Word is out in publications far outside the scamblog circuit. Yes, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, among other major publications, recently reported on the huge drop off in new applications. Yesterday, the Times reported on the new trend of sub-T-14 law schools that will open non-profit “firms” to employ more students after graduation and to keep employment numbers from spiraling further into the abyss in this new era where straight up lying is less effective and technically against ABA policy.
More interestingly, in Barron’s today, the president of an IT company discusses a recent interview with T-20 law graduate who has abandoned his unsuccessful search for a legal job to take an entry level IT position for $20/hour, using skills that he taught himself in high school. It is an excellent representative anecdote about the common reality of this generation of college graduates—particularly law graduates. The jobs that most of us end up obtaining require high school level skills. Most practical skills, like learning a programming language, web design, or even public speaking, develop from personal interest and life experience, not expensive college courses taught by disinterested professors.
Yes, we keep hearing the same noise from Obama and the others about how we are becoming a more sophisticated society with greater educational needs, etc. We hear the politicians discuss this frequently, especially the abstract idea that we need substantially more math and science training (although no one ever really tells us which jobs these skills would help to fill). We also hear about how people with college degrees have a higher employment rate—yes, a college degree does make a person more attractive for working as a cashier at Starbucks and Gap—and higher total lifetime earnings, which never accounts for how the majority of those extra earnings get sucked into the black hole of immense debt payments.
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