Re: Work/Study

1

I've often thought that the more "elite" the student body of a college is, the more they would benefit by having mandatory involvement in the facilities work of the campus. 10hrs/week sounds reasonable.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 1:54 PM
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I worked 30 hours a week while getting my BA. So yeah, 10 hours isn't much. At the same time, the larger problem is the privatization and deunionization of higher-education staff. Ivy League grads are going to be Ivy League grads no matter how many toilets you make them clean along the way. But the people who cook for them, and keep the physical plant running, and make the copies, and schedule the rooms and answer the phones deserve to make a living wage and full benefits. At far too many schools, both public and private, that's no longer the case.


Posted by: minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:05 PM
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How is that "the larger problem" in this context, minnie? It is of course a problem.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:07 PM
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I worked 10+ hours a week throughout college, and full time during the summers. It's not nothing, especially when most of your peers are cruising on full rides from their parents, but it's easily doable. It's also really good experience, but if my limited sample is anything to go by, it's experience most of the people getting it have already had in High School, and most of the people who really need it will never have.

If I had to pick a school in the US whose students could most benefit from actually getting their hands dirty it'd be a tossup between Harvard and Princeton.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:07 PM
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3: The larger problem in terms of "how should colleges and universities provide services beyond instruction." Not, of course, the larger problem in terms of making Harvard pukes be down with the gente.


Posted by: minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:10 PM
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The only people I met at Harvard with whom I am still in regular contact are ones I met at the work-study job I got, after a year of cleaning bathrooms. This probably says more about me than anything else, but the work-study program was pretty good to me and those friends.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:17 PM
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Of course, that stuff can also be helpful in a straight-up educational way. I worked as a tutor, teaching assistant, group discussion facilitator, editor, event organizer, computer lab monitor, tech support person, and more while I was in college. Every one of those jobs has been helpful to me in doing the work I do now. Not just in terms of process, but substantively.


Posted by: m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:24 PM
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I heard that the Crimson now lets people do work/study there, so you can enhance your resume and make money at the same time.

My Senior year my financial aid package required me to work, but I didn't because of the job search and thesis writing stuff. I did before. Their "budget" wasn't too stringent, so I was able to get by by spending less.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:26 PM
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It would be one thing if these loans were going to be the difference between having textbooks versus not, but a trip to Japan? Avoidance of the unthinkable drudgery of ... 10 hours per week at a library desk? Gag me.


Posted by: Amber | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:28 PM
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And I'm not totally sure how you can play a sport and hold down a job. That's 2-3 hours per day plus travel time. A sport like crew also has rotating practice times which would make it very hard to schedule work hours.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:28 PM
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I think it's helpful for college students to spend at least a little time working in a retail/service job where their fellow students are the primary customers, just so they can get a sense of what insufferable dicks college-aged adults can be and thereby tone down their own insufferable dickishness when the shoe's on the other foot.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:28 PM
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I heard that the Crimson now lets people do work/study there, so you can enhance your resume and make money at the same time.

They can do this because...surprise, surprise, they raised a significant sum of money from their alumni to create an endowment dedicated to this purpose. (The Crimson is financially independent of the university.) Every Harvard organization with which I was affiliated hits me up for money at least once per annum. Some of them I oblige from time to time.


Posted by: Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:31 PM
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11 gets it exactly right.


Posted by: Ubu Imperator | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:31 PM
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Even though these are certainly the less wealthy students who attend Harvard, it's still irksome to read fawning accounts of how the haves beget more haves.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:33 PM
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And I'm not totally sure how you can play a sport and hold down a job. That's 2-3 hours per day plus travel time.

You could play as an amateur rather than as a quasi-professional.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:34 PM
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I knew that the Crimson was independent and owns its own building. I remember reading an article about this in the Harvard magazine by a guy who thought that this reflected a kinder, gentler Crimson than the one he'd known.

It really cracks me up that Harvard Student Agencies engages in fundraising. That's supposed to be a profit-making business!


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:34 PM
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One time when UTexas was calling me for money, the kid on the other end began, "Did you know that the state legislature is cutting funding for UT by ten percent?"
I said, "What jerks! I'll be sure to vote Democratic in the next election."
He said, "Actually, I'm a Republican."
I said, "Does this make you want to reconsider that?"
He said, "No. Would you like to donate some money?"
I said, "No...I gotta go."


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:35 PM
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15: I take your point, nosflow, but I'm talking about reality as it is now. Harvard, unlike your current school, doesn't pay people to play sports by providing athletic scholarships.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:35 PM
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17 is perfect.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:36 PM
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And I'm not totally sure how you can play a sport and hold down a job. That's 2-3 hours per day plus travel time.

We have tons of students who do this. A full third of our school is student-atheletes, and I think another third is involved in one of the band/choir/music type extra-curriculars. Many of them have at least a work-study job on top of that, if not a regular job. Work-study at least tends to be pretty understanding of your sports or band commitments.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:38 PM
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14: Not to pick on heebie in particular, but shitting on overprivileged kids is sort of a recurring theme around here and I'm not entirely sure why. Being able to go to very good schools and do cool things while you're there is a good thing. Many of those kids are going to be dicks, but that's not so much because they're overprivileged as just because pretty much any group of human beings includes a substantial dick component. Some overprivileged kids are George Bush; others are Barack Obama.

Unless we're just shitting on fawning journalism, in which case carry on.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:39 PM
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Harvard, unlike your current school, doesn't pay people to play sports by providing athletic scholarships.

It's not as if I approve of my current institution's practices in that regard either. In fact, you might even think that, given 15, I would be even more disapproving of them!


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:40 PM
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I realize in retrospect that I took a cheap shot at this lending program, which isn't, in itself, the problem. If a Harvard alum wants to shell out two grand so a current scholarship student can go to Japan or take acting lessons, more power to him or her. Personally, I've got better ways to spend my cash. The larger point is the implication that top-tier students, financial-aid-eligible or not, are entitled to a dazzling array of fulfilling, amazing, life-changing internships, projects, trips, and other resume-enhancers, regardless of whether those experiences actually offer any real, measurable value to the student. Harvard students will eventually be Harvard grads, and programs like this that denigrate boring old on-campus gigs strike me as the wrong tack if we want privileged students to realize that they are just that: privileged, and members of a community in which most people aren't.


Posted by: dredgereport | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:41 PM
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12
Every Harvard organization with which I was affiliated hits me up for money at least once per annum. Some of them I oblige from time to time.
Posted by: Franklin D. Roosevelt '04

I was so sure I knew who this was, but the dates don't match. Damn.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:41 PM
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When I was a first-year law student. We weren't supposed to work for money. We were supposed to devote our time to our studies, as our utterly incompetent dean of students always reminded us.

She was seriously incompetent. Every time someone went in to ask a question, she'd say, "why are you asking me about this? You should be studying." At the end of her second year an ad hoc committee went to the dean to get her fired. I think that when she sued, she was given a job somewhere else. In the process of gathering information we found out that she'd done a piss poor job when she worked in a district attorney's office. She'd also ran for office, and the campaign against her won an award for best negative ad. It seemed totally fair too. "In her 3 years X only won 3 cases. One involved pleading out a 15 year-old shoplifter." Or words to that effect.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:43 PM
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Many of those kids are going to be dicks, but that's not so much because they're overprivileged as just because pretty much any group of human beings includes a substantial dick component.

True. But the nature of their expected dickishness is shaped by their overprivilege. And the nature of overprivileged dickishness is generally more grating than many other sorts of dickishness, at least to people who are not themselves overprivileged.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:44 PM
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12: When I get mail from Harvard, I think of Charlton Heston in 55 Days at Peking: "Open a letter and you may have to read it; read it, and you may have to answer it."


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:44 PM
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You're very trusting, Cyrus.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:44 PM
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21: Mostly you're making a good point. But saying "Some overprivileged kids are George Bush; others are Barack Obama" is kind of like an argument for trickle-down economics.

The only part of the article that really shocked me was:
As Harvard has raised financial aid in recent years, the debts owed by graduating students sank to an average of $8,000 for the class of 2008 from $16,500 for the class of 1999.

Our crappy students come out saddled with such gigantic debt (I don't have numbers, but) and such less earnings potential, that this plucky entrepenurialism, applied only Harvard kids really does grate.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:44 PM
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Being able to go to very good schools and do cool things while you're there is a good thing.

Yup. It's also a good thing to do some drudgery while you're there. Really. The average ivy undergrad would overall benefit as much, if not more, from a term in a part time crappy job or work study as they would from almost anything else they could have done with the time.

So I think the problem is the idea of saving them from "wasting" this time so they can do something better with it, when in fact the opposite might be the case.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:45 PM
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She'd also run for office, BG. I swear, a Harvard diploma isn't worth the cat it's printed on anymore.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:46 PM
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21: I don't entirely disagree with you, but lumping Dubya and Obama together as "privileged" elides some rather important differences.


Posted by: Sir Kraab | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:46 PM
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I do think that debt is enormous and that loan forgiveness is the wrong way to go when incentivizing people to go into lower-paying fields. This is a general problem though. And there should be exceptions for the guy who has cancer and has to go to chemotherapy several times a week and feels crappy and needs some time to rest. I think that Harvard is better about stuff like that than most public universities.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:48 PM
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As Harvard has raised financial aid in recent years, the debts owed by graduating students sank to an average of $8,000 for the class of 2008 from $16,500 for the class of 1999.

Holy shit. Seriously?

I wonder what the standard deviation is--is this a bunch of rich kids with $0 debt and the ocassional kid with $100k+? Or is the median really around $8,000? That's nothing.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:49 PM
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The average ivy undergrad would overall benefit as much, if not more, from a term in a part time crappy job or work study as they would from almost anything else they could have done with the time.

While I don't exactly disagree with you, this depends on a very paternalistic definition of "benefit". The stuff they're doing instead is almost certainly better for their long-term prospects, for example.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:50 PM
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this depends on a very paternalistic definition of "benefit".

