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- 1. W W W . D I S P A T C H . C O M MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2012 High 52 ,Low 32 Details B6 $1.00 TIGER GETS FIRST TOUR WIN SINCE ’09 C7 S teve Newman never expected to be going back to college in his 50s to train for a new job. But the 51-year-old Hilliard resident also never expected to get laid off three years ago after 25 years as a civil engineer. “Fortunately, my wife and I had been making provisions for an undefined emergency since the middle of the previous summer, so we were not without resources,” Newman said. With high unemployment, low home values and downsized retirement ac- counts, hundreds of thousands of baby boomers are turning to college to boost their job skills. The number of students ages 50 to 64 increased 17 percent na- tionwide between fall 2007 and fall 2009, according to the latest data avail- able from the National Center for Edu- cation Statistics. The growth has been even more dra- matic at Columbus State Community College. The number of students age 50 or older increased more than 81 per- cent, to 1,506 students, between fall 2007 and fall last year. That age group is the fastest-growing population at the school. “It used to be that many older adults came to college to help pass the time during their retirement and to enrich their lives,” said Chandra Bell, a coun- selor and career-assistance coordinator at Columbus State. But people are now Columbus State and other colleges see surge in numbers of baby boomers enrolling to boost their job skills NEAL C. LAURON DISPATCH Steve Newman works on logistics-class homework in his dining room in Hilliard. Newman, 51, is part of the fastest-growing student pop- ulation at Columbus State Community College — adults over age 50, many of whom are remaking themselves for second careers. BACK TO SCHOOLBy Encarnacion Pyle | THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH See OLDER STUDENTS Page A7 - Boomers bounce back, remake themselves to launch new careers | A6 AGING OHIO: BOOMER BUST The recession upended life for thousands of Ohio baby boomers. In a three-part series, Ohio news organ- izations examine the effects across families and commu- nities. The stories are part of a national Aging America reporting project launched by the Associated Press and the Associated Press Media Editors association. - Sunday: Out of work - Today: Midlife retooling - Tuesday: Many unprepared WASHINGTON — The monumen- tal fight over a health-care law that touches all Americans and divides them sharply comes before the Su- preme Court today. The justices will decide whether to kill or keep the largest expansion in the nation’s so- cial safety net in more than four dec- ades. Two years and three days after President Barack Obama signed into law a health-care overhaul aimed at extending medical insurance to more than 30 million Americans, the high court begins three days of hearings over the law’s validity. The challenge from 26 states and a small-business group puts the court U.S. SUPREME COURT Health-law arguments to begin By Mark Sherman ASSOCIATED PRESS See ARGUMENTS Page A4 Would you wait months instead of weeks for your tax refund if the delay deterred thieves? A taxpayer advocate is suggesting that as a way to stop scammers from stealing millions from the Treasury through bogus tax refunds. The thefts occur in part because the IRS doesn’t review all taxpayer documentation before issuing re- funds, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson told a U.S. Senate sub- committee considering a bill to re- duce refund theft. Some of those reviews come later. TAX-FRAUD CASES ID thieves count on fast return By Kathy Lynn Gray THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH See TAX FRAUD Page A7 WASHINGTON — Even though Ohio’s Senate race is not deemed among the nation’s most competitive this year, outside groups already have poured in about $5 million. That’s the most in the country, Democrats say. Republicans don’t dispute the assertion. The bulk of the money for ads that began airing last year is focused squarely on ousting Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and replacing him with GOP state Treasurer Josh Mandel. The Ohio contest, along with a handful of other U.S. Senate races, could decide which party controls the SPECIAL-INTEREST GROUPS Outside cash floods into Senate race By Jessica Wehrman THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH See OUTSIDE Page A4 March 27 ONE DAY ONLY! While supply lasts. ® SUPER TUESDAY!HALF PRICE! Limit 2 Now 2/$3Gallon Reiter® Milk Fat free,1%, 2%, whole. Reg. $2.99 Earn When you buy Gift Cards $25 Choose from these and HUNDREDS more OFFER VALID through April 8. See store for details The number of people taking