Lying to Students.

The other day I posted a graduation post that was fairly positive. So why come in now and post one that's fairly cynical?

Well, a variety of reasons, the first of which is that this time of year I often hear a lot of commentary about what should be in graduation speeches and, beyond that, what supposedly some speaker has said to some body of students.

Quite often these tough talking speakers turn out not to have delivered a blistering speech to any actual body of graduates, but every now and then the opposite is true.  More frequently, however, it's an article that somebody wrote about what they would say to the newly minted graduates, if they were invited to speak, which they weren't, and are unlikely to be.

I’ll be frank that I’m hugely skeptical about graduation speeches in general, and life has made me pretty cynical, assuming I wasn't somewhat cynical to start with.  But I sat through a lot of speeches this year and I’ve sat through quite a few the past few years.

I find that some of the annual "what I'd say" or "what new grads desperately need to hear" theme irritates me for a variety of reasons, a lot of which is no doubt very personal to me and me alone.  But I don't like the condemnation of the younger Millennial Generation of Americans that's so common today.  Indeed, I find myself, as a member of the "Gap" between the Boomers and the Gen Xers, to find Boomer critiques of younger generations to be hugely ironic as I can't grasp why so many of the Baby Boomer Generation, which was characterized by rebellion against the generation of their parents (perhaps unfairly to some degree, as no generational set of traits characterizes every single member of a generation) should be taken too seriously by the generations that followed when offering this sort of advice.  Not all the speakers are Boomers anymore by any means, but the "kids these days" type of theme often fails to note that when they were kids, that generation had pretty radical views about everything, including work, and a lot of the political mess we find ourselves in today is directly attributable to Boomers having a death grip on American politics both in reality, and in the dead hand of their generation having reworked everything from 1968 forward.  It's sort of like the engineer on the train to Chicago bringing in the fireman and telling him make sure not to go to Chicago.

FEF-3 fast passenger locomotive, designed for speeds over 100 mph.  Getting on an educational path is a lot like boarding one of those fast trains. They start slow, but after awhile they're rocketing towards their destination.

No matter who the speakers are in general, if they're invited speakers, I occasionally will hear a lot of speeches about unlimited possibilities.  The written ones are often combined with the "you need to" type recommendations.  "Unlimited possibilities" themes are common with invited speakers and at least in my experience they seem to be included in commencement speeches as a rule, along with related themes like “you can achieve your dreams”, etc.

Frankly, those speeches were always lies to a degree as there’s never been unlimited possibilities for most people.  The line from the movie Lawrence of Arabia that “you can be what you want, but you can’t want what you want” is much closer to the truth.  Indeed, you can, with hard work, be anything you want. . . but you can't want what you want.  What you want is often determined by set limits of various types.  Determining those limits is a real trick, and imagining limits that don't exist is self limiting while challenging them can open up possibilities.  But it's folly to imagine anyone can truly achieve absolutely anything they want.  To go to the extreme, you may wish to be the Czar of all the Russians. ..  but you are not going to be.

Often the people who deliver those sorts of lines have been successful in some notable thing or, on rare occasion, are what we might regard as hugely successful, with that definition frequently being economic in nature, i.e., super rich.  In both instances those people often been the beneficiaries of not only their own hard work (and they typically are really hard workers), but lucky breaks as well. Generally hard working people will be successful, but hugely successful people have unique things going on with them of all sorts.  Sometimes luck, sometimes genius, sometimes lucky associations, sometimes Providence, and sometimes ruthlessness.  Not everyone who sits in an audience hearing a speech is going to be the beneficiary of those sorts of things, so for most people, indeed all people, things really are limited to some degree.  Indeed, the fact that so many graduation speakers seem to have the theme that you have to try to go out and start the next Microsoft discounts the reality that for quite a few people, some less lofty goal might be success.  That’s something that somebody with two kids who are now in university isn’t supposed to really say, but I’m pretty sure it’s the case.

It's also frankly the case that modern society has shut the doors and windows on a lot of former roads to success. Yes, some have opened up, but at least in my cynical view, a lot more have closed than have opened.  When the 1960s vintage Boomers graduated they still lived in a world in which simply having a college degree opened the door to the white collar world. That world is long gone.  And in spite of the occasional Life Time movie to the contrary, if you heart's desire as a young person is to leave the city and farm or ranch, well, you aren't going to if you weren't born into it.

