Law School: A Necessary Evil??? [Eugene]

Yesterday in my introductory post I explained why I felt that law school was a necessary evil. It was an incredibly sobering experience for me when I began searching for a job and realized how tough it was for a social science/humanities major to find "good work", and really even any work at all. The BA just doesn't mean that much these days. The way the current educational system is set up, more education, i.e. law school, is required. In the Wall Street Journal today, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute opines that the entire higher education system in the US is broken. I happen to agree. Money quote:

Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

Whether you agree with the solution or not, it would be very difficult to argue that everything is fine with higher education. The proof in the pudding is that pretty much every single social science/humanities major in the country feels the need to apply to law school now. For the outrageous costs that are required to obtain a BA, it should definitely be providing young, intelligent people with more opportunities and open more doors than it actually does.