Education and Barriers to Entry

NOTE: This post also appears here at Time To Keep Score, a blog to which I'm grateful to have been invited to contribute. There's a good group of writers over there. It's a good read and I recommend it highly. Now to the post...

As I'm neck deep in finals and my eyes are growing dark and hollow in a Gollum-like manner as I've confined myself to the indoors to study, this topic is particularly near and dear to my heart. As I interact more and more with attorneys, it's become clearer and clearer that law school serves two essential purposes to the profession it supposedly prepares students for: 1) give law firms some sort of cheap and easy way of rating applicants by looking at alma mater and GPA therein, and 2) big, fat, yet-sometimes-porous barrier to entry (I saw porous because I don't think I've heard any breaking news lately about the dearth of attorneys).

Almost every attorney I speak with either can't remember much of what they learned, and certainly can't remember the last time they used something they learned, yet we all must go through it. I've heard similar complaints of the medical profession and others, though I get the impression that it's a bit different for you MBA students and the like who pursue advanced education while working.

Certainly, 3 years and countless thousands of dollars is something of a barrier, but I think the largest barrier to entry in any profession is our country's overall education system. Add to those three years the 4 (or 5 for those like me who took their time) years of undergraduate study and to those the years of secondary education that did very little to prepare or motivate me towards my career choice, and we have a system that, in the name of general education (read "liberal arts"), does little to help young people funnel their way into fulfilling and meaningful careers and mostly just prolongs that moment, that very real and frightening moment, when you have to decide what you're going to do with your life.

If you're lucky, you get to have that moment. For many young people, that moment passes them by as they end up working ten years at a job they took after high school, "just to make some money before they figured out what else to do," with a very low ceiling and very few options. Can't we figure out a way to move the process along some?

I'll be 30 when I enter, as I said, the lowest rung of my professional ladder. Couldn't I have been working in a law office during high school summers, reviewing documents, learning the basics of Internet research and the nitty gritty of filing court papers? Couldn't I have bypassed all of that liberal arts education during my undergraduate years that was really just there to hold me over until law school?

Just a thought. And really, it has nothing to do with how sick of my finals I am. I promise.

Good Clip Explaining a Mormon's Experience

Thanks to my friends at timetokeepscore.blogspot.com for bringing this to my attention.

The following video is of a Harvard undergrad from Blackfoot, ID, who was given the opportunity to share her perspectives as a Latter-Day Saint as part of a larger panel discussion series on religion at Harvard.

It's very well done and she's asked some tough questions. She's not speaking officially for the Church in any way, but I feel that she does a very nice job of representing the Church's viewpoints and that her personal take can be useful for anyone who's curious. Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions.


Day of Faith: Personal Quests for a Purpose - 3. Rachel Esplin from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo.

Next Time You Have 7 Digits of Disposable Income...

You might want to consider this purchase available at www.neimanmarcus.com.

Thanks to Jason Sobel of ESPN.com I now know that next time I have 7 digits to spend on something just for me, to say nothing of a yard big enough in which to build it, I can have Jack Nicklaus personally design a 3-hole practice course in my backyard. After designing it and supervising its construction, the Bear himself will even play a quick round with me.

Some of us can only dream the dream, I guess.

For those of us with a bit less to spend this Christmas, here's a nifty gift coming it at under 30 bucks. Apparently, it's real.