EduBubble

Somewhere in the faculty lounges of University of Texas there’s a gaggle of professors shaking their fist at the 1% and the 1%’s lying schemes for depriving the rest of us. Perhaps they imagine they’re shaking their fist at Wall Street or perhaps at some oil baron in Oklahoma. Little do they realize that the evil lies in themselves. Well, perhaps not their very bodies because most of the faculty is probably an adjunct, but in the larger metaphorical body of the faculty itself.

All I know about the scandal at UT is what I’ve garnered from the no longer anonymous Paul Campos at the InsideTheLawSchoolScam blog. He notes the public records state that the top 25 salaries at the Univ. of Texas Law School ranged from $272K to $217K. But if you thought the public records were correct you would be wrong. All of that legal education about honesty and perjury and ethics are a nice show for the students, but the students shouldn’t expect that the faculty might follow these rules.

It turns out that the law school has been handing out forgivable loans and retention bonuses with “moral obligations” but not contractual ones. In other words, something that’s for most intents and purposes just income. That’s how the IRS treats it.

If you start including that in the calculations, the old numbers are wildly off. 22 professors shared $4.65 million in forgivable loans! Whoo hoo! But the public doesn’t need to know about these things.