Men's Engagement Manager?

[johnnys]

I've been advocating this for a while as an alternative to the law school route for lawyers. Basically give (at least) two options to become eligible to sit for the bar exam: (1) the traditional law school route, or (2) a full-time apprenticeship under a member of the bar in good standing for three years.

If my proposal were ever adopted, I think you'd see significantly decreased tuition rates and debt loads for attorneys, since law schools now have competition, and you'd have far fewer stories of people taking on massive debt loads only to realize that they don't actually want to be a lawyer after all. I think you'd also see a greater law school emphasis on clinical courses (and attendant hiring good clinical professors) that allow students to do actual legal work, rather than the predominantly academic offerings you see now. And I think you'd even see a marginal improvement in the overall quality of attorneys, since a lot of them would now have practical experience as soon as they become licensed bar members.

I'm also aware that my proposal will almost certainly never be adopted in the states that require a law degree from an ABA-accredited law school. Ironically, the closest state to my proposal is California, which allows anyone to sit for the bar even if they don't have a law degree. (This is partly why California's bar passage rate is so low...it's literally open entry.)

Virginia has your proposed model - called "reading for the bar" and takes 3 years. Not terribly popular VBBE - Law Reader Program - Memorandum.

[Razik]

You see nothing wrong with institutionalizing this nonsense? It doesn't indicate a problem to you?

No. In fact, I think I'm cheering this shit on now for the fact that it ultimately weakens the power of the establishment institutions themselves.

See, I've lost faith in our empires and no longer believe that their existence actually serves my interests. I also hold no hope of it being turned around by changing the officers each election cycle. It may all just need to crumble into ruin so that something smaller and more manageable and sensible can take it's place. Perhaps we all should hope that these institutions continue to fill the intellectual and governing classes with such frailty and weakness and promote it to anyone foolish enough to listen to them.

I won't be listening, of course. Neither will my peers. Neither will most of you. Because we know the strong always inherit the earth, never the meek. So maybe the more Bambi's the system produces for itself, the better.

The wolves are getting hungry, after all.

[Jeff Leonard]

Another component to this is debt load. Kids want more money than they are worth coming out of college. Part of this, I'm assuming, is that a $50K/year job is not that appealing when you have $100K++ in student loan debt. New hires might be more willing to accept the salaries they are actually worth if they had less debt coming out of school. Perhaps a more efficient private system could tackle this problem. Kids come out of college with less debt and can accept jobs with salaries more in accordance with their experience and companies can actually afford to hire them and keep them. Everybody wins.

Would it actually work in practice? I have no idea

The issue is that like so many other problems facing this country, politics and politicians screw things up by getting involved and making bigger shit piles. If I were Czar of the World, which I should be, I would cut all non-degree related classes immediately. My son in law has an electrical engineer degree, and what are some of the classes needed to get that degree? Music appreciation, eastern religion studies and so on. Cut out the BS classes, let a student spend 2 years studying their ACTUAL field and be done with a fraction of the debt!

[JHG]

My experience was that virtually all of med school and residency is basically a "time served" model. The vast majority of it is completely useless. Anything you learn, you learn on your own time, which they give you precious little of, because they're too busy cramming in more useless stuff. The latest "big innovation" in med school training was the PBL model (Problem Based Learning) which succeeds in wasting even more of your time since now you have to go to a group meeting for all your study time and pretend to contribute while being assigned "projects" to present to the group. Med school basic sciences could be done all online (the current lectures are really bad), then once you pass that, go to rotations which is the apprentice model. Residency is more interested in providing cheep labor for patients that Medicare/Medicaid won't cover to actually teach you much. It's basically a way for the hospital to make money off of the patients that they would otherwise get nothing for treating. So, it strives to be a type of apprentice model, but there are too many conflicts of interest for it to succeed. As long as graduate medical education is funded by Medicare, I see so good reform solution.

100% agree! Coming out of basic sciences myself and teaching myself the information I was not taught through UWorld.

[JHG]

I'd go... Maybe online CME then, for PT, physicians, etc.

I'd go too.

[MattJ.D.]

That's happening anyways. Living in Houston I had a front row seat to what happened to our local economy when the price of oil tanked a few years ago. Most of the major oil companies and all of the major oil field service companies cut thousands of jobs. Everyone got dinged - engineers, managers, pipefitters, etc. I actually think companies might be less willing to cut people they had invested their own time and money into educating. I don't know though. I've never been directly involved in that world, but what I do know is that a lot of my clients have been in the oil / oil field services industry for 30+ years and most have the same observation of new hires - they don't know anything useful coming out of school and they are essentially a pain in the ass for about 2 years until the company can train them internally to actually be a useful. So that's my observation. To a degree, some of these companies are having to spend time and money already to educate their engineers. Maybe they could cut down the learning curve by bypassing the traditional university into something more direct.

Another component to this is debt load. Kids want more money than they are worth coming out of college. Part of this, I'm assuming, is that a $50K/year job is not that appealing when you have $100K++ in student loan debt. New hires might be more willing to accept the salaries they are actually worth if they had less debt coming out of school. Perhaps a more efficient private system could tackle this problem. Kids come out of college with less debt and can accept jobs with salaries more in accordance with their experience and companies can actually afford to hire them and keep them. Everybody wins.

Would it actually work in practice? I have no idea

You mean like this shit?

UT petroleum engineering majors discover jobs are now hard to...

Chemjobber: A fair warning to petroleum engineering students?

(A thread on college confidential about it from 2013- a forum aimed at college shit)

'warning' to petroleum engineering students ? College Confidential



university of texas warns against petroleum engineering major - Google Search

[Peter_KSB]

Virginia has your proposed model - called "reading for the bar" and takes 3 years. Not terribly popular VBBE - Law Reader Program - Memorandum.

Washington also has a similar program - Rule 9 internships. I've yet to encounter someone who became a lawyer this way.

[pstein]

I've been advocating this for a while as an alternative to the law school route for lawyers. Basically give (at least) two options to become eligible to sit for the bar exam: (1) the traditional law school route, or (2) a full-time apprenticeship under a member of the bar in good standing for three years.

Option #2 is legal in a few states. If you apprentice under a lawyer for three years, you're able to take the bar. Some states require passing proficiency exams at least once, I think. It's discouraged for a number of reasons, the greatest of which is that a far smaller percent pass after "reading the law."

[Bluefan75]

Ultimately, where we're at is the fault of the parents of the kids who we currently love to blame for societal downfall. It's not millenials; it's their parents. It's not going to be our kids; it's going to be our fault. I plan to raise my boys with work ethic and a never-ending desire to improve oneself. I don't care one bit if they don't go to college.

While parents certainly shoulder some responsibility, don't discount the teachers/education system. Here in Canada at least, you need an undergrad plus a year of teacher's college. You then pursue Master's in order to increase your pay. But with very few exceptions, they are university graduates. The supposedly most influential, the guidance counselors, especially fit that bill. So when that is what they know, that is what is pushed. I know at my high school(and this is 20 years ago), the attitude was if you were going to pursue a trade, it was a lower position in society than if you were a university grad. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Sean Kibler]

It be pretty scary to have to go through a company like that because what if the job gets cut out? You have to redo your "education"?

Perhaps, but ideally not so. University isn't impervious to such issues either.