plotting their exit strategies as we speak.

"The federal government, through the Federal Family Education Loan program administered by the Education Department, loaned U.S. students enrolled at foreign free-standing medical schools $1.5 billion between 1998 and 2008, according to the report.

Although that amount represents less than 1 percent of all federal student loans made during the same period, borrowing has grown by more than 300 percent because of increases in tuition, student enrollments and the availability of other loan funds.

Foreign medical schools that participate in the loan program have to meet certain statutory requirements. One requirement has been that 60 percent of their students who take the USMLE must pass the test. Beginning last month, however, Congress increased that must-pass percentage to 75 percent of students.

According to the report, the Education Department has not been able to fully enforce the institutional pass rate requirement on foreign medical schools. One reason is that private organizations that administer each step of the exam have refused to release student scores on grounds that the information is proprietary.

Stall, stall, stall..... Obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate........ Pad those pensions.

http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/news-now/resident-student-focus/20100809gao-loans.html

Hunger Strike!

Release: Unemployed J.D. Begins Hunger Strike to Support Law School Transparency

On August 5, 2010, Ethan Haines, self-designated J.D. Class Representative, emailed an Official Notice of Hunger Strike to administrators of ten randomly selected law schools ranked in the Top 100 of the 2010 U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings. These schools were selected because they stand to gain the most from keeping the current rankings structure in place.

Below is a partial listing of recipients of the Official Notice of Hunger Strike:

1. University of Pennsylvania Law School (Philadelphia, PA)
2. Fordham University School of Law (New York, NY)
3. William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii at Manoa (Honolulu, HI)
4. Florida State University College of Law (Tallahassee, FL)
5. American University Washington College of Law (DC)

The Notice sets forth two conditions that administrators can satisfy to end Ethan's hunger strike. One condition is to provide written confirmation of their intent to cooperate with the Law School Transparency (LST) organization's information request regarding employment statistics. Ethan is not affiliated with LST, but is an avid supporter of the cause and intends to forward the compliance statements to the organization.

The remaining five law schools will be announced Friday, August 6, on the blog http://www.unemployedJD.com. A Twitter petition http://twitition.com/wqtfs is also circulating the internet in support of the cause.

Feel free to contact Ethan Haines for additional information.

Ethan Haines
J.D. Class Representative
ethan@unemployedjd.com

Excelerate Discovery

Excelerate Discovery, the current nesting place of several former Update Legal recruiter hacks, apparently had a bit of a shake up last week. Alexandra "Lexie" Newman was reportedly shit-canned during her Israeli vacation, and apparently went ballistic on Facebook. Just another day of backstabbing and juvenility in the distguished profession of law.