the law-school admission test spiked after the Great Recession hit in 2007. But it has dropped more than 16 percent this year, the largest decline in more than a decade. Many think the drop is an indication that prospective students have realized that the job market for law-school graduates hasn’t been this bad since the mid-1990s. Others think law Employment rate for law-school grads Ohio’s five public law schools boast that most of their students find jobs within nine months of graduating. But some experts say that doesn’t necessarily mean the graduates get full-time, permanent work or jobs in their fields that will help pay off their high debt. A breakdown for the class of 2010, the latest available statistics: Total graduates Avg. loan amount (National: $68,827) PERCENTAGE OF GRADUATES Employed, any job (National avg.: 87.6%) Employed full time, requiring law degree With at least one law-school loan 134 $60,149 92% 53% 84% UNIV. OF AKRON UNIV. OF CINCINNATI 129 $58,455 88% 53% 89% CLEVELAND STATE UNIV. 178 $71,477 88% 67% 82% OHIO STATE UNIV. 202 $81,408 89% 61% 90% 161 $76,898 90% 40% 86% UNIV. OF TOLEDOLAW SCHOOLS Sources: Capital University law professor Jason Dolin and the individual schools Law grads: lots of debt, few jobs By Encarnacion Pyle THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH See LAW GRADS Page A7 SPORTS,C1 1. KENTUCKY VS.LOUISVILLE 2. OHIO STATE VS.KANSAS FINAL FOUR MATCHUPS Kansas Jayhawks forward Thomas Robinson celebrates the win over North Carolina. United States pays families $50,000 for each of 16 slain Afghans NATION WORLD, A3
- 2. Unemployment can serve as your “fire drill” for retire- ment. Start to budget and act as you would if your unemployment status turns into a permanent situation. Cutting back on luxuries, such as vacations and din- ing out, are obvious. Here are other strategies to help out-of-work boomers: Retrain your brain Look for a skill set that’s in high demand. Research the best training and educa- tion options in your area. Determine your `gap coverage' needs If retraining isn’t for you, take a realistic look at your current situation: If you were planning to retire at 65, how many years do you have until you reach that number? Consider taking a job instead starting a new career to bridge the gap. If you are fortunate enough to re-enter the work force, put away savings in a self-directed IRA until you are eligible for the company plan and try to rebuild your emergency fund. Rollover options Don’t leave your 401(k) money with your former employer. Ideally, you want to transfer your retirement assets to an individual re- tirement account — IRA — or a Roth IRA if you qualify. Cashing out your 401(k) at a former employer should be the last resort. Keep your safe money safe Boomers need to be cau- tious about investment decisions. Preparing for the worst often translates into overweighting your portfolio into safe money investment products. For many, this is desir- able, and even necessary, to provide cash flow during retirement or to offset a lack of income. However, if an adviser has taken you out for dinner or coffee to dis- cuss bonus annuities or a reverse mortgage, remem- ber, there is no such thing as a “risk-free” investment. Track your assets Evaluate your 401(k) and IRA holdings. Even if you are not currently contrib- uting to your nest egg, you should revisit your risk tol- erance. If you were an ag- gressive investor while you were employed, is it appro- priate for you if you are now unemployed or retired? As you near retirement age, you also might need to adjust your risk-to-return ratios. Re-evaluate insurance coverage Find out if you can be added to your employed spouse’s company health plan as a family member. Also, review your life insur- ance coverage and deter- mine whether your former employer had a life insur- ance policy on you that you can take over. If not, you’ll need to replace it. There are no loans for retirement Most parents want the best for their children and are willing to sacrifice to help them get started. But your No. 1 priority should be to invest in your own retirement first. Nathan Bachrach and Ed Finke write “Simply Money,” a weekly financial advice column for The Cincinnati Enquirer. Partners in the Financial Network Group, Bachrach and Finke wrote this column for this project. simplymoney@fngltd.com Tips on weathering `forced retirement' By Nathan Bachrach and Ed Finke FOR THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER ISTOCKPHOTO.COM A7Nation WorldTHE COLUMBUS DISPATCH MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2012BREAKING NEWS: DISPATCH.COM coming back “because they have lost their jobs, need new skills to keep their jobs or are planning a new career because they can’t afford to retire as planned,” Bell said. With 