Dickishness begets paternalism.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:51 PM
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(I don't have numbers, but)

recent numbers (2007) for student loan debt.

average debt per borrower ($22,700) (about 60% of students)
average debt per degree ($12,400)
The College Board (Trends in Student Aid - 2008)


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:52 PM
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31: I'm not sure what you're saying right now. She didn't have a Harvard degree, and this wasn't Harvard but a state school.

If you're calling me stupid, well, we can agree to disagree.

It was awful, because I really think that she, a Latina, had been hired to promote diversity, which I am generally pro, and I'm pro affirmative action, but it wasn't a case of picking a minority candidate who was equally qualified or even somewhat less qualified, she just totally failed. She didn't even have the sens to let someone postpone an exam when her father-in-law died, and she needed to go to the funeral.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:52 PM
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The stuff they're doing instead is almost certainly better for their long-term prospects, for example.

Not sure this is true. I wasn't suggesting they do menial jobs and boring workstudies to the exclusion of everything else. Just that including it in the mix shouldn't be viewed as a bad thing that requires heroic efforts to avoid.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:53 PM
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In half-hearted defense of this program, I would point out that more important benefit is not that you can avoid working 10-20 hours/week during term to fill out / top up your financial aid package, but what you can do with your summers. In many socially useful fields of endeavor, the main point of entry to fulltime employment after graduation is through unpaid internships during summer break. But Harvard stipulates that students have to save $X,000 over the summer each year as part of the financial aid package. I applied for and got a scholarship one year from a foundation unrelated to Harvard using the argument that I wanted to do a particular internship over the summer. I got the money, did the internship, and made a small but meaningful contribution to the commonweal.

Given that the applicants have to convince a well-to-do alum to lend to them, I suspect that my case will be more typical for the program than "would like to bum around Thailand and smoke dope for a while". Though I might contribute to the candidate that appealed to me on that basis.


Posted by: Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:55 PM
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$8,000 is not nothing, not if you wind up making $29K/year.

My grandfather did well as a middle management type and paid for all of his kids to go to college. (I think they probably worked some, but it was for spending money, not tuition). He didn't really have to save to do it. I mean, he saved anyway, and they cut out vacations during those years, but he pretty much wrote the check out of his current salary. Very few people can do that nowadays.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:56 PM
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Just that including it in the mix shouldn't be viewed as a bad thing that requires heroic efforts to avoid.

Look, I totally agree with you, but "shouldn't" is different from "isn't". "Menial jobs and boring workstudies" simply don't look as good on a resume.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:56 PM
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In many socially useful fields of endeavor, the main point of entry to fulltime employment after graduation is through unpaid internships during summer break

Which is itself ridiculous.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:57 PM
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Very few people can do that nowadays.

This is by design.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:58 PM
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$8,000 is not nothing, not if you wind up making $29K/year.

That's 10K more a year than a grad student makes. It would not be that hard to pay off in non-crippling lifestyle-dent sized payments, in 5-10 years.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 2:59 PM
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40 is so right about the evil unpaid internship business. We can talk all we want about the theft of labor, but a lot of career counselors will tell you that you need to volunteer a lot to get work experience that people find "interesting" to get certain jobs.

I knew people who made the money they needed to contribute by working dorm crew and the reunions. If you got s job in another city than your own, housing costs could eat things up, e.g., somebody who worked at the CDC for 3 summers.

I also had a friend who had a summer job in a lab which paid peanuts. Theoretically, he could have gotten an extra job, since this was 35 hours/week at little more than minimum wage, but he was expected to work a lot more hours than that and to come in on weekends.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:00 PM
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45 con'td: Which is a GOOD thing. I don't want anyone to be unduly burdened by college debt.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:00 PM
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$8,000 for a Harvard degree? That's pretty close to nothing as these things go.


Posted by: Sir Kraab | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:00 PM
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The average ivy undergrad would overall benefit as much, if not more, from a term in a part time crappy job or work study as they would from almost anything else they could have done with the time.

Shame we got rid of universal conscription.


Posted by: FDR | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:01 PM
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44: expand pls


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:01 PM
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$8,000 for a Harvard degree? That's pretty close to nothing as these things go.

Indeed. Fwiw, I seem to recall reading somewhere that average debt load is not well correlated with tuition.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:02 PM
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Also, state by state the average varies a lot. Something like a factor of two across the range.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:02 PM
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heebie pwned by 45 and 47.


Posted by: Sir Kraab | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:02 PM
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30: Agreed.

32: Agreed also, but I think what I'm trying to say (waving vaguely in the direction of) is that elite education can be an engine of social mobility. Also that you pretty much join the privileged class when you end up at one of those places, whether you were in it before or not, and even if you're a lot less privileged than some of your classmates.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:03 PM
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45: Grad students have a hard time, but they don't have to look quite as professional, plus you know, that job may not come with benefits. Health insurance is expensive.

I'm not really arguing against term-time jobs, but I do think the idea that people should have to go into debt to finance their education is absurd.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:03 PM
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Fwiw, I seem to recall reading somewhere that average debt load is not well correlated with tuition.

This makes sense. All schools have students who are stretching beyond their means to attend them.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:04 PM
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34: Programs like this are the reason.

As to the value of having Harvard undergraduates work at part-time jobs during the school year, it's important to remember that it's not the George W. Bushes of the class of 2013 who will be cleaning toilets during Dorm Crew -- it's the lower- and middle-class kids who likely already had such jobs when they were in high school (or before).


Posted by: NCProsecutor | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:05 PM
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Grad students have a hard time, but they don't have to look quite as professional, plus you know, that job may not come with benefits. Health insurance is expensive.

But the problem then is truly that health insurance is the problem, not the 8K owed to Harvard, no?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:05 PM
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that average debt load is not well correlated with tuition

I would expect it to correlated much better with average family income than with tuition.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:06 PM
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Pretend what I wrote made sense.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:06 PM
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...it's important to remember that it's not the George W. Bushes of the class of 2013 who will be cleaning toilets during Dorm Crew...

I think this is one reason that my father's prep school made every student work on the school farm.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:06 PM
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58: heebie, I agree that health insurance is the systemic problem, and normally I prefer to look to systemic solutions. I'm just saying that in the meantime that's the reality a student faces.

Just like, I don't think that schools should be in the business of providing healthcare to students, but I blame Harvard for not subsidizing more generous mental health care for its students.

And $29K in New York in publishing is not much when you have to dress professionally.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:10 PM
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61: P/utney?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:10 PM
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I do think the idea that people should have to go into debt to finance their education is absurd.

Not necessarily. The ratio public to private benefit from tertiary education is skewed toward private benefits--even more so if you're talking about elite institutions. So there is a sound policy argument for putting some of the burden of financing on the individual to whom the private benefits will accrue. (And let's not forget that subsidizing tertiary education, whatever the economic and social benefits, is almost by definition a regressive redistribution.)

The trouble with debt is that it pushes graduates toward employment choices that have a low ratio of public to private benefits. The ideal progressive policy (which actually has a chance of getting enacted under this administration) would be to saddle students with a debt load, but make the repayment schedule variable with future income--and make provision for forgiving the debt entirely for graduates who take their skills into careers with a high ratio of public to private benefits.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:10 PM
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Shame we got rid of universal conscription.

True, actually. Or at least some kind of near-universal-but-not-entirely-mandatory-but-highly-incentivized service work. (Teach for America or VISTA or CCC or military service) x ((living wages + health insurance) + loan forgiveness for those who stay on). Making it near-universal means that there's less of a penalty in terms of prestige and $ for those who participate versus those who jump to fancy jobs out of the starting gate. Over time, one would hope, the fancy job people would come to be seen as selfish pigs.


Posted by: Sir Kraab | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:10 PM
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I do think the idea that people should have to go into debt to finance their education is absurd.

But crushing debt is all bootstrappy and stuff.


Posted by: Sir Kraab | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:12 PM
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Having read the article, the loan program itself sounds harmless-to-modestly-good for me. I'm a little put off by any extreme personalization of lending (send money to THIS child in Africa!), but I recognize that that's a personal quirk.

What I do react badly to is stuff like this: "I have friends who would spend 10 hours a week when they are not in class working at a coffee shop or in the dorms," said Mr. Kushner, 24, referring to time that he considered wasteful. "I think the most special thing about college is not just what you do in class, but what you do out of class."

On the one hand, it's pretty uncontroversial that social and other external-to-your-coursework activities and connections are an important part of most people's college experience. I would even argue that for straddlers -- students who are trying to leap from lower-class backgrounds into the middle or upper-middle class, those aspects of college are MORE important than coursework.

But I really dislike this hyper-utilitarian notion of how valuable people's time is. It speaks to a really narrow view of what is "useful." If you can't see how working at a coffee shop can be useful to you as a human being, that seems pretty shortsighted.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:16 PM
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But crushing debt is all bootstrappy and stuff.

Ordinarily this is where I would link to Holbo's post about "Dark Satanic Millianism", but I gather the good professor is on the unfogged shitlist these days.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:16 PM
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61 is a good idea.

50: the creation of the private student loan industry has been done in such a way as to take up what slack there is in the system. By giving the loans special status to protect them from discharge through bankruptcy you got private lenders interested, by shifting universities to more reliance on direct tuition you encourage rate increased up to what the population will bear. That population being typically young people who are not debt-averse (probably too much so). This system was tailor made to suck up production capability of young people and works pretty well as a transfer of wealth from employed youth to the investing demographic. If a significant percentage or people on a typical salary could write a check for their kids education, tuition would rise to absorb this. Of course it's all more complicated than that alone, but the entire system is set up to encourage and facilitate debt now, which really doesn't fit with the scenario in 41.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:18 PM
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65: yup; keep the army out of it and it's not a bad idea.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:20 PM
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I wasn't in work/study, so I only worked off-campus. I feel like I missed something valuable, and that working in a campus gift shop or something would have brought home to me how my university education in general was mostly just a lot of dicking around and an elaborate means of keeping me busy in the absence of real, paying work. Presumably the matter would have been different if I had gone to a very good school, with demanding coursework, opportunities for enrichment, etc. I can't speak to that situation. (Although I do think the going assumption here---that one should care whether this particular program benefits the students involved---is unwarranted.)


