You bring up an interesting point. I am the father of two daughters, and pay for an expensive private school education for them. I have a wife who is college educated and dropped out of the work force to raise my two kids.

My friends and I joke that we are financing an education that will end in motherhood.

I think along with the negative externality that Posner cites, there are positive externalities that occur from having a well educated mother. Having a good education is like purchasing insurance. If we assume a traditional husband-wife relationship and the husband becomes unable to work, dies, or divorces the woman, the women should be able to get back into the workforce and utilize the skills she acquired in college.

There is a positive externality that is not accounted for when the children are consistently exposed to a well educated mother. She should be a better decision maker and rear a better child.
This should be a future benefit to society.

Posner is correct when he states that tuition is not at a market clearing price. However, even though business and law schools are generally not subsidized, the main of education is. This skews the tuition rate for every school, including graduate schools that have nothing to do with business, law or medicine.

His idea of raising tuition is good, if we get rid of all the subisdies and government intervention throughout the educational food chain.

Is it possible that elite schools' nondiscrimination policies are responding to the fact that there is far less demand for their graduates' services (as distinguished from demand for the social cachet of an elite credential) than their graduating class sizes would imply?
If there were no chromosomal divide, with its ideologically uncomfortable skill/preference distinctions, wouldn't optimum graduating class sizes be lower? I think so. So aren't these policies working well if the underlying agenda is to either maximize the sizes of elite schools' faculties and administrations, or to provide continuing market opportunities for second and third tier programs that sevice the "non-elite"?

Jack Shafer at Slate.com has already debunked this as another unsubstantiated "trend" article. There's been an irritating spate of these from the Style writers.

Regarding Jeff's point above, I don't think anyone doubts that the benefit to the individual (and the individual's family) is greater. Posner specifically mentions reducing marital search costs and marrying a person with a higher expected income.

However, against the benefit to the individual the benefit to society is less by lowering the supply of capable workers in a given profession, and thus increasing the price.

The situation is particularly interesting if we think about public education, where the state is subsidizing all or part of the tuition.

An alternative, or maybe not an alternative but a caveat, to Posner's theory is conditional scholarships rather than higher tuition. If a student finances her own education privately, she should be able to do whatever she wants with that education, including not using it formally. However, scholarships should be reserved for those who are going to pursue a career with the education they are given.

I think the same holds true re: public universities. Admission should be contingent on an agreement that the student will work the degree for a set number of years.

"Admission should be contingent on an agreement that the student will work the degree for a set number of years."

You don't really think this is true, do you? The rebates program makes some sense, if we think that the loss of workers is a significant problem. But what can be gained from a policy that forces people to work in a profession that they have found they dislike and/or have little aptitude for? There is information that you cannot get without having actually practiced in the field -- if that information tells you to do something else, it benefits nobody for you to ignore it.

Just one question, that woman who graduated from Harvard and went on to Yale Law and then the career of mother and attorney, was this a concious veiled reference to Hillary?

People will probably call me archaic and sexist, but there is something to be said for division of labor and specialisation of labor based on gender. It is a biologic-cultural reality even at the "elite schools" and among the "elite classes". Maybe there is something basic and fundamental about it that cannot be overcome.

somewhat related to this topic:

http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2005/08/more_on_labor_m.html

It would be interesting to look at a graph of labor force participation rates for 1) men and 2) women. The graph would report the % of people age 25-64 that are working, 1960-2005. It it were possible to look at it by level or type of education, it might also be interesting.

The graphs for men and women might look a lot different. It might be nice to discuss or explain this a little bit.

Anecdotally, I see lots of working moms today. There are a lot of programs for working moms in corporations. Not making lists of employers that are friendly to woring moms is not good. There are all kinds of things for working moms today that possibly did not exist 30 years ago. Employers are very accomodative to moms (work at home, flex time).

http://www.workingmother.com/mainstory.html

there was an inadvertent typo in my previous posting:

"working" not "woring"

labor force participation rates for men at Professor DeLong's blog:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/07/four_out_of_fiv.html

"However, scholarships should be reserved for those who are going to pursue a career with the education they are given."

So, all scholarships are to be awarded retrospectively? Then, what about liberal arts colleges (though colleges which predominantly make up the "elite" schools)? For instance, is an English or History major who goes on to law school and practices law "pursu[ing] a career with the eduction they are given[?]" What about a Music major? You get the point.

The problem is a practical one. Many students choose a major because they are required to do so. As a graduate of an "elite" liberal arts college, it more than obvious at these schools that academic interests are one thing, entering the work force in a chosen profession quite another. To only subsidize that very, very low percentage of students who enter a field directly using their undergradate degree (or graduate degree, provided, according to your terms, it is sufficiently similar enough to their major), would do a disservice not just to those students individually, but to all liberal arts students who are subscribe to a pedagogy of lifetime learning.

That said, I tend to agree with N.E. Hatfield both in principle and in disclaimer. But that may be more of a cheap way out of this argument because I don't have my own proposal.

Rebates are a cute idea, but if they don't account for more of the externalities they'll just end up skewing the calculus even more. The cost of making the rebates fairer (and so, inevitably, more complicated) could easily swamp their benefits. If you want more women to work despite being married with kids, it'd be easier to just get rid of the "marriage penalty" tax.

BTW, the trackback function on this blog doesn't work. If you're interested, I did a follow up post at http://spitbull.blogspot.com/2005/09/half-time-show.html

Re: R and Matt's comments on my previous comments.

I didn't intend to convey the idea that the student had to work in a profession associated with the degree he or she received. Any job will do. So, a person who got a music degree could go to law school and satisfy the requirement.

Re: scholarships being given retroactively. Don't be snarky. Obviously the scholarship would be given same as always, but the student would have to pay it back if he or she chose not to work, at all, in any field of his or her choice.

Re: R and Matt's comments on my previous comments.

I didn't intend to convey the idea that the student had to work in a profession associated with the degree he or she received. Any job will do. So, a person who got a music degree could go to law school and satisfy the requirement.

Re: scholarships being given retroactively. Don't be snarky. Obviously the scholarship would be given same as always, but the student would have to pay it back if he or she chose not to work, at all, in any field of his or her choice.

And, as a side note, my scholarship proposal is not completely unheard of. The Golden Apple Scholarship currently follows a similar paradigm.

Although I am not really that well versed on the details, students get a scholarship in return for agreeing to teach in the inner city.

I think Judge Posner misses (or intentionally avoids) the true point of the NYT article: what this trend means for feminism. That's a much more interesting question than whether ivy league schools need to adjust their tuition a bit to compensate for "lost" donations (as if they were "owed" those donations in the first place, when the professional schools charge students $30k/year and then treat them with all the respect given lab rats, until it comes time for "donation" season).

I am not an expert on feminist theory, but I think the argument goes something like this. The pioneers of the women's lib movement in the 60s and 70s opened doors for women that were unprecedented and gave them the opportunity to, finally, become part of the power structure of America, both in the corporate world and in goverment. Those positions of power are reserved, largely, for graduates of the elite institutions. Those pioneering women who opened the door for all women feel, understandably, that women with such opportunities have a responsibility to exercise their potential. By giving up those opportunities to stay home and raise a family, the argument goes, they are doing something profoundly destructive -- they are setting back the cause of women's rights, undermining the gains made by those women who sacrificed their own personal lives to even the playing field.

I understand the feminist backlash at today's generation, which often takes for granted the gains that have been made over the past 30 or 40 years. But I think that, as an argument, the backlash is ultimately unconvincing. Conquering discrimination was, and continues to be, an important goal. However, no individual "owes" his or her life to a cause. A Harvard Law grad who wants a personal life has every right to that life, even if it means that he or she might not fulfill their professional "potential." There are many lawyers who could be, perhaps, chief justice of the supreme court if they dedicated every waking moment to the law. But many of them want to go home at a reasonable hour and spend some time with their kids. There is nothing wrong with that. Similarly, a Harvard Law grad has the potential to make millions at a large law firm, but he or she might sacrifice some of that money for a job that offers more intersting work, better hours, or both. That is a deeply personal decision, and it is not society's business, or that of his alma mater, what he decides.

A broader point here is that the professional world has become, in many ways, anti-family. Lawyers and doctors, especially, are expected to work absurd hours and are paid, in return, absurd amounts of money. But this leaves many of them unsatisfied on a personal level. It also destroys marriages and creates entire generations of kids raised by nannies. I am not surprised that many bright, successful people are not satisfied with this life. Perhaps the professions need to reform themselves to become more accommodating to families. After all, families are the backbone of our socieity. Rather than lash out at women (or men) who take time off to raise their kids, academics -- feminists and otherwise -- should take a long, hard look at what the legal profession has become. They might not like what they see.