I'll get back to all of that in a moment, as it has something to do with lying to university students.

People can, of course, be very limited in obtaining a successful life by their own actions, which is the flip-side of that.  And there’s something to reminding people of that and trying them to encourage not to surrender to vices, sloth and inaction which will impair a successful life.

On speeches, this year, for the first time ever, at my high school Alma Mater (where my father also went. . . and my son. . . and my wife. . . and my wife’s parents  . . . and most of my local aunts and uncles) the students delivered the speeches themselves.  Frankly, I was really impressed as they were; 1) really good speeches, both inspiring and practical; and 2) sincere.  I’ve heard some good graduation speeches, including those delivered by really well known people but these were among the best.  I don’t think that my own high school class from so long ago could have delivered speeches anywhere near as insightful.

The worst speech I heard this year was at an academic awards banquet.  The speech delivered to the assembled body of really smart students was of the “you can achieve your goals”, “reach for the stars” variety delivered by a KW graduate who apparently was encouraged at that across town high school back the same year that I graduated from NC to pursue his dreams of entering theater.  I guess he was awarded a “most successful” grad award a few years back for what seems to have been appearing in Broadway plays and starting some theater school in the Midwest with his gay partner, whom he mentioned repeatedly in a fashion which would necessarily elicit applause from the polite.  I'm not commenting on him personally (I'd never heard of him) or anything about his personal life  whatsoever but rather his speech.  It was rather self congratulatory and, frankly, I’m cynical enough to find that sort of success to be of a variety mostly appreciated by high school theater departments whereas I’d regard my high school friend who dropped out of college to become an electrician and who ended up owning the electrical company a much larger success.  That's hard to explain, but in the overall scheme of things I'm not sure that theater schools matter much, but solid electrical wiring does.

Indeed the unstated implied message of such a speech is that, if the speaker is exceptional, it's because his career success, if it is that, is the exception to the rule by a gigantic measure.  Most people who major in theater or dance at any post high school institution are lucky if they secure a position teaching it somewhere.  Some will break into theater or the preforming arts, indeed one of my high school colleagues had a role in a television drama of the 1980s and 90s for as long as it ran, and one lawyer I know was at one time an actor in a soap opera, but most won't break into it.  A super good friend of mine who majored in music at a major music school remains involved in music but has always made his living in another fashion in spite of being a graduate one of the best music schools in the nation.

Another fellow I know who majored in theater makes his living driving one of these:

And he feels pretty lucky to be doing so.

On that, to amplify it a bit, a father of a recent graduate I know was relieved when his son took a job as a social worker.  He'd been majoring in music with theater as a "fall back", which his father viewed as a recipe for disaster.  In the end a college professor told him that he wasn't a good enough musician for the major and he should drop it, which he did.  Did he do him a favor, or not?  I guess that depends on your view.

Of course, that's because I view success probably differently than a lot of people. I guess the theater school guy is a success for achieving his dreams, if that's what he did, in a fashion that somebody regards as notable.  Maybe he's a success for being able to convert his dreams into a related dream and make a living at it.  I'm not sure. But if that's the case, large number of small businessmen are every bit as successful.  Maybe it was achieving his dreams over adversity, which would perhaps explain why he mentioned his partner repeatedly given the change in social views over the years, but then all of his success followed well after the 1969 Stonewall riots and its not really the same, for example, as the local guy who was on the Black Fourteen, at least in my view.  It might not even really be the same as the story of the successful Mexican restaurateur who owns the Mexican restaurant across the street. 

The worst graduation speech  of all time I ever heard was at my law school graduation which was by a 1,000 year old lawyer, then under investigation.  It was awful and boiled down to "I love lawyers. .  .I'm a lawyer and I love me".  But a lot of specialty school propaganda is of that very nature.

And more on that in a moment.

Being around young people in general, I’m impressed by how smart and well educated they are.  This Spring my daughter was studying for the IB certification for her high school degree and came in to talk to me one night about topics on the history part of that exam.  The French Revolution through World War Two.  I thought this will be easy.  The list of topics were not.  For example, she had a topic on the Treaty of Lucarno and the political figures of Weimar Germany during the 1920s up to the Great Depression.  All the topics were really advanced.  We didn’t get that sort of advance study when I was in high school.  And since my son, three years older, has been in college I’ve been drawn into conversations on topics so advanced that I’m stunned a 21 year old even knows they exist.  Once they overcome the dog’s breakfast that they’ve left with by earlier generations, they’ll be a real force.