Posted by: Michael Vanderwheel, B.A. | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:20 PM
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I'm pretty much in agreement with 64, with the caveat that in our actually-existing world, people are routinely encouraged to go into crippling debt for tertiary education. I don't think the solution to that is government-funded college for everyone, but I don't think it's a great model.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:23 PM
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Making it near-universal means that there's less of a penalty in terms of prestige and $ for those who participate versus those who jump to fancy jobs out of the starting gate. Over time, one would hope, the fancy job people would come to be seen as selfish pigs.

I actually agree with you on the policy merits, but I have seen enough of the reality of countries with universal service to know that the civilian class hierarchy will reproduce itself in the universal service program as reliably as the sun rises in the East. A bunch of the guys I worked with in France exploited connections to get into a program that allowed them to take a government-sponsored makework job with a French multinational overseas, thus getting a valuable career headstart while discharging their universal service obligations.

I also understand that the Texas Air National Guard has played a similar role for some scions of the elite.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:24 PM
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From Oberlin's first year of existence (1833). Forgive the length:

MANUAL LABOR DEPARTMENT. This department is considered indispensable to a complete education. It is designed first to preserve the student's health. For this purpose, all of both sexes, rich and poor, are required to labor four hours daily. There being an intimate sympathy between soul and body, their labor promotes, as a second object, clear and strong thought, with a happy moral temperament. A third object of this system is its pecuniary advantage; for while taking that exercise necessary to health, a considerable portion of the student's expenses may be defrayed. This system, as a fourth object, aids essentially in forming habits of industry and economy, and secures, as a fifth desideratum, an acquaintance with common things. In a word, it meets the wants of man as a compound being, and prevents the common and amazing waste of money, time, health, and life.

Posted by: Sir Kraab | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:24 PM
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68: no, that post is good. I see that you respect his desired naming instead of the more popular "Donner Party Conservatism".


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:27 PM
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Oberlin was founded by STRAUSSIANS!


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:30 PM
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34: This article put the median at $8,000 for 2004. Sheesh.

I agree. $8,000 is fucking nothing. Says the girl with nearly $200K in debt.


Posted by: m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:31 PM
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Oberlin was founded by STRAUSSIANS!

No, Emersonians (as in Ralph Waldo, not John).


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:32 PM
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76 was overflow from The Weblog.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:33 PM
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Says the girl with nearly $200K in debt.

But it was a birthday party no one will ever forget, right?


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:34 PM
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It turns out that hiring Eliot Spitzer to turn tricks is rather expensive. But it was worth it.


Posted by: m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:36 PM
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Further to 74:

However, the "Learning and Labor" plan at Oberlin -- as far as full employment was concerned -- died very quickly because as enrollment grew there wasn't enough paid work for all the students. (The college owned a farm, sawmill, and some other enterprises and tried at one point to raise silkworms.)

Students were told they'd best try to find jobs as teachers during the long vacations or to work in town as gardeners, handymen, etc., to pay for their tuition and board.

The college concluded, among other things, that you can't efficiently run a manual labor operation with students and it would be better to have students pay for physical activity (e.g., gym) than to be paid for it.

Utopian visions sometimes turn out to be . . . utopian.


Posted by: Sir Kraab | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:41 PM
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It turns out that hiring Eliot Spitzer to turn tricks is rather expensive.

And that's why LB hasn't been furloughed. Step it up, Arnie.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:57 PM
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Deep Springs (from their site: "Deep Springs operates on the belief that manual labor [20 hours/week] and political deliberation are integral parts of a comprehensive liberal arts education") seems to do all right, though I dare say it wouldn't scale up particularly well. The one person I know who went there absolutely loved it.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 3:57 PM
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My mom really wanted me to go to Deep Springs, but I got hung up on the no girls part, among other things. Turned out that the mere presence of girls didn't help a lot if one didn't have much in the way of social skills, but what the hell, I was remarkably stupid back then.

(Yeah, yeah, low-hanging fruit; sue me.)


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 4:02 PM
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63: M//nt H/rm/n.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 4:02 PM
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//e/ /o/i/e /o/ /ea/i// //a/ //u// i/ /u// /a//e/ /i//ou/ /o//o/a///?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 4:08 PM
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I absolutely loved Deep Springs. My labor duties required me at different times to milk the cows, build a boiler from a kit, push cattle, run a bookstore, install a septic system and a leach line, pull a breach-birth calf out with chains, bake daily bread, do the dishes, answer the phones, and sort the mail.

I got hung up on the no girls part

My reaction to this was to spend long hours on the college's one phone line. During one discussion of the student body's position on coeducation, I held up my $400 phone bill as an argument in support of changing the single-sex policy.

It's funny, in response to the original post I thought mainly of my experience supporting the union at my later transfer college; but of course, Deep Springs was the only reason that I, from as middle-class an existence as you could find, thought about the importance of work in community at all. I later built a lot of Marxist business on top of it, but that's where it began.


Posted by: Resident Deep Springer | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 4:51 PM
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The college concluded, among other things, that you can't efficiently run a manual labor operation with students and it would be better to have students pay for physical activity (e.g., gym) than to be paid for it. Utopian visions sometimes turn out to be . . . utopian.

Other times, utopian visions turn out to be...realized.

Berea College is distinctive among institutions of higher learning. Founded in 1855 as the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, Berea charges no tuition and admits only academically promising students, primarily from Appalachia, who have limited economic resources....All students work at least 10 hours per week in campus and service jobs in more than 130 departments.

Also here.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 4:58 PM
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82: and it would be better to have students pay for physical activity (e.g., gym) than to be paid for it.

I was part of continuing dialogue in a similar vein over a century later as one could either be a Math Dept. tutor for credits (big fucking whoop) or pay. The usual compromise was 1st semester their way and from then on you could do it as a job.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 5:00 PM
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89: Stayed at the Berea College hotel one time. It really is a place that has seemed to "work". From what I know of Warren Wilson it seems to have been a more mixed experience. A good friend of my son's is going to start at the latter this fall, will be interested to see what her experience is.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 5:04 PM
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My mom really wanted me to go to Deep Springs.

Mine too!


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 5:12 PM
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The college concluded, among other things, that you can't efficiently run a manual labor operation with students

This is still a very polarizing subject at Deep Springs. A recent president was let go after a nine-month tenure because, I suspect, he was very avidly pushing for a kind of professionalization of facilities management that would further subordinate student authority over the work program. That said, I don't think that what he was pushing was terribly far off from the norm -- he was probably just too cavalier about denigrating the importance of the student-run work program.

The school has a full time ranch manager, farmer and mechanic, and goes back and forth on having a student- or staff-run kitchen. The tension came up around individual projects -- would student labor be used, for example, in the construction of the new dorm facility. (It was, though in a minor and inefficient fashion that, I gathered on a recent visit, irritated the students and the contractor alike.)


Posted by: Resident Deep Springer | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 5:28 PM
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88/93: Can I ask how you found the transition to your transfer college, which presumably had different priorities as a community? The DS alum I know had been seriously embittered by the process, and seemed to need to protect his utopia from gawkers; he only talked to me about the place at all because I had been in one of the association's programs for high-school students.

Now I have to go read the thread linked in 92 to figure out who I went to camp and/or college with.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 5:41 PM
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at Deep Springs.

Don't forget the Deep Springs perqs, either, Benedict! Like the young, underage illegals working as custodians and male prosties for the Manly Men of the ranch. Ay pupp-ay


Posted by: Hermann Goering of yr Dreeemz | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 5:49 PM
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95: Did your work there pay well, at least, ToS? I mean, I know that money isn't your primary motivation, but still...


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 5:53 PM
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94: I approached my transfer college with an air of superiority, which was always puzzling to the people there, since they imagined that transfer students always assumed they were moving up in the world. I was a bit of an alien for my first year -- I once told a woman in my class how important it was to me that she was outspoken because my classroom experience hadn't yet involved women students. WINNER. I was more extroverted than the typical DSer, and I made a point of finding my community -- appropriately enough, among student activists, and less predictably in an improv comedy group.

And I enjoyed gawkers. DS was a guaranteed 15 minutes of party conversation. I still dine out on the story.

At the end of my first year, one friend said, "You're a real spiritual outsider here, aren't you?" I don't think I ended out that way--I still hate the administration of the college (though it conducted itself admirably in the last round of union negotiations), but I have a good bounty of friends who are a little bit freaky but hardly outside the bounds of alumni.


Posted by: Resident Deep Springer | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:00 PM
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94: To belabor the point--DS gave me the lenses to understand the college community from a more materialist view than the typical undergrad, who understood it to be centered around them. I got graduate teacher unionism a lot faster than most of my peers, and got interested in the surrounding working-class/post-industrial community a lot quicker too. But there were plenty of students who got it -- I was in a minority, I wasn't unique.

Undergrads like to say "I can't wait to get to the real world". Though they had a temporarily coddled existence, it had an economics that would continue after they were gone and was unassailably part of the real world, whether in its capacity as a local employer, a manufacturer plant of future knowledge workers, a holding pen for children of privilege, etc. etc. This was an effect of studying within an intentional community for my first two years.


Posted by: Resident Deep Springer | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:06 PM
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DS was a guaranteed 15 minutes of party conversation.

"So is it true what they say about the reason why Deep Springs got out of the wool business?"


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:14 PM
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97: Interesting, and I'm glad the transition was easier for you. I have to imagine that screwing with people's expectations about how grateful and humble a transfer student ought to be would be a lot of fun. Until it got really, really old.

I made a point of finding my community

Yeah, just recognizing that this is in your power makes a huge difference. Having been part of an intentional community probably makes the lesson more obvious, but all the same I'm impressed that you got it at that age.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:15 PM
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Also:

Undergrads like to say "I can't wait to get to the real world".

