Irate law school grads say they were misled about job prospects

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by 03310151, Aug 17, 2010.

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  1. JBjunior

    JBjunior Active Member

    While we are asking for others to make decisions for us (federal law) we might as well assign a federally employed personal assistant to each person to make sure they don't do anything else stupid as well.

    People have to have personal accountability and stop relying on others to have their best interest in mind.
     
  2. rickyjo

    rickyjo New Member

    JB, got to disagree with you a bit. Although I am not certain I agree with BrandeX I do sympathize with the general idea of trying to make colleges unable to distribute misleading statistics. One can do his/her homework and be naive enough to believe the college is going to try and do right by them and produce accurate statistics. This hypothetical person wasn't lazy or stupid, just unreasonably optimistic; therefore, right or wrong BrandeX's suggestion is justified in my mind. I do not believe having a requirement for a statistic like this is any more unreasonable than a warning on a pack of cigarettes or mandating nutrition information on a can of ravioli. I prefer the government to stay out of these things, but it's not unreasonable to suggest that mild involvement may prove positive.
     
  3. AUTiger00

    AUTiger00 New Member

    can you provide the link this photo is from?
     
  4. james_lankford

    james_lankford New Member

  5. BrandeX

    BrandeX New Member

    No. "Joe Average" is too incompetent to manage himself.
     
  6. AUTiger00

    AUTiger00 New Member

    Thanks. I tried the "griffin hall" ferraris in my google search and got nothing. I actually know that kid. That's too bad, he's a nice guy.
     
  7. JBjunior

    JBjunior Active Member

    That absolutely stinks that he is in that position (massive debt and probably no job, if the story is true after all) but I think it is hilarious that you know him.
     
  8. rickyjo

    rickyjo New Member

    Brande -- The problem with your statement in a broad sense is that it's not just average Joe who will be told what to do, it will also wind up being us. I'm very afraid of a government that believes that in many circumstances we are not smart enough to manage our own self interests, at the same time, the government should look out for our self interests, but if it comes at the expense of liberty I'm usually against it. In the case you mentioned earlier, I'm not certain if there is a significant loss of liberty so I'm not strictly opposed to it.
     
  9. cookderosa

    cookderosa Resident Chef

    I'm with ricky on this. I'm not opposed to some kind of informed consent, but buyer beware in all things.
     
  10. bazonkers

    bazonkers New Member

    Many people seem to gloss over the things they don't want to hear. Even with the easily available information (like this article) that law school grads don't always make huge salaries and often end up with large loads of debt, there will still be people applying to law schools thinking that the above only applies to everyone else in their class, not them.
     
  11. Stadium

    Stadium New Member

    It's not really the school's fault that they didn't do their research. Any popular law school forum on the net would have told them that it would be tremendously difficult to land a lucrative job as a student from a low-ranking school. They'd have to graduate at the top of their class.
     
  12. dfreybur

    dfreybur New Member

    One of the purposes of the AMA is to keep the number of graduating doctors small enough that doctors are assured of a good living. I don't get why the ABA does not set similar limits on the number of graduating lawyers. It's in their long term self interest.

    When I got my Bachelors from Regents (now Excelsior) in 1993 I pondered what to do next. Should I go for a JD? I went to the library and checked the Census records from 1990 to see the earning potential for workers with a "first professional" degree. Working in IT engineering I was already near the median and already well past the mean starting income for new JD graduates.

    I had seen market saturation hit various career fields before. After high school I had chosen my initial field in engineering based on such trends (not that I ended up in my initial field). I could see in 1993 that lawyers are a saturated market. The time to get a JD, if you expect to work in the field, had past. I'm surprised it's still that way.

    Now each year I ponder some sort of Masters. An MBA to break into management? An MS/MIS to change fields within IT? A Masters in Accounting to become a dual skill professional? A Masters of Divinity for my own self improvement and to have another way to give back to society?

    Each year I look at the prices and pass for the year. Now here I am on degreeinfo looking at options. This thread reminds me what I did in high school and after my Bachelors - Read the demographics data, project forward the time it takes. See if it will be worth the price.
     
  13. Koolcypher

    Koolcypher Member

    This is a very interesting thread, however, the writing has been on the wall for many years. I think the students, either failed to see it, or thought that it would not apply to them. This brings me to this question. What about the MBA? Is the MBA heading in the same direction? Or worse, is it there yet? I fear that, like our JD brethren, getting an MBA from a school not branded as a top 50 program is not a wise investment. What about for the rest of us, the ones in the mid 30's early 40's, with certainly enough experience under our belts, is getting an MBA from a lower rank school, or a nationally accredited school even a wise investment?
     