Which assumes any generation can overcome the mess older generations have left them with.  The force of economics and society has eliminated a lot of occupations and the ability to make a living in all sorts of places in favor of a really dull cubicle world that people generally don't like.  Entire occupations that individuals once could make a living in are flat out gone, in favor of a downward shift in everything and in which everyone needs a college degree, which is flat out absurd.

All of which gets back to the lying, or at least the negligent misrepresentation, of things to graduates.

A person can't do whatever they want.

They have to find something that they can make a living at, and hopefully they like it.  Worried parents may say that, but universities aren't going to.  Entire educational disciplines right up through post graduate work depend on the students being ignorant of that fact.

Indeed, while any traditional field of study offers some jobs, given the post 1960s boom in degrees, just having a degree doesn't open the door to anything.  So having a degree in English, or History, or Art or Political Science isn't going to open the door to employment, except perhaps as an officer in the U.S. Military, the one remaining institution in American life which regards having a degree as an open door to "white collar", i.e., officer status.  If a person does well, that opens the door to something else, often some type of graduate school.

Some degrees are even worse, and they are the ones that are often followed by the word "Study" and involve ethnicity.  They're close to worthless in the real world, save for people who are lucky enough to take them through graduate school and into teaching.

Nobody wants to say that, particularly nobody associated with higher education, but it's true.  Honesty would require that if you are in any of the degree fields mentioned above, the first thing your university should warn you about is that you are unlikely to find employment with the degree.

This takes me to our local bar journal, perhaps oddly enough.

Our state bar publishes a magazine monthly (or maybe quarterly).  It always features an article by the law school dean.  This month's theme is a celebration of the legal profession.

Here too I'm pretty cynical as every single field does this.  If there were executioners who did only that today, as there once was, I'm quite sure their professional journal would issue articles celebrating themselves as public servants.

Some professions are particularly bad about this, and law is one of them, but it sure isn't the only one.  Lawyers do like to imagine themselves however as the only thing that keeps Western society from descending into Something Really Bad, as if other occupations don't have a role in this.  The role of lawyers in creating Something Really Bad is generally glossed over as if we're all soldiers in a Crusading army, except we wouldn't say that as in the modern world we'd regard it bad to be a Crusader, of the actual type that is.  We'd probably see ourselves now as being in Saladin's army, which in some ways really is a better analogy.

Let's turn to the Dean's article:

As we celebrate the legal profession this month, it is important to recognize the foundation stone and common thread that ties the legal community together in Wyoming and beyond: the Juris Doctorate Degree (the law degree). The law degree, arguably, is the most versatile academic credential in the world, empowering those who have earned it with a modern day ‘Excalibur’ sword to overcome life’s obstacles, settle disputes, fight for justice, and obtain the highest levels of professional achievement in the areas of law, business, academia and public service.

King Arthur with Excalibur.  I wonder if that analogy strikes anyone else as a hopelessly odd one for a law degree.  At least by my recollection, we neither pulled our degrees out of a stone that restricted to us alone, although I suppose some strained analogy could be made, nor was some spooky lady that dwelt in a lake involved in any fashion.  Moreover, its worth nothing that Arthur is betrayed and looses in the end and the baddies take over his kingdom.  Additionally, the whole story involves something really important that the seekers have lost that seemingly shouldn't have been lost.

Um, wow. 

A law degree entitles a person to do one thing and one thing only, take a bar exam.  That's it.

Not everyone who obtains a law degree with in fact pass the bar.  Most do, but not everyone  A few will have taken seven years of study and hit that brick wall.  I know one such person and what she ultimately did was marry well.  I'm sure that's not why she chose her spouse, but that did provide her with security.  Not to be sexist, I've know at least one male lawyer who married really well and thereafter rapidly gave up practicing law.

If you take the bar exam, and pass, that entitles you to do one thing and one thing only, practice law.

The practice of law is a hard, hard job.  It doesn't pay anything like what people imagine it does and the hours of work it requires are colossal.  It comes in front of everything else in your life. .. everything.  People who work in it will sacrifice time with their families and surrender huge blocks of what had been their personal life to it. For a lot of people it becomes their identity in the end so that they can't leave it and it remains the only thing in their lives.  Some go so far as to sacrifice health and morality, assuming that they were in the class of more or less moral people to start with and that they wouldn't have gone down a self destructive path anyhow, which is an assumption a person really ought not to easily make.