They do? I honestly can't remember hearing this in college, and I sure didn't feel that way myself.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:19 PM
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You're right that they don't say they can't wait to get there, but I found it pretty common to dismiss the college experience as "not real world." It is a fairly benign assertion of adult understanding of your circumstances -- life won't always be this fun -- but it obscures the material forces that have been harnessed to create the halcyon groves.


Posted by: Resident DSer | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:25 PM
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99: There was a moment in the co-ed debate when an alumnus berated the trustees for their fear that co-education would turn the place into an uncontrollable orgy. "Students here have had sex with everything on the ranch," he said. "I don't think adding female students to the mix will bring the place down."

The milking routine involved bottle-feeding milk to a few lost calves. My senior dairy boy offered himself up as a bottle substitute. It was uncomfortable, and he stopped immediately.


Posted by: RDSer | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:29 PM
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I'm surprised that merely "uncomfortable" describes the experience.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:36 PM
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The trouble with debt is that it pushes graduates toward employment choices that have a low ratio of public to private benefits. The ideal progressive policy (which actually has a chance of getting enacted under this administration) would be to saddle students with a debt load, but make the repayment schedule variable with future income--and make provision for forgiving the debt entirely for graduates who take their skills into careers with a high ratio of public to private benefits.

The hassle of going through hoops like this is enormous. Plus, if you wind up marrying somebody they usually count their income too. Under the direct loan income contingent repayment plan, all of the debt gets forgiven after 25 years, but the amount forgiven is, of course, income.

Plus you have to understand, that I'm very anti-debt. If you can help it, I don't believe in going into debt at all. I firmly believe in buying a used car for cash rather than financing something.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:53 PM
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102: I wouldn't say that we dismissed the college experience as "not real world", more that we dismissed the real world as not Chicago.

In any case, the material forces were pretty obvious, what with the slumlord thing.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:56 PM
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I'm struggling to discern a coherent argument in 105. What exactly are you suggesting, BG? College shouldn't cost so much? The government should pay full tuition and expenses for everyone? You should only go to college if you can afford to pay cash? Debt forgiveness creates moral hazard?


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 6:59 PM
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Oh, yay, wonderful, Resident DSer.

88 just made me smile: My labor duties required me at different times to milk the cows, build a boiler from a kit, push cattle, run a bookstore, install a septic system and a leach line, pull a breach-birth calf out with chains, bake daily bread, do the dishes, answer the phones, and sort the mail.

Thanks for explaining a bit of this. I hadn't heard much about Deep Springs in any detail.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:07 PM
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What, another Chicagoan?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:17 PM
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102: I wouldn't say that we dismissed the college experience as "not real world", more that we dismissed the real world as not Chicago.

Heh.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:19 PM
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Because really, the real world should shut down for several days once every spring while random people try to build nuclear reactors or Tesla coils from scraps.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:20 PM
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Shouldn't it, though?

Has FIST ever won?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:24 PM
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107:

I was expressing my Yankee aversion to debt as a way of explaining that my views on the cost/benefit calculations weren't totally rational.

Yes, I don't think college should cost as much as it does. Probably too many administrators, plus benefits costs which ought to be socialized.

On debt forgiveness. No, there's no moral hazard; it's just not as good of a deal as a grant. Forgiven debt will be treated as income to the borrower student whereas a tuition grant won't be--at least under the direct loan program. You haven't made much money, you pay off $20K, then suddenly when you're 60, you have an $80K boost in taxable income. It's not a moral hazard question.

I think that I object to all of this incentivization stuff. I think that recent college graduates ought to have time to try out different jobs. They shouldn't have to know right away whether it's going to be super socially useful so that they'll get permission to get loan forgiveness. I can imagine a lot of middle of the road choices that wouldn't qualify for forgiveness but won't make you the big bucks either.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:25 PM
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This is, I have to say, on of the rare unfogged conversations that makes me acutely conscious of the class lines that exist on unfogged.

It's an interesting conversation, for that reason, and I don't want to complain. But, despite my profoundly middle-class, generally well educated upbringing I have always been somewhat vague (perhaps deliberately) and what it is that people who are "trying to get ahead" in society are supposed to do.

This thread just gives me opportunity to reflect up just how specialized the knowledge of the expectations for people who are specifically moving up in class, or demonstrating their comfort with class markers.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:30 PM
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114: Anything in particular that stood out to you? I sorta get what you're on about, but I'm curious.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:34 PM
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114: Anything in particular that stood out to you? I sorta get what you're on about, but I'm curious.

I can look, it was a general reaction to reading the whole thread. It was certainly more a reaction to the discussion about Harvard than the discussion of Deep Springs (which is interesting).


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:39 PM
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Further to 113: I don't think that somebody who has a B.A. in English and decides to make furniture or become an organic farmer should have to demonstrate that these are super socially useful in the way that being a legal aid attorney is or working for a 501(c)(3) environmental organization. And yet, they may not be making the big bucks.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:46 PM
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114, 116: I'm interested if you can say more, as well.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 7:48 PM
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Not to put words in Nick'S mouth, but I gather that it's the presumption that low status service sector jobs are something that college types/Unfoggedders would only experience through a work/study.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:14 PM
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Not to put words in Nick'S mouth, but I gather that it's the presumption that low status service sector jobs are something that college types/Unfoggedders would only experience through a work/study.

No, it wasn't that.

I hesitated to pick out specific comments, because I don't want to offend anyone. But it strikes me that my reaction to this may be quite particular to my personal hang-ups.

For example, one comment that caught my attention was

I heard that the Crimson now lets people do work/study there, so you can enhance your resume and make money at the same time.

This is a totally obvious comment, but it just struck me that the Harvard Crimson is entirely outside of my experience, and that I would have thought to consider the unfairness implied by people getting work study for working on the Crimson.

Heck, my college didn't even have a television newspaper.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:28 PM
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it's the presumption that low status service sector jobs are something that college types/Unfoggedders would only experience through a work/study.

Huh? I sensed that the unfoggedders were by and large drawing a distinction between themselves (down the gente, dirt under the fingernails at one point or another, knows what it means to do an honest days work for an honest day's pay, etc.) and the overprivileged Ivy Leaguers, with the latter needing a stiff dose of reality in the form of wielding a mop or spade.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:30 PM
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down the gente

Up the swipple!


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:36 PM
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109: Yes indeed. (Surely our continuing accumulation here can't come as a surprise?) I was before your time, though, I think. essear, were you around and doing Scav for the first item in 111? Because in that case we overlapped. And competed.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:41 PM
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This is a totally obvious comment, but it just struck me that the Harvard Crimson is entirely outside of my experience, and that I would have thought to consider the unfairness implied by people getting work study for working on the Crimson.

Not that I am expecting an outpouring of sympathy for Harvard snots, but the backstory of the work-study program at The Crimson is worth understanding.

1. The Crimson is and continues to be a farm team for elite media jobs. It's not quite the mafia it is sometimes made out to be, but it has an incredible alumni network and definitely gives you a let up in that career path -- IF you achieve a senior executive position in the organization

2. The Crimson has traditionally been incredibly competitive and has demanded slavish dedication of personal time to the organization. In my day, it was the equivalent of a demanding fulltime job (i.e. 40 hours/week or more).

3. There was a longstanding realization that the time commitment required to achieve a senior position in the organization created a barrier to students of modest means, which in turn aggravated the class bias in a key "pipeline" for elite journalists.

4. At the same time, there was sense of competitive envy that other Ivy League papers offered compensation (or in some cases, even course credit) for their staffers.

4. The graduate board of The Crimson launched a fundraising effort that created an endowment to compensate staffers from lower income families so that they would have the same chance to succeed in the organization, with all the professional opportunities that entails, as their more affluent peers.

I'm inclined to view this development as an unalloyed positive.


Posted by: Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:47 PM
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4 (the second) s/b 5, obvs.


Posted by: FDR | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:49 PM
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121: People here aren't a cohesive whole, an unambiguous group. Quite a few went to Ivy League schools, including Harvard. Their experiences and backgrounds differ in any case. Some were whole-hog privileged, some were not.

? I thought this was known, but maybe not.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:52 PM
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Well-chosen pseud, Frank:

In 1900, Roosevelt entered Harvard University. Only a few months into his first year at Harvard, Roosevelt's father died. During his college years, Roosevelt became very active with the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, and became its managing editor in 1903.

While I'm at it: I love the name Gabardine Bathyscaphe. Though I may call you Gabby.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:56 PM
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Huh? I sensed that the unfoggedders were by and large drawing a distinction between themselves (down the gente, dirt under the fingernails at one point or another, knows what it means to do an honest days work for an honest day's pay, etc.) and the overprivileged Ivy Leaguers, with the latter needing a stiff dose of reality in the form of wielding a mop or spade.

Yeah, I'd agree. There are some Ivy folks; probably an over-representation of DC, MN, CA, TX, and NYC folks; the Scots, Irish, English, Kiwis, Australians, and corresponding ex-pats living in the US; a very occasional US ex-pat commenter from Chile; it's a weird lot, really. But I'm not sure there's a class/education barrier. Maybe that everyone has or aspires to have some sort of university degree. And appreciates a good cock joke.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 8:59 PM
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121: Well, I was just guessing. And actually thought of you as a good counterexample. But I could see how, from a low SES VP, a bunch of UMC Ivy Leaguers demanding that UC Ivy Leaguers get exposed to honest work to keep them grounded would seem a bit rich.

Anyway, my school was founded with money wrung from the labor of exploited workers, so we're all sort of honorary working class.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:03 PM
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127: It wasn't arbitrarily chosen. Thanks for noticing.


Posted by: FDR | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:04 PM
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But I could see how, from a low SES VP, a bunch of UMC Ivy Leaguers demanding that UC Ivy Leaguers get exposed to honest work to keep them grounded would seem a bit rich.

I'm on the fence about compulsory labor in the countryside for the bourgeois elements, but my exposure to UC Ivy Leaguers in my impressionable youth definitely turned me into a passionate advocate for confiscatory inheritance taxes.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:14 PM
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128: I left out Chicago and Canada in the over-represented category.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:17 PM
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127: Aww, thanks. But can I put in a vote against "Gabby"? It's... inapt. Chicago, remember?


