Witness the fact that Corbett, a conservative and strict Catholic, who grew up in a northern Pittsburgh suburb, went to tiny, tiny Lebanon Valley College - then owned/operated by the Evangelical United Brethren Church (later merged with the Methodist Church). It is of particular note that all students were required to attend mandatory chapel services. Why of note? Because back then, as far as the Catholic Church was concerned, to attend services of any non-Catholic religion was a mortal sin. (I recall having to confess that I had stepped foot in a Protestant denomination church to attend my cousin's wedding. That was once. Corbett was attending multiple weekly chapel services.) The school had an enrollment of about 1,000 at that time - now it's grown to a whopping 1600! It is located approximately 200 miles from Pittsburgh, in the middle of a cultural and intellectual wasteland - keep in mind that this was in the pre-internet era, so his isolation was virtually total.
So why on earth would Corbett chose to go there? I submit it was the only school he could find which admitted him. Given the costs of room and board, it would have been less expensive for him to live at home and commute to a Pittsburgh college/university, such as Carnegie-Mellon, Univ. of Pittsburgh, or if he wanted a Catholic college/univ., Duquesne University or LaRoche College. He could have been a day OR residential student at St. Vincent College - only a 60 minute drive from his family's home.
I challenge anyone to come up with any explanation for Corbett's choice of undergraduate school other than that Corbett was such a poor student, with such poor grades and admissions test scores, that this painfully small, evangelical/non-Catholic school was the only school which would admit him. So there he is in the most intellectually formative time of his life, in an isolated evangelical school far smaller than the vast majority of high schools. Is it any wonder he has such a narrow, unimaginative and bigoted world view? This is further reinforced by the fact that his wife is also a "graduate" (using the term loosely) of this remote outpost of "higher learning". You could say Tommy was at the last frontier of college education.
So our intrepid governor manages to actually complete a degree - then what? He wants to go to law school, but ends up as a 9th grade substitute teacher for a year. Where? The Pine Grove area (Schuykill County). Wow! How impressive! This school district is tiny on a scale similar to Corbett's undergrad school. Pine Grove has one each: grade school, middle school, high school.
The Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives Sunshine Review gave the school board and district administration a "F" for transparency based on a review of "What information can people find on their school district's website". It examined the school district's website for information regarding; taxes, the current budget, meetings, school board members names and terms, contracts, audits, public records information and more
College remediation: According to a Pennsylvania Department of Education study released in January 2009, 33% of Pine Grove Area High School graduates required remediation in mathematics and or reading before they were prepared to take college level courses in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education or community colleges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Grove_Area_School_District
I am not only a lawyer, but also a former law school professor, and here's the deal. If you want to be a lawyer, you go to either a top school with a national reputation - Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, University of Virginia, etc. - or to a law school located in the state/geographic area in which you want to be admitted to practice or to run for political office. In Corbett's case, his undergrad school would mark him as an instant reject to any of the top law schools' admissions committees, so we'd expect he would have applied to one or more PA law schools - Dickinson, Temple, Pitt, or Duquesne. Pitt would have had the lowest tuition. Duquesne offered both day and evening programs. Pitt and Duquesne are in his hometown - again he could have lived with his family and commuted.
I strongly believe and challenge anyone to disprove that Corbett ended up as a substitute 9th grade teacher for a year because none of the law schools to which he applied, even whatever school he would have considered his backup school, would accept him. So a year later, where did he finally get accepted? To a 4th Tier (that's the lowest ranked) law school down on the Mexican border - St. Mary's Law School in San Antonio. The Wikepedia entry notes the low value of a degree from this institution unless one intends to stay in Texas:
Employment Prospects and Bar Passage
In 2008, 91.3 percent of St. Mary’s graduates were known to be employed within nine months of graduation. Of those, 89 percent worked in Texas, underscoring the regional value of the law school’s degree. Like other Tier 4 schools, graduates received a slightly low median salary of $55,000 in the private sector. In the public sector, the median salary is $54,250. Students at St. Mary’s stress that while the school’s reputation is rising in Texas, particularly in San Antonio, finding a job outside of the state can be arduous.
In 2009, graduates of St. Mary’s passed the state bar at a rate of 84.6 percent, which placed the law school in 8th place out of nine ABA-accredited Texas law schools. This poor showing indicates that other law schools in the state do a better job of preparing their students for the bar exam.
Prospective students can do well by choosing St. Mary’s for their legal education. The average debt, at about $91,500, is high, and the likelihood of obtaining a nice private-sector salary is not, so prospective students should think long and hard about their decision. While the law school cannot offer much aid while students are in school, it can offer a degree with high regional value that will get students a job in Texas. The relatively low bar passage rate is another concern, but overall, St. Mary’s can be good choice for those who want to live in San Antonio and work in the state.
So there's ole Tommy - 1500 miles/22 hours driving time away from friends, family & home in yee-haw! Texas! (Although I'm sure he played on this decades later when he started whoring for all the fracking Big Oil companies).
Conclusions? (1) Because of his low IQ/competence/academic record/standardized testing scores, Tom got rejected by various Pennsylvania colleges at both the undergrad and grad level. (2) He's bitterly resented this fact his whole life. (3) The words Tommy lives by are "Payback's a bitch" and this has what has led to his vicious cuts to Pennsylvania education, particularly the state's higher education system.
Am I right or am I right?
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