78 million baby boomers en- tering their retirement years, the coun- try — not to mention Ohio — needs more of these experienced workers to stay in the work force longer, even in part-time positions, officials said. “Keeping older workers engaged in the labor force is vital for the contin- ued economic growth of our region,” said Bill LaFayette, a Columbus econo- mist and owner of the consulting firm Regionomics. The labor force growth rate is al- ready declining and is projected to slow to a crawl between 2020 and 2025 because of the exodus of baby boom- ers, he said. With people living longer, healthier lives, there is also a new demand for programs designed to train the over-50 population, said Celia Crossley, a ca- reer strategist and managing partner of Crosworks in Columbus. Last year, about 36 percent of work- ers said they expected to keep working past age 65, compared with 20 percent in 2001, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. “It’s a different world today where 50 to 70 is considered the new `middle age,’” Crossley said. Martha Harrison, 52, of Powell start- ed playing with the idea of going back to college in 2005 after more than 20 years as a preschool teacher. She was motivated by two primary factors: money, and a desire to get a counsel- ing degree to help children deal with their increasingly complicated home lives. “Preschool teachers barely make above minimum wage, which makes no sense when you think about taking care of someone’s most-valuable as- set,” Harrison said. She tried a few online psychology classes with a for-profit college in 2005 but didn’t really get started on her education until she enrolled at Colum- bus State’s Delaware campus in fall 2010. Harrison has enjoyed school so much she wants to transfer to Ohio State to work on a bachelor’s degree and eventually earn a master’s so she can become a school counselor. She isn’t daunted by her age. “The way I look at it, people my age, we have maybe 25 or more years left of working in us, especially in some- thing that we enjoy,” she said. When Newman lost his job, he and his wife, Deb, who is a stay-at-home mom, had saved about half of what they thought they might need to sus- tain themselves for about six months with no other income. “We were glad to have made such decisions, despite not having had time to complete our preparation,” he said. Through friends, Newman immedi- ately landed a job as a marketing director for a men’s legwear company in Granville. He took a job 11 months later as a traffic engineer for the Ohio Department of Transportation. But neither worked out long term. So the father of four signed up for a free three-week program at Columbus State that was created to train dis- located workers in logistics — the movement and storage of goods from the beginning to the end of a supply chain. After the training, Newman got a job as an inventory specialist at ODW Logistics Inc. in Columbus. He then enrolled in a three-quarter-long online certificate program at Columbus State, which helped him move to a more- advanced job at the pharmaceutical company of Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. Even though Newman had earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State in 1984, going back to college was chal- lenging, he said. “In the past 13 days, I’ve had to read seven chapters, take nine quizzes, solve four sets of problems, take one midterm and two finals — and that doesn’t even count working 40 hours and spending time with my family.” Newman is just thankful for a sec- ond chance, even though he’s making $60,000 a year less than his peak sala- ry as a civil engineer. He’s also looking forward to working his way up in what he hopes turns out to be a long, suc- cessful second career. “Getting laid off was quite a blow,” he said. “But finding something else to go after and making strides to move ahead has me feeling good again.” epyle@dispatch.com FRED SQUILLANTE DISPATCH Newman runs a forklift at Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane. The civil engineer was laid off three years ago. OLDER STUDENTS FROM PAGE A1 schools should be taking steps to stop churning out more graduates than the market can bear while at the same time saddling them with huge debt. “Things have really col- lapsed in the last two to three years,” said Peter Koltak, 24, of Upper Arlington, who is a second-year law student at Ohio State University. “Paid summer positions for law- school students have gone from 20 to 30 openings to just two or three in some cases. “And the number of jobs available for new graduates has dropped exponentially.” This school year, nearly 130,000 people took the LSAT, compared with about 155,000 a year ago and more than 171,000 in the peak year of 2009-10, according to the Law