A Racket Revealed

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article detailing how some law schools are now opening up in-house law firms to place graduates that otherwise would be unemployed (link to NY Times article). Due to the fact that law schools have been churning out graduates at numbers that surpass available jobs, the schools have taken it upon themselves to create a continued "need" for more lawyers. In actuality, they have exposed themselves for the money-hunger enterprises they are. Instead of curtailing enrollment until the job market can absorb the existing number of law graduates, the schools stubbornly refused to kill their cash-cow, i.e. student enrollment. In order to avoid outrage from an increasing number of unemployed graduates, law schools have invented a convenient dumping ground for would be lawyers. The graduates are thus doubly wounded. While the salaries they are offered in these contrivances are far below those of the free market, at the same time they have to begin paying off their massive amount of student loan debt. Once again, the students are bled dry while the schools feast.

This sets a dangerous precedent, as universities may see this as an avenue for continuing to increase student enrollment beyond what is necessary or warranted. For example, say a major university is graduating an excess number of people with liberal arts degrees. The school could invent "creativity centers" where graduates could churn out meaningless pabulum while earning a pittance salary. Naive students would continue to enroll in droves under the notion that there will always be a job waiting for them, regardless of the fact that the job is essentially  an artifice.

Schools validate their importance by promoting the fallacy that everyone needs a college education; not everyone does. But employers have been brainwashed into thinking that only college graduates are capable of doing even the most menial of jobs. Another Times article (link to article), titled "It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk," describes how such degree inflation has run amok. In one instance, an employer required a college degree for a $10 per hour job carrying legal papers between adjacent buildings. This is insulting to the very intelligence of the job applicants. Furthermore, with students incurring an average debt of nearly $25,000 dollars for a bachelor's degree alone, this level of compensation ensures that graduates are saddled with debt for an even greater portion of their adult lives.

There needs to be a public rebuke of the way universities have been corrupted from institutions of learning into financial corporations. Otherwise universities may continue their deceptive practices in order to ensnare more money and enslave more graduates with crushing debt and unfulfilled dreams.