Education Improves Your Chances (and other myths of our generation)

Anonymous said...

This is yet another reason to avoid law school. If you are a 22 year old with zero debt, you have the dignity that comes from knowing you don't owe anyone anything.

Why ruin that by taking on a bunch of debt?

JANUARY 10, 2012 4:09 PM

 Anonymous said...

22 year olds don't think that way.....they are constantly sold the education improves your chances myth.

(from LawProf's "Interesting Piece of Evidence" comments)

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      Anonymous said...

REALIST:

As an undergrad engineering major, I interned at a industrial research lab. My boss had a PhD and grumbled that all of the decisions about what he got to research were made by his boss, who had a MBA. That insight led me to earn my own MBA after engineering school.

While I was in my MBA program, our economics professor was explaining to us the concept of opportunity cost. He mentioned that those students who pursued a PhD in economics would never make the same money as the MBA students. Which prompted me to ask in class, "So the Economic PhD's actually failed to understand economics". My comment did not endear me to him.

Many of us working in industry have MS or MBA's that lead to well paying jobs across a wide assortment of careers. If you're not happy in your graduate program, take a look around you and see what opportunities may be awaiting you.

I still enjoy hitting my public library weekly to read up on my interests in history, culture, politics, science, etc. It's more fun, because it's unrelated to my job.

I now have a daughter in college, and what I told her was "If it's fun to do, they're not going to pay you much to do it."

January 6, 2012 11:42 AM

Pointless Credentials said...

I recently rethought our North American obsession with credentials when I saw this video about tribal people learning how to do dentistry in under two weeks.

http://itecusa.org/i-dent-video.html

Some people just have a natural ability to do things. Some countries don't seem to be so obsessed with the sheepskin on the wall.

January 7, 2012 6:32 AM

STEM Doctor said...

The politicians are still operating under the delusion that everyone must go to college. If this actually happens, I'm sure that teaching those introductory composition courses is going to become even more of a thrill for the English graduate students.

Anonymous said...

This reason points to a reality that is lost on most middle-class people with academic aspirations. 

It's hard for them to wrap their brains around the fact that their high school math teachers who eat tuna sandwiches in the teacher's lounge and drive beat-up cars to work every day could possibly be living more comfortably than someone with "professor" in their job title.

It does not compute.

In their minds, professors are in the upper middle class, drive European cars, live in the nice part of town, hobnob with other people who "matter," vacation abroad, have season tickets to the ballet, etc.

Even grad students buried up to their eyeballs in their dissertations cling to this idea. They almost have to believe it to keep them going.

When reality sets in, and you find yourself envying your old teachers with their tuna sandwiches (on whom you once looked with a certain measure of contempt), you realize how hoodwinked you've been.

January 4, 2012 9:27 AM

(From 100 Reasons Not to Go to Grad Schools' "75. You can make more money as a schoolteacher" comments)

[addendum to part 2: depression in the law]

"...sometimes re-evaluating one's dream in the face of reality is a sign of maturity."

This comes from a comment of one of numerous people advising an aspiring law student to seriously reconsider his dream of being a lawyer (See the discussion here). At least for him, he is not one of the thousands of inexperienced, naive, and confused recent liberal arts grads. He actually has had quite a bit of experience in the legal field as a legal secretary and majored in legal studies. His dreamtalk and determination talk remind me of how my parents raised me: that if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything here in this country. Hell, that's how my family made it. We're one of the dime-a-dozen immigrant success stories, and yeah, it does inspire me to do great things when I reflect on my family's development here.


But back to this kid. He has a mediocre GPA and a poor LSAT score, even after several test attempts. He has anxiety problems, especially test-taking. Now, let's review these key points:
1) Law school admission is highly weighted on GPA and LSAT score, much like med schools with GPA and MCAT
2) In law school, the summation of your grade is determined by one or two cumulative closed-book, subjectively-graded exams per semester
3) Umm, debt?
4) Umm, terrible employment prospects for anyone outside (and even inside) T14?


And yet, he is dead-set on law school, ready to accept $100k+ in debt from a Tier 3 or 4 law school just so he can get into anything at all. Why is he posting on LawProf's blog and TLS (top-law-schools.com, frequented mostly by 0Ls, or aspiring law students; FYI 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls are of course current law students in respective class years), then? He was just wondering whether he should settle for the Tier 4 or postpone his jump and study for the LSAT again in hopes of getting into Tier 3. 