Posner signs onto the agenda of pursuing the objective to "open up places [at elite professional schools] to applicants who will use their professional education more productively; they are the more deserving applicants."

There is little to quibble with here. Law schools already subsidize public interest work and the legal profession incentivizes pro bono work. If the legal profession and legal academia prioritize productivity, because lawyers do good things and the more highly qualified the lawyer, the better s/he is at doing good things, then we should promote our best lawyers, whether male or female, to do good things. I see nothing wrong with mandating that entrants to law schools commit to performing pro bono work or to working for a minimal number of years, 5, 8, whatever, so long as it isn't, say, 15. This will also work to reduce the quantity of lawyers, which is always a good thing.

I am interested in the same concepts you raise. Originally I thought about three fundamental ways we evaluate a process. The first is apparent and primarily legal, that of logic. The second way, follows from the first, which is rational. The world of economics is more rational than logical. The third way I thought about for a long time, and that is emotional. The emotional context of a decision interacts differently.

But recently, I realized a fourth way to think. This way explains the success of many decisions that are counter intuitive.

Consider accepting an applicant to professional school.

Logically, the best person should be accepted. There is a standard for review, based upon various policies and recently confirmed by the Supreme Court in the Michigan decision.

Rationally, a school should Pareto optimize its applicant pool by choosing a portfolio of people that they hope would be successful. Obviously, you cannot choose all people.

Emotionally, a school should do what is in its best interest of the decision makers at the time, which usually focuses on the interests of the faculty making the selection process.

But in terms of relationships, the school should focus on maximizing the size of the endowment and prestige. Beyond any particular person or interest, the school will go on.

This explains why schools must be flexible with their policies. Harvard is starting to learn that it is hard to challenge the US Military and still get your valuable grant money. Yale has been complaining about a whole variety of issues related to the faculty, but quite frankly I found the student culture quite uncompelling when I visited my brother.

At Stanford, I thought the selection process was quite fair. There were many women in the class.

Now I have to say one thing, that will surprise everyone. At Wharton, the women are down right beautiful. Wharton by far has the best looking women of any elite graduate school. If you would say this at Yale, they would call you sexist but at Wharton, they would call you honest.

I have to give credit to the selection committee at Wharton for accepting so many beautiful, intelligent, and friendly women.

I think this seems to follow the rule Pareto set forward as the 80/20 rule. It seems quite remarkable that Wharton has 80% of the beautiful women that attend elite business schools in this country. The other 20% are evenly distributed.

If you don't believe me, visit the school.

"the legal profession incentivizes pro bono work."

Not the legal profession I work in. Some law firms speak well of it, provided that you meet your regular billable requirements, and that's about as good as it gets.

"I see nothing wrong with mandating that entrants to law schools commit to performing pro bono work or to working for a minimal number of years, 5, 8, whatever, so long as it isn't, say, 15."

Why not 15, if 8? Since you think that the state is better equipped to determine how a person should devote his or her own labor for 8 year, why not 15, 20, 30 years?

And how would it improve the quality of legal service to force people to work in the profession who do not want to? Do you expect people who are forced to perform a job to work very hard at it?

Finally, how would it reduce the number of lawyers? Do you think it would deter people from entering law school? The number of people it deters would be less than the amount of people who are forced to remain in the profession, I would guess.

As suspected, Winfield, it turns out that you are not the free market proponent you pretend to be.

I disagree with Judge Posner's premise that there is a "labor market distortion" in the number of law school graduates who do not spend full careers as practicing attorneys. This assumes that there is an unmet demand for lawyers, when I suspect that the opposite is true. In fact, I would argue that this "trend," to the extent supported by the evidence, is a positive one:

1. Law schools attract way more people than the number of lawyers who are needed to contribute to the common good. This is for a number of reasons, familiar to anyone who has spent time with law students or recent law school graduates - people go to law school for the prestige or not having a better idea of what to do, and they wind up getting tracked into the profession by a combination of debt, non-monetary sunk costs, and peer pressure.

2. A surplus of lawyers is a bad thing, particularly because unlike other businesses, lawyers have a number of ways to enlist the coercive machinery of government to enable them to make a living without their being much in the way of independent demand for their services. In particular, the number of lawyers is a primary driver of the number of lawsuits, especially class action and/or contingency fee lawsuits where no client needs to be persuaded to pay (except as a proportion of what, in a marginal case, may be seen as a windfall recovery) for the lawyer's services.

3. How to fix the imbalance between an excess supply of lawyers and the market's relative inability to discourage prospective law students from entering an overcrowded field? Fortunately, the solution presents itself: if some number of spots in law schools are being taken by women who will have short or part-time legal careers, instead of men who will practice full time, the surplus is partly corrected.

What about the idea that, if graduate schools cease to ration their spots based on ability but instead charge what the market will bear, then the people going to law schools and business schools will be the slow-witted offspring of rich parents, and the "external benefits" of which you speak will not be captured.

I suppose the market might be able to correct this by making more loans available, but someone of modest means and superlative ability would probably hesitate to go $1M in debt just for a shot at a decent law or business career after 3 years of school.

I think we've talked about college, professional school and elite professional school without making the proper distinctions. I've done it too above.

With regard to elite professional school, I think all those spots should go to people who want to practice (or teach). Those graduates have the best training and should use it. Moreover, they take the place of someone who want to be practicing.

Regarding the force labor problem above, if we limit the discussion to elite professional school, I think the problem diminishes. If a student has the slighest inclining that they don't want to practice law, then they shouldn't except the invitation to study

(sorry for the cut off)

Anyone who wants to study a profession but not practice can go to a less-competitive school, and not worry about being forced to do a job they don't like.

"If a student has the slighest inclining that they don't want to practice law, then they shouldn't except the invitation to study."

This is silly. Most incoming professional students have no way of knowing whether they will enjoy, or be any good at, practicing the profession they are planning to study. But they might turn out to be very good at something else.

"Anyone who wants to study a profession but not practice can go to a less-competitive school, and not worry about being forced to do a job they don't like."

So you would only designate, say, the top five schools for a forced labor requirement. Isn't your aim more easily acheived by in the current system, where students from those less competitive schools can replace the students in the more competitive schools who drop out of the work-place?

We (you) have made up a problem here, and then composed inane solutions for the non-existent problem. There is no shortage of professionals in this country. To the extent that there is a shortage of medical doctors, it is due to the fact that there are fewer medical schools than other professional schools, which is in turn due to the fact that medical schools require more capital expenditure.

Schooling is only part of the equation in any profession, and the market bears out that truth.

I imagine that Posner's proposed policy might result in wage distortions for elite college grads, perhaps in turn creating a slight disincentive to attend a top school - even for those candidates who wish to pursue a lucrative career.

R.--

I don't really think it's that big of a problem, either. It's an interesting thought experiment. I certainly didn't make it up, as you say in your post.

The question is not, at least to me, is the current system working. It is. Should we all just post comments which say "Current system is good." That's not really very interesting. At the very least, I'd like a post on why the current system is better than any of my, or anyone else's, inane solutions.

The interesting question to me is how can we get the best education to people who most want to practice in a given profession. It's not about just correcting for shortages, but raising the quality of the profession overall. Yes, of course, education is only part of the professional equation, but it's still important.

Posner suggested raising the barriers to entry through higher tuition. I suggested (above) making scholarship money contingent on practicing a certain number of years or that money has to be paid back, and later added that it makes the most sense in the elite professional school context.

Tom -- fair enough. the tone of my most recent post was unreasonable and you did not make up this issue, although I think the comments have expanded it to "all professionals" whereas Posner presented it as a gender issue.

But all of my objections stand. I don't think there is much to be gained from your proposals. To the extent that this is an interesting problem, it is interesting because of the gender implications. The professional setting seems like one particularly good example where a free market works -- discounting the initial problem of access into the market. There isn't any labor shortage. If someone from one of the top schools leaves the market, there is an equally qualified candidate from another school to take his or her place. If the replacement actually enjoy the profession, that person is probably more qualified, and at that point in the career, where he or she went to professional school is of secondary importance.

I'm not sure what to say about the issue as Posner presented it. On the one hand, it would be a real problem if the number of women entering top professional schools and then leaving the profession created some sort of market shortage, but it hasn't. If the rate of departure from the profession were higher at the top schools than at other schools, it might eventually create a levelling effect, whereby the lesser schools' endowments slowly crept up to the level of the top schools'. But that isn't likely to happen -- the stratifications in endowments has only increased in recent years.

