My post yesterday, Should the State of Florida Subsidize UF’s Graduate Tax Program?, which reported on UF Prof Jeff Harrison’s suggestion that the subsidy does not serve the interets of UF’s stakeholders, has generated a flurry of commentary in the blogosphere:

• Scott Schumacher (Washington): “[W]hy single out tax programs? . . . Are competent tax attorneys any less valuable to society than the competent contract attorneys that Harrison apparently believes are worthy of the public’s largess? When you get right down to it, I doubt many citizens are happy to support any programs in the law schools.”
• Jeff Harrison (Florida) (Wealth Redistribution in Favor of the Status Quo):  "[W]e could stop the subsidization of post-JD degree tax education today and there would be little or no unmet demand for the tax advice LLM graduates offer. The value of most tax advice would be fully monetized. I can think of few, if any, free-rider problems. Regardless of how the courses are taught, I think what is learned by most is Retaining Wealth I, Retaining Wealth II, and so on. Thus, the only justification for subsidization would be to depress the cost of tax advice. Maybe this is a defensible goal. If that were the goal we would have to revamp most of what is taught in an LLM tax program and include courses like ‘Tax Advice for the Poor and Working Poor.’ But that is covered in the basic JD course. So whatever wage-depressing rationale may exist can hardly be traced to an advanced tax course. In any case, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it."
• Jim Chen (Minnesota) (The LL.M. Program as Cash Cow):  "A responsibly managed public law school with a LL.M. program for has the obligation to charge market-based rather than state-subsidized tuition rates for the LL.M. Revenues from the LL.M. program are supposed to cross-subsidize other law school operations. Whether they are foreign lawyers, domestic specialists, or aspiring academics, LL.M. candidates can, will, and should pay full freight. In turn, a law school may appropriately use LL.M. revenues to finance any other interest, including a few scholarships for J.D. candidates….To be sure, in the first years of a nascent LL.M. program, a law school might persuade itself (and its university) that some discount is needed to establish a beachhead in the highly competitive market for LL.M. candidates. But the University of Florida’s LL.M. program in tax is neither new nor obscure. It might well be the most prestigious program of its kind…. This is precisely the sort of program that can and should charge premium tuition …. When you have a cash cow, get milking."
• Jeff Harrison (Florida) (Tax Advice for the Poor): "If poor and middle class people do not demand tax advice and if there are no positive externalities that accrue to them by virtue of the advice given to the relatively wealthy and corporate clients, why should they be asked to cough up anything at all to support an LLM program? In effect, the subsidization of LLM tax programs by all classes results in a redistribution from lower income to upper income classes. So much for a progressive tax system!"