And so I come back to the above-bolded comment. It's been taking a lot of strength for me to come to terms with myself.  Like this kid, I had often thought I would "win the lottery ticket" and "beat the odds" with my sheer determination. Throughout my life, my parents have taught this to me because we did beat the odds and have made it really well here in the U.S. And for me personally in my academic life, I have shown to beat the odds. Frankly, I didn't see why not study my ass off, save money, etcetera. All I would lose were some hours of sleep, social time. I had much better things to gain. The trade-off was worth it.


But are soaring debt and the prime years of my life worth the risk for an oftentimes depressing school experience and job (if I even get one)? By depression, I wish I were exaggerating. Studies have shown that on average, 9-10% of 0Ls are depressed (that is, overwhelmingly mentally healthy and optimistic), but by the end of the first year of law school, this figure goes up to 32%, and by third year, 40% . Furthermore, from a 2007 study by the American Bar Association, only 4 out of 10 lawyers said they would recommend the law to others, and less than 50% of lawyers reported having job satisfaction. We must consider that many of the people who come out depressed or dissatisfied must have been those who did not research enough into what they were getting themselves into. But still, these stats are something to bear in mind, along with the rest of the happy-happy-happy stats surrounding the current law market. 


Call me a dream killer, or call me a pragmatist. Unfortunately, times have been changing, and for recent grads who don't have $100k to throw around or aren't the children of a parent who owns a law firm (or have some other way of a secure attorney position), if you want to pursue law, you really need to think hard about it.


[Thankfully, the kid I mentioned earlier eventually did mention in the linked discussion that he will take some more time off to consider his future. I forgot to mention that he still has that job as a legal secretary making a decent $35k a year, so he's doing quite well in that regard compared to other yuppies. Good for him.]


And to close, I leave you with this gem that's far more succinct than me:


Eager law student (YouTube)

[and this happy picture]

Self-assessment, part 2: Law School?

Another track I am considering for myself is law school. I have done lots of online research and read some books, notably The Law School Admission Game and Should You Really Be a Lawyer?: The Guide to Smart Career Choices Before, During & After Law School. What my research lacks, compared to my grad school research, is talking with real practicing and non-practicing lawyers, law students, and other people in the legal field. And the most helpful bit of research to see if law school is right for me is to actually get my feet wet in the legal field itself.

As with grad school, there's a plethora of material out there that warns people not to go law school these days.

• Exposing the Law School Scam: quite extensive blog. A collaborative project.
• Inside the Law School Scam: a clean, unpretentious, articulate blog written by a law professor. Law schools and their professors, as you can see from my links, are often blamed for encouraging law school to students in order to rake in more money, but it seems this current professor strays from the flock.
• When Law School Becomes a Bad Investment: from the Washington Post.
• Is Law School a Bad Investment?: from Business Insider.
• Law School: As Bad As You've Heard: and always read comments from articles. Notably this one: "Graduated in the top 3% of class, top 20 school, law review, 5 years of biglaw, unemployed for 18 months, losing the house, and wife leaving.
• Think you’re safe? I did too." Okay, hope the wife wasn't leaving because of no paycheck, but damn. And he's not the only one with bad news.
• The Girl's Guide to Law School: this is written by a Columbia '06 grad who did get into BigLaw (six figures, work-crazy life) and other things. She started this rather extensive and beautiful site as a guide for women to get the most out of law school, along with several myths she (and numerous other sites) debunks. She also uses the right it's and its and has a smart, simply-designed layout, which all make me quite happy. It's useful to note these myths:

1. Lawyers Make a Lot of Money
2. Student Loan Debt is “Good Debt”
3. Law School Gives You Three More Years to Decide What to Do With Your Life
4. Life as a Lawyer is Exciting and Intellectually Challenging
5. Getting a Law Degree Opens Lots of Doors
6. You Can Trust a Law School’s Employment Numbers

To summarize: "the prospects for those legions of new lawyers have been grim, a fact hardly unbeknownst to them...in the past few years, young lawyers faced a glut of competition from other legal professionals; plummeting wages; a reduction in openings in and offers at big law firms; and cripplingly high student-loan debts. When the recession hit, thousands of young lawyers suddenly found themselves trying to work off six figures of debt in pay-per-hour assistant gigs. Granted, things are looking better. But the National Association of Legal-Career Professionals still cautions that "entry-level recruiting volumes have not returned to anything like the levels measured before the recession." 
(Source: slate.com)


It seems this material has affected the number of applications to go down in the past years, which I think is great.