It can be really interesting.  And most people who do it make at least a middle class income. Some do very well.  But let's not fool ourselves. . . we're not Knights of the Round Table.

No law school dean is going to tell incoming students that.  It's not even imaginable.  That is, no law school dean is going to greet an incoming class in law school and say something like "Welcome. . what you are about to embark upon will change your way of thinking and character forever.  None of you will escape this.  You're going to give up parts of your personalities, your free time, your hobbies. . .some of you will become absolute assholes and others drunks, drug addicts and go from one superficial relationship to another. .  according to current statistics over half of you will regret your choice. . . have a nice day!".  You won't even get "You'll be working hard, the topics will be interesting, some of you will get rich, most of you won't, and a lot of you will be working very long hours and making less than the plumbers and electricians you'll call to work on your houses".

All of which (well not the drug addiction, etc.) is fine if you have the talent and desire to do it, and know what you are getting into.

Which might require some honesty from law school deans.

Instead you're going to get stuff like this, reflecting the good Dean's view on the super utility of the degrees conferred by his institution:

First, the law degree is the modern-day manifestation of the gun and holster in the Old West. In the old days, daily life on the American frontier was much more Hobbesian in its outlook as disputes were often settled by ordinary citizens at gunpoint in the streets of towns and cities without due process. Places like Dodge City, Tombstone, and Harlan County, Kentucky (near my roots), were made famous by gun fights between town Marshalls, criminal gangs, and outlaws attempting to solve their problems when the legal processes of civil and criminal justice were deemed ineffective-tive. As a Kentuckian, I was told repeatedly two things growing up: (1) that Kentucky is the only state that waited until the end of the Civil War to make up its mind as to which side to join, and then chose the losing side; and (2) that “the only thing in the law that comes before the Second Amendment is that First Amendment.” Though the U.S. Supreme Court did recently confirm that the Second Amendment guarantees a private right to bear arms among American citizens, the vast majority of disputes in society today are settled by judges and lawyers in court houses across America, not by civil wars and shootouts. Judges and attorneys, equipped with law degrees, have become the primary actors for deciding who’s right and wrong today and what the punishment should be. They are the linchpin for the peaceful resolution of disputes and the maintenance of order in society.

Still from The Great Train Robbery.  Robbing commerce or fighting for justice?

I'll be frank that I really detest the lawyer as gunslinger analogy, which is really common around here.  I also detest the lawyer as Knight Errant analogy, which is also pretty common.  There's something really wrong about this analogy in the first instance.

The Dean is also incorrect, FWIW, on the history of Kentucky in the American Civil War.  The state legislature of Kentucky was in fact pro Union but the state declared itself neutral in a war in which no state could be neutral.  A secessionist movement attempted what would have amounted to the oddity of a state coup, one was attempted in Colorado as well, which would have taken the state into the Confederacy, but it was as stupid as the attempt to do so in Colorado and failed.

Second, the law degree is the only degree that grants those who have earned it access to the third branch of government (the Judicial Branch) professionally. With any other advanced degree (Master’s, MBA or Ph.D.), one may run for President or Governor, serve as a federal or state legislator, or lead a Fortune 500 company; but only a law degree qualifies one to serve as a judge, justice or clerk in the American court system. The Judicial Branch of Government, accord-ing to Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, is the most powerful branch of government because American courts have the power to strike down laws, statutes, and certain government actions that contravene the U.S. Constitution (the principle of Judicial Review). The law degree is the gateway to access this special branch of government which is responsible for the important function of enforcing the law.

This is absolutely true, but let's be honest.  The number of people who are qualified to be judges and who obtain that position is a tiny percentage of those who obtain it.  I'll put myself in that category as I've attempted to secure such positions seven times and failed in all seven.  I'm now at the point where jurists who are appointed are younger than me and I have no chance of securing such a position now. 

If I had entered the field believing that this was my ultimate goal, I'd now have a complete career failure.  But aiming for judge as a career goal is a pretty stupid goal for that very reason.  You probably aren't going to get it.  Indeed, I know a lot of first rate lawyers who apply and fail to get it.  I doubt that any of them entered law school and were swinging for the fences really.

