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.

What happens to leftover campaign donations?

I caught an article today in the Wall Street Journal (always sounds pretentious to start off any form of communication that way, doesn't it?) talking about President-Elect Obama's incoming donations for his inauguration ceremony. I think the whole notion is a bit ridiculous, but I certainly don't mean to single out the incoming administration as all incoming presidents have used their inauguration as a fund raising opportunity.

But anyway, my question is what exactly do they do with leftover campaign donations? Do they manage to spend every single cent of what's donated, planning down to the closing of the polls? Somehow I doubt it, and it's more likely that it's retained by the party or by the campaign, though I did hear that some of Obama's campaign staffers were to receive some somewhat lavish gifts when it was all over.

I guess that's okay, but given how much cash he ended up with and given how much he was able to point to all of the low-dollar donations from "average people," wouldn't it be somewhat patriotic of him and his campaign to hook up some of those folks who donated less than $500 with some of the leftover laptops and other swag from the campaign, to say nothing of at least a partial refund? Just a thought.

Seriously, though, if any of you know the law about surplus campaign funds I'd be curious to know. I've done some research on campaign finance reform but haven't ever seen that come up.

Interesting Situation on Campus

I know I'm not going to get a lot of pity from folks a bit more to the left, but there's an interesting situation on my campus that I find troubling. Of all the student organizations here at the law school, there are four that I would classify as right-leaning: the College Republicans and the Federalist Society on the political side, and the Christian Lawyers and J. Reuben Clark Law Society (Mormon Lawyers) on the at least facially apolitical or moral side.

The school's student organization governing body technically requires that any student organization have a faculty sponsor. Here's the interesting situation: not a single faculty member is willing to support any of those four organizations. Anecdotally, what few faculty members I know to have a rightward lean are unwilling to publicly present themselves as such for fear of peer ostracizing.

That about blew me away.

To a certain point, I'm willing to just cope with the fact that leftish viewpoints will largely dominate the personal persuasions of faculty members at most universities. It only allows faculty members who make objectivity and political neutrality in the name of open ideas that much more worthy of respect. But as more and more academic institutions and private enterprises make diversity a mission and a cause to be won, I'm not sure that this fits the bill. And when a university's career development center offers internship credit for volunteering as a pollwatcher for a specific party (I'll let you all guess which one) with no mention of the other, I'm concerned.

Isn't a university obligated to provide a friendly environment for people of any political persuasion? How far do we need to go to ensure that this happens?

It's OUR Job...

I came across this bit of numbers from Pew, and thought I'd pass this on. According to a recent study, 57% of Americans either mostly or completely agree that it's the government's job to care for the needy.


I want to clarify one thing. It's NOT the government's job to care for the needy. That implies that it's "someone else's" job. It's all of our jobs to care for the needy. All of us.

This is about as preachy as I'm willing to get, but I despise the notion that conservatives somehow have it in for the poor, the less fortunate, minorities in difficult situations, etc. when that's not usually the case. What is the case is that there is a strong mistrust of the government's ability to create and administer effective programs for the kind of relief that's needed that will most promote permanent extraction from a bad situation.

That being said, we cannot nor should not allow the existence of such problems to provide an excuse for not doing our part, nor should we assume that the government bears that responsibility alone. It's our job.

Thougts on Mormons and Prop 8

There has been a bit of press lately covering both protests to the passing of California's Prop. 8 and the LDS Church's (Mormons') reaction thereto. I've followed the back and forth from afar as it's been several years since I've lived in California. But, I have sought out and appreciated the opportunity for good dialogue with friends who opposed Proposition 8, while at the same time saddened to hear of my niece's experiences being spat on and cursed at for supporting it.

There's not much that I can offer on the subject that hasn't already been both against (Stay classy, Roseanne) the Mormons' participating in Prop 8 and in defense thereof, but I would like to put out a few thoughts for those who are interested.

First off, although I'm bummed that the Mormons have become almost the sole face of Pro-Prop 8 California when the church itself paid out no institutional money in support of the proposition, when the anti-Prop 8 campaign was in total better-funded than the pro-Prop 8 campaign, when at best I figure there are 200,000* voters in California who are actively-practicing Mormons of voting age, I forced myself not to be surprised by that despite my initial bewilderment once I thought about how involved that extreme minority of voters became.

I can only hope that Mormons in California behaved themselves civilly and with class, if for no other reason than to do as little as possible to justify allegations of bigotry and intolerance that are being cast. I hope that pro-Prop 8 folks did and continue to follow the official direction given by the church with respect to the appropriate mode of support for that proposition.

What I do hope, most of all, is that we Mormons welcome the inevitable protests to Proposition 8 and other similar amendments nationwide as long as they are kept cordial and civil towards religious practice. The Mormon Church said this on the subject:

While those who disagree with our position on Proposition 8 have the right to make their feelings known, it is wrong to target the Church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the democratic process.

Once again, we call on those involved in the debate over same-sex marriage to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other. No one on either side of the question should be vilified, harassed or subject to erroneous information.

But I hope that we Mormons welcome the opportunity for dialogue and understanding that healthy protest can foster. Being overly defensive or overly zealous typically does little other than reinforce viewpoints either in your favor or against you, and without good dialogue and perspective we will never reach an understanding of how best to handle this issue that has potential to be so terribly divisive. No matter how future elections shape the policies of the varying states or, as I feel is inevitable, the nation, there will be a large body of people who will feel robbed of something special and sacred, and we will be forced to reconcile those feelings to continue to exist as neighbors in a spirit of social compassion and of patriotism. Both parties are under obligation to work together in a way that allows us to agree to disagree in some measure of harmony. Otherwise, we undermine what we view as the righteousness of our own position.

*My estimated number is based on the just under 800,000 Mormons in California. Figure only about half are actively-practicing, half of that half are under 18, and that's where I get to 200,000. It's a dirty method, but I don't know of nor could I find any information as to Mormon voter registry or turnout, though my suspicion is that it's not tremendously different than any other group of potential voters. Also, I know at least anecdotally of several Mormons who did not vote for Proposition 8 and I imagine that they are not terribly unique.