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twitterThree professors bidding Boyd adieu
Specter of budget cuts is a reason cited by departing law school educators
Chris Morris
Sunday, April 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.
With concerns about state budget cuts and quality of life in Las Vegas, UNLV law professor Raquel Aldana is one of three William S. Boyd School of Law professors leaving for other jobs. She and her husband have a young child, and she has concerns about the schools in Nevada. "I have to ask, 'Is this a place where I can raise my child?' "
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UNLV’s William S. Boyd School of Law is losing three highly regarded professors, and faculty sources said several others are looking elsewhere.
Professors Raquel Aldana and Tuan Samahon, considered rising stars on the faculty, said they are leaving in part because they question Nevada’s commitment to education in the face of a proposed 36 percent cut in higher education in Gov. Jim Gibbons’ budget.
They also both have young children and said they worry that Southern Nevada’s struggling schools will fall further behind given other proposed cuts.
A third young professor, Michael Higdon, is leaving for the University of Tennessee to be closer to family, but he echoed his colleagues’ view that the law school’s rapid rise in national rankings is threatened by budget cuts.
The Boyd School of Law is a bright spot in Nevada’s higher education system. Just a decade old, Boyd has a top 100 ranking among law schools and has become known for recruiting both up-and-coming and veteran legal scholars.
All three departing professors are considered engaging instructors and prolific scholars, their colleagues said.
Samahon said he counts six additional faculty members — of a total of 40 or so — who have interviewed elsewhere. That means nearly a quarter of the faculty are leaving or considering it. Two others have decided to go from full-time to part-time, he said.
The departures create an immediate challenge for the young law school. Boyd will have to try to attract new talent and keep the remaining top professors here even as the Legislature considers deep budget cuts.
Beyond the immediate, the departures also raise the specter of a troubling trend that transcends the university system. After years of incremental progress in drawing young college graduates to the state, Nevada could be suffering the beginning stages of a “brain drain,” as educated professionals go elsewhere because their jobs are threatened or because they question whether Nevada can provide good schools for their children and health care when they get sick.
Boyd School of Law Dean John Valery White acknowledged the challenging environment. He said with so many talented young faculty, some turnover is inevitable. He said the law school is committed to attracting and retaining top talent.
“One of the components of my job is to build a strong faculty, but not under the assumption that we wouldn’t have any turnover,” White said.
He noted that quality of life challenges are not unique to Las Vegas. White came to Boyd from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where some difficulties in attracting and retaining talent were similar, he said.
Richard Morgan, the founding dean who is now of counsel at Lionel Sawyer & Collins, said the economic climate is challenging, but must be kept in context. He noted that other states are cutting higher education budgets, and private university endowments have been shredded by the recession.
“I think people at the law school are pleased and have a good feeling about the esprit de corps and team effort in building a good law school,” Morgan said. “I’m sad to see those faculty leave because they’re good people, but you’re always going to see people leave for professional or personal reasons.”
The state’s higher education system is expected to take a significant cut in its funding, as Nevada confronts the largest budget shortfall — 30 percent — of any state in the union, according to a recent study.
The alternative to cutting, a big tax hike, is not an option in an ailing economy, said Dan Burns, a spokesman for Gibbons, the first-term Republican who opposes any tax increase to make up the state’s huge budget shortfall.
“The economy is in a deep crisis,” Burns said. “There are layoffs everywhere. Thousands of people don’t know whether they’re going to get their next paycheck. The money is just not there.”
Gibbons is proposing a 36 percent cut in the higher education system budget, including cuts of 50 percent each at UNLV and University of Nevada, Reno. He also is proposing a 6 percent cut in public school teacher salaries.
Still, Burns said, “No one should question the governor’s commitment to education.”
Samahon has doubts.
He’s accepted an offer at Villanova University, the Augustinian institution outside Philadelphia.
He and his wife have 5-year-old twins and were attracted to the excellent school district in the area.
Samahon, who had a prestigious federal clerkship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, said he sees two ways to build a class of college-educated professionals.
One is to draw them from elsewhere. Nevada does so by luring them with low taxes, he said.
“But my sense is that a lot of professionals are not motivated solely by pecuniary interests,” Samahon said. “There are other things that are more appealing than low taxes. Decent infrastructure. Medical care. Excellent schools.”
The other way to produce educated professionals is to grow your own, he said. The advantage of a strong law school is that many of the graduates stay here, bolstering the supply of lawyers for business, government and social service groups, he said. He noted that something like one-third of the pro-bono work for Legal Aid of Southern Nevada is provided by Boyd graduates.
“They do a huge amount of good in this state,” he said.
Samahon’s thoughts extended beyond education. He said he and his wife had “mixed experiences” with doctors here. He described the health insurance benefits as “terrible.”