Which actually gets back to the theater guy for a moment.  Most people who study theater aren't going on to be Paul Newman. . . or even Claudia Cardinale.  Shouldn't an honest speaker mention that?

Indeed, I'd like this argument to urging high school baseball players to believe that they must enter the Major Leagues.  Amateur baseball is the only field that grants access to the Major Leagues.  But even if you are really good, you probably aren't going there.

That's  not a reason not to play baseball, just as the fact that you probably aren't going to be a judge isn't a reason not to become a lawyer.  But to argue that this is one of the super nifty things of a law degree is to really engage in fantasy.

Third, the law degree is the most empowering credential in society today.* With a law degree comes the confidence and know how to handle life’s problems and challenges or assist those in need of help who do not have legal training. I tell new law students that law school is like training for “The Matrix” (yes, the sci-fi movie with Keanu Reeves playing the role of Neo). Like Neo, those who choose to pursue a legal education have chosen to take the red pill, which will lead them down the rabbit hole to see and understand the real world the way it truly is in all of its nuance (not exactly a pretty place). Those who choose to take the blue pill will remain in a state continuing to live their lives and experience problems without the proper tools and training.

I'll be frank here that I simply hate this analogy and I find it absolutely everywhere.  Patrick Coffin, for example, the really conservative Catholic commentator who is flirting on the edge of real extremism now days claims that people like him have had their "red pill" moment.  Using it in a somewhat different fashion, I heard a Deacon delivery a homily within the last month using this analogy.  I saw somebody in a politically extreme camp use it to justify their view that they possessed the truth, when they rather obviously did not.  It's everywhere.

Frankly, the whole idea that only people who are lawyers see the truth of things is really insulting to most people.  And its simply not true.  One of the things that can be said about lawyers in general and American lawyers in particular is that they are very frequently not the servants of larger truths.  Indeed, a book that recently came out argues that the entire boom in education of the 60s and 70s was so dominated by certain political views that it indoctrinated a very large number of students with them and a fair number became lawyers, and that's gone to the point where its now harmful to American society.  It's certainly the case that lawyers have been prime players in movements that involve larger philosophical and even metaphysical questions about which they are entirely untrained and blisteringly ignorant as a rule.  In order to achieve the red pill/blue pill position that people such as the Dean maintain, we'd probably need about six more years of post baccalaureate training, or really good bachelors degrees in featuring a strong concentration in science, philosophy and theology.

And that view isn't one that is expressed by lawyers who are very good.

Good lawyers learn pretty quickly that a lot of people, some with outstanding educations, and some with very little, are often extremely wise and knowledgeable on all sorts of things.  Nowhere does this express itself more than with the modern jury, which is often young, smart and knows that it knows as much about most topics as the lawyers do, maybe more.

For that matter, quite a few average people often know the law quite well.  I've seen laymen correct lawyers on the law more than once.

Indeed, it can be argued that law schools in general feed out buckets full of blue pills and it maybe the dean has taken a few too many.

Most of us don't have anything like the wide educational background that would really be necessary "to see and understand the real world the way it truly is in all of its nuance".  Some do, some are entirely deluded about it and don't care anyway, and most of those who pick that knowledge up, do so after they're practicing law.

It is often said that law school deans and administrators should err on the side of discouraging potential law students from attending law school unless they have really thought it through financially and professionally, weighing whether it is worth the money and the right fit career-wise. In my opinion, the law degree is the ultimate tool for preparing one for life’s challenges regardless of one’s personal or career path. Whether you are seeking to become President of the United States or wanting to be a stay-at-home mom or dad, the law degree is an indispensable tool for overcoming so many obstacles along the way. Thus, it should come as no surprise that most of our U.S. Presidents dating back to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson earned their law degree. Currently, lawyers make up approximately 40% of the U.S. Congress as a whole, including 57 members of the U.S. Senate. Twenty-three of the 50 governors in America are lawyers. Those with a law degree are part of an exclusive club of trained leaders and professionals who possess a powerful weapon - a modern day sword - to solve problems and serve humanity with competence and compass.