It wouldn't do for a school to limit the number of female slots up front to try to counter this issue, or to try to figure out which applicants will leave the profession early to run families. A school could try to gain a slight advantage through the policy that Posner suggests -- it might increase its endowment over time. But it could also create a big public relations backlash if the effect was to keep women out of the classes -- which seems to be the desired effect.

So I guess, yes, I don't see much wrong with the current system, and I don't think there's much valuable to say in this thread.

Not to interrupt all this great experimental thinking about innovative ways to discourage elite women from having children (by penalizing them for spending time with them) but a technical sidenote: I think the average sex ratio of undergraduates at elite institutions is closer to 60-40 percent female, rather than the 50-50 ratio Posner suggests. (That is, if I’m correctly recalling the research we did in examining sex ratios as an explanation for courtship behavior, or lack thereof, on college campuses--subsequently published as “Hanging Out Hooking Up Looking for Mr Right” (NY: Institute for American Values)). The only exceptions to female-dominated campuses were certain elite technical and math schools (MIT, Cal Tech etc) and for reasons that perhaps Richard Posner can explain, the University of Chicago.

Dear Dick,
I suggested the tuition rebate plan in my book proposal, "Housewives from Harvard," three years ago and on Sixty Minutes last fall (the latter earning me a coveted #77 on Bernard Goldberg's screwup list). The idea occurred to me then, because, when I looked into the lives of the women who announced their weddings in the selective Styles section of the New York Times in 1996, I found them all at home with their babies, advanced degreees and all, and I see no reason that society should subsidize this delusional and unproductive variant of finishing school. Now I read in your blog that professional education is not subsidized. Surely that cannot be right. Why do they keep hounding me for donations? Are all the donations to, say, the University of Chicago Law School not tax deductible? And do the rest of us taxpayers not therefore make up the difference in the cost of running the government caused by the diversion of money from the fisc into the coffers of the law school in order to subsidize legal education there?
And surely tuition doesn't cover the cost of legal education at state schools, does it?
btw, readers, lose the community service move. These women only work at their childrens' schools. Darwin lives.

Not to sound like a broken record, but you are all completely missing the point of the NYT article. Nothing in the article suggested that professional schools are suffering financially from the fact that some female graduates choose to take a few years off to spend time with their kids. The article does not suggest that schools are in danger of losing needed funds, or that the stay-at-home grads stop contributing, or that schools would consider admitting fewer women (or charging them higher tuition) to compensate.

Rather, the article is concerned that the "best and brightest" women, by choice, are not advancing as far in their careers as perhaps they could, and it asks what this trend means, from a feminist perspective.

Specifically, the article states that women are concluding that it is "unrealistic" to have both a career and a family, at least while the children are young. To me, this raises the issue of whether the legal profession should better accommodate families with more flexible hours and expectations, perhaps in exchange for lower pay. Many corporations and government agencies have made it possible for parents (men and women) to have both a career and a family. In fact, the traditional corporate icon was the "family man." Why, now, do law firms in particular demand such sacrifice from employees that they must choose between work and a personal life? This issue should be in the forefront, not some absurd economic calculation about how many women professional schools "should" admit.

I do not care about the law schools one way or the other. But I do not want my tax dollars going to pay for Hurricane Katrina, because some millionaire gave money to the U of C Law School to turn out these princesses and is deducting it. As far as I'm concerned that's no different than the wasteful scandals at the United Way or any other tax subsidized charity.
If the society continues to subsidize these girls' delusion that they are equal to men because they spend three years in torts class and all before they return to the June Cleaver role, they will never be motivated to stay and fight for the changes you describe.
Anyway, if you read the article closely, you see it's not about big bad law firms with killer hours. They say almost nothing about knowing they cannot keep a career on track with careful nurturing for a few years, and most of the firms I know have provisions for such arrangements already. They are talking about staying home until the two or three kids are in school or even gone to college. I wasn't the best student at the law school, but I can add, and that is a minimum of eight or nine years out of the work place. There is nothing firms can do that will keep these women, who have a lethal combination of impenetrable narcissism, perfect madness mothering, and husbands for whom they are a Darwinian advantage, at work.

I'd like to know what everyone thinks about the gender gap in top coporate jobs viz. this discussion.

At Harvard Law School, I was a minority: I belonged to the "public interest" community--students who are interested in taking jobs in the non-profit sector rather than the big firms where most of their classmates end up. There were very few men in this community. Women seem much more likely than men to pursue work in the public interest, whether it be because they are more compassionate or because the non-profit sector is more family friendly. Regardless, we need more ivy-league educated lawyers to dedicate themselves to public service. If the men are more likely to take the corporate jobs, where supply surely exceeds demand, and the women are more likely to take the public interest jobs, where demand likely exceeds supply, shouldn't that count for something?

I don't think that the ratio incoming class/applications less than one implies that demand exceeds supply. If I date two or more girls at the same time doesn't mean there are more girls than guys in the dating market or that I am in great demand. Everybody dates as many people as possible before marrying. And everybody applies to several places before choosing a school.

And, anyone who wants to study medicine law or management can do it, whether or not they can get a spot on Harvard that's another question.

I think what's happening to girls is that they are realizing that the corporate career path is not that great: outsourcing, less job security, smaller salaries per hour, having to pay huge educational debts, mortgages and so on.

They get a much better quality of life for a lot less work if they marry a rich guy or at least someone who makes 300K plus. Divorce laws are quite biased in the wife's favor, so girls get more from marriage than guys. There's no point in becoming corporate slaves if they have another much better option.

Whether or not they can find a rich guy, that's another issue.

These days the payoff of a professional degree is becoming more and more like a lottery ticket, if you don't become a CEO, law firm partner, MD at an investment bank or a highly paid surgeon, then you will likely live paycheck to paycheck the rest of your life. In any case you will have little personal or family time when you enter such careers.

So increasing tuition to replace girls with highly paid guys will not work, because the supply of highly paid jobs is determined outside the educational system and it will not increase; it is decreasing, instead. So smart girls will be replaced by mediocre guys who might become unemployed or working outside their fields anyway. Higher tuitions will not increase efficiency, it will just redistribute income from alumni to universities.

Thinking in general equilibrium terms is becoming out of fashion, unfortunately.

All of this seems to be a twist on the value of public education vs. a private education or the Commons vs. the Lords Spiritual& Temporal. A quick test, who said this, "You can send them to the Ivy League or you can send them to the Service Acadamies, but the fact still remains, a muttonhead is a muttonhead." ;)

I believe some of these comments were made by other posters in some form or another, but I'd like to raise them again: raising tuitions and offering rebates for a "productive" legal career would have the primary effect of discouraging lower- and middle-class applicants from becoming lawyers. The societal effects of that trend are far more scary than any "danger" to law schools posed by alleged decreases in donations.

First, last I checked, none of the elite law schools is hurting in the donations department.

Second, increasing the already astonishing amount of debt required for most of us (myself included) to become a practicing lawyer will further drive the profession toward being populated by those with great family wealth - i.e. those with right-leaning political and social sensibilities.

Third, it's unclear to me that any change in the overall productivity of lawyers as a result of decreased participation by women is even demonstrable. Look at the revenues of major law firms. Look at profits per partner. Look at trends in billable hours. Look at the overall amount of legal work generated and billed in recent years. How can anyone claim that productivity is down, when it appears to be skyrocketing on all fronts?

Fourth, several of Judge Posner's general assumptions are troubling: that lawyers of any stripe (even the "innovative") actually produce net benefits to society in excess of their pay, that the productivity of a lawyer (or anyone) is measured primarily in revenues they generate or income they produce for themselves, that a "working career" as a lawyer somehow indicates an ability to repay law school debt (even before his increase)... And what of all the transaction costs imposed by lawyers on the economy? Has anyone done this calculation: the risks offset by lawyering in corporate transactions versus the amount of fees generated by that lawyering? What is the cost of "overlawyering"?

"But I do not want my tax dollars going to pay for Hurricane Katrina, because some millionaire gave money to the U of C Law School to turn out these princesses and is deducting it."

Can anyone tell me what this sentence means?

Dear Judge Posner,

In calculating the benefits and costs of your prosposal, I believe that you did not calculate the political and emotional outrage that such a proposal would provoke from many people, especially women. This is not to say that your proposal is mean spirited or sexist. However, given that the proposal will impact the attendence rates of women much more than it will impact the rates of men, many people will view the proposal as "turning back the clock" on women's rights.