And despite all of these sources, I'm still intrigued. As I said in the beginning, I must extend my research by talking to more people involved in the legal field itself.


I feel that my set of skills and interests (writing, research, analysis, reading, attention to detail, logical and deductive reasoning, argumentation, strong work ethic, etc.) align well with what it takes to be a lawyer. But what about my values? I'm not just talking about the moral skepticism of certain cases I might be forced to undertake. I'm also talking about... well, it's the same deal with my largest concern that stops me from going to grad school, which I'll cover in part 3.


In any case, I'll be talking with more legal folks, and I have been researching being a paralegal so that I can get my feet wet into the legal field without throwing away three years of my life and $100k+ of my parents' and my own money (and instead saving money and gaining valuable experience). This is the mistake that thousands of law students make. One of the books I mentioned earlier makes a great analogy to this ridiculous problem: would you buy a $30,000 car without first test-driving it? Would you put an investment in a $100-400,000 house without first stepping foot inside? Nonetheless, many students decide to go to law school because

• they have no idea what else to do with their liberal arts degree that's not "prestigious" or "respectable" or earns lots of money (lulz)
• their loved ones, especially their parents, expect them to and/or want a lawyer in the family as much as they want a doctor or an engineer (but too bad, you were too dumb to not major in the sciences)
• these loved ones, as sincere as they are, insist that their child is apt to be a lawyer based on only some obscure notions (e.g., Law and Order, John Grisham novels) of what it means to be a lawyer
• the students themselves have those obscure notions without ever setting foot in a law firm
• as with grad school, they want to ride out the economic recession by staying in school another three years (completely ignoring the mounds of student loans; fellowships are non-existent for law students and scholarships are hard to get)
• the myths outlined above by Alison

With spiky hair and blowing wind in an indoor court room!

...and so on. I pick these specific yet common reasons because they also apply to my initial reasons for considering law school, though I'd have to replace John Grisham and Law and Order with the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video game. :3 "OBJECTION!" "HOLD IT!" and my favorite, "TAKE THAT!"

But like I said, different from grad school, I'm not completely giving up on law school altogether. I want to try being a paralegal or legal secretary first. I've also reasoned that, should I like the legal field after some experience, I can maximize my chances of "success" by getting a high LSAT score and going to a T14 school. I already have the GPA and recommendation letters set, and I'm sure I can write a good personal statement. 

At the same time, who knows? Even if I do like law, get in the top of my class at a top law school, and land a respectable job, will this lifestyle be conducive to my happiness? 

This all comes down to what makes me happiest, and consistently. And after much reflection this semester, from both my academic and social lives, I've come to realize... [HOLD IT!]

Part 3 awaits.

Self-assessment, part 1: Grad School?

[This will be a three-part series of posts.]

Apologies for the freeze in blog entries. I'll need to figure out how to squeeze in time during school to do this because I really like writing entries. For now, I'll take advantage of my winter break to get back up to speed.

I've been home for three days, and while I ensure myself much relaxation, I guess you can say I find a lot of "fun" in researching options for my future. I don't find this as a duty or an assignment; it naturally comes out of my nature of being incredibly risk-averse and loving research.

I've firmly established that I will not go to an advanced-degree school right after college. After much online research and discussions with alums and professors, I know that real-world work experience will help me. I can save up more money, build my resume with experience, network, and think more seriously about whether I want to go back to school, what kind of school I want to go to, when, and why.

This is especially good advice for humanities and social sciences (from here on out, HUMN/SOSC) students. For engineering and natural sciences students, grad school is still a wonderful thing to pursue: while no grad school decision guarantees a person a higher-paid and more prestigious job that one will enjoy, it seems that the majority of these folks seem to be in good standing. They also have more funding given to them as they are still in grad school. Debating between a master's and a Ph.D. may be worth reconsidering for even this cohort (see Infographic on the Costs of Going to Grad School). Again, this cohort would do well to also explore the rest of my post since NIH/NSF grants are starting to dwindle.

For people like me, however, grad school is especially becoming more and more of a really stupid decision. Just take a look at these links:

"Adulthood waits."