Only a law school dean could argue that its a good investment to spend thousands of dollars and three years of your life in order to obtain a degree and law and then become anything other than a lawyer.  There are stay at home mom's and dad's with law degrees, to be sure, but if that was your goal entering law school, you probably ought to ask yourself if your quest for personal knowledge of that fashion warrants your taking the place of somebody else who wanted to occupy that same student's chair in order to earn a living or actually fulfill a professional dream.  Stay at home if you like, I have nothing against that, but does anyone actually enter law school with that expressed goal?

Indeed, that strikes me as a recruiting cry by somebody who is pretty worried about their institution, perhaps with good reason.  The UBE has made the local law school redundant to some degree.  Go to law school to acquire knowledge alone is a lot like the old "Try One In The Guard" recruiting call of the Cold War which was pitched to recently discharged soldiers.  It basically amounted to "we can't fill the unit slots. . . sure you didn't like the Army, but maybe you'd like us. . . will you hang around for a year and see?"

Anyhow, continuing on; 

In my lifetime, I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to practice and teach law and manage a major public law school. During that time, I never met anyone with a law degree who requested a refund for their legal education. Now that is some-thing to celebrate!

It perhaps serves here to note that if you asked for your money back, you aren't going to get it.

I've been practicing law for thirty years and I'm not going to be asking for my money back.  Indeed, if I did that, it raises the question if I have to give the money that I earned in the profession back as well, and most of us do have at least a slight mercenary reason for being in the profession, and I'd have to give my friends back whom I met practicing law.  I'd even maybe have to give my family back, as my wife was employed by the court when we first started dating, and I'm sure not going to do that.  All of which of course amplifies The Butterfly Effect nature of decisions.  But the fact that the Dean can say this shows that he isn't out in real practice very much.  I in fact know a person who was one year behind me in law school who became so disgusted that she actually demanded that she be stricken from the roles of those licensed to practice law.  She didn't just quit, she wiped out her admission entirely.

And this doesn't begin to credit the rampaging levels of mental illness and addition in the ranks of lawyers, which is a huge acknowledged problem in the profession.

Nor does it acknowledge the number of lawyers who urge their children not to take up the profession.  Just recently I was having lunch with a cousin of mine who is also a lawyer (I seem to have a lot of lawyer cousins) who noted that he felt bad now as he'd been so vocal in his view that his own daughter and he cousins not become lawyers that he featured he had unfairly tainted it for them.  A lawyer I know who started off as a teacher keeps a list of acceptable professions, all blue collar, taped to his refrigerator so that his young children will see it.  Another lawyer I was talking to just recently told me that he was urging his sons to be plumbers or electricians.

That's pretty telling.

Now not everyone feels that way to be sure.  Not by a long measure.  But those in the profession do know those who hold some opinion like that, perhaps (hopefully) fleeting in nature.

Of course, the whole point that the Dean's hypothesis is absurd as if you ask for your money back, you won't be getting it back, is really the very point.  You won't get it back.  And you won't get back the three years you invested in the degree tacked back on to your life either.  The investment and the degree, if you obtain it, is there.  The admission to the bar is there.  Now you are that thing, a lawyer, and while you may chose not to practice, the fact of the matter is that by that point in time you are now no younger than 25 years old, if in fact you aren't in your upper twenties or even pushing 30, and you are running out of time.  

You don't get time back.

So, with all that, what do you say to the new high school graduate.

Well, I suppose, you can do what you want, but you can't want what you want.

You can try for those things you can rationally want, but statistics play a role in things and if you are planning to enter the Major Leagues, you will probably fail.  Some wont.  Most will.

And while you can mark time in upper education for awhile, it's only awhile.  Mark time too long and you'll have just what soldiers made to mark time have.

Sore feet and no forward progress to show for it.

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Appendix One.  Is A Liberal Arts Degree A Bad Idea?

Medieval depiction of the Seven Liberal Arts.

Am I saying that a Liberal Arts degree is bad?

No, I'm not.  

I feel all education in anything is a good thing, but I think you have to keep in mind the history of degrees and how, in the big cycle of law, we've freakishly returned to them.

Early on the real purpose of obtaining a Liberal Arts degree was:

1.  You came from a rich family and we're going to be rich, and needed a well rounded education; or

2.  You were headed into one of the professing occupations, which were the "Professions".  You were going to be, in other words, a teacher, a lawyer, in some branch of the medical arts (which now really require a bachelors of science) or a cleric.

