Law Grads Face Brutal Job Market

From Monday's WSJ:

"Members of the law-school class of 2011 had little better than a 50-50 shot of landing a job as a lawyer within nine months of receiving a degree, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of new data that provides the most detailed picture yet of the grim market for law jobs.

Under pressure from disillusioned graduates and some professors, the American Bar Association for the first time released a tally of the previous year's graduates who have secured full-time, permanent jobs as lawyers. Until recently, the ABA required law schools to report only general data about how their graduates fared, such as how many were employed full-time or part-time in any kind of job, whether or not it required a law degree.

The numbers suggest the job market for law grads is worse than previously thought. Nationwide, only 55% of the class of 2011 had full-time, long-term jobs that required a law degree nine months after graduation. The ABA defines "long-term" jobs as those that don't have a term of less than one year."

MP: An interactive graphic accompanies the article, and reveals that graduates of even some of the top law schools are having a hard time finding full-time work in jobs that require a law degree: less than 66% of the graduates from Georgetown Law (tuition of $50,000 per year) and only about 75% of the graduates from University of Michigan are employed in jobs that require a J.D. degree.  

Interestingly, the word must be getting out that law school graduates can't find work - the number of students taking the LSAT this year fell to an 11-year low, see chart below. 

J2LYK There's a Texting/SMS Language Revolution

Back in 2009, a CD post featured Charles Platt, former senior writer for Wired Magazine, who got hired at an Arizona Wal-Mart and then blogged and wrote about his experience.  Today he sends along this provocative guest post for CD:

Phone messaging and Facebook are being blamed for degrading the English language, but in reality, language evolves to satisfy the needs of people who employ it, and the result is enrichment with new terms that serve a useful purpose. After online media encouraged acronyms as substitutes for frequently used phrases (such as BTW, OMG, and the ubiquitous LOL), the limitations of a phone keypad spawned abbreviations that are showing signs of permanence, even including txt for text and k for ok (Netlingo hosts a list of more than 2,000 chat acronyms and text message abbreviations, while Wikipedia provides a thorough history and analysis of SMS language).

The international reach of the web means that the neologisms and (especially) emoticons are now functioning as the beginnings of a world language. Esperanto was supposed to achieve this, but failed miserably, perhaps because it was created by a committee of experts. Texting and messaging are developing from the grass roots up, and thus are more durable, regardless of what language professors might prefer. I see this as something to celebrate, but of course YMMV.

~Charles Platt

TAM Charles!

Amazing Illusions: Two of the Best Ever

It's been awhile since I've featured an illusion, the last one was the peacock illusion above, which I thought was one of the best ever.  Both birds are exactly the same color, but you'll never convince your mind of that, see it here without the background.  

Here's a new one that might be even better, courtesy of Alex Tabbarok, where again you can't convince your mind that the two boxes are the same color. 

The Bad Grammar Epidemic

From the Wednesday WSJ:

"Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace. Many of them attribute slipping skills to the informality of email, texting and Twitter where slang and shortcuts are common. Such looseness with language can create bad impressions with clients, ruin marketing materials and cause communications errors, many managers say.

There's no easy fix. Some bosses and co-workers step in to correct mistakes, while others consult business-grammar guides for help. In a survey conducted earlier this year, about 45% of 430 employers said they were increasing employee-training programs to improve employees' grammar and other skills, according to the Society for Human Resource Management and AARP." 

Accompanying the article: How's Your Grammar? Take a 22-question grammar quiz here to test your skills.

Where Krugman Went Right: On Housing Policy

Since 1999, when economist Paul Krugman started writing for The New York Times, he has been drawing the criticism of free market-oriented economists (and recently the president of Estonia) for glaring deficiencies in economic analysis and for writing what amounts to “fiction” (economist and Estonian expert Steve Hanke’s word to describe Krugman’s trashing of Estonia’s recent robust economic growth and counter Keynesian fiscal reforms). 

The Krugman-Estonia kerfuffle raises an interesting question: Has Krugman ever sided with free market economists against government activism in his Times forum?

In Back from Serfdom, my Atlanta colleague Robert Dell quotes a Krugman column from June 2008 to support the case for termination of government affordable housing policies.  The normally predictably partisan pundit Krugman appears here to be channeling AEI's Peter Wallison: 

“Why should ever-increasing homeownership be a policy goal? How many people should own homes, anyway?

Listening to politicians, you’d think that every family should own its home—in fact, that you’re not a real American unless you’re a homeowner. . . . and that is reflected in U.S. policy (MP: Which drove homeownership to unsustainable levels and created the housing bubble, see chart above). Because the I.R.S. lets you deduct mortgage interest from your taxable income but doesn’t let you deduct rent, the federal tax system provides an enormous subsidy to owner-occupied housing. On top of that, government-sponsored enterprises — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks — provide cheap financing for home buyers; investors who want to provide rental housing are on their own. In effect, U.S. policy is based on the premise that everyone should be a homeowner.

But homeownership isn’t for everyone. In fact, given the way U.S. policy favors owning over renting, you can make a good case that America already has too many homeowners.” 

We can only hope Krugman will direct a future critical blast toward the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) for continuing to promote home ownership on its web site. 

Larry Sabato Speaks Out on UVa Controversy

 
"This has given us our worst two weeks of publicity since I've been associated with UVa and that was 42 years ago. So it's been a disaster, it's been a national public relations disaster."   

The Coming Revolution in Information Technology

From my article in the Detroit News this week:

We are on the cusp of a revolution in information technology that will be even larger than the one that's taken place over the past 40 years. Evidence of this transformation is emerging in what's known as direct-digital manufacturing, an innovation that could lead to the "desktop" printing of entire products from automobiles to washing machines.

Some products developed from three-dimensional computerized manufacturing — such as patient-specific implants for hip joints or teeth, and lighter and stronger aircraft parts — are being made from computer-engineered materials that did not exist a few years ago.

Smart manufacturing, in which the science of emerging materials revolutionizes the very fabrication of physical products, has extraordinary economic implications for the United States, which is at the epicenter of digital innovation.

To grasp the magnitude of the changes taking place, consider that, in the last three decades, computing speeds have risen 200,000-fold, while costs have dropped 10,000-fold. In 1980, it cost $10,000 for the hardware to store a single book. Today it costs one penny. That's why a Kindle can store thousands of books. And the cost of storing books and digital information is still collapsing.

We're entering a new age of super-computing, providing cheap information and processing power to nearly everyone. But that assumes that our electricity production keeps pace with the rising energy demands of the new information-intensive technologies. Those states that fail to increase electrical generating capacity will pay a huge price for such shortsightedness in terms of lost economic opportunities and jobs. It's time to start modernizing the electrical infrastructure now to prepare for an exciting digital future.