Higdon, who also clerked on the 9th Circuit, is a Boyd graduate. He said his time here has been “tremendously positive,” but added that Nevada will have to continue to invest to keep up: “Part of the rankings are how visible and well known you are, and that takes money.”
Aldana, who has been at UNLV for nearly a decade, has accepted a position at University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.
Without money, UNLV will have difficulty helping talented and ambitious professors develop innovative programs, Aldana said.
“It’s a solid program with a solid reputation and wonderful people here,” she said. “That’s not foreclosed, but it could be challenged by whether they can retain talent and also draw new people by allowing professors to be entrepreneurial about new programs.”
Aldana echoed many of Samahon’s criticisms. She, too, has a young child: “I have to ask, ‘Is this a place where I can raise my child?’ ”
She said that UNLV, once it has resources again, should become more family-friendly in its recruiting, offering opportunities to spouses.
At McGeorge, Aldana will be director of an inter-American program that will seek to build ties between the legal communities of the U.S. and Latin America.
Jim Rogers, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, said he was saddened by the departures, though not surprised. Rogers is in a tough fight for more money at the Legislature.
“What you’re seeing is a reasonable reaction to the general attitude of Nevadans, which is, education just isn’t that important,” he said.
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Ironic that Nevada does not allow lawyers to be licensed unless they graduated from an American Law School.
Maybe Nevada should adopt the same legislation and not allow Doctors to "play doctor" in Nevada unless they too have graduated from an American Medical School?
How about teachers, CCSD is recruiting teachers from "off shore". A common complaint from school kids is that they have a hard time understanding what the teacher is saying!
Over the past two years, my department at UNLV has lost 20% of its faculty (all top performers). Nevada's general attitude towards higher ed has always been the same (not good), but UNLV could still attract good faculty with a good economy and good (i.e. visionary) leadership. The economy and UNLV leadership have changed, both for the worse. Now faculty face a Nevada populace that doesn't care for (or just resents) higher ed, a bumbling, reactionary UNLV administration, and relative cuts that far exceed those to universities in practically every other state. Nearly every mobile (= productive) UNLV faculty member I know is on the job market, and I think UNLV is at the beginning of a major faculty exodus. The net flux of faculty will reverse when the economy and UNLV administration improve, which will be in 3 to 5 years maybe.
2zero, I've always been curious about something, and I don't ask this to put you on the spot at all--you got me thinking. If you graduate from an accredited medical school, you don't have to take a test to prove you should be a doctor in Nevada or, so far as I know, other states (if I am wrong about that, someone, please correct me!). But if you go to law school and graduate, you have to take an exam on law? To quote my favorite all-time king, Yul Brynner, is a puzzlement.
What is it with this newspaper and sloppy reporting?? The professor's name is MICHAEL Higdon. A quick check of the UNLV website would have revealed this error.
Comment removed by staff.
"The first thing we need to do is kill all the lawyers." William Shakespeare
If you looked into the phone book, you will see a ton of pages of lawyers. We certainly do NOT need any more. So adieu, mon legal-beagles.
Right on Teddy.
A lack of resources + uncertainty + fear of the future = arrested development = A Poverty Trap. If an individual can be equated to a family unit, which in turn can be equated to the State, the State is a poor man with a poor family and a challenge. The challenge is to avoid the Trap.
Remember: This is the same guy that suggested siphoning off Property Tax from Clark County to give to the State of Nevada.
Thanks Northern Nevada!
C'mon everybody. Sing along!
Home means Nevada. Home means the hills. Home means the Sage and the Pine....
"What you're seeing is a reasonable reaction to the general attitude of Nevadans, which is, education just isn't that important." --Chancellor of Nevada System of Higher Education, Jim Rogers.
LOL
Funny how Nevadans don't hear the same "education just isn't that important" attitude emulating from the private educational service sector.
LOL
BTW: nice photo.
Professors are always leaving UNLV. It's too bad that the young, rising star professors leave more often than the professors that, in my opinion, are lazy and sucking the system dry.
To ZeddyBear@10:24am:
If you're going to quote Shakespeare, don't quote him out of context. The line was spoken to state how they were going to eliminate people who would stand in the way of a possible revolution - i.e. who would be the ones that would protect the rights of the people the most, and eliminate them as to avoid resistance of the revolution.
So when people say "The first thing we need to do is kill all the lawyers" and think it means what you think it means, I take it as a compliment and just laugh at their ignorance.
So, torture maven Jay Bybee has a place of honor at the Boyd School and these professors don't say boo. But our state is going through a crisis and they skedaddle out of town, before the budget is even fully addressed? Gee, thanks fellas. Don't let the door hit you in the tush.
Three less lawyers is great news. Please take the rest of them with you.
