Misled about job prospects? Lawsuit!

There was an interesting item in the 8-11-11 Wall Street Journal about law school graduates in Michigan and New York who are suing their alma maters because they claim the schools misled prospective students about job prospects.

To quote the Journal, "The lawsuits allege that the schools have distorted their post-graduate employment information by advertising the percentage of those who secure any kind of job within nine months of graduation, even ones that don't have anything to do with the legal industry. They also allege that the reported amount for graduates' average salaries is inflated since it is derived from the narrow, self-selected pool of people who actually provide that information to the schools."

Engineers should be forgiven if they get a deja vu feeling when reading the passage about distorted post-graduate employment information. For decades engineering schools have been accused of claiming there is a shortage of engineers even as engineering employment falls and engineers are in unemployment lines.

So it should be interesting to watch the fallout of the lawsuit and whether or not it has any impact on the practices of schools catering to other professions. Who knows, perhaps someday engineering schools will be required to prove their assertions about the employment circumstances of their graduates.

The WSJ article is here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904823804576500694179259396.html?KEYWORDS=law+school+lawsuit