From Jordan Weissman's ongoing tour of destruction in higher education, a graph of the U.S. News top 25 law schools' underemployment rates, as calculated by the Law School Transparency Project.How they define underemployment: "Under-Employment Score. The percentage of graduates underusing their skills and credentials. These are graduates who have not successfully started any professional career nine months after graduating law school. We count a graduate as underemployed when he or she is Unemployed – Seeking, pursuing an additional Advanced Degree, in a Non-professional job, or employed in a Short-term or Part-time job."
It should be noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed ~8% unemployment for new advanced degree graduates in October 2011.
It seems to me that, unless you get into a top 5 law school, you have a less than 50% chance of a positive ROI on your tuition money. Hard to say, though.
It would be very interesting to know what would happen if a similar study were done of graduate schools in chemistry.
Lawyers may have 50% unemplyment, but, as Eminem aptly put it, I still don't give a #%^.
ReplyDeleteGood. Let's see if we can get it over 50%.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you suppose the odds are that those snooty private school statistics at the top of the list are complete bullshit?
ReplyDeleteNo no, you are looking at it the wrong way. What you are supposed to think is - what are the odds that statistics for chemistry is the same and if you are not in one of the top-10 schools that manage to get 95% of their graduates employed you are royally screwed.
DeleteHere's their data collection methodology: http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=guides&show=8
DeleteI believe that the top private schools can game the metrics, but that these websites/groups exist to expose the gaming.