Self-Delusion Spreads from Professional to Graduate Education; Consternation Curiously Absent

I want to be clear at the outset:  I love literature.  I was an English major, and I’ve never regretted it for a moment.  I seriously considered pursuing a Ph.D. in English.  I could not have a deeper faith in the liberal arts as a path to the betterment of all mankind.

So imagine my dismay at some recent reportage in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Graduate programs in languages and literature are suffering troubles all too familiar to the readers of these pages:  In these straitened times, the tenure-track academic appointments for which a doctoral degree is the traditional and necessary preparation are available for only about 60% of the recipients of doctorates in language or literature (a number chillingly reminiscent of the 56%-57% of the last two law-school graduating classes who managed to find a full-time, long-term job requiring a law license within 9-10 months of graduation, though when you exclude school-funded and self-employed positions as well as a few other confounders and irrelevancies, that number is closer to 53%).  The Modern Language Association (a trade group for college and graduate educators and scholars in language and literature analogous to AALS) recently released a report conceding “[w]e are faced with an unsustainable reality.”

The solution?  Simple—dismiss the “reality” as “wrong”:

"The discourse of Ph.D. overproduction is wrong," said Russell A. Berman, who led the task force that wrote the report and is a professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford University. "What we need instead is a broadened understanding of career paths.” 

As the Chronicle explains, the MLA believes that language and literature departments should urge upon students considering graduate degrees

what else they could do with a language or literature Ph.D.  Career options off the tenure track . . . include teaching at community colleges and high schools, working at cultural institutions such as heritage museums and libraries, and putting skills to use in the private sector.  "The subject matter may, in fact, be far from literature," Mr. Berman said, "but the rich professional formation acquired during the course of doctoral study can be put to good use.”

The Chronicle also reports that the MLA “is taking a stance similar to the American Historical Association, whose executive director has said that history Ph.D.’s are not being overproduced but underused.”

If you’re feeling a certain frisson of déjà vu, you don’t need a doctorate in French to understand why.  The MLA appears to be arguing that you should pursue a doctorate in language or literature (median time to completion nine years, by the way) because it will make you a better high school teacher.  If you think this is silly, you’re right.  If you think this is silly, but still believe that people unsure of their desire to practice law or do something clearly and directly law-related should attend law school because (as comp lit Prof. Berman put it to the Chronicle) “the rich professional formation acquired during the course of [law] study” is (as I lampooned it in a past post) “ideal preparation for any line of work, a thoughtful life, the vicissitudes of holy matrimony, Monty Python’s Argument Clinic, or the searching examination that can be expected from St. Peter when the matriculant finally reaches the pearly gates,” you are engaging in the kind of wishful thinking that would earn your contempt if you observed it in a colleague or a student.

We need to get a few things straight.  You can get a doctorate in English because you love English and have the time and money to devote yourself to what you love, regardless of what comes after your studies are done.  But once we start talking about education as preparation for a career, the argument changes:  Specialized professional and graduate education is supposed to prepare you for specialized lines of work.  There is no honest or sustainable basis for a view of specialized professional or graduate education as proper (let alone cost-justified) preparation for whatever job the market may eventually offer you.  The fact that a doctorate in English, or a law degree, will provide its holders with thoughts or perspectives on unrelated work uncommon for others without their benefit does not mean that someone would rationally pursue either (or both, given that they’re apparently both ideal preparation for everything) in order to secure work unrelated to the discipline studied. 

This is classic post-hoc fallacy:  If you want to consider whether education X is good preparation for job Y, imagine yourself planning a path to job Y, and think about whether you’d consider education X an essential, or at least a very important, step on that path.  The fact that you previously went to law school, and now have a nonpracticing position that many people would consider a good job (say as a high-school civics teacher, or as a paralegal), does not mean that the former was the cause of the latter.  Nor does it mean that the latter justifies the former in any meaningful sense.  Nor does it mean that whatever perceptual or perspectival advantages the former course of study lends to the later  work justifies the education as a sensible preparation for the job if you were thinking about it ex ante.

Put slightly differently, the fact that you get a job not requiring a law degree after you graduate from law school does not, without a great deal more, make that job “JD Advantaged.”  Law schools that are silently indulging that fallacy in their employment reporting should cut it out.  If the Section 509 compliance audits that the ABA announced last year to test the accuracy of law-school disclosures are to be worth a damn, they will focus relentlessly on this issue.

And how do we explain this spreading contagion of laughable illogic among America’s best-educated and most thoughtful?  I’m afraid we need look no further than Upton Sinclair’s well-worn observation that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Bernie

Comments

[anon]

Precisely correct. I've cited that adage, here in these comments, on numerous occasions.

Since Sinclair's time, however, the capacity to "spin" in all aspects of our culture has reached proportions that can be truly characterized as a "crisis."

Those of us who have been around for a "while" have seen the "bs" level in our society grow and grow and grow. This is especially acute in legal academia. There is no shame.