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:21 PM
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What about Bathy?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:22 PM
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Hold me closer Gabardiney Bather...count the headlights on the highway...


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:23 PM
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134: Because I'm a model of personal hygiene?


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:29 PM
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That's often the foot in the door into the world of modeling.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:33 PM
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Fucking hell. I decided a while ago that it's Gabby if he or she chooses to be a regular commenter. Sorry. "Gab" maybe.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:38 PM
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The Gift of Gabardine?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:40 PM
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Geebie would work.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:41 PM
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Oh no, that would never work.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:41 PM
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109: Yes indeed. (Surely our continuing accumulation here can't come as a surprise?) I was before your time, though, I think. essear, were you around and doing Scav for the first item in 111? Because in that case we overlapped. And competed.

No, my time at the U of C was contemporaneous with nosflow's.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:46 PM
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Sorry, parsimon, didn't mean to destroy your plans. (For the record: she.)

140: But I'm fallible!


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:47 PM
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Gabba!


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:48 PM
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ONE OF US! ONE OF US!


Posted by: OPINIONATED FREAKS | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:48 PM
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142: oh right, never mind. Given your field, I was briefly wondering if you actually were the amazing and Scav-hope-destroying J/st/n K/sp/r of breeder-reactor fame.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:53 PM
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All my life, I've been waiting for 145.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 9:53 PM
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143: My plans? Choose your nickname after your pseudonym, then, and choose it well.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:06 PM
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146: No, I am not amazing. Just aware of the legends.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:08 PM
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I'm not sure there's a class/education barrier

For the record (and no offense intended, Stanley), I disagree. The regular commenters here are overwhelmingly, even stunningly literate. Not just in an English sense or a well-read sense, but in a set of overlapping professional and social circles and mores that precious few people in our society ever, ever get to participate in.

Perhaps it's not a barrier in the sense that we don't actively turn people away.* But in my fairly longtime observations, it absolutely functions as a barrier, both in occasionally deterring and intimidating people who might like to comment, but also in just creating a space that telegraphs very loudly and clearly what it is about.

That's in no way a criticism -- I don't think there's a group known to humankind that hasn't developed exactly that kind of signal. It's just an acknowledgement that this is who we are -- a slightly vulgar, often irreverent, geographically dispersed, extremely literate loose assemblege of well-educated people with a keen interest in sex, politics, and current events.

*I missed the read thread on the day it was happening, so I will just say here that I think it was a pretty good illustration of the shadow side of what I'm talking about in this comment. If read -- a cosmopolitan, multilingual hyper-educated person working in a university setting -- failed one too many times in trying to communicate with people here, then what does that say about the chances of an alterna-read who doesn't even have the same cultural bona-fides?

Gosh, on rereading all of this sounds more vehement than I mean it to. But it's quite late here and I have to get to bed, so I'll stop talking and perhaps in the morning the Europeans will have sifted through and lifted up what I meant to say.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:09 PM
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They are so good at that, aren't they, the Europeans.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:10 PM
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and no offense intended, Stanley

And none taken whatsoever. I'm unsurprised that Witt gets it, once again, exactly right.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:13 PM
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Much as I love this place, here's the real problem: Even a good ol' fashioned Harvard-bashing turns into examination of our own excessive privilege far too soon.

The question of media fields and other high-demand, low-pay fields is an extremely difficult one, and really impossible to properly address at the undergraduate level.

Even with the salaries for editors, how many lower-class kids have the connections or background to get an executive position at The Crimson? Even if that opens people up to a fair shot, that's only 2-3 non-subsidized kids entering media fields with sweet, high-paying jobs.

What about those who go the internship route? Even if the elite colleges pay for them to do the internship (and then who'll pay for rent if, heaven forbid, they didn't grow up in NYC, LA, DC, or occasionally Chicago?), they're still stuck with trying to make it in those same cities after college without the college subsidy. Media doesn't pay well for years to come because they don't have to. Because they've found they can always rely on a steady supply of rich kids whose parents pay for those $2k a month rents in Manhattan while their kid's got a really promising $30k a year job at Conde Nast group. (Incidentally, this mostly comes up for me due to friends of mine trying to make it in music, which has similar issues).

Let's face it, some jobs are so desirable that plenty of the haves in this society will pay to take them, and that advantage can never be erased by any set of temporary subsidies or lower student debt. The best we can do is try to reduce financial inequality and provide a safety net, so people at the lower end can afford to really scrimp and try to get to those jobs while those on the upper end have a bit less of a boost. But overall, I think it's a bit of a lost cause. Unless media starts acting less like a business and more like a public service, it'll continue to make use of its prestige and appeal by drawing upon the outside money of its potential employee pool.

Seeing media production as a job is almost the wrong way to look at it, at least for the vast majority of content producers. Instead, it's a hobby that can almost pay for rent, with a few very well-compensated organizers at the top.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:29 PM
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I suspect most of the people who stick around here are stunningly literate in the mechanical words-per-minute sense. (I know this has been discussed before.) The couple of my friends whom I've told about here say the volume of text overwhelms them.


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:43 PM
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150: Witt, I understand you're off to bed, but it's best not to revisit the read question. She doesn't stand as a person representative of the outside of this place. There is a shadow side here, but read doesn't really inhabit it.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:51 PM
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Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of Unfogged? The shadow side does


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:53 PM
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Re: 150. I grew up poor, but I went to a liberal arts college full of upper-middle class people. They were basically nice, but their single most annoying trait was their airy assertion of how "we" were all alike.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 10:59 PM
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Read all the comments. That is the basis of the comments. The rest is Torah.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 11:04 PM
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I'm not sure there's a class/education barrier

I don't think there is precisely a class barrier, the background of all us is pretty mixed that way.

As for education though, there probably is a bit of a functional barrier. There are a hell of a lot of graduate degrees of one sort or another here, or at least people working on or aspiring to them. And while there certainly isn't any sense of requirement along these lines, I imagine the commenters who don't share this background are exactly the sort of people who are confident in their lack of formal education around a group of people who have a lot of it. I suspect this may intimidate some people though.

It correlates somehow to the issues of class, but we're pretty diverse that way I think. In other words:

We've got ivy league grads and high school dropouts. But the high school dropouts we get are the sort who might well get a doctorate later.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 11:05 PM
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I'm a high school dropout who got a doctorate later!


Posted by: Nakku | Link to this comment | 06-17-09 11:52 PM
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Huh? I sensed that the unfoggedders were by and large drawing a distinction between themselves (down the gente, dirt under the fingernails at one point or another, knows what it means to do an honest days work for an honest day's pay, etc.) and the overprivileged Ivy Leaguers, with the latter needing a stiff dose of reality in the form of wielding a mop or spade.

Or at least like to think they are (including y.t.), but if Unfogged was down with the gente, the question of whether "shitting on overprivileged kids" might be a bad thing to do wouldn't come up, now would it?


Posted by: Martin Wisse | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:22 AM
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The thing that unites Unfogged commentators isn't class or education, but a deep and unyielding commitment to avoiding their actual jobs.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:32 AM
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re: 160

Not a high school dropout, but, yeah -- I'm a former YTS trainee who got a doctorate* later.

The whole class/education thing gets very complicated for people from non-middle-class backgrounds who end up spending long periods in education. We've talked about it before here. You end up in class-limbo to a certain extent. Years of socialisation into a particular educational/class millieu go quite a long way to erasing some of your earlier background, but they don't go all the way and the various 'code-switching' strategies you end up developing aren't fool-proof.

It's possible to both over-emphasize the 'come up hard' element and engage in a certain amount of self-valorisation, and also to go the other way and act assimilated until one of those moments when you hit a sudden class-barrier that you've been forgetting exists, e.g. when someone starts banging on about 'chavs'.

* not actually official for a week or two more.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:45 AM
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Fucking chavs.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 6:19 AM
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The thing that unites Unfogged commentators isn't class or education, but a deep and unyielding commitment to avoiding their actual jobs children.

I get what ttaM's saying too, not that I spent that long in education. But I was very glad to move out of Oxford in the end - although I did have a couple of friends my age who had been at College there and now had babies, I spent an awful lot of my time either with 'town' women feeling over-educated or 'gown' women feeling too young and poor. To move here, to a place which does have a university but is in no way a university town, and where no one gives a fuck where you got your degree, or how old I am, or even how much our household income is, was incredibly liberating.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 6:58 AM
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exposure to UC Ivy Leaguers in my impressionable youth definitely turned me into a passionate advocate for confiscatory inheritance taxes

Dear god this, yes.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 7:18 AM
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164: "neds", I think, not "chavs". Or "schemies", if you're from Embra.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 7:33 AM
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re: 167

Yeah, 'neds' where I'm from, and also occasionally 'schemies': I'm from the east-coast/west-coast border zone, we always seemed to use a mixture of Embra and Glasgow slang growing up, but with a bit more Scots than either.

But down here where I live, it's always 'chav'. I don't even really mind some people going on about neds/chavs -- I have a couple of mates of impeccable ned stock who are very funny on the whole subject -- but when it comes from people not from that background ...


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 7:38 AM
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I avoid causing offence by referring only to "The People". As in "Good God, look at that woman's frightful tracksuit. She must be one of The People."
Or, occasionally, "The Masses".


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:01 AM
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re: 169

My younger male relatives are full members of the Reebok classic, trackies, baseball cap and Buckfast brigade. So much so that in photos they look like extras from one of Ken Loach's Scottish films, or like they are taking the piss.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:10 AM
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Letting my free-floating cynicism fly for a bit, the situation the OP describes is one of those (like undergrad admissions) that is best understood if you view elite private universities as managed investment funds with sophisticated fund-raising mechanisms intertwined with education-related front organizations. Not saying that it doesn't result in a lot of deserving people getting quality educations and opportunities, but the way the consumers of the education are handled is mostly informed by their potential future role in the ongoing funding of the enterprise in addition to the usual overall brand maintenance.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:26 AM
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Some of mine are verging on that too... at least they're still mercifully Burberry-free.

