People have lamented the skyrocketing cost of college tuition for years, yet its rise continues unabated. No matter how outrageously expensive it gets, it just seems to keep rising, since our society’s credential mania means that people with less credentials than their competitors are assumed to be lazy and unambitious, even if the course of study leading to the required credentials teaches obsolete skills or useless information.
Around 1960, law school tuition was less than a tenth of what it is today, after adjusting for inflation: “Median annual tuition and fees at private law schools was $475 (range $50-$1050); adjusted for inflation, that’s $3,419 in 2011 dollars. The median for public law schools was $204 (range $50 – $692), or $1,550 in 2011 dollars. [For comparison, in 2009 the private law school median was $36,000; the public (resident) median was $16,546.]”
Despite the fact that law school was 90 percent cheaper than it is today, people way back then already worried about its considerable cost, and the level of student loan debt: “The cost of attending law school at least doubled in the [past] 16 years…, raising the question whether able, but impecunious, students are being directed away from law study. . . almost half of the schools reported that students were reluctant to take out loans owing to ‘fear of debts, particularly during the low income years immediately after graduation.’”
Given their belief that tuition was already too high, people back then probably didn’t expect tuition to explode further, but it did. Current tuition levels would have been unimaginable to them. There’s no way they could have fathomed that tuition would rise ten-fold , even after adjusting for inflation, and people would still go to law school. Too many people have gone to law school thanks to the romanticization of the legal profession in shows like “Ally McBeal” and “L.A. Law” that make law look sexy and exciting.
Most areas of law are actually extremely dull, as I learned as a young lawyer in Los Angeles drafting form interrogatories and discovery requests. (To escape the drudgery, I left the world of commercial law for non-profit law firms after saving up some money. My current legal practice at a non-profit law firm is not so dull, but it’s not well-paying either. As a result, I live in a little two-bedroom house, not a mansion, and drive a Hyundai SUV, not a Porsche.).
Most Americans think higher education is wasteful, but they have little choice but to keep going to college in ever-increasing numbers, since lacking paper credentials can mean no job at all in a scarce job market where employers are unwilling to take any risks in hiring and have little time to carefully vet applicants for low-level jobs. (Why do employers even care if people have paper credentials? Because to get such credentials, people have to possess very basic skills, the ability to follow directions, and the willingness to jump through hoops on command, even if the course of study leading to the credentials doesn’t actually teach much of value. Due to self-selection, people who don’t have the credential are less likely to have such needed traits, even if the courses leading to the credentials are themselves almost worthless).
At best, it’s like having a coat in winter: you need one, even if the price is outrageous, as education writer Daniel Luzer suggests in Washington Monthly. But if winter coats all cost $3,000, they’d still be a rip-off, even if you needed one to keep you warm.
Thanks to factors like the proliferation of unnecessary state licensing requirements that require useless paper credentials, and financial aid that directly encourages colleges to raise tuition, colleges can raise tuition year after year, consuming a larger and larger fraction of the increased lifetime earnings students hope to obtain by going to college. As George Leef notes, “long-term average earnings for individuals with BA degrees have not risen much and in the last few years have dipped.”
Meanwhile, college students learn less and less with each passing year. “Thirty-six percent” of college students learned little in four years of college, and students now “50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago, the research shows.” Thirty-two percent never take “a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”