Given our country's history of great prejudice against women, I believe that one has to be sensitive to such a reaction. Moreover, because women are socialized to rear children and men are socialized to be breadwinners, it is slighlty troublesome that under your proposal women would be socialized out of an opportunity to attend elite institutions. Of course, women can choose to defy social norms, but this is not easy to do.

In short, what is gained by your proposal is most likely offset by the harm it would do to gender relations.

cheers,

Neerav Kingsland

Using the term "maximum possible value" for your education is a bit too vague - certainly too vague to be used as a basis for radical changes in the education system.

Next, even women who leave the workplace after a few years can establish a network of professional connections. Those professional connections can be of great value to her children, perhaps greater then any designer jean degree the children may one day earn.

She then ships her child to an elite school where her connections help another generation get connected to a large network. Adding value to the school and her family.

How do you calculate the value of these networks for the family unit? The revealed preference is that they must have great value.

The following issues exist in Judge Posner's article.


Measuring demand versus supply by examining applications versus acceptances is faulty and misperceives the application process. Because of the subjectivity of the application process, smart applicants to elite law schools apply to multiple law schools (anecdotally, approximately 4-6, and as many as 15). There is also a vanity-oriented approach to applying to schools to which an applicant is not at all qualified on the "off chance" that he or she may get in anyway, which improperly inflates the applicant pool. Acceptance rates -- if properly adjusted for the multiplicity of applications and the demonstrably unqualified applicants -- may not reflect any "excess" demand, making an increase in price an improper solution to a nonexistent problem.


Also, measuring a "productive" career as being one that remains within the confines of the profession of the school at which the applicant studied ignores two important factors. First, one should consider the fluidity with which many graduate degrees, particularly law degrees, may be used for other endeavors that are nonetheless economically productive, sometimes at a compensation rate higher than that of a lawyer at a law firm (i.e., an investment banker), sometimes at a lower rate (i.e., an unsuccessful screenwriter of legally-oriented television shows). Those graduates still work, but they are not in the "profession" and are therefore deemed less "productive" and unworthy. Second, even those legal positions that are a drain on the economy, being funded by taxpayer resources (say, being an employee of the federal government as a member of the appellate judiciary) may be socially productive in an important and meaningful way despite being less highly compensated than the similar vintage of a private law firm attorney. Measuring productivity as the amount of money earned in the private practice of law ignores the variations on the economically productive uses of a law degree and the economically unproductive -- but unquestionably necessary -- uses of a law degree within the practice of law. This this estimate appears impractical. From a results perspective, using Judge Posner's estimate of productivity to set the price of legal study would further widen the holes in important parts of the profession from elite schools (those being pro bono and government service, despite the financial aid options already available) and shift the composition of the law school classes not from a mix of genders to more men but from a mix of economic backgrounds to more wealthy people. The gender mix may be muted, but it would still be disproportionate from Judge Posner's perspective for all of the reasons women currently apply to law school.


The idea that law schools are not contributing their maximum economic productivity to the legal profession by providing a number of women who will drop out demonstrates a lack of practical familiarity with the economic model of the large law firms that absorb the overwhelming majority of the graduates of the elite law schools, male and female. Large law firms operate on one important principle -- leverage. Partners are few, associates are many, and this "pyramid" structure depends on attrition over the years to perpetuate itself. To state the obvious, there are fewer women at the partner ranks of the "AmLaw 100" law firms than there are at the associate ranks, by a significant percentage. As each class progresses towards partnership, the firm depends on more and more associates choosing other paths -- government service, pro bono (once the law school loans are paid off), smaller, so-called "lifestyle" firms, career options outside of the law and, yes, motherhood. To provide the large law firms with a large number of employees who will work their tails off while they are untethered by family commitments, never seek accommodations for their families once they veer onto the "mommy track" (unlike the men who abandon young associates to tuck in their kids and then "work from home"), and, most importantly, never threaten a try for the partnership is an economic boon on which the large law firms have come to depend, especially after the merger mania in the late 90s and the jump in 1999 to the $125K standard-NY-firm starting salary, both of which further pushed the firms to leverage their teeming hordes of associates. Admitting more men in the long term would result in more unemployed 8th year associate men as the partnerships would continue to be unable to assimilate those "surplus" associates -- who need to work to provide the sole or dominant income for their families -- into the ranks of the partnerships. The admission of women in large number to law schools satisfies the demand for many entry-level associates while allowing for their attrition and the market to tighten in symmetry with the pyramid structure of the large law firm economic model.


Lastly, the rebate idea is simply silly. I enjoyed my experience at U of C, but my intention of giving any donation to the law school is determined less by my earning power and potential and more by my frustration with its faculty.

This is, by far, the worst idea posted on this blog so far. All this would do is discourage less risk averse students from attending college. The motivation is also deeply troubling: this is social engineering with market mechanisms.

Btw: is there any evidence for an undersupply of well-educated men in the labor market? Simply pointing to the high demand for education isn't the same.

I find it very interesing that Posner never seems to question why these elite women were dropping out of the workforce in the first place. It is often because these women overestimated how much the professional world had evolved since women entered the workforce en mass (which is sad to say not that much). Could the skills and talents of 50% of some graduate school classes be so worthless that we are not all debating how we can keep these valuable women in the workforce instead of throwing up our hands in the matter?
The loss of these women from these professions is exactly that -a loss. Could Poser really be so stupid as to not realize that some of these women are dropping out because they find most professions are still absolutely incompatible with and some outright hostile to employees who are also raising young children? Such attitudes are mostly due to inflexible work arrangements, and a professional culture that still treats child rearing as some sort of silent hobby that one should never actually discuss or need to work around.
Even though today's generation of men helps with child rearing more than previous generations, it is still only a minimal amount. Whether a woman is a professional or not, in the year 2005 she still does 90% of the child care for most individual families. How about actually treating employees who also happen to be mothers (or parents) by taking this into consideration in a sincere way?
After so many years of struggling, or fighting with the lack of adequate, quality child care many women simply throw in the towel. A better solution would be to examine how we could re-invent the workplace to keep these high achieving women in it. What additional incentives could we offer (like more on-site child care)?
Could the "family-friendly" policies that some firms already offer be utilized more effectively without fear of retribution or loss or advancement opportunity? Could someone really take a few years off to raise a young child to pre-school age and then return? Most western industrialized countries have far more extensive family/work balance programs and generous child care arrangements that the pathetic assortment in the U.S.
By re-examine the working world entirely and make it more compatible for members of both genders who want to work and utilize the skills they worked so hard to obtain in their professional education and yet maintain a
part-time or flexible arrangement. There is absolutely no reason why most professions cannot reconfigure themselves along this line- it is only out of an outdated stubborn (male) tradition that they do not. To suggest that new models of work for most professions cannot be implemented displays a lack of rigorous intellect and imagination (and I would argue that Mr. Posner lacks both). Most women want what men have always had - rewarding professional work and a family life and the current work enviornment have all been created with only a male (and one without child care oblications)in mind. To say that these women are "choosing" to waste their professional education is false and insulting. The professional world hasn't figured out how to re-structure itself to fit this new work paradim for all working parents. Posner should talk to some of the Men of Generation X and Y. Many of them feel more pressure and desire to deviate from the traditional career models too, and both genders could benefit tremendously from professions that help them accommodate family obligations. Instead of discouraging applicants to eilite schools who do not work full time with higher tuition -Why not make it easier for both genders to work part-time without having that be career suicide? Posner's so-called "solutions" are nothing more than a reward for the very ineffective and outdated labor model that is the main cause for women dropping out of the work force in the first place - not biologic destiny. So nice try Posner - now go back to the drawing board.

while successful lawyers and businessmen command high incomes, those incomes often fall short of the contribution to economic welfare that such professionals make. This is clearest when the lawyer or businessman is an innovator, because producers of intellectual property are rarely able to appropriate the entire social gain from their production. Yet even noninnovative lawyers and businessmen, if successful--perhaps by virtue of the education they received at a top-flight professional school--do not capture their full social product in their income,

But the whole argument rests on the presumption that the professional education is the source of this positive externality, that the individual would not have produced this gain without the professional education. I find that dubious.

An intelligent, hard-working, and creative individual may well make these sorts of contributions as a lawyer, but might also make equivalent contributions as an engineer or businessman. In other words, it may well be the case that the professional education is not really the basis for the contribution, and therefore none of this value should be credited to it.

I am unwilling to accept the underlying assumption without any support whatsoever.