  14. TheTick900

    TheTick900 New Member

    Koolcypher, I would say that the MBA is starting to slowly lose its significance due to the overwhelmingly amount of people in evening MBA programs, weekend programs and online. That is mainly the reason why the DBA has been established.
     
  15. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    This isn't something I know about and so I can't say you're wrong but I'd like to see something that might pass as solid evidence for this before accepting it as true, just because you said it's so.
     
  16. cjzande

    cjzande New Member

    I had heard this before somewhere. There are a few sites online making this claim, but nothing I could say was "definitely trustworthy."

    According to THIS ARTICLE, it's actually *congress* that semi-controls the number of doctors.

    "The marketplace doesn't determine how many doctors the nation has, as it does for engineers, pilots and other professions. The number of doctors is a political decision, heavily influenced by doctors themselves. Congress controls the supply of physicians by how much federal funding it provides for medical residencies — the graduate training required of all doctors."

    I guess one could argue, if indeed the "heavily influenced by the doctors themselves" phrase is taken to mean the AMA lobbying Congress, then yes, to some extent, they control the number of doctors.
     
  17. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    Regardless of the mechanism, there is no question that the number of new doctors and dentists trained annually has shown little or no growth over the past 25 years. In contrast, the number of new lawyers has grown steadily. All stats below are from the US Dept. of Education's 2009 "Digest of Education Statistics", table 279:

    DDS degrees, 1982-83: 5,585
    DDS degrees, 2007-08: 4,795
    Change: - 14.1 %

    MD degrees, 1982-83: 15,484
    MD degrees, 2007-08: 15,646
    Change: + 1.0 %

    JD degrees, 1982-83: 36,853
    JD degrees, 2007-08: 43,769
    Change: + 18.8 %

    Here's another way to look at it:

    In 2007-08, there were 55 dental schools in the US. That's down from 59 in 1982-83.
    In 2007-08, there were 120 medical schools in the US. That's down from 124 in 1988-89.
    In 2007-08, there were 201 law schools in the US. That's an all-time high.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 26, 2010
  18. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    The contrast becomes even more striking if you go back 50 years.

    In 1957-58, the number of new JD graduates was smaller than the number of new MD + DDS graduates (combined).

    In 2007-08, the number of new JD graduates was more than twice as large as the number of new MD + DDS graduates.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 26, 2010
  19. thomaskolter

    thomaskolter New Member

    This is interesting but who said they were assured a job a relative earned their degree in law by apprenticing for it after earning a UoL Law Degree by their external degree. And even then had to start her own practice to make a living and trudged it out for a few years before she could earn a decent living at law. She does general law by the way handling many sorts of work but refersdifficult cases to other lawyers for a percentage, a finders fee.

    The AMA is another case with the new Health Care Law how are they going to deal with the new demands and a push for non-MD primary care providers by the law and if I heard right Walmart may go into the business. And they are thinking of outsourcing patiants to foreign nations like India where the medical care is far cheaper another hit for non-emergency care in the US by specialists. It may start a trend like $4 drug lists if they do right now they seem to be looking at it, from a relative in the company in their health care plan looking at it. I was the one that recommended sending patiants to overseas low cost private hospitals to keep costs lowewt and they could negotiate likely to reduce costs more. So the AMA monopoly may seriously backfire long term but just a thought if they don't adapt to this.
     
  20. dfreybur

    dfreybur New Member

    Thanks to everyone who responded. View the statistics as the effect, work backwards to speculate a cause, and my statement is one of the conclusions that can be reached. It certainly isn't the only conclusion that can be reached.

    Shortly before I graduated I attended some meetings of the local chapter of the Professional Engineer society NSPE. I asked there how to tell the difference between elitism and enlightened self interest. Having the PE test be difficult to pass keeps the number of licensed PEs low similar to the way having the medical board tests be difficult to pass keeps the number of licensed MDs low.

    If I actually wanted to show it as an initial agenda of the AMA how would I go about doing so? I would read the proceedings of the earliest meetings as the organization was founded to see if the statement appears anywhere. That much work would be good for a Masters thesis. I'll stick with the understanding that it is speculation on my part.

    Professional licensing boards (medical, law, engineering that I know of at least and probably accounting and some others as well that I don't know of) serve an assortment of purposes. They do quality control by making it difficult to enter. They do quality control by pulling the licenses of the worst among their practitioners. They do PR and damage control to protect those of their own members who aren't bad enough to kick out. They encourage the public to view them as professionals. None of those automatically imply my initial assertion that they have an enlightened self interest in limiting their number of members to ensure high employment, but none of those are in conflict with it either.

    I'm in IT where certifications are done by the vendors in a way that keeps the entrance bar low. I could make a list of similar statements that don't automatically imply that the vendors intend to keep the bar low, but none of those would be in conflict with it either.
     

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