Loyola-New Orleans Law School Post-Hurricane Blog

I agree with the posting concerning paying Loyola tuition. I am more than willing to pay tuition at which ever institution I plan to attend. I understand that Loyola is a business, but I thought it was a business run by Jesuits. Whatever happened to Catholic humanism and social justice? Like many others, I likely lost everything in the hurricane. However, I am blessed to have family in Baton Rouge and a place to stay. I know that this is just about money, and I should be content to be safe. However, Loyola should be more willing to help their students in their time of need. The administration's statement that others have it much worse off than us, and that this tuition issue pales in comparison to the suffering of many seems rather self-serving.

[Note from blog owner: I will add my two cents here. I look at this from the perspective of an outsider: I am a law prof at UNC Law, and have no connection to Loyola Law School other than compassion. I can certainly understand the unfairness that many students see in the system as it stands. Those of you who land this fall at schools with lower tuition than Loyola will be paying more for the same education than those around you; those of you who land this fall at schools with higher tuition than Loyola's will be getting what might be seen as a windfall. But given that the member schools in the AALS had to throw this plan together (with the Loyola and Tulane deans) and implement it at a moment's notice, I am hard-pressed to see how the organization could have adopted and implemented a plan that would have been individualized to each school's tuition compared to Loyola's and Tulane's. Such a plan would, in addition, have created very perverse incentives for those looking for a school to host them this fall: it would have created a rush to the less expensive schools, at a time when the most important thing was simply to find academic homes for everybody who wanted them, and fast.

My own view--and again, this is just my view, not that of the Loyola administration, with whom I have not spoken on the subject--is that in the scheme of things Loyola 2Ls and 3Ls are very fortunate to have had the nation's law schools throw their doors open to them. There is not a law school in the country--including Tulane and Loyola--that is goint to make a nickel on this disaster; instead, the nation's law schools are assuming and helping to spread the loss. So while I have great compassion for the financial straits in which you find yourselves, I don't think that it would have been feasible to develop a system whereby Loyola and Tulane students paid the tuition of their host school rather than of their home school. -- Eric Muller]