"An addendum to my prior post -- I utterly, and I do mean UTTERLY, reject the notion that women, as a class are victims, and need to be treated differentially."

How nice that you are willing to extend the personal experience of not needing to be treated differently over 3 Billion of your fellow humans. Would you care to discuss the class, race, and cultural entitlements that contributed to your success in life? Perhaps you believe you simply worked hard.

None of you get to tell any woman, (or man for that matter) what they can or cannot do with their education. There are fundamental liberty interests at stake. Unless you are a loan officer at Sallie Mae you do not have a legally recognizable interest in career productivity.

Back when the topic was Affirmative Action the concern about higher education was all "meritocracy" and "standardized tests." (Which has the effect of disadvantaging many African Americans in admissions.) Now that the topic is gender, the same people are worried about the use and productivity to which the degrees are put. (Which, as a test, would have the effect of disadvantaging many Women in admissions.)

I declare the subtext of both concerns to be a bias/preference towards white males in elite universities.

Do nothing.

There are already too many lawyers.
Too many of every profession.

We need more women in Universities.

Yours

MONICA: The professional world hasn't figured out how to re-structure itself to fit this new work paradim for all working parents.

First of all, 'paradim' is not a word. The word is "paradigm." Secondly, the professional world always adapts to social paradigm shifts. It does so cautiously and with the preservation of its own interests in mind. Changes have set in; and those changes have permitted 'working parents' to commit to even more onerous schedules! Thirdly, I would note here that "all working parents" do not have an inalienable right to a professional job. We do not live in a Marxist utopia. Good thing! I like my freedom of speech and my individualized iPod. Lastly, it is a sad presumption of many ideological movements that their impact on the world will be positive in precisely the way intended. Feminism aimed to improve the lot of women, and succeeded in a great many ways. Unfortunately, by granting women equal access to the workplace, feminism also granted women equal access to work 18 hour days slaving away for The Man! The real question is why feminists ever thought slaving all day at a corporate prison would be a victory for liberty and freedom! To continue on that point, I certainly like my profession, but many people would hate it. Why are you assuming, Monica, that most American women want to be professionals their entire lives? The entire reason Posner posted his post is that studies indicate the opposite: American women with advanced degrees from elite universities, in significant numbers, are working for a few years at highly prized professional occupations and then opting out of their careers to raise children in a traditional manner. The question is not one of equal access to universities or to the workplace (which is implicitly extant if women can make such choices); the question properly framed is whether this behavior benefits society at-large.

No one (sane) is presuming that disincentivizing women who plan to work for less than 5 years in their chosen profession would obstruct other women from taking their places. Indeed, there would be no problem if all the qualified women at elite universities who planned to work less than 5 years were replaced with qualified women who planned to work more than 8 years after graduation. Posner's argument in no way promotes the exclusive interests of white males. To read it as such is to succumb to irrationality and bias.

If the men are more likely to take the corporate jobs, where supply surely exceeds demand, and the women are more likely to take the public interest jobs, where demand likely exceeds supply, shouldn't that count for something?

It does. Public interest lawyers pay less for school. Their loans are reduced. And saying you want to do public interest makes it easier to get into law school. You can also get a stipend for public interest summer jobs.

Here's the thing. Women who go to law school and quit being lawyers after a mere few years get corporate jobs, because that's how they finance their super-early retirement and attract a super-rich mate to finance their child-raising. So even women are rejcting public interest in mass numbers. That percentage of public interest lawyers is majority female perhaps says something about ideology. I'm sure that the percentage of conservative law professors who represent public interest groups in amicus briefs to the federal courts is overwhelmingly male. But, those guys aren't poor, and they weren't hanging out at the Rape Crisis Center in law school.

I have not read all the comments, so forgive me if this has been addressed.

If we accept that there exists a market for diversity in corporatations which demands women and minorities, can we expect that a reduced supply of women will drive up the wage of the reamaining women. Of course, the impact of substitutes (males) will create an upper bound on the wage (apart from the marginal revenue product of labor).

Therefore, can we say that the propensity for women to exit the labor market creates a positive wgae benefit for those that remain in the market? Can we furhter state that this acounts for some of the convergence between male and female salaries?

J Williams "because that's how they finance their super-early retirement and attract a super-rich mate to finance their child-raising."

Is that really the level at which we are viewing the women alluded to in the article?

Posner: "raise tuition to all students but couple the raise with a program of rebates for graduates who work full time...The real significance of the plan would be the higher tuition, which would discourage applicants who were not planning to have full working careers"

(a) How is this not covered by college loan programs? If you don't work and can't pay off your loans, your loans will pile up with interest, giving a pretty strong incentive to work. If you don't work and *can* pay off your loans (or didn't need to take loans) then you probably are beyond the point where you'll be taking token penalties into consideration.

(b) If we are concerned about a "finishing school" model taking over at elite professional schools, where women stalk rich, or soon-to-be rich, men to "to finance their child-raising" shouldn't we lower tuition radically? This will flood the school with applicates who are qualified but discouraged from applying because of entry cost, and the presumption that the class entering will be moneyed, like it unfortunately is, will go out the window.

(c) The way this system will be implimented will be very difficult to manage. If the lowest performer in a law school class can't find a job should he be penalized under the "not working" clauses? What about the 50% student in a bad job market? What about the 90% who decides to just do wills and mortgages privately for his friends? The alumni office will turn into an government unemployment office - checking in on how many job interviews have taken place.

"And saying you want to do public interest makes it easier to get into law school."

No it doesn't.

"Women who go to law school and quit being lawyers after a mere few years get corporate jobs."

Many of them do. Many of them do not. Since more women enter public interest jobs than men, this statement is at best misleading.

"So even women are rejcting public interest in mass numbers."

For the reasons stated above, this is also misleading, at best.

"That percentage of public interest lawyers is majority female perhaps says something about ideology."

Hmmm. What do you think it says about idealogy, exactly? Aside from refuting most of what you said earlier in your own post, I don't see what this says, in particular, at all.

"But, those guys aren't poor, and they weren't hanging out at the Rape Crisis Center in law school."

Is this an attempt at humor? What do you think it says about "ideology?"

DEAR Jack Sprat (Wow! you can use spell-check - I missed a word in my post- so what? I suppose that makes you superior! Wow- I'm impressed!). Seriously Jack: regarding your comment on my post, you are correct in asserting that changes have set in. I would argue that those changes simply have not sunk in deep enough and it will take more time for them to do so. What is concerning to me about Posner's proposals is that they don't take that into consideration.
His proposals seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater (literally). If society does not address the difficulty of women being able to balance a professional career with the raising of children, then one consequence for our society is that many women who do want children (and that will still be the majority of women) will drop out of their professions entirely - OR - many women will continue to forgo child-bearing alltogether because they find the risk to their careers too great.
This is already happening on a massive scale in other countries particularly Europe with some populations dipping well below replacement level and this has huge consequences to all. That isn't beneficial to society in the long term. Some how there must be a better way. The point I was trying to make is that the workplace as a whole is still in flux and currently woefully inadequate with regards to adjusting to the needs of parents(and in particular to mothers). Raising a child is not raising a puppy- your German shephard will not grow up to pay for your Social Security or become the next productive citizen or modern professional. So, it is certianly not in the interest of society to continue down the path of ignoring the needs of all its employees (particularly half of its employees or half of the country's population) in balancing work/family/life issues. Even child-free employees want more of a work/life balance and could benefit from such policies. This is a higher priority in most other industrialized nations. Posner neglects examining a very important part of this story and over-simplifies it. It is not all women who are dropping out of the workforce - it is specifically some
high-achieving mothers of young children who are leaving the professional world (incidentally not for their entire working lives) because they are too often saddled with the entire weight of responsibility for raising those children in conjunction with an inflexible workplace. I don't assume for one moment that there aren't women who are leaving because they find working at home as a stay-at home parent to be satisfying- of course some are. And incidentally, maybe men shouldn't be "slaving away 18 hours a day" at their corporate prisons either. Maybe everyone can envision a working enviornment that is more palpable to family life for men and women.
Many women would rather be able to keep one foot in the working world via part-time or flexible options and one foot in the home - to achieve that essential balance of one's life skills that men have always taken for granted.

In response to: "The professional schools worry about this phenomenon because the lower the aggregate lifetime incomes of their graduates, the lower the level of alumni donations the schools can expect to receive."

Is there any good reason to believe that the relevant measure in determining likely donations should be students' aggregate *personal* lifetime incomes, given that they may share in family income with spouses? Female students who end up leaving the working world to raise children commonly have husbands, and those husbands typicall contribute to their family income.