School Admission Council. Ohio has five public law schools, more than any other state except California, which also has five. “It doesn’t make any sense. California’s population is more than three times as large as Ohio’s,” said Jason Dolin, an adjunct professor at Capital University Law School who is concerned about the overabundance of law-school graduates. In 2009, Ohio had 1,194 people pass the bar exam, compared with an estimated 686 job openings — resulting in a surplus of 508 lawyers, the Ohio Board of Regents said. “We have too many law- yers,” regents Chancellor Jim Petro said. Petro would like to shift some of the state funding that is currently earmarked to help subsidize the cost of teaching law students to Ohio’s medical schools to help fill a national shortage of doctors. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the U.S. is short 13,700 doctors in all specialties. That number is predicted to hit 63,000 by 2015 and more than double by 2025. Lawmakers rejected Petro’s recommendation during the last state budget process, but he is considering introducing a similar measure in the future. The state needs to help the medical schools increase their enrollments to bolster Ohio’s prosperity, he said. The overall employment rate for new law-school grad- uates across the country was 87.6 percent in 2010, the lowest it has been since 1996, according to the National Association for Law Place- ment. And only 68 percent of the graduates obtained jobs requiring a law degree; 27 percent of the jobs were temporary, and 11 percent were part time, said James Leipold, the association’s executive director. “There is likely more bad news to come,” Leipold said, although he disagrees that the U.S. has too many law- yers. Despite perceptions that lawyers all make six-figure salaries, the national median starting salary for the class of 2010 was $63,000, down al- most 13 percent from the previous class. The median salary in Ohio is just below that. Most new graduates also are still paying off their law- school education, often into middle age, advocates for fewer lawyers said. In the 2009-10 school year, public law-school students averaged $68,827 of debt, and private law-school students $106,249, according to the American Bar Association. “Many students are gam- bling the equivalent of a home mortgage on their legal educations,” Dolin said. Ohio would be better served by having one or two fewer public law schools, he said. “If law schools were at all sensitive to market forces, they would be shutting their doors or at least reducing their head count.” He said law schools often give students misleading information about employ- ment and starting-salary prospects to entice more students to apply and in- crease the schools’ rankings. “They categorize employ- ment as any post-law-school job — from a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship to flipping burgers at a fast-food restau- rant — in the same manner, saying a job is a job, when it clearly is not,” Dolin said. But Alan C. Michaels, dean of OSU’s Moritz College of Law, said the school provides prospective students with straightforward facts about their job prospects. The legal profession is just one of many fields hit hard by the recession, he said. “Law- school applications go up and down all the time. They are down right now as part of a market response.” To better prepare students to work, Ohio State has added several courses in which students simulate trials, negotiations, settlements and other legal procedures to bring what they’ve learned in theory to life, Michaels said. The university has also increased fieldwork place- ments and added a law and leadership program, several practical problem-solving courses for third-year stu- dents and a new one-year fellowship that matches new graduates with the general- counsel offices of several leading national corpora- tions. “Right now, Ohio State has the most strongly creden- tialed student body in the history of the law school, and they are graduating and going out there and making a difference,” he said. Sara Smith, 23, of Athens, who is a second-year law student at Ohio State, expects to graduate next year with $100,000 in undergraduate and law-school loans. But she still wouldn’t choose another career, even though she knows she will be on the lower end of the pay range when she finds a job. “Public-defense work is my passion,” she said. Nonetheless, Smith can’t imagine why anyone who isn’t absolutely sure they want to become a lawyer would go to law school in this incredibly tight job market. “That would be crazy,” she said. epyle@dispatch.com LAW GRADS FROM PAGE A1 “If we place a greater value on protecting tax- payers against identity theft and the Treasury against fraudulent refund claims ... we may need to