Dear Michael:
Not only are attorneys in Nevada required to graduate from an ABA-accredited law school, they are required to pass one of the most invasive moral character investigations in the country and successfully complete what is thought to be the third most difficult bar exam in the U.S. (California and NY duel for the first and second spot on a yearly basis). Graduates of foreign law schools can apply to have their education vetted on a case-by-case basis and if approved by the State Bar of Nevada, may sit for our bar exam as well, so I'm not sure that the comparison to foreign-educated medical doctors is apt. As a practicing attorney in two states (Nevada and California) the antics of some members of our bar who have forgotten their oaths bother me on a daily basis, but this is an enforcement (i.e. the Bar's problem), rather than a screening (i.e. Boyd's) problem. As a Boyd alumni who has employed current students and spoken at the school on multiple occasions since I graduated, I am continually struck by the overwhelming professionalism and diligence of the student body.
Bill_in_Henderson:
Samahon, in addition to various other Boyd professors, have been very vocal about Bybee. In the future, it may be helpful to know something about what your talking about BEFORE commenting on it. Just a suggestion.
Lets look at the facts for just a second. Nevada has fewer lawyers per capita than any western state so lets not get overwhelmed by a few ads in a phone book for a county with 2,000,000 people. Second, we produce about half the lawyers we need to replace those that retire and move out of state so what we get are the lawyers who are educated in other states, those that don't know and don't care about Nevada and Nevadans.
The Boyd School of Law has been one of the real bright spots at UNLV (thank you Dean Morgan) and the fact that the governor wants to castrate southern Nevada rightly scares thinking people (at those thinking people who can understand that you cant' have a growing economy without a decent quality education system). If you think only bureaucrats think higher education is important check out the hundreds of letters from business leaders published in the Chancellor's weekly memos on the budget issues. And those business leaders are the ones whose businesses will pay for education with a tax increase. But the people expressing opposition are the feeble minded libertarians who quake at the thought they might have to pay $100 in additional taxes to have a state worth living in.
Hss46 wrote:
"But the people expressing opposition are the feeble minded libertarians who quake at the thought they might have to pay $100 in additional taxes to have a state worth living in."
Big jump there "feeble-minded" one between robbing citizens an additional $100 and equating such to a social state worth anything, let alone one worth living in.
Socialists attempt to moralize social thievery.
LOL
ROFL, yes publicly funded education . . . definitely an immoral form of social theivery
And I thought libertarians were feeble minded. How feeble minded can I be for failing to equate public education with socialism and immorality. I earnestly beg the forgiveness of all.
Seriously Harley . . . life in a society of 2,000,000 people in this Valley would be a disaster without quality public education. Jobs would disappear and the few that remained would be minimum wage, working poor type jobs. So public education has to be funded and it truly would be immoral not to, not socialism or thievery.
Right now, your per capita share of state and local taxes combined is roughly $80 per month, 50th in the nation, and still we have the biggest budget hole and thats in the smallest budget. If we increased the budget by 30% it would still be, on a per capita basis, smaller than the budget deficit California just plugged. And while no one who is rational would argue that there is zero waste in state government, to say we are going to decimate public education because there is some waste is to throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes that kind of approach to solving problems is at best pure selfishness and at worst, feeblemindedness.
But I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to solve the problems if you have information besides the insinuation that socialism and publicly funded education constitute immoral thievery
Right on, Nevadaappleslices. And it won't stop there. I know of many other professors, in many other colleges at UNLV, that have better offers and will most likely LEAVE. Unless this state starts being serious about higher ed., only the "dead wood" will remain at UNLV... and then what will this school become, a petrified forest???
These professors have the right to do whatever they see fit in order to serve their own personal needs. But why can't they do it with some class, instead of taking a swipe as they run away?
Time to hire new professors and move along. The last thing we would want is to retain an employee who holds such disdain for their employer. Bad apples, as they say.
One thing that employees in the education business,yes it is a business and yes they are employees,never want to discuss while they are complaining about their dire working conditions on a daily basis is their income and benefits.They want us to believe they are sacrificing themselves for the good of mankind, however their main goal is to extract as much money from taxpayers as possible.The students are the secondary issue,their income is priority one.And their income is what is bankrupting our education system,especially for people who do not work year round.Let them leave there are plenty more to take their place,if they need to actually fill those jobs in the first place,most could not hack it in the private sector,not enough days off for them in the private sector,plus they might have to actually put in a full days work.
"So, torture maven Jay Bybee has a place of honor at the Boyd School and these professors don't say boo. But our state is going through a crisis and they skedaddle out of town, before the budget is even fully addressed? Gee, thanks fellas. Don't let the door hit you in the tush."
I think these 3 law professors are smart to leave before Professor Bybee is indicted by the Spanish crimes against humanity court. The indictment will be a tremendous embarassment to UNLV Law School which they will not live down for a long time, assuming the law school continues to exist.
I think the University should protect its reputation by asking Professor Bybee to relinquish his tenure.
CynicalObserver, I think you are far behind the news cycle. The Spanish have decided not to indict any US offical.
Bybee should be given a medal anyway.