And should we suppose that the average female students' expected aggregate share in and control over a lifetime family income is less than male students'? Perhaps female students in fact do even better than male students in terms of the money they end up having available to donate to alma mater by tending to marry men who earn still more money than their average male classmates.

If so, and assuming female alums may not donate in strict proportion to their personal income but rather in proportion to their family incomes, it could be that donations could be maximized by admitting more female students, rather than more male students.

In addition, even if this is only close to true, each female student displaced to make a place for a less gifted male who is likely to have a longer career will probably bring down the male donation average. So, from a purely donation-maximizing point of view, the female student's donation potential should not be compared with her average male classmate's donation potential, but with the donation potential of the average male who would take her place.

Finally, it may be that average male and female students alike enjoy the presence of the opposite sex and the romantic opportunty this presents sufficiently that a student body at close to 1:1 male/female ratio improves future donations overall. One could easily imagine a married couple who met in school being unusually generous donors. If so, the creation of such couples may represent a windfall that schools might try to encourage.

It seems to me far from clear how this would actually work out, and I see no reason to suppose that the current scheme does or doesn't actually maximize donations.

"No one (sane) is presuming that disincentivizing women who plan to work for less than 5 years in their chosen profession would obstruct other women from taking their places. Indeed, there would be no problem if all the qualified women at elite universities who planned to work less than 5 years were replaced with qualified women who planned to work more than 8 years after graduation. Posner's argument in no way promotes the exclusive interests of white males. To read it as such is to succumb to irrationality and bias."

I think it necessarily follow that fewer women will attend given the above hypothetical criteria. There are only so many women with sufficient credentials who want to work more than 8 years. Thus, limiting admission to these women results in fewer qualified applicants, and therefore fewer women in each class. Though there may be equal numbers of males and females in the next tier of applicants (once u elminate the highly qualfied women who are unlikely to work long), there is a cascade effect. There would likely be more qualified males in each tier of applicants that are willing to work more than 8 years, even if there are equal numbers of male and female qualifed applicants. Barring some compensatory affirmative action, this kind of criteria would lead to fewer women in the professional schools.

PALOOKA: There are only so many women with sufficient credentials who want to work more than 8 years.

Who says that number is prohibitively small? You have no idea whether there are enough women with the sufficient credentials to go around. You just made a presumption, which is fallacious -- and fallacies are irrational. You've also proven your bias by presuming a fact that supports your case and your case only. So, I'm right.

MONICA: "What is concerning to me [sic] about Posner's proposals is that they don't take that into consideration."

Apparently, it's not just your inability to spell "paradigm," but aan absolute unfamiliarity with the English language, at least in its Standard form. "What is concerning to me" is that your sentence makes no goddamn sense. But then, that isn't just a grammatical problem.

MONICA: "If society does not address the difficulty of women being able to balance a professional career with the raising of children, then one consequence for our society is that many women who do want children (and that will still be the majority of women) will drop out of their professions entirely - OR - many women will continue to forgo child-bearing alltogether because they find the risk to their careers too great."

We're not talking about all women, we're talking about highly educated soon-to-be or already upper-class women. The corporate workplace already has addressed their concerns. It gives them maternity leave and child-care and doesn't mind that they leave after 5 years, because there are plenty more women exactly like them gaming the system in quite the same way. And it doesn't mind that men and women do not have the same long-term career goals, because federal laws prevent them companies from doing anything about it, e.g., firing women because they're pregnant. So there is no crisis. Unless you want to remove the protections we provide for women in the workplace -- how about pure competition? no sexual harassment laws? no anti-pregnancy discrimination laws? -- the different lifestyle choices of men and women with continue to be reflected in the "professional world". What's more, there is nothing wrong with that. Women desiring to be mothers is good, if that is their genuine aspiration. Women having 10 year long careers is good, if that is their genuine aspiration. The point is to guarantee that the qualified women who want to work for 10 years are getting into the elite law schools instead of the qualified women who want to work only for 3. Changing our societal conception of masculinity or revamping our entire workplace model in accord with your Marxist utopian fantasies is really irrelevant to that social welfare objective.

The workplace is not "inflexible," it is adaptive to its own needs first. It flexes all the time. It just doesn't flex into a Marxist fairytale, which is your problem with it. Go live in stagnant Europe then. See what it is like to live as a young person in countries with no growth and huge social entitlements guaranteed for its older citizens.

"And saying you want to do public interest makes it easier to get into law school."

No it doesn't.

Actually, it does. It's called an essay.

"Women who go to law school and quit being lawyers after a mere few years get corporate jobs."

Many of them do. Many of them do not. Since more women enter public interest jobs than men, this statement is at best misleading.

"So even women are rejcting public interest in mass numbers."

For the reasons stated above, this is also misleading, at best."

Nothing in my post is misleading, if you can read without unnaturally truncating the sentences. The majority of law students who are interested in careers as public interest lawyers, while they are still in law school, are women. But it is not necessarily the case that the majority of public interest lawyers -- working lawyers who have passed the bar -- are women. In fact, if you consider military lawyers to be public interest lawyers (and law schools do so in considering to reduce your loan repayments), quite a few are male. And if you add in public interest groups that are majority male, like the Landmark Legal Foundation or The Center for Religious Liberty and Originalist Justice, or the Cato Institute, you have a much larger pot. The point was that the poster I was responding to assumed that "public interest" = "identifiably liberal causes that are the basis of law school clinics" and assumed that the only people who become public interest lawyers are those who are interested in identifiably liberal causes while in law school. Hence, the ideology comment. And it's spelled with an "o". Look it up.

Are there assumptions in my previous statements? In fact there are. I assume that a reasonably intelligent reader would understand that by "women who work for a mere few years" I meant "the women likely affected by Posner's reform proposal and that we are discussing in this forum." I did not mean, "any and all women on the planet Earth, including those non-existent women possibly raised in a hypothetical by a Leftist who is maliciously distorting the meaning of my text." But thanks for trying.

In any event, the percentage of law students who become public interest lawyers is ridiculously small, say, 5%. Approximately half of law students are women. If there are 100 lawyers total, 50 are women. In that universe, even if all public interest lawyers are female, there are still 45 female lawyers who are not public interest lawyers. My point, obvious to anyone with a brain, was that those 45 are taking corporate jobs. The goal is to make sure that those 45 keep working, instead of opting out of work after a few years. Why? Because it's better to have women in the workplace and in professional schools who actually want to be there. They shouldn't be there just because it's an easy way to subsidize their babies. And, frankly, that is explicitly how many view it. Posner isn't being sexist at all. He's saying let the women who really want to be lawyers be lawyers. Hee's not promoting alienation; he's seeking to eliminate alienation and promote total social welfare with his proposal.

If discrimination in the labor market is responsible for even a small fraction of the discrepancy between male and female labor force participation rates, "profiling" is not a good option (since you folks don't seem to like talking about ethics, consider that discrimination against women may diminish in future, upsetting your calculations).

Note also that almost as many men as women say they would drop out of the labor force, if they could.

Those who are unable to spell "an" should not complain about those who misspell paradigm.

If you want to design a system that will maximize alumni contributions, then admit women who can attract the very highest net worth males. Since the women will probably survive the husband, she can donate all his money to her school.

Indeed, why don't you just admit the best little golddiggers the admission office can find, consistent with academic standards of course.

Of course the admission office will need to make sure the girls have good bloodlines. Don't want your girl losing her looks at a young age and being replaced by a trophy wife who will give the old guys money to a less deserving school.

A bonus of the good bloodlines approach is your girls may be able to catch more then one high net worth fish in her prime fishing years.

Just imagine how bad the admissions office that turned down Anne Nicole must feel.

"Who says that number is prohibitively small? You have no idea whether there are enough women with the sufficient credentials to go around. You just made a presumption, which is fallacious -- and fallacies are irrational. You've also proven your bias by presuming a fact that supports your case and your case only. So, I'm right."

Oh, Sprat. I am saying that introducing criteria which favors men over women will result in more men in the class. That should not be a controversial point. Men are more likely to work many years in a high paying career, therefore, introducing this criteria will lower the number of women admitted because it decreases the applicant pool. The calculus changes as the number of schools does, however. The more schools institute such policies the less likely a school will be able to find or attract women that fit its new criteria. If a prestigious school adopted a policy similar to those discussed here, it may well be able to attract additional female applicants because of the unique nature of their school (though this may not necessarily be true). As the number of schools instituting this policy change, they lose this competitive edge, though.

