>You're making the exact same logic error, but this time talking about majorities, so in addition to failing at logic you're failing at statistics.
One of us is being stupid, but I don't think it's me.
The assertion is college is necessary for a middle class lifestyle. What I'm saying is 1) it's not and 2) when you add up lost opportunity costs, direct costs, and interest on student debt many people (maybe even most) are losing money by going to college. Now, that's their choice, but I don't want to be on the hook for someone else's personal enrichment.
>Did that 30% make a bad decision to go to law school?
Yes. Anyone who goes to law school right now is an idiot, unless that law school is Harvard or Yale. The 70% in your example are either lucky or have been shunted into jobs that don't require a law degree or they're working as lawyers and making less than they would have made teaching Social Studies to the local second graders. The number of newly minted lawyers far, far exceeds the number of jobs for newly minted lawyers.
The exception, of course, being people who got in to the very, very top schools.
One of us is being stupid, but I don't think it's me.
You also have proven unable to parse English.
The assertion is college is necessary for a middle class lifestyle.
Your continued inability to parse English is getting old. Here, for the record, is the original assertion.
Not when the majority of jobs that create a vibrant middle class in the post-industrial United States require at least a college degree.
Now why do I say that you failed to parse this correctly? Because "majority" does not mean "all". So the majority these jobs could require a college degree but there could still be lots of them that don't require a college degree.
Going back to what you wrote...
Yes. Anyone who goes to law school right now is an idiot, unless that law school is Harvard or Yale. The 70% in your example are either lucky or have been shunted into jobs that don't require a law degree or they're working as lawyers and making less than they would have made teaching Social Studies to the local second graders. The number of newly minted lawyers far, far exceeds the number of jobs for newly minted lawyers.
Can you cite a source?
According to what I can find now, until 2009, law school had a fairly stable economic outlook. Then the bottom dropped out. Median starting income for newly graduated lawyers has dropped 35% since then. (See http://www.nalp.org/classof2011_salpressrel for a source.)
However stop and think for a second. Law school takes 3 years. People graduating this year into the dismal market entered in 2009, with decades of history of law being a good economic choice. The lifetime income for someone with a law degree averaged DOUBLE the lifetime income for someone with a bachelor's degree. In retrospect, the law degree was likely a mistake. But when they committed to it, based on the data that then existed, it looked like a good choice.
So, were all of the people who are walking around with useless newly minted law degrees demonstrating poor decision making abilities when they chose to do that? I don't really think so. They didn't spot the oncoming macro-economic train, but these things tend to be much clearer in hindsight than in advance. (I knew about the oncoming problem, but only because my brother was selling stuff to lawyers, and he told me how the financial crisis was impacting law firms.)
I give up. Instead of reading what I write you keep building straw men out of cherry picked sentences and then slap them down. It must be easier to "win" an argument that way, but you're just wasting my time and that of everyone else who reads what you write.
One of us is being stupid, but I don't think it's me.
The assertion is college is necessary for a middle class lifestyle. What I'm saying is 1) it's not and 2) when you add up lost opportunity costs, direct costs, and interest on student debt many people (maybe even most) are losing money by going to college. Now, that's their choice, but I don't want to be on the hook for someone else's personal enrichment.
>Did that 30% make a bad decision to go to law school?
Yes. Anyone who goes to law school right now is an idiot, unless that law school is Harvard or Yale. The 70% in your example are either lucky or have been shunted into jobs that don't require a law degree or they're working as lawyers and making less than they would have made teaching Social Studies to the local second graders. The number of newly minted lawyers far, far exceeds the number of jobs for newly minted lawyers.
The exception, of course, being people who got in to the very, very top schools.