Legal Commentary

Thank you, Prawfs, for having me back on board this month.

My student evaluations for an upper-level class arrived last week in my mailbox.  The evals were benign and unremarkable with two exceptions.  One student wrote, "Nothing to improve, except for clothing." That's feedback I can act on.  I can change the outside easily. Men's Wearhouse, here I come.

One student refused to dignify the front page of the evaluation with any markings, except for the word "OVER ->" On the back, the student wrote "WE PAY YOU. YOU DON'T PAY US."

The previous year, a different student personally relayed a similar observation in complaining that a colleague of mine was unavailable because he was at a conference in Chicago.  "I don't understand why we pay your salaries so that you can go to conferences," he said.  I started to explain it, but found myself more interested in why he had asked it.

So: "We pay you. You don't pay us." I've never been directly paid by a student, though passing a plate in my larger lectures has now crossed my mind.  Outside of research assistants that the school provides, I certainly have never paid a student, but if any of you out there in prawfsland are paying students for being students, I'd like to know what the going rate is.

Of course, students apply for the privilege to pay the school, but what are they paying for?  Professional education can be a strange service- our schools offer a professional certification that the student may or may not receive.  The school pays professors to participate in that certification, and the accreditation folks want the school to protect the public... from some of the people who pay the school.  If you pay to attend my school and allocate your time toward my class, you have to follow my [very reasonable] rules to earn credit.

If you are reading this and thinking, "Well, that's obvious." It's not obvious to all students. Why is that? We can play the old "it's generational" song on our violins because we know the tune well, but I think students today consume all services differently.