I knew a person from the Scottish Office who visited Buckfast Abbey and asked them if they could do something about their wine being the preferred tipple of every alky north of the Tweed, like stop making it or make it weaker or raise the price or something; and the monks refused, saying that if the alkies didn't drink Buckfast they'd only drink something else. Which is the same reasoning used to justify selling arms to dodgy countries.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:32 AM
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*I missed the read thread on the day it was happening, so I will just say here that I think it was a pretty good illustration of the shadow side of what I'm talking about in this comment. If read -- a cosmopolitan, multilingual hyper-educated person working in a university setting -- failed one too many times in trying to communicate with people here, then what does that say about the chances of an alterna-read who doesn't even have the same cultural bona-fides?

This is probably the dumbest comment I've ever posted, given that the one thing we do. not. need. is to re-open the read wound. But I also sat out the read thread, and I cannot bear for that episode to get turned into the collective memory as described above.

Read failed because she was often cruel and unwilling to engage in well-intentioned dialogue. At other times she was lovely and made a positive contribution, but the former is why she failed.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:39 AM
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"My younger male relatives are full members of the Reebok classic, trackies, baseball cap and Buckfast brigade. "

Heh. I have a similar but opposite situation. My US relatives are from thoroughly middle class and/or academic stock, yet one branch has somehow produced a collection of white trash cousins. My second to last visit involved spending a couple of hours sitting outside, chucking and catching knives while swigging JD from the bottle.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:46 AM
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I'm a high school dropout who got a doctorate later!

Yes, I meant that literally. There are several of us.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:48 AM
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163 is very good about the weird line you walk, and the pitfalls on both sides of it.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:49 AM
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chucking and catching knives while swigging JD from the bottle

I love Thanksgiving.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:54 AM
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177: A guy I vaguely knew damn near lost a foot from playing knives, I just happened to be there.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:01 AM
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We used to throw darts at each other [as kids, not as grown-ups]. I don't think I ever got hit, but I do remember one literally sticking out of a friend's ankle.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:04 AM
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There is a class/education barrier to participating here, but it's eclipsed by the pedantic/obsessive/nerd barriers. I've mentioned the site to a lot of people who come from loftier class backgrounds than I do, and who have significantly more education, and mostly their response is "I don't get it". Which is great. Who needs them anyway?

Also, I don't think Minnesota is overrepresented here in the same way that lawyers are overrepresented. We hardly ever geek out about Minnesota stuff to the extent the lawyers and professors geek out about lawyer and professor stuff. It just happens to be where people are from.

Re: Neds in the academy
Of course, we don't really have an exact analogue here in the US, but moving in bohemian circles, you get the opposite problem. There's a lot of rich kids and trustafarians who are at pains to show how cool and broke they are, and then you find out that they flew to NYC to stay at their grandparents' summer place on Long Island for 3 weeks. Hmph.


Posted by: minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:08 AM
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179: Yeah, this was a kids game definitely, but they were drunk and we were maybe 15 or so. Stupid. Anyway, he got a 6inch or so boot knife through the top of his ankle, cut a tendon or two. Hell of a mess. Nearly lost his foot later when it got infected and he didn't get it looked at soon enough.

A couple of us who were more sober had to carry him two blocks with a towel round it to a pay phone and get an ambulance, 'cause there were people at the house with open warrants.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:10 AM
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There's a lot of rich kids and trustafarians who are at pains to show how cool and broke they are, and then you find out that they flew to NYC to stay at their grandparents' summer place on Long Island for 3 weeks. Hmph.

That's universal, I think. Or at least milder forms of it are.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:13 AM
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That's universal, I think. Or at least milder forms of it are.

Agreed. And a constant source of bemusement to the people who actually don't have any resources, many who would trade places with them in a heartbeat.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:15 AM
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re: 180

I don't know, re: the nerd thing, by the way. I think quite a lot of the people who comment here aren't nerdy, or at least not in the sense that I usually understand it. There are some full-on alpha nerds, of course.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:20 AM
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173: This is probably the dumbest comment I've ever posted,

Per usual, you're too hard on yourself; you've posted far dumber comments.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:25 AM
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I think it ('nerd') is a term with usage that is (has?) changing quite a bit. It used to be pretty universally accepted to mean some sort of caricature of a bespectacled MIT engineerring student (or graduate) with no social skills. More recently though I've heard people described as art nerds, and someone else as a french lit nerd, even a raver nerd. So it seems to have maybe morphed into meaning anyone who has a passion and/or focus for anything a bit esoteric or off the beaten path. This maybe isn't so far of then.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:27 AM
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185: Well, I try to fit in.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:29 AM
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187: Me too!


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:30 AM
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So it seems to have maybe morphed into meaning anyone who has a passion and/or focus for anything a bit esoteric or off the beaten path.

Yeah, there's also the assumption that some people make that being smart is the same thing as being nerdy. The idea that there are smart people who can talk to the opposite sex is a revelation.



Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:30 AM
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189: Heteronormativist.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:33 AM
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163
Not a high school dropout, but, yeah -- I'm a former YTS trainee who got a doctorate* later.
...
* not actually official for a week or two more.

Will congratulations be in order?

Re: the original topic of privilege and education, a friend of my parents always said that you should go to an Ivy League school if you could get in, but if not, a public college or university would provide just as good an education as a non-Ivy private school, and just as good connections or lack thereof, at a fraction of the price. (Ironically, he is a professor at Tufts, exactly one of those non-Ivy private schools.) As it happens, I didn't take his advice.

The important thing seems to be to keep that "a fraction of a price" thing true. I blame California for the rising cost of higher ed.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:37 AM
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186
even a raver nerd.

That's the only one that sounds weird to me. The idea of an intellectual pursuit seems integral to "nerd." Lots of stuff can be intellectual pursuits, but a type of dance party just doesn't seem part of the same domain.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:41 AM
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192: Yeah, I thought that was weird too, but I think it was meant in the sequencing-of-electronic-music sense, which I could sort of see.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:42 AM
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Chicken shit is fattening! Look at cows.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:46 AM
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Mega commenting fail. Time to do some work.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:48 AM
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Salmon fat is an important source of mercury!

Wait, are we on the right thread?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:48 AM
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pwnage is .... well, yeah, time to do some work.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:49 AM
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Having a crappy service job is a valuable learning experience if you know it's going to end in a certain number of months. Otherwise there's no silver lining.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:50 AM
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198: that was sort of the point of targeting it at a particular population, wasn't it?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:51 AM
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The idea of an intellectual pursuit seems integral to "nerd."

Not sure about that - I've certainly encountered ski nerds and SCUBA nerds.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:53 AM
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Not sure about that - I've certainly encountered ski nerds and SCUBA nerds.

Gadgets and the possibility of arguments over minutia are going to be nerd attractors. I would think SCUBA at levels above very beginner would actually require quite a bit of intellectual work calculating dive and decompression times and such.


Posted by: CJB | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:58 AM
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I thought obsessive fondness for gadgets fell into the category of "geek" rather than "nerd". Or maybe I've lost track of what the words mean since high school, where people were very territorial about them.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:03 AM
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Dammit, Jim, I'm a dweeb, not a nerd.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:09 AM
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I thought obsessive fondness for gadgets fell into the category of "geek" rather than "nerd"

That is how I would probably make the differentiation if I had to, but I am not sure what a ski nerd would be if it wasn't someone really interested in the gear and technique. I would probably call that a ski geek, but a lot of people seem to use the two interchangeably. Also there is a lot of nerd geek overlap.


Posted by: CJB | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:10 AM
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What 198 said. I worked about 10-50 hours per week in various part-time jobs from age 14-22, depending on the season and the school year, and I have to say that the idea that working 10 hours a week will give someone solidarity with the working class is completely at odds with my experience. Mostly what it taught me was that menial work sucks, that it's a huge bonus to be able to afford an unpaid internship, and that a college student working 25 hours a week at McDonald's is worlds away from the fry cook doing it indefinitely, even if they're right next to each other.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:13 AM
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and just as good connections or lack thereof

I don't think this is true. Connectors get connected wherever they go, but the difference is going to be between strong regional connections and elite ones.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:13 AM
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Doesn't 205 basically contradict 198?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:16 AM
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I would think SCUBA at levels above very beginner would actually require quite a bit of intellectual work calculating dive and decompression times and such.

Luckily, there are now gadgets for this that anyone diving at that level has. (But, yeah, there is some math on the tests.)


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:17 AM
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I don't think 198 is at odds with the general tenor of the thread. A 10-hour job won't impart solidarity, but it will impart sympathy or at least a clue.

As for solidarity: my dining hall job was unionized, and the union steadfastly resisted any attempt to carve out exceptions for student jobs. The lesson of getting paid much better than your minimum-wage peers doing higher-status lab or even library work was not lost on everyone.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:18 AM
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Either way, debating the subtle differences between a "geek", "nerd", and "dweeb" is definitely cool.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:26 AM
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207: No. The only way it can be a valuable learning experience is if it's short term. I agree with that. People who are working jobs trying to make ends meet are not there for the valuable learning experience. 205 wasn't very clear, but I think the idea that giving Harvard (or wherever) students 10 hours in the dining hall so they understand whatever is like sending them traveling to a third world country so they can experience poverty, in the "well, sort of, better that you traveled than did not, but not really..." sense. It's good to have different experiences, but look, if you're in a position to look at a job as something you do to have an experience, it's not as clear that you'd be better off working that job than doing something else.

I don't think it's a bad thing to have worked a minimum wage job but I also would have traded it in a second for the financial security to have been able to take unpaid internships, or paid internships in other cities.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:28 AM
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210 is just the sort of comment I would expect from a hybrid dork/spaz.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:28 AM
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202, 210: Someone without a net nanny link to the Emilio Estevez skit from SNL, the one where he's in the gameshow "Nerd, Geek, or Spaz?"