This was actually the general rule of things for the Medieval period into the modern one.  It only changed to any degree starting in the early 20th Century, with that change growing during the 1920s and then massively accelerating after World War Two.  From the 1940 to 1970 period simply having a BA opened the door to a white collar occupation.

In fact, that changed white collar occupations.  Prior to that time a lot of people entered the while collar world through their own talents and efforts, but not through a formal education.  When the extremely dated comedy How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying has the founder of the big company be a window washer by original trade, it was funny, as the audience personally knew of such instances.

Indeed, the irony of the whole thing is the BA degree went to being a foot in the door to being a necessity, pushing others out and ultimately requiring that everyone had a degree. When that occurred, universities responded by offering more degrees, including a lot that are of very low utility.

With all this being the case, we're now back where we started over a century ago, with what I'd call the British Addition.  Now a BA entitles you to pursue a MA in business, or the field you first studied with an eye towards being a teaching professor or a teacher, or a lawyer, or a clergyman, or finally, a military officer.

That last addition reflects what was the case for the idled British well to do prior to World War Two. They were getting a degree, and then they were entering the Army or the Episcopal Clergy.

Don't be fooled, however, student.  If you are studying any of these fields or closely related ones, that's what awaits you.

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Appendix Two:  Is Going To Law School A Bad Idea?

Byron White Courthouse, Denver Colorado.

Am I saying that going to law school is a bad idea?

No, I'm not saying that either.

I have a problem with propaganda, quite obviously.  At least I have a problem with "propaganda" in the modern sense, which means to basically authorize falsehoods of varying degrees in support of your position.  Originally propaganda meant material designed to propagate, which is basically what we'd regard advertising to be.  I don't have a problem with that.  And I feel that a lot of what law schools do to attract students is in the nature of propaganda.

Freikorps recruiting poster urging German men and soldiers to arms.

The further problem I have with propaganda is that propaganda tends to be doled out by people who haven't really lived what they're preaching, directly.  It isn't as if Goebbels, for example, had been a Frontsoldaten in the Great War.

Now, stepping back, I'm not in anyway claiming that the law school dean in question is anything like that.  Far from it.  He was a practicing lawyer.  But even here I'm a bit irritated as he knows, or at least should know, the current lay of the legal landscape.  That's because its at least widely believed that the local law school has been complicit in it.

One of the things that's happened to lawyers in the last decade is that our state adopted the Uniform Bar Exam.  Lawyers were opposed to the change but its' widely believed that that law school backed it and at least the back story is that the law school campaigned for it and, it's claimed, the Supreme Court ordered it adopted as that meant that degrees issued by the law school became more transportable.  Law schools all over the country have been strong backers of the UBE.

The other big backers of the UBE are one of the national bar organizations and states with gigantic bars supporting their gigantic populations.  The reason is that the UBE helps one class of people in particular, and those are the members of gigantic firms in big cities.

These lawyers are no more adept than any others, and frequently when the cross state lines they are less so, as has always been the case for lawyers crossing state lines. But the change had been significant.  As the UBE lawyers have come in, the gravity has shifted regionally to giant firms to the detriment of local lawyers.

Swinging back to the law school, under a prior university dean the school was ordered to emphasize its oil and gas industry connections.  As that dean had himself come from a state in which the oil and gas industry was big, there was real logic to it. That resulted in a guerrilla campaign from the then law school dean to defeat that emphasis for reasons that remain unclear.  For various other reasons the university dean resigned and a new one came in, who has since herself been replaced for reasons that remain wholly unknown.  But the law school dean fell too, and now we have the current one.

The reason I note all of this is not to suggest the dean is a bad guy.  I have no reason to believe that and I'm glad he's been a practicing lawyer.  But it's also widely believed that the law school is in a bit of trouble in an era which has seen, until recently, declining enrollment.  If you have a state bar in which the younger lawyers are destined, if they remain in the state, to practices which exclude big stakes civil and criminal defense, there's going to be trouble.  That's going to get worse, moreover, as out of state UBE lawyers are now picking up out of state plaintiff's work.  They're also picking up the oil and gas work.

It isn't as if there won't be legal work. There will, but thanks to the UBE, and perhaps to the law school, we're going to be seeing an era in which local lawyers are to the courts what the ARVN was to the Vietnam War circa 1967 or so.

Okay, so what's the point here.