It's not that I think the population in question is "prohibtively small." Indeed, highly qualified female law school applicants are probably slightly more abundant than males. But any policy which decreases the female applicant pool more than the male will necessarily result in fewer women admitted, unless compensatory admission policies are adopted.

Ummm... I couldn't make it through all the comments, so maybe this was already mentioned, but it's pretty obvious to me that if you meet your spouse in one of these institutions, you are going to be much more likely to give money to that institution. Not only that, but your spouse will probably be more involved in the alumni association (more time!), and that in and of itself has value.

law school essays serve primarily one purpose: to ensure that the applicant can write coherently, about anything. Often applicants don't write about law at all, or about anything related to law school. If you want to write about public service, great. You don't have to.

If the applicant cannot think of anything to write outside of "I want to do public service," but finds that he or she cannot honestly write that essay, I would suggest a profession that involves less writing.

Not that I should have taken the time to respond. This thread has deteriorated, which is not surprising, since Posner did not offer a proposal with much interesting to say for it.

JW: I'm not sure which schools you are referring to, or the details of their loan repayment programs, but I think it a tortured definition of "public interest" that includes the JAG Corp.

I also can't say which post you were referring to, originally, for the reason that your original post was incoherent. Too bad it doesn't stand on its own. You followed that up with being needlessy insulting. Congratulations.

I personally haven't met any women who admit, frankly, that they have entered law school in order to subsidize their babies. Perhaps we run in different circles. (In fact, I would be rather disappointed if we did not.) Nor do I think that it would make any sense for someone seeking to "subsidize their babies" to enter law school. Law school costs a lot. It doesn't subsidize anyone's babies -- you pay for it, regardless of whether you work afterwards or not. If the women you are concerned about are not in fact the women taking public service jobs, they aren't receiving any subsidies for their educations.

I didn't think that Posner's goal was to make women work who did not want to, but to distribute law school slots to those who plan on practicing. I don't think his plan is feasible, and I don't consider the loss of those women who choose not to practice particularly disturbing. I do not, however, accuse Posner of being sexist. I do accuse you of being a sexist, JW, and I'd accuse you of many less savory terms were this not such a civil forum.

"Because it's better to have women in the workplace and in professional schools who actually want to be there."

Why do you get to decide that? Why not let the fact that women are willing to pay $100K to go to law school operate as evidence that they want to (and are entitled to) be there.

I understand why people (especially men) here might be bothered that a woman would do well on a meritocracy exam and take a place in an elite school. But you don't get to dictate what they do with their degree, via subsidies or otherwise. Just like you don't get to tell your neighbor to have fewer children because it decreases property values on your block.

I knew all along that you folks didn't really believe in all that liberty interest stuff.

As an aside: Are you similarily bothered that Posner wasted a coveted spot in the Yale English Department by using his degree simply to get a good law school spot, where now his English skills are used to make his opinions read prettier for 1Ls and thereby cover for his constant dismissal of individualized justice (or even vested State law) for institutional policy ends? See, e.g. Flamino v. American Honda.

"Posner isn't being sexist at all. He's saying let the women who really want to be lawyers be lawyers."

Actually, he said: "...it will be on average a smaller benefit than the person (usually a man) whose place she took..."

It seems to me that Posner is worried about Women (who "on average have a greater taste and aptitude for taking care of children, and indeed for nonmarket activities generally, than men do") taking the place of Men. It seems he thinks women's proper socio/biological place is raising babies, cleaning house, and servicing men (provided they don't do it on the market.) It is, after all, what he said.

I think law school teaches child-rearers of any gender several valuable lessons about how NOT to raise or teach children.

And notice the entitlement in this fragment:

"...it will be on average a smaller benefit than the person (usually a man) whose place she took..."

It is the MAN's place that she TOOK. Why? Because the sentence assigns it to him!

One could have written it as:

...it will be on average a smaller benefit than the person (usually a man) who might take HER place...

But then that would assign the right to the spot in the elite school to the woman who earned it based on the objective merit criteria that we so value on this blog.

Before you criticize my non-approved use of cut-up method and deconstruction, take a minute to realize I am right about the effect of Posner's text.

Thank you, drive through.

Intellectually drafted article. seems to grab attention at once.The writer has a good knowledge of the subject and makes reading interesting.

I'm wondering, Jack Sprat, just what kind of competition you seek to encourage by the removal of sexual harassment laws. Do you think the sexual harassment laws somehow interfere with the free market? Which market is that? Groping isn't a market.

Other than that small quibble, Sprat, I say keep up the good work. You are fast becoming the least reasonable person on this blog, which is quite an accomplishment.

Oh, and one more thing. The number of law schools that have viable loan repayment programs for people who choose public interest work is very small. Even at those schools, the effect of those programs is grossly outweighed by the disincentive for public interest work provided by huge tuition bills.

I am male, have a strong desire to do liberal public interest work, and am instead taking an offer to work at a large corporate law firm. (one with a generous pro bono policy) While I could live and start a family on a public interest salary, I cannot live, start a family, and repay my student loans on one. You could call me a sellout, or you could say the system didn't properly incent my potential contribution to social welfare.

I wonder, given that Posner's goal is maximizing economic return from law degrees, would he support the same post-grad subsidy for those who choose to work for the ACLU or Lambda Legal? Would he support it at a level that would actually enable people to take those jobs and live comfortably? I doubt it. If you only value work by what it pays, then those jobs are inferior.

And along those same lines, why shouldn't the decision to raise children get a loan subsidy?
I think if we stopped undervaluing less quantifiable economic factors and took "family values" rhetoric seriously, it would deserve a subsidy. No matter what gender does it, raising healthy, well-educated children is perhaps a better investment in society than another Wachtell associate staying up until 4am to construct a tax shelter for an offshore bank.

"You could call me a sellout, or you could say the system didn't properly incent my potential contribution to social welfare."

Or one could say your talk about "social justice" and "public service" was just that, talk. I don't blame you for "selling out," but you'd think you could at least accept that decision as your own, rather than blaming others.

P.S. How ironic that by choosing corporate over public interest, I seem to be contributing to society's undervaluing of the non-economic benefits of public interest work. Wouldn't the world be a better place if more of us volunteered to be a loss-leader? Kind of leads one to respect those people who put child-care before big money.

"but you'd think you could at least accept that decision as your own, rather than blaming others."

How would I go about doing that? Maybe I should talk about the decision honestly on a public forum. Would that work for you? Who did I blame? I did the calculation before I entered law school, and I am not seeking to rationalize the consequences now. The discussion this week has talk of women choosing child-care and/or public interest over more lucrative options. My (perhaps stereotypically "male") choice is relevant to that discussion. I would prefer a subsidy, wouldn't you? It would have changed my decision. Doesn't make me look good to say it but it is the reality.

If Posner is for subsidies to support corporate law jobs, it is a legitimate question to ask why not subsidies for public interest jobs or informed child-care.

Linda - you've got your panties in a knot! Stop being so bitter. Relax and have an orgasm and you'll feel much better.

Sandra Day O'Connor is an example of a woman who attended an elite college and who also took several years off to stay home with her children.
Was her education a waste?

Nice blog.I like thsdfis site.
Nick
http://www.yahoo.com

POSNER: "...it will be on average a smaller benefit than the person (usually a man) whose place she took..."

Right. Person. Meaning...it could be a woman. So, let the women (or men) to whom the benefit will be greater take the job. I don't see how stating that women are persons is sexist, Corey.

And to another comment, sexual harrassment laws surely do interfere with the function of the marketplace. It requires a compliance officer in the company, a redrafting of company documents and contracts, sexual harrassment training and trainers, and firing otherwise productive employees who say the wrong thing to the wrong person. It also results in lawsuits, some of them frivolous, which a company would rather settle than litigate (because of bad press), which, obviously, costs money. So, yes, imposing huge costs on companies does impede the function of the market. It raises the cost of doing business, which effectively raises a barrier to entry to the marginal firm.

ME: "Because it's better to have women in the workplace and in professional schools who actually want to be there."

COREY: Why do you get to decide that?