100 Reasons NOT to Go to Grad School: it's only up to the 70s at this point, but it's quite a vast and eye-opening blog. It also has links to other sites of similar flavor.

The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time: from one of my favorite sources, the Economist.

Articles from The Chronicle of Higher Education:

So You Want to Go to Grad School?: by Thomas H. Benton. It's a pretty good summary of the demerits of grad school for HUMN/SOSC. Keep in mind that this man recognizes he is one of the "lucky few" English Ph.D.'s in a tenure-track position, but he writes these articles to warn people before investing in grad school to make informed decisions.

Is Graduate School a Cult?: also by Thomas H. Benton. My religion pundit self will refrain from commenting on the sad use of the word "cult" here, but nonetheless, it's an interesting read.

So You Want to Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities: alright, I gotta admit... The girl sounds scarily like me, like the mentality I have had for a long time about why I would want to go to grad school. The feeling echoes a comment in the next link (and here, I agree that it's NOT funny because it's so true).

"So You Want to Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities: 9 Years Later": also by Thomas H. Benton. Read the comments too. One of them says something like, "It's too true to even be funny." Fortunately, it's funny for me since I haven't leapt into a Ph.D. program (yet?).

The Big Lie of the "Life of the Mind": " She was the best student her adviser had ever seen (or so he said); it seemed like a dream when she was admitted to a distinguished doctoral program; she worked so hard for so long; she won almost every prize; she published several essays; she became fully identified with the academic life; even distancing herself from her less educated family. For all of those reasons, she continues as an adjunct who qualifies for food stamps, increasingly isolating herself to avoid feelings of being judged. Her students have no idea that she is a prisoner of the graduate-school poverty trap. The consolations of teaching are fewer than she ever imagined. " This article speaks to me the most.

A Letter From a Graduate Student in the Humanities: this is written by an English Ph.D. candidate who responds to Thomas H. Benton and other doomsday writers of grad school with pleas for solutions for grad students and Ph.D.'s who are struggling with finding a job inside and outside academe.  

You can also do a quick Google search with keywords such as, "grad school, should I go to, costs of..."

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But first there is the question: why graduate school? Let's be honest, Jasna. Well, shamelessly put...

• I love school and learning. For much of my life I have been in this environment and could not have imagined myself anywhere else. I love intellectual challenges; I want that "life of the mind."
• I want prestige. Because I have a very high GPA, great relationships with my professors, and go to a reputable university, I feel entitled to get an advanced degree such as a Ph.D. as a tangible measurement of my self-worth. I am egotistic. Furthermore, these credentials mold me as an exemplary applicant for graduate school.
• I love researching and coming up with new ideas.
• I want to surround myself with other intellectuals. I love stimulating discussions and people who have high intellectual capacities like me.
• I love teaching and counseling. 
• All of the above said, I would incredibly love the idea of being a tenure-track professor. In the ideal situation, I will be my own boss, get to research and write about what I love, inspire young minds, counsel these young minds, have great benefits for both myself and my kids (free education!), and be called "Professor [Marie]" or "Dr. [Marie]." Wouldn't that be fancy? Plus, many of my favorite people are professors, and it is natural for me to want to be like them.
• I am graduating with a humanities degree. There is no other direct path for me to take with a religion and East Asian studies degree, other than to teach at the grade school level or go to a seminary. And hell no, I'm not going to any seminary (though I would like to teach grade school for some time).
• I am pressured by my family and friends to get an advanced degree. This is similar to the prestige bullet point. Because I have been known as an intelligent and continuously successful student, my loved ones expect me to get a prestigious, elite job that requires great intellect and all that crap. And if you know me well, I hate ruining people's expectations; I love going beyond people's expectations. 
• This pressure is further hindered by the fact that I am a first-generation immigrant. I have had this drilled into my head that my parents went through shit tons of difficulty and brought my brother and me to America for all the opportunities it has, for us to have a better life. Underlying all this sincerity is the expectation of doing "better" than my parents because of my greater opportunities here than in our home country. My brother is finishing med school to become a doctor; it's only expected that I get a Ph.D. or J.D. Otherwise, I feel that I am wasting the gift my parents gave me in being able to live here. I feel inadequate compared to my brother and am letting my parents down.

I don't mean to brag. I just mean to be frank of my elitism and subsequent insecurity. And the truth is, I know that graduate students and freshly minted Ph.D.'s think just like me in these regards.