Well, the law school, I've recently learned, has incorporated a new MBA/JD program.  That probably makes some sense given the direction that the law in the state is headed and it might explain the tone of the dean's "look,. . . heh. . heh, you can also do this. . . "  It's sort of like going into the used car dealers to buy a ten year old 1 ton diesel and then being shown a 1976 Toyota 4x4 "look. . .  you can also take it fishing in the high country. . . "

Of course, no law school dean can come out with an article and say; "Jeepers. . . we really screwed the pooch for y'all here, but we're going what we can now. . . no use crying over spilt milk. . . ".

That'd take guts.

So maybe that explains what he's saying.

Of course, Chesterton would say that you can indeed go back.

We're probably not going to, however, as we're Americans and we believe the entire world, including all of history, is linear.

Too bad.

Be that as it may some level of honesty is really required here. And that honesty would say these things:

• If you want to practice law, you need a JD.
• Our JD here locally is relatively cheap, compared to others, and if you are going to practice locally, it's a really good buy.
• Locally means our state and the neighboring ones.  If you are looking to bust into the Really Huge City, you better go pick one up somewhere else.
• And locally means local practice, which is going to mean business, probate, contracts, real estate divorces and some criminal work on both sides.  If you are hoping to get rich, well you should have been born a Baby Boomer and entered the field in the 1970s, you sot.

And honest law school dean would also say:

• Being a lawyer is really hard work and it doesn't pay whatever you think it does.
• You'll give up a lot to be a lawyer, including a lot of family life and personal time, and a lot of what defined your character before you became one. It'll permanently alter whomever you are.

To expand that out a bit, however, if universities were more honest, they'd also say that if you are majoring in the Liberal Arts, you are going to be confronted with the British Addition.  And you should know that.  So people majoring at the state university in most of the Liberal Arts should be asked, fairly early on, "so what do you intend to do with this degree?"** Beyond that, they ought to be honestly told what they can do with such a degree, which isn't much except to go on to an occupation where no degree should really be necessary or on to grad school with the hope of teaching, or on to law school with the hope (presumably) of practicing law, or into the military, if slots and their own qualifications allow for it.

It's not 1966 anymore.

None of which says that its a bad idea to be a lawyer.

And indeed, most Liberal Arts degrees (but not all) are ideally suited for the pursuit of law.  Much more than my undergraduate degree by a long measure, I suspect, although I've met quite a few people who had engineering and science degrees who became lawyers.  I've even met a fellow who held a MD who became a lawyer (who went back to being a surgeon).  

But there has to be something to being honest and not a purveyor of propaganda.  Practicing law is interesting.  It's varied.  For a polymath, it offers a lot that keeps a person interested.  It's also hard, and its not like rolling in piles of cash every day.  Indeed, the cash element of it is one of the things that's seriously tainted American law.

And beyond that, if you have a Liberal Arts degree, it's one of the few professions you can really enter.  You might have started off to study the history of British Empire in Africa, and might retain a lasting love of the topic, but making a living at that might very well prove to be impossible.

It's a shame that the law school, assuming the widely  held beliefs about it are true, has made being a local lawyer a harder thing to make a living at.

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*If this is true, and it may be, it could be argued to be evidence of a massive societal defect.  Or maybe not.  Rather than the Gunslinger analogy the better one might be Seinfeld's analogy that lawyers are like the kids who actually know the rules to Monopoly, whom everyone has to consult while playing the game.

**One of the all time great movie scenes involving this is in A River Runs Trough It.  In that scene the young graduate Norman Maclean is called into his father's study after the son has graduated with a Bachelors in English from a university in the East.  When he does this, the father, a Presbyterian minister, asks his son his intentions, noting his career options, which included the law and the clergy.

He ends up becoming a professor at the University of Chicago.

There's a lot, at least for a contemporary Westerner, in all of that.  Both sons are well educated, one from an East Coast university and one from the University of Montana.  The son going to the local university manages to get a journalism job with his degree in English.  Today maybe a person could get a journalism job with such a degree, or more likely with a journalism degree, but such jobs pay extremely poorly as a rule and the modern landscape for newspapers isn't very promising.  In contrast, the career options the elder Maclean brother faced are pretty much dead on for what they would be today.  Teaching, the clergy, or the law.  In picking up teaching as the option, he finds himself relocating away from his beloved Montana.

Sic transit Gloria Mundi