Bar Rescue: Stetson College of Law

 

    Stetson College of Law. A law school by the beach with year-round sunshine is what they advertise to potential students. If only we knew the mess it was before signing up.

    I am a 3L and have been at Stetson since August of 2021. I have seen Stetson deal with many problems and usually not find solutions for them. It may come down to mismanagement of the school, or they simply do not care about their students and how they feel. When we arrived at Stetson, our tuition was $47,000; it is now almost $52,000 after all fees are paid. I have asked many peers if they plan on donating once they are alumni, and no matter how successful, everyone has a resounding "no." Everything from masks our entire 1L year (even though all of the Florida schools were maskless) to being unable to use the tennis/basketball courts for a year, to a gross and rundown gym, to mishandling dangerous situations on campus, the school is a mess.

    Inflation is clearly a country-wide problem, but raising tuition by 2%, then 4%, and then 5.6% is an issue when the school does nothing to cut costs and still turn a significant profit. They actually operate as if they have plenty of money as they throw lavish staff parties and exclusive trial team parties and dinners, and give unlimited funds to any club when they ask. But when everyone is invited to Barristers? That is going to cost an additional $80 to $100. So what is the point in student fees if we can't even get a barrister at a reduced price? In early 2022, a bunch of 2 and 3Ls could plan an entire barrister without any school funding for $80 a person, where they did have an open bar the whole time, real food, and a cigar bar. With enough leftover money to donate to a charity. Can that random group of students plan better than the school can? Probably.

Stetson does not even care about their students passing the bar because if they did, they would pay for students' private bar prep courses the same way many private schools do. We pay more than double what we would at public schools in Florida, and we still get worse value than we would have gotten at any of those schools. Stetson is not worth the insane debt many of us will be in.