But the other truth is, graduate school is a long, brutal, and expensive ordeal that in many situations does not involve much fruitful, intellectually curious discussion. It's cut-throat competitive during and after for those rare tenure-track jobs and insecure, slave-labor-like adjunct positions. And if you find yourself not getting either of those things (or you're dissatisfied with wandering the country as an adjunct), you'll in many ways be seen as overqualified or just plain inexperienced for jobs outside of academe.  

[See Occupy Wall Street for even more people who feel entitled. Some of them even "only" have bachelor's, though others also have Ph.D's.]

So, here are the majority of my concerns with grad school. I have one other major concern, but I'll leave that with the rest of my concluding thoughts to the third and final part of this Self-Assessment series.

Hello, world.

So I start a new blog, Eudaemonia, towards the end--but not quite--of the first semester of my senior year. It's an odd time to start, methinks. So what am I doing here?

I just finished a long conversation with an old online friend. I had not talked to him in years because of a conflict we had, but we have both decided to look past that conflict and try to be friends again. It's worked, for the most part. He is still that fun guy I grew fond of with our mutual love for general nerdiness. At the same time, he is also that arrogant prick I grew to despise. Now, I first got to know him when I was in high school, when I thought I was mature (what, assuming I am now?), trapped in my Catholic high school and video game bubble.

As far as Catholicism went, I recognized that I hold little faith in it, but I still respected it for what it was, as well as for the great education their kind of school gave me.

Then there was my friend I mentioned earlier, who had this popular modernist worldview that all religions, especially Christianity, are backward, for the uneducated, full of lies, etc. He rolled out the usual refutations of the Bible--the problem of evil, the multiple contradictions, the ridiculous laws it contained that, for example, justified slavery or cruel treatment of women. I already knew, as a wee high school girl, that my friend's refutations rested on very simplistic understandings of the Bible and Christianity. One flaw, for example, is that official Catholic doctrine embraces evolution. Yes, friend, the Bible can actually be interpreted on something higher than the literal view, and in multiple ways. The ends of these conversations either trailed off into nothingness or to him admitting that, perhaps, he had more of an issue with certain groups of religious people rather than religion itself. Progress, perhaps?

Tonight, he brought up questions about religion and the Bible again. And his views apparently had not changed after all these years. He brought out the same refutations, the same notion that religion has no inherent worth, and so on. At this point, I could at least use my advanced studies in religion and postmodernism to better articulate my thoughts. Again, though, the conversation eventually ended up like before, and I have a good feeling the conversation did not open his mind up as much as I had wished.

Reflecting on his lack of value he saw in religion, I concluded that he probably has not had very many enriching experiences with religious people or people of different cultures. I am sure that, despite the tons of money he owns, he still must not have traveled out of the U.S., let alone out of home state or Florida (for family vacations, of course). He is probably still deeply affected by the zealousness of his parents' Baptist church and the Bible-thumping South he lives in. This is understandable, and the act of writing about it calms me a bit. Yet he very much exudes the gamer and fantasy reader he always has been, and now I see this in a negative view: at his age (mid-twenties), he is still trapped in his self-serving world of video games, LOTRO, and Star Wars.

I got quite disgusted after rationalizing all of this. How could he live such a selfish life, not really serving others, not really going out there and experiencing the world, and not expanding his mind? At this point the adage that education is not limited to the classroom struck me hard.

At the same time, this whole conversation and the disgust I felt helped me to discern what I did NOT want to do with my life. I have been struggling with this for a lot of this semester. I had contemplated on, after all, having a simple life with simple pleasures--going to work 9-5, coming home to play video games and eat, spend time with family, and sleep, and then getting up to do the same thing again. What was wrong with the simple life, I thought. What was the point of me chasing after these prestigious programs or finding difficult things to do just to challenge myself? But after talking to my friend, I found that I at least don't want the extreme end of the simple, selfish, close-minded life.

And so goes the creation of my new blog, Eudaemonia. I chose this name because I feel that I am truly on a journey now in finding my own virtuous life that makes me, for the most part, happy. And what is happiness for me? That is what my journey is about. I at least know, at this point, that I do not want that simple, selfish life. At the same time, after my happy rejection from Teach for America, I know that I do not want that chaotic, completely selfless life. But more on that later.

For now, I must sleep. But in the meantime, I say, welcome to my blog!