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:30 AM
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212: Guilty as electrostatically charged.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:31 AM
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204: I was taking " X nerd" to be short form of "someone obsessively interested in the minutiae of X, who has difficulty interacting with other people, especially people uninterested in X". I suppose, looking at it, ski and SCUBA nerdery both involve intellectual effort.

Luckily, there are now gadgets for this that anyone diving at that level has.

IN MY DAY WE DID IT ALL WITH A SCHNORKEL AND A PAIR OF FLIPPERSH.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:32 AM
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I'd be willing to substitute -geek for nerd in that construction. But I did use "geek out" later in the same comment, so I thought that would impart more nuanced meaning to the first part.

When I think of who's in and who's out at Unfogged, the in people definitely have a propensity to be some kind of nerd/geek/otaku about several pursuits -- cooking, grammar, literature, photography, music, movies -- not that you can't find people like that at the margins of, or even *gasp* outside Unfogged, but it seems like one of the necessary conditions for being comfortable here. I dunno how you'd sum it up exactly: "educated polymath dilettante gourmandizers" maybe?


Posted by: minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:44 AM
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IN MY DAY WE DID IT ALL WITH A SCHNORKEL AND A PAIR OF FLIPPERSH.

A guy I know who used to be a navy diver and got into free diving used to have fun with SCUBA divers by swimming by them at like 80-100 feet down with nothing more than a snorkel and flippers.


Posted by: CJB | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:45 AM
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217: nothing more than a snorkel and flippers? Ah, that explains why my instructors insisted we all learn the hand signal for "Look out! Ugly naked free diver!"


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:54 AM
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OK maybe a swim suit, but he didn't really say.


Posted by: CJB | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:55 AM
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More fun would be to skip the snorkel and paint scales on your flippers and legs.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:06 AM
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educated polymath dilettante gourmandizers

I think a large proportion of upper middle class SWPL types would think of themselves this way. Unfogged is quite SWPL in a class sense. But it's also a very small community that grew initially out of a network of personal relationships, so I think the most important factor in hanging around here is just whether your idiosyncracies match up reasonably well with the people who post here.

If you want to talk demographics, I'd point to the large proportion of academics and ex-academics (anyone who was ever in a Phd program was in an academic career). Lots of lawyers too, but that is more common.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:14 AM
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Years of socialisation into a particular educational/class millieu go quite a long way to erasing some of your earlier background, but they don't go all the way and the various 'code-switching' strategies you end up developing aren't fool-proof.

This really resonates very deeply with me. I identify as working class despite a patchwork background that's not working class by any definition a genuine working class person would recognize, but given the crap choice of pigeonholes to be shoved into, that's the least uncomfortable. It's also sufficiently removed from the subcultures I usually move in that I can blame my code switching failures on class differences.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:17 AM
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217
A guy I know who used to be a navy diver and got into free diving used to have fun with SCUBA divers by swimming by them at like 80-100 feet down with nothing more than a snorkel and flippers.

That's one hell of a long snorkel. Or so it sounds to someone who has only seen those snorkels kids play with.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:17 AM
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But it's also a very small community that grew initially out of a network of personal relationships

Not really. While there are plenty of people here who have been commenting longer than I have, I was around when the comment threads initially got long (like, I remember fifty comments being a long thread). And there's not a core of people who knew each other offline before commenting here. Ogged, Unf, and Bob (not McM) knew each other for real before founding the blog. Labs met Ogged in Invisible Adjunct's comments. Apo 'met' Ogged through his blog. I showed up from random clicking around political blogs. And so on.

There are pre-existing personal relationships among commenters, but mostly in twos and threes, not in a larger core group. The basic social structure here coalesced here.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:25 AM
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Ogged, Unf, and Bob (not McM) knew each other for real before founding the blog.

I meant to finish this sentence with "But none of them are around these days."


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:26 AM
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educated polymath dilettante gourmandizers

The fact that there isn't a well-defined career path for this vocation is a source of never-ending frustration for me. You could argue that Ari and Gonerill have hit that jackpot, but recall that they actually had to write dissertations and suck up to tenure committees, so they don't really count in my book.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:31 AM
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I meant to finish this sentence with "But none of them are around these daystheirs was a primarily sexual relationship."


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:35 AM
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Damned HTML! That joke wasn't good enough to shine through any technical deficiencies!


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:36 AM
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217: That guy had ears of steel, geez.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:44 AM
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226 is so very true.

I'm having a serious identity crisis in terms of figuring out where I fit IRL work-wise. I've been bouncing all over. I think my dream job would be some kind of non-profit but well-funded foundation job working on health care policy and public health stuff maybe with some kind of legal focus, but I don't know what you do to prepare for that before you go to grad school.

I've been looking at human service social/justice stuff, and in addition to being broke, they just don't seem to treat people well. They demand a lot of "volunteering". I was just at a corporate event about GLBT inclusion and affinity groups sponsored by a large financial services firm. There were still plenty of annoying corporate-y types who were pretty intolerant even though gay. The T person worked for an arts person as a controller, and she was cool. People started saying TGLB.

So, I'd like to find a job where people can dress well and get paid, don't look like clones, run their organization efficiently, not be total leeches and never have to use leverage as a verb. I know that it's impossible, but I can't figure out what would be tolerable.

I'd like to avoid writing mission statements. I have a friend who works at the Boston Fed, and he said that their HR people spent months on their mission statement, and he had no idea what it was for.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:48 AM
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The fact that there isn't a well-defined career path for this vocation is a source of never-ending frustration for me.

There used to be, if you go back far enough. But it usually entailed membership in a monastic order, which would rule out several of the stalwarts hereabouts.


Posted by: OFE | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:53 AM
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I know that it's impossible, but I can't figure out what would be tolerable.

This is how I ended up in law school. I couldn't figure out the 'how to get there from here' for anything else that looked interesting, barring an academic career which I knew I didn't want.

Given that you've been to law school, I realize that doesn't help much.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:54 AM
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which would rule out several of the stalwarts hereabouts.

Wouldn't that rather depend on the order?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 11:56 AM
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a job where people can dress well and get paid, don't look like clones, run their organization efficiently, not be total leeches and never have to use leverage as a verb

Hip-hop DJ?


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:01 PM
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Hip-hop DJ?

She said dress well.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:04 PM
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Heebie, if you're still reading, I really like the Embrace Your Inner Red State play list. (I already liked country (*gasp*), but this mix is very well-done).

As for class and Unfogged, for some reason I was under the impression that there's a fair number of people here that grew up like I did - culturally middle-class, but without the money to back it up*, and with plenty of relatives/family friends that ranged along the spectrum of poor to fairly wealthy.

*(I mean, even now, my dad, who rambles around the country in a rusted out van living off his VA benefits, looking suspicious enough that the highway patrol pick him up as a bum, writes me long letters full of references to Ginsberg and obscure epidemiologists).


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:06 PM
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235: Yes, and?


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:07 PM
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Admit it, soup. That guy doesn't look like a clone.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:07 PM
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It takes a tough chicken to make a tender mix.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:08 PM
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Wouldn't that rather depend on the order?

Not many orders welcomed families with kids, methinks, but that aside, I have a completely unsupported belief that the orders with the heavy intellectual clout and the great beer tended not to be the ones with the interesting private lives.


Posted by: OFE | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:08 PM
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230: That's why so many of the people who don't want to do anything remotely technical end up in law. There are plenty of pretty sweet jobs for people with some rigorous math background, in pretty much any field you could want.

My friend's going to a respectable business school with a scholarship to ease a switch from publishing to marketing, and I told her to take at least some of the higher-end econometric and statistics courses, along with any quantitative marketing this program had. It just makes getting an interesting and tolerable job that pays sooooo much easier, it's incredible.

Many non-profits, whether environmental, social justice, or other appealing causes, have the same problem as the media. Lots of people want to work for them, because it seems like interesting work with policy or for a good cause, so that means they get lots of applicants who don't need the money but just want to have a nice job or the resume boost. And they have to keep costs low or else no one will donate to their cause because their annual reports show too much going into administrative costs versus program spending. So, their staff ends up getting paid shit (and not that many of the positions even end up being particularly interesting). I'm seeing some similar burnout from my friends who worked the Obama campaign and entered the bottom ranks in DC this past year.

Jobs with broadly appealing one-line descriptions are almost, as a rule, poorly paying, crap work environments, have a very rigorous/arbitrary selection process that makes them a lottery, or are just a handout for those with connections.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:10 PM
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Re 226, a very English friend of a friend has decided that his goal is to become a national treasure. (Knighthood optional, but welcome.) Which is awesome, but how exactly does one intern for such a position?

It does seem like pain perdu's desired job existed in the States not so long ago; I'm thinking of Clifton Fadiman et al. Though if I recall correctly, a number of people in that crowd had to create roles for themselves as public intellectuals because academia still didn't want Jews.


Posted by: Gabardine Bathyscaphe | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:14 PM
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That's why so many of the people who don't want to do anything remotely technical end up in law. There are plenty of pretty sweet jobs for people with some rigorous math background, in pretty much any field you could want.

My biggest regret, really. Promising technical aptitude, and yet for some reason I went into law anyway. (I was told by several people it would be a useful advantage in the law. LIARS.)


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:16 PM
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f you want to talk demographics, I'd point to the large proportion of academics and ex-academics

And academics manqués. I come here instead of subscribing to Harper's. Bob McManus or Lewis Lapham? I've made my choice.

(I realize that I may the only person for whom Harper's signals "was a brainiac in college a lot but somehow avoided grad school". I made that up once and it was probably wrong.)


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:17 PM
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232: Re:Law. I do not think that I would thrive in a corporate law firm, and I wouldn't want to have to do my own marketing. On the other hand, I don't really want to work for the kinds of organization which help poor people like the ones that m. leblanc works for. So even within law, I don't know how you get there from here.