Well, Corey, it's a Law and Economics website, and the question implicit in Posner's post is "How do we increase total social welfare given the present situation?" If improving totoal social welfare is the goal, it's rather obvious that a qualified attorney with a constant work ethic working for 8 years contributes more to society than one working for 5. Look:

5x2 = 10
8x2 = 16
16 > 10

The point is not that "I get to decide" as some sort of Evil Misogynist (you really need to get over your self-hatred, Corey; it's ok that you have a penis). The point is that society is better off if qualified women attorneys work longer, and there is no reason why elite universities shouldn't factor market demand into their admissions decisions. That just isn't a sexist statement. It likewise isn't racist to insist that elite universities should factor market demand into using race in admissions, as you argued, Corey, however many weeks ago. If law firms and businesses want professionals who work long-term, universities should seek out students who want to be long-term employees, whether male or female. I think there are plenty of women out there who are willing to work long-term. Apparently, you think all women want is to have your babies. You're the misogynist, Corey.

PALOOKA: I am saying that introducing criteria which favors men over women will result in more men in the class.

Who says it favors men? It favors persons with a certain work ethic. The point is that you don't know how many women out there who posess such a work ethic aren't getting into elite universities because they are being edged out by the slightest of margins by women without it.

corey: I am male, have a strong desire to do liberal public interest work, and am instead taking an offer to work at a large corporate law firm.

Here is the solution. Meet a nice woman at your law firm who wants to work as lawyer for a few years, then quit to have babies; tell her that you'll quit instead of her! Then you can raise then children and do liberal public interest work, while she can continue to work in the corporate world! Problem solved!

Monica, Don't be concerned with "Jackie", s-he is just insecure and in order ot prove how sophiticated and intelligent s-he may be, have ass-u-me-d the post of Grammar and Syntax Nazi. ;) Have a better one.

As with any tort, the harassment itself impedes business, probably more than any measures taken to stop it. That's why the measures are taken. I would guess the number of "otherwise productive" workers who just happen to enjoy harassing others is less than the number of of "otherwise productive" workers whose productivity is harmed by the harassment.

In general, the idea that a free market is one in which individuals are not given a means to address wrongs committed against them is a novel one, to say the least.

University of Chicago Law School should only admit women who've had hysterectomies.

Dear Jack Sprat: What planet do you actually work on? You act like because a small fraction of U.S. corporations with more than 50 employees offer a paltry UNPAID maternity leave of less than
12 weeks that somehow the child-care dilemma of the U.S. is solved? Wow - that will be news to millions of parents!
The absence of quality, affordable child care; pre-kindergarten programs; and after-school activities is a daily concern for millions of working American parents professional or otherwise. The U.S. is one of only seven countries that do not offer some sort of PAID maternity/paternity leave to its citizens. The lack of quality, affordable day care is one of these most pressing issues young families face today. The U.S. system is a pathetic patchwork of Kentucky-fried day care at best.
Also, you apparently cannot read. I have never in any post advocated anything remotely similar to a "Marxist Utopia." I have only advocated for sensible work/life balance policies that despite your fanatsy are NOT readily available, enforced, or utilized (without repercussions) by the majority of U.S. workers (male or female).
Such policies benefit all employees (whether they have children or not)and they would also go a long way to help retain the employment of high-achieving professional women the original article was referring to. Should we screen out qualified men who want to leave the practice of law after 3 years as well? I've certainly met many disgruntled male lawyers in my day, many who did in fact leave their practice after only a few years. Maybe these male lawyers didn't change their mind to raise children but they still didn't put in your pre-requiste
10 years? So, should we simply change the graduate school admission process to only include those applicants of either gender who solemnly swear to remain in a particular profession in a certain capacity until death do they part? Or for at least 10 years? Should we charge retroactive higher tutition for a man who leaves the practice of medicine after less than 10 years as a an unhappy physician(as an aquantance of mine just did)? How absurd. And the next time you start spouting off your "free market" talking points you might want to actually dust off a little research about our own stagnant economy and Europe's actual ecomonic growth.

Posner: "which would discourage applicants who were not planning to have full working careers (including applicants of advanced age and professional graduate students)."

I applaud posner for pointing out that this would discourage 'applicants of advanced age' - which presumably would include all the 're-training' initiatives that Bush is offering to combat outsourcing - but does anyone who supports this logic support disincentives for disabled or ill students?

If a student has had cancer, and is significantly more likely to relapse than another student, why should he take the place of a healthy student? If one student has a P(.90) of 25 years of work, and the cancer survivor has a P(.50) of 25 years of work, 'total social welfare' gets an additional 10 years of service out of the healthy person (plus not covering the health insurance costs). Any takers?

"The point is that society is better off if qualified women attorneys work longer, and there is no reason why elite universities shouldn't factor market demand into their admissions decisions. That just isn't a sexist statement."

You are right, that statement is not sexist. That statement reflects the other criticism I made, namely, that shools should not get to impede the liberty interest of certain women who seek admission for a utilitarian social welfare goal. To repeat my example: Preventing your neighbor from having children will increase the market value of your house. (Sad but true) Do you seek the right to do so? Should society deter pregnancy on your behalf?

You have noticed that I have switched to arguing a liberty interest as a way to avoid discrimination against women in admissions, where before I was arguing for using race as a factor in admissions to avoid practical effect discrimination against certain minorities. How perceptive... it seems my goal might be to increase or maintain female or minority enrollment in college.

Have you also noticed that when the issue was practical effect discrimination against minorities, you defended the "objective" merit criteria that perpetuated it? And now that the issue is women in college, you advocate applying an ex post degree utilization study as an admissions factor that would also (in practice) reduce enrollment of women. What is your goal?
To increase abstract social welfare? Even if it means looking away from sex harassment? How technocratic of you.

"Right. Person. Meaning...it could be a woman."

Right, except it will be: "(usually a man) whose place she took"..."in most cases it is indeed the wife"... and the final sentence Posner writes:

"Were admission to such schools based on a prediction of the social value of the education offered, fewer women would be admitted."

I agree with Posner that the effect of using social value (defined in his narrow L&E way as he does in the text) would be to admit fewer women. He admits it. In fact, he clearly designs his subsidy to avoid being overturned by courts narrow "practical effect discrimination" jurisprudence.

The declaration that this is a L&E website does not exempt discussions here from critique. In fact, it invites mention of the widely known and difficult to refute concerns with L&E method.

It would be interesting to consider a tax cut targeted or specific to people downsized at legacy corporations or companies that lost in deregulation. This might stabilize things and help people transition to new jobs.

Also, on the logic of not admitting older people due to concerns over donations to a university and lifetime earnings: you may need to consider strength of good feelings toward university in addition to lifetime earnings. A lot of 20 year olds who get a law degree like all their undergrad classmates may not appreciate the opportunity as much as a more mature person with more unique work experiences. This appreciation may translate to higher donations, more unique or differentiated success and thus desirable notoriety for a university, etc

You must work in your profession 10 years in exchange for a professional education.

You must work on my plantation 10 years in exchange for passage to this country.

Smells like... indentured servitude!

one more thing on older students: they may have lots of real-world experience and situations that may be valuable to young people. young people's education (and possibly earnings) may be enhanced through interactions with these people.

So someone takes a few years out to raise children. Are you jealous that person had the opportunity to do so? Big deal. Raising children is damn hard work.

I've worked all my life without a break and I don't know a single woman who has NEVER worked. Not one. Almost every woman I know went back to work six weeks after the birth of a child. Of the few women I know who stayed home to care for children -- every single one, including the wives of some very rich and hardworking men -- went back to work mostly after said children started first grade...although I do know ONE woman who waited until one of her kids could drive before she went back to work.

I didn't see any kind of actual research in that NYT article by the way -- you guys are going to have to have numbers to present this as really being a problem. And then you'll also have to present numbers on everyone else who doesn't actually go on to work in their degree field, and why, and was that a waste of their education?

I wonder how many of you sour grapes people couldn't get into an elite school and therefore want to keep someone else out of one?

I am VERY tired of people who wish to make things even harder than it already is. Yes! Let's make MORE rules, shall we? There aren't possibly ENOUGH RULES in life!

Of course, we're going to make those rules for people who ARE NOT US. Because WHITE GUYS DON'T NEED MORE RULES! NO! Everyone ELSE needs rules!

Sheesh! Okay, enough ranting. Normally, I'm pretty reasonable but this is just silly. Bunch of misogynists wrapping yourself up in the flag of "public interest".

Thanks to the few of you who are voices of reason in a sea of idiots.

So someone takes a few years out to raise children. Are you jealous that person had the opportunity to do so? Big deal. Raising children is damn hard work. And of course the person spending the most time with the children shouldn't have any education, right? That'll benefit those kids!

I didn't see any kind of actual research in that NYT article by the way -- you guys are going to have to have numbers to present this as really being a problem. And then you'll also have to present numbers on everyone else who doesn't actually go on to work in their degree field, and why, and was that a waste of their educ