For example, there have been no (or precious few) apologies when representations have been proved wrong or perhaps fraudulent; instead, many, if not most, law profs have simply retorted by spitting like honey badgers, fuming about "scam bloggers" and "law school haters" instead of taking responsibility and pledging to do better.

Employment numbers are now goosed by law school hiring with impunity. And, these numbers are basically rendered false by, as you say, counting as "JD Advantaged" positions that neither require nor, in many instances, even prefer JDs. This goes on under the nose of the body committed to "regulating" these matters. It is the sort of conduct that has made Wall Street such a success, despite its all too obvious failure.

One wonders, therefore, how the tide can be turned in one little pocket of our overall culture (legal academia) while the culture of crap goes on unabated every where else?

Law profs, especially the new crop, seem to have an almost infinite reservoir of self-regard. This seems unshakable.

Realistically: how can this change?

[John Thompson]

@Bernie:

"a number chillingly reminiscent of the 56%-57% of the ***last two*** law-school graduating classes who managed to find a full-time, long-term job requiring a law license within 9-10 months of graduation, though when you exclude school-funded and self-employed positions as well as a few other confounders and irrelevancies, that number is closer to 53%"

To strengthen your point overall, I would add that it hasn't been just the last two graduating classes. It's been the last five, and if early indications (i.e., offers at graduation) track previous results, it will be six.

[James Milles]

Interesting turnaround. t's a long, long time since I was in grad school (Master's in English, UT-Austin), but in those days, the message was quite clear that anyone who had a graduate degree in English and took a job anywhere besides teaching (say, marketing writing or journalism) was a failure.

[Just saying...]

Many employers would likely see poor decision-making skills in someone who spent a lot of time and money getting a PhD in an area X when they are looking for a job in area Y.

[Matt Bodie]

Bernie: I understand the cynicism -- we've certainly earned it -- but there are genuinely non-law-practicing jobs in which one still uses one's legal education. The crossover between law and human resources is a growing and largely underexplored development in our academy, but many law grads are taking HR jobs. They can do those jobs more effectively because they understand the law. And I'm not just talking entry-level compliance -- experienced attorneys are now becoming VPs of HR at big companies. So while I agree that the "JD advantage" category is ripe for abuse, it is not a null set, even with much more rigorous reporting standards.

[Jeff Harrison]

Excellent and no better example than law schools spending gobs of money to attract students so they (the schools) can stay in business. Particularly in public law schools, the idea that the schools were means to an end and not ends, is dismissed entirely.

[Nathan A]

"What we need instead is a broadened understanding of career paths.”

I think this is the part that cracks me up the most. He isn't completely wrong. But literature departments have shown zero desire to provide their students with the training or resources necessary to secure employment in any "broadened" "career paths."

[Jeff Harrison]

I'd give Nathan a "like" if I could. Law schools are in fact not talking about broadened "career paths" either. In fact, they seem to be bent on narrowing them.

[anon]

Nathan and Jeff:

YOu seem to be completely oblivious to the point of the post, thus demonstrating the validity of its central thesis.

[Doug Richmond]

Matt: I agree that lawyers may be able to put their legal educations to use in meaningful jobs other than practicing law, but typically (and unfortunately) not at junior levels. The argument or claim that "experienced attorneys are now becoming VPs of HR at big companies" overlooks the fact that those are experienced attorneys and thus offers no defense at all of "JD Advantage" jobs for today's graduates.

[Jeremy Telman]

The delusion has not spread to graduate programs. It's been there a long time. In 2000, the American Historical Association published a letter I wrote in response to an article that was a lot like Russell Berman's recent report for the MLA. It seems like very little has changed in that part of the academy, and I have not changed my views:

As a European history PhD who repeatedly struck out on the academic job market and has, at the age of 36, begun a new career, I read with interest John C. Burnham's essay. While I agree with much of Burnham's analysis, I do not think that the ills of the profession will be significantly reduced if PhDs seek employment as "postacademic historians"—hired as public historians or as private historians having "tenure" at AT&T.
First, while I agree with Burnham that the skills one acquires in a PhD program are useful in professional settings outside of the academy, traditional PhD programs are not well-equipped to train students efficiently in these skills. A program that focuses more intensively on professional training would better prepare aspiring historians to do the kinds of work that Burnham describes. Rather than encouraging more students to spend years writing dissertations that very few people will read, the historical profession could better achieve Burnham's goals by bolstering MA programs. This means that the professors who teach in these programs have to recognize, as Burnham does, that they are not exclusively training young people who will devote their lives to teaching and research in the academy. These programs must include, as faculty members who are central to the programs' missions, professional historians who work as museum curators, local historians, archivists, and the like. The focus of the program should be professional training that will prepare students for a broad spectrum of jobs related to history.
The second problem with Burnham's proposed solution is that it fails to recognize that many people pursue PhDs because they are interested in academic positions and have no interest in in-house positions at AT&T. These aspiring PhDs often have intellectual ambitions that they believe, rightly or wrongly, could not be achieved outside of the academy. Such people are unlikely to derive satisfaction from being "the only person in [the] office who knows how to look things up."
Burnham suggests that we cannot know whether the current decline in permanent, full-time teaching positions will continue. I hope that he is right and that universities will begin to create numerous new tenure-track lines in history departments. Until there is clear evidence of such a trend, however, it is irresponsible for universities to accept more students into PhD programs than they can expect to place in the types of jobs that those students seek. Getting a PhD is a costly endeavor, not only because graduate students are consigned to poverty and indebtedness while they pursue their degrees, but also because the PhD delays entry into the work force by seven years. Students who want to pursue the kinds of careers that Burnham describes should be able to prepare for those careers in high-quality professional programs that culminate in a masters degree. PhD programs are better suited for students who are exclusively interested in teaching in the academy. However, because teaching positions are difficult to obtain, PhD programs in history should be small—both in quantity and class size.

