25 years old and deep in debt

[Phillip V]

Obama Says Law School Should Be Two, Not Three, Years

President Obama urged law schools on Friday to consider cutting a year of classroom instruction, wading into a hotly debated issue inside the beleaguered legal academy.

"This is probably controversial to say, but what the heck. I am in my second term, so I can say it," Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style meeting at Binghamton University in New York. "I believe that law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three years."

The president's surprising remarks, made while discussing how to make education more affordable, come at a time of crisis for law schools. With an increasing number of graduates struggling with soaring tuition costs, heavy student debt and a difficult job market, a growing number of professors and administrators are pushing for broad reforms in legal education.
...
On Friday, he questioned the utility of a third year of classes and suggested that students use their final two semesters to gain work experience. "In the first two years, young people are learning in the classroom," Mr. Obama said. "The third year, they'd be better off clerking or practicing in a firm even if they weren't getting paid that much, but that step alone would reduce the costs for the student."

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/obama-says-law-school-should-be-two-years-not-three/

[Barrister]

Obama Says Law School Should Be Two, Not Three, Years

President Obama urged law schools on Friday to consider cutting a year of classroom instruction, wading into a hotly debated issue inside the beleaguered legal academy.

"This is probably controversial to say, but what the heck. I am in my second term, so I can say it," Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style meeting at Binghamton University in New York. "I believe that law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three years."

The president's surprising remarks, made while discussing how to make education more affordable, come at a time of crisis for law schools. With an increasing number of graduates struggling with soaring tuition costs, heavy student debt and a difficult job market, a growing number of professors and administrators are pushing for broad reforms in legal education.
...
On Friday, he questioned the utility of a third year of classes and suggested that students use their final two semesters to gain work experience. "In the first two years, young people are learning in the classroom," Mr. Obama said. "The third year, they'd be better off clerking or practicing in a firm even if they weren't getting paid that much, but that step alone would reduce the costs for the student."

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/obama-says-law-school-should-be-two-years-not-three/

Sounds like Obama is advocating for the Canadian tradition of articling...

[Ideologue]

Sounds like Obama wants to increase the output of lawyers by making their production 33% more efficient, worsening the problem.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Ide is corrrect. Lawyers tend to have a strong urge to reproduce, and often take steps to provide a food source for the next generation of bbs and Martys.

[MadImmortalMan]

Obama is right, but he's got the wrong field. It's medicine that needs a shorter school time. It's everything, really, but medicine especially.

[Ideologue]

Smart people are smart.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/law-school-applicants-decline-especially-among-grads-of-elite-colleges/?_r=1

Law School Applicants Decline, Especially Among Graduates of Elite Colleges

We've written before about the declining interest in law school, as evidenced by the number of people taking the Law School Admission Test and the number applying to law schools. Over at the Associate's Mind blog, Keith Lee notes that the number of applicants is down across the board, but the drop-off is particularly sharp among people who went to elite schools for their bachelor's degrees.

He looked at graduates of the Ivies and three other schools (Stanford, Duke, the University of Chicago); I've done a similar analysis, but included the top 20 national universities as ranked by U.S. News that send a substantial number of alumni to law school each year. (Note that M.I.T. and Caltech, which are top-ranked national universities by U.S. News, are not included in this analysis because they are not among the top 240 biggest feeders to law schools for which the Law School Admission Council releases data.)

Across the board, the number of people applying to matriculate in fall 2012 was 67,700, down about 17 percent from the number who applied to matriculate in fall 2008 (82,000).

The average decline in applicants who graduated from the "elite" schools was 28 percent.

[chart omitted]

Among all 240 feeder schools that the Law School Admission Council releases data for, Rice had the biggest decline; 135 of its alumni applied to matriculate in fall 2008, but only about half that number applied for the fall 2012 semester.

I'm not sure why graduates with bachelor's degrees from these higher-ranked universities have shown larger declines in interest in law school. Maybe they have access to better career services offices, which informed them that opportunities for newly minted lawyers have declined. Or maybe the range of jobs available to them in nonlegal fields has recovered faster than that for most college graduates, so the Ivy Leaguers feel less pressure to wait out the terrible job market by enrolling in law school. Or maybe it's just coincidence.

I should note, by the way, that among the 240 feeder schools the Law School Admission Council tracks, there were 55 feeder schools that saw their alumni law school applicants increase; 22 schools had percentage increases in the double-digits.

Among the schools with the biggest increases in percentage terms were Florida Gulf Coast University, Liberty University,  Sam Houston State University, Utah Valley University and the University of New Mexico. Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences (a program founded in 2006) and Kaplan University (where enrollment grew sharply in the early years of the 2000s) had the biggest increases in the number of their graduates who applied to law school.

[garbon]

About time you give me credit.

[Ideologue]

DAMN IT

No, I've always thought you were rather bright.  Conspicuously educated, sure, but bright.

[Phillip V]

Colleges Set to Offer Exit Tests: Employers Say They Don't Trust Grade-Point Averages

'Next spring, seniors at about 200 U.S. colleges will take a new test that could prove more important than final exams: an SAT-like assessment that aims to judge students' real value to employers.
...
The test is part of a movement to find new ways to assess the skills of graduates. Employers say grades can be misleading and that they have grown skeptical of college credentials.
...
Even as students spend more on tuition—and take on increasing debt to pay for it—they are earning diplomas whose value is harder to calculate. Studies show that grade-point averages, or GPAs, have been rising steadily for decades, but employers feel many new graduates aren't prepared for the workforce.

Meanwhile, more students are taking inexpensive classes such as Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, but have no way to earn a meaningful academic credential from them.

HNTB Corp., a national architectural firm with 3,600 employees, see value in new tools such as the CLA +, said Michael Sweeney, a senior vice president. Even students with top grades from good schools may not "be able to write well or make an argument," he said. "I think at some point everybody has been fooled by good grades or a good resume."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323980604579029143959843818.html

[CountDeMoney]

Employers Say They Don't Trust Grade-Point Averages

Good, I can tell them my undergrad GPA is totally off.

[PDH]

Employers don't trust GPA unless that GPA is low, then they trust it.

[CountDeMoney]

SON OF A

[merithyn]

Employers don't trust GPA unless that GPA is low, then they trust it.

[CountDeMoney]

From the article:

Only one in four employers think that two- and four-year colleges are doing a good job preparing students for the global economy, according to a 2010 survey conducted for the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Meanwhile, GPAs have been on the rise. A 2012 study looking at the grades of 1.5 million students from 200 four-year U.S. colleges and universities found that the percentage of A's given by teachers nearly tripled between 1940 and 2008. A college diploma is now more a mark "of social class than an indicator of academic accomplishment," said Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University geophysics professor and co-author of the study.

Well, we know that grade inflation is a problem (see PDH's observations in academia, Ide's graduation from law school), but from what I've seen of all the job apps I've done the past year, only a few asked for GPA and even a couple of those were only interested in the GPA of the major.

But if only 1 in 4 employers feel that students are prepared for work I don't see how like exit tests would help fresh grads, as opposed to where they went;  I'm sure a straight C student from Harvard or Football Factory U would still be in a position to succeed on the entry-level job front than a straight A student from the University of Student Loans State--Basement campus.

[Ed Anger]

If you had nice tits in my classes, I'd likely give you an A.

In the online courses, the software did all the work.