ask all taxpayers to wait longer to receive their tax refunds, or we may need to increase IRS staffing significantly,” she said last week in her testimony. “If our goal is to process tax returns and deliver tax refunds as quickly as pos- sible, the IRS can continue to operate as it currently does — but that means some identity thieves will get away with refund fraud, and some honest taxpayers will suffer harm.” Steven T. Miller, IRS dep- uty commissioner, told the subcommittee that 460,000 taxpayers have been victims of identity theft since 2008. In September, one person in Tampa was charged with stealing $9 million in tax refunds, Tampa Police de- tective Sal Augeri testified. Here’s how it happens: A thief obtains personal in- formation about an individ- ual, including a Social Se- curity number, and files a bogus tax return listing a tax refund under that indi- vidual’s name. The thief has the refund sent to an ad- dress he has access to or to his bank account and col- lects the refund. Carter M. Stewart, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, called tax-return fraud a “growing threat to American tax- payers.” It’s common in Ohio, where nine people were indicted in two cases in January. A grand jury charged three Dayton women with stealing the identities of mentally disabled adults and collecting $170,000 in fraudulent income-tax refunds. One of the women, Karen T. Taylor, 50, had a job cleaning offices and stole identity information while she worked, accord- ing to the U.S. attorney’s office. The three women are accused of using Social Security numbers and birth dates that Taylor obtained to fill out false income-tax forms, including fake in- come and deductions to plump up the refunds. The refunds were deposited into bank accounts the women controlled, authorities say. In Cleveland, six people were charged with stealing at least $1.7 million in fraudulent tax refunds be- tween April 2009 and Au- gust 2011. Many of the false returns were filed under the names of people who had recently died. Refunds were sent to co-conspirators in Ohio who would sell and cash the checks at businesses and banks, the indictment says. Already in fiscal year 2012, which began Oct. 1, IRS agents nationwide have worked 258 tax-fraud cases related to identity theft, compared with 276 for all of 2011, 224 in 2010 and 187 in 2009. IRS spokeswoman Jennifer Jenkins called it a top priority. “We empathize with how frustrating the situation is for ID-theft victims, and we’re working to speed up case resolution,” she said. In 2011, the IRS began using filters to flag returns for possible victims of iden- tity theft, Miller said. As of March 9, these filters had stopped 215,000 question- able returns with $1.5 bil- lion in claimed refunds. Other new protections include identification num- bers for taxpayers who have suffered identity theft and ways to catch names of dead people on fraudulent returns. Miller said the IRS pre- vented more than $14 bil- lion in fraudulent refunds in 2011, including $1.4 mil- lion in refunds filed by identity thieves. Ronald A. Cimino, a Jus- tice Department deputy assistant attorney general, told the Senate subcommit- tee that identity theft never will be eradicated. “It is an unfortunate truth that there will always be a small but persistent segment of society who will seize on any opportunity to make `a quick buck’ at the expense of others,” he said. kgray@dispatch.com TAX FRAUD FROM PAGE A1 Preventing tax-refund theft Criminals are stealing tax refunds in record numbers by filing returns using legitimate taxpayer names and stolen Social Secu- rity numbers. To prevent theft, the Internal Revenue Service suggests you: - Notify the IRS immediately if you are a victim of identity theft. Call 1-800-908-4490. - Respond immediately if you receive a letter from the IRS. - Beware of promises of re- funds for low-income filers, of tax returns with no documents required or unsolicited offers to prepare a return and split the refund. - Protect your financial in- formation. - Keep personal information in your home in a secure place. - Don't give personal in- formation over the phone, through the mail or on the Internet unless you have initi- ated the contact or you know whom you are dealing with. - Check your credit report every year. - Don't carry documents that contain your Social Security number. - Change passwords for In- ternet accounts frequently. - Use virus controls on your computer and update them frequently. - File your returns early; thieves try to file before legiti- mate taxpayers do. - For more information, visit www.IRS.gov/identitytheft. Source: Internal Revenue Service THE HOT ISSUE Do you plan to retire later than you expected because of the economy? 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