[Jojo]

Bernie is absolutely right on this. Law faculty have been silent and , in some cases complicit, in the fraud that is employment outcome reporting. Jd advantage is a worthless category for anything other than a fig leaf. Are there any entry level jobs where a jd is a benefit but not a requirement? Of course, but there aren't many of them. Reporting and rankings should cover non-solo, jd required, non-school funded, paid work as an attorney. Period.

I concede that this will not tell the full story of all employment. But so what? GDP doesn't tell the full story of economic output but it is a very useful number. Ft lt job percentages allow comparisons between schools and allow comparisons year to year.

Why use full time, long term no solo no school as the metric if it is imperfect? Because you cannot be trusted. I am appalled to read 0L come-ons like the unemployment rate among lawyers is less than 5 percent or 95 percent of our law graduates are employed within 6 months of graduation and the median salary of those graduates who work in large firms is 150,000.

Is there anyone here who doesn't view such sales pitches as slimy and misleading? Why do you allow your institutions to get away with it? Have you no shame?

[JayA]

Jojo, Some of us have brought the issues you describe to our administration multiple times and very little has changed. What would you suggest we do? I guess we could quit in protest, but I am positive that would not change things. The line of people willing to fill our positions is long. For me, I try to be honest with prospective students, teach students to the best of my ability, and connect students to my contacts in practice.

[twbb]

Matt, many, many recent JDs try to break into human resources with little success, _especially_ in entry-level compliance jobs. Some postings actually state they will not hire JDs and hiring personnel are pretty explicit when asked why they don't like hiring JDs. For administrative positions a legal background is a negative; any attempt to apply legal knowledge to their job will be a waste of time and money. If a new JD finds what he or she thinks is a flaw in an employee contract that thousands of employees have already signed, then that new JD is almost always going to be plain wrong. Furthermore a company faces potentially greater liability if the low-level employee says something wrong and is a lawyer versus a non-lawyer.

[Rob T.]

"Upton Sinclair’s well-worn observation that 'it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it'."

Are you Paul Campos, by any chance, or are you merely channeling him with that run-into-the-ground quotation?

[John Steele]

Nice post, Bernie.

[Michael C. Duff]

60% for language/literature grads sounds way high. In any event, the phenomenon is manifest in virtually every profession and graduate program. Yet we are reminded repeatedly of the astronomically high unemployment rate for new undergraduates. This seems to resolve to -- don't get a law degree; don't get a business degree; don't get an engineering degree; don't get an accounting degree; don't bother graduating from college. What does that leave? The magical/mystical start-up? Is it any wonder why students keep signing up in graduate & professional programs? The alternative seems to be to abandon hope. In that milieu a 60% chance for a low paying job (by historical law job standards) beats the alternative.

[Just saying...]

JayA: I think ALL profs who object to the dishonest practices used by law schools to juice their employment numbers to attract new students should quit. Certainly, the number of profs who feel this way should be overwhelming, don't you think? That would shake up legal education -- mass resignations by faculty across the rankings spectrum.

Doubt it is going to happen. Most law profs know they are unemployable elsewhere and certainly not at their current salaries.

Alternatively, their could become more involved in the ABA accreditation process and not leave it the present crowd who is interested in maintaining the status quo to keep the poorly ranked law schools in business.

Profs who feel this way should go public like Tamanaha and Campos, too.

[dan rodriguez]

I have some thoughts on this post over at Prawfsblawg.

[Jeff Harrison]

Great logic. "just saying." If those of us who disagree with current practices of law schools quit, that would certainly clear things up. I can assure you on each faculty there are people not playing ball but who may not be as visible as others.

On a different point, the dishonestly claim as a causal factor is getting a bit thin. Any one currently believing the glossy brochures of law schools fighting to maintain the jobs of law professors has been under a rock now for about five years. I understand the bitterness of pre 2011 grads but, at this point, it's a bit more like sour grapes.