Rooting out the Policy behind the Scam

There are people who, afraid of this truth, grant half of it, like debtors who offer half to their creditors, and ask to be let off the rest. —Dictionnaire philosophique

There are two main aspects of the academic credentialing (i.e., mistakenly referred to as "education") scam: The governmental policy that enables the scam itself, and the actual people who administer the scam. Scam refers to the deliberate inefficiency of schools graduating more students than there are (entry-level) jobs in that field. This situation is enabled by the government policy of subsidizing tuition for the purpose of encouraging education; this creates the worst of both worlds, it both interferes with market demand while not regulating it sufficiently.

This governmental policy is the cause. The effect of that cause are the schools themselves, both the administrations and their fellow-traveling academics taking advantage of the unlimited and almost unregulated government money available.

The immoral behavior of both the school administrations and the disingenuous stay-away-from-my-fat-paycheck professional/professorial sophisters are a necessary result of the moral hazard governmental education policy created. An ignorant population of mostly young students who have limited career options, spending government (i.e., other people's) money, not having to repay it for years (once they have their imaginary castle-in-the-sky high-earning dream job in the future), creates too tempting of a payday for schools to forgo collection. We as a country pay for scamming, and scamming is exactly what we get, and in abundance. 

This policy of moral hazard creates the scam because the policy creates the incentive. Otherwise, the students would not be so gullible; as the quondam scamblog mentioned, if one must spend their own money—their social value, really—the marketing of law school via job placement stats suddenly would become closely examined by even the special snowflakes. Maybe I should contact some actual recent grads before I risk my youth on this? Yeah, maybe an actual unbiased living person in the real world might give me useful advice.

As to a response to this situation, the policy (cause) and the scam (effect) both ought to be exposed. If only the cause is addressed, it is an abstract, unexciting policy issue. The effect—the ScamDeans earning more than twice the income than the President of the United States, the Professor Dumbledums writing rambling make-work articles for each other, cry out for exposure, as public opinion does not well countenance overpaid, underworked professors who provide no value back to society.

If only the effect were addressed, however, we would forever be trimming the leaves instead of reforming the underlying policy instead. We must continue to expose the visible put-an-ugly-yellow-toothed-face-to-the-devil ScamLords, while also addressing the situation that allowed them to prosper. Only then may we rip-out the scam by the dirty roots, and put an end to the sociopathic robbing of the taxpayer and student under the pretense of "law" or "art" education.
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Read my book-length satire/exposé of law school, Smarter Than Socrates: The End of the Law School Era.