I really like team-based research and sometimes wish I'd done an M.D./Ph.D and gone into academic medicine with a translational research focus. Easier to get jobs in metropolitan areas than with a humanities degree. I think I'd like to be affiliated with a university, but an academic career in a field without "real-world" job options does not appeal.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:18 PM
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230: The fact that you have an Ivy degree and can still be wrestling with this angst at your present age instead of settling or selling out are, taken together, good indicators that you have the class signifiers and social capital necessary to work in "development", that is, as in fundraising for already wealthy institutions.

True, it involves sucking up to rich people and asking them for money, but the folks I know who have gotten into that game come to love that aspect (the separating rich people from their money, that is). You get to dress nicely and attend a lot of receptions, the mission statements are generally already written, and, if you pick the right institution, you and the rest of the staff can all have a private laugh behind the boss's back when she uses "leverage" as a verb.

Just don't let your underpaid staffers phone my house Sunday around dinner time, 'cause I'm just starting to get drunk, OK?


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:18 PM
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I was told by several people it would be a useful advantage in the law.

Really? Outside IP law particularly? That surprises me that anyone would think so. I've met two or three people who did research for a while and then went into patent law, but even then they weren't so much using their background for more than translating. In some cases the PhD/JD combo might have been useful window dressing for a firm too, I don't know.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:19 PM
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I want to take econometrics and statistics! I think that they're fascinating, and I want to use my foreign language abilities too. Thus the dilettante problem.

I was thinking of comparative health research which has statistics and stuff.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:19 PM
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234: One of my new favorite people is a DJ/promoter. She drives a crappy car, but lives pretty well. Her partner is an esthetician or whatever, so I'm sure she does alright too.

236: culturally middle-class, but without the money to back it up
As I like to put it "over-educated, under-employed lower-middle-class". Although if my parents had mastered their pathologies a bit earlier, we could have been middle-middle-class.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:20 PM
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My biggest regret, really. Promising technical aptitude, and yet for some reason I went into law anyway.

Me too.

Seriously, if I'd managed to identify a job I wanted that required more math classes than I'd taken, going back to school for a couple of semesters of math wouldn't have been a problem. My problem was finding a target to aim at.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:22 PM
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I'm thinking of Clifton Fadiman et al. Though if I recall correctly, a number of people in that crowd had to create roles for themselves as public intellectuals because academia still didn't want Jews.

The Marty Peretz model still exists, but it requires marrying an heiress, which could conceivably be worse than writing a dissertation.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:23 PM
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(I was told by several people it would be a useful advantage in the law. LIARS.)

I do find that being able to do simple arithmetic reliably, and to find my way around a primitive spreadsheet, both impresses people and comes up fairly often.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:24 PM
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I'm developmentally not my age. It's not so much because of class issues but trauma.

I have a hard time with the sucking up part. I went through a phase where I was looking into development. Hospitals and planned giving seemed attractive. They pay well, and people stay for a while. In a lot of other places you have to switch jobs to get a promotion. There were some interesting people, but there were also these super high energy gabbers who felt that they could sell anything, and I''d kind of have to believe in my cause.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:25 PM
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Really? Outside IP law particularly? That surprises me that anyone would think so.

By mathematics professors, even!


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:25 PM
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By mathematics professors, even!

That's bizarre. I can see this making sense for some very particular, narrow law paths. But in general? Bizarre.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:26 PM
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of course, I hardly need to point out that everyone should study a bit of mathematics on general principles, right?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:27 PM
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Perhaps I am reading Brock incorrectly, but I thought he was saying Promising technical aptitude rather than the taking of math classes was the "advantage".


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:32 PM
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A guy I know who used to be a navy diver and got into free diving used to have fun with SCUBA divers by swimming by them at like 80-100 feet down with nothing more than a snorkel and flippers.

All good fun until someone loses an eye blacks out and drowns.

My math education was going well until I encountered premeds and an 8:30 am physics class. Now it's all gone.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:33 PM
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255: Something about having an analytical turn of mind? Not that it's exactly a technical background, but I remember thinking the logic puzzles section of the LSAT was silly -- good luck for me that they relied on it, but what possible application was "Alice orders the vegetarian appetizer, and won't sit next to anyone who eats meat. Betty has spareribs, and sits next to the person who had seafood..." going to have to practicing law? And then in law school it made sense: working through a statute, or a multipronged legal rule, is very much that sort of process.

I could see someone thinking along those lines giving advice like "Sure, having some technical aptitude will make you a more successful lawyer." I don't know that it's good advice, but the thought process makes sense to me.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:36 PM
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By mathematics professors, even!

Who are universally acclaimed for their broad experience and knowledge of the world outside mathematics.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:40 PM
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I think a lot of people don't realize what it is that lawyers do. (Thinking aloud: no, that can't be it, because a lot of lawyers themselves seemed to act like it would be some sort of useful skill, but it generally hasn't been.)

One exception: a few years ago we were asked to devise a glorified sort of stock option plan, the returns of which scaled continuously with the returns received by another group of investors. Doing so required using some very elementary calculus, which (1) might have been the most fun thing I've ever done at my job, sadly, and (2) made everyone else on the team cower under their desks in fear. Several people lost bowel control. So I was sort of a hero for a day. But that was an unusual enough situation that I don't expect it to happen again, certainly not frequently. And certianly not frequently enough to make me consider mathematical aptitude in any realistic way a "useful skill" in my job.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:40 PM
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he was saying Promising technical aptitude rather than the taking of math classes was the "advantage"

Well, the one as evidenced by the other. (Or as could be evidenced by other comparable "technical" classes.)


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:41 PM
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Wait, no, 262 is only partially right. That's what a lot of people seemed to be suggesting. But my one math professor seemed really to think that the more higher mathematics classes I could take before law school, the better lawyer I'd be.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:43 PM
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So I was sort of a hero for a day.

That really might have been what lawyers who told you math would help were thinking of -- I've been that class of hero a couple of times (although never with calculus. Seriously, my big mathy show-off moments have been percentages. And some very, very primitive statistics.), and it probably looks more glamorous to the guy losing bowel control than it does to the one being the hero.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:44 PM
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263: He thought you had real math potential, and was grasping at straws to get you to take more?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:45 PM
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And certianly not frequently enough to make me consider mathematical aptitude in any realistic way a "useful skill" in my job.

Look at it this way: as long as that plan is in force and your firm cares about that client, you have job security.

On a vaguely similar topic, perhaps this thread at EOTAW (which I belatedly discovered last night) has now died down to the point where we could discuss it here without being obnoxious? It's a fun topic for playing with the differences in how lawyers and academics see the world.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:46 PM
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265: I'm not really sure, but I doubt it. It's possible he gave that advice to everyone in any field, on the general premise that math is useful!. But for whatever reason he seemed really to believe it.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:47 PM
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261: Not that I want to discount your personal analysis, but I'm discounting your personal analysis somewhat since you do not have the experience of practicing Law without technical aptitude.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:47 PM
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268: that's true, but I certainly see plenty of very successful lawyers with near-zero technical aptitude. (Although I guess it depends on what one means by that phrase--LB is right that general analyical reasoning skills are certanily useful.)


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:50 PM
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In the antitrust and securities litigation practice, post-calculus level math comes up pretty frequently, particularly statistical applications. the few lawyers who can follow along with the experts have a real advantage.

On the transactional side, I almost believe that if securities lawyers understood the math behind derivative instruments like Collateralized Debt Obligations, the products would never have reached market and Lehman Brothers, AIG, etc. would still be in business.


Posted by: unimaginative | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:51 PM
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On the transactional side, I almost believe that if securities lawyers understood the math behind derivative instruments like Collateralized Debt Obligations, the products would never have reached market and Lehman Brothers, AIG, etc. would still be in business.

This is a real possibility.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:53 PM
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236: Thanks, Parenthetical! I'm so glad!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:54 PM
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Wait, what's the "math" behind CDOs to which you're referring? Just the flow of the waterfalls?


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:54 PM
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271, 272: Try telling that to the tax lawyers and accountants who sold their souls enabling all sorts of scams.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:55 PM
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274 to 270 and 271.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:56 PM
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270.2: This may be true, but I've been continually amazed at how few people really understood the math, assumptions, and models behind credit derivatives and multi-tiered securitizations. It seems there weren't even enough to fully staff the places creating these things, let alone the law offices helping to vet them.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:57 PM
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I secretly suspect that much of the Mineshaft is better at math than me, but I just took more classes than most.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:57 PM
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Have you all noticed that there's a vehicle out there called The Axiom? I think it's Isuzu. Let's take this SUV as our premise, and see where we go.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 12:59 PM
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I almost believe that if securities lawyers understood the math behind derivative instruments like Collateralized Debt Obligations, the products would never have reached market and Lehman Brothers, AIG, etc. would still be in business.

I don't. Understanding differential equations is orthogonal to being a greedy asshole who jumps on the bandwagon when someone else invents an unregulated ponzi scheme.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:00 PM
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273: I actually meant risk calculations generally, not the CDOs themselves, when I agreed.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:01 PM
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273: Nah, there's a fair amount of multi-variable statistics that goes into determining the appropriate sizes of tranches, their respective default rates, and some other assorted debt-related properties.

Plus there's a whole other layer of statistics and assumptions that goes into determining the values of the various inputs that then go into the model to determine all the above.

There were problems through much of this system, but I believe the worst errors were generally made in that second part (how to estimate the parameters for the CDO tranche pricing model, and determining the robustness of those estimates).


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:01 PM
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280/281: oh, yeah, but all that's almost completely invisible to the transactional lawyers drafting the paperwork. It's not a matter of understanding it or not--it's just not even a part of the world in which they're involved. They'd literally never even see most of it. That's for the ratings agencies and other risk assessors. I really don't think you can pin that on the transactional lawyers.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:06 PM
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282 was more directly to 281 than to 280.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:08 PM
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I mean, even now, my dad, who rambles around the country in a rusted out van living off his VA benefits solving mysteries with four hippies and a talking dog.

Fixed.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:08 PM
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(What I'm trying to say: I've read the legal documents for CDOs. There's no math in there.)


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:09 PM
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282: I'm not on the transactional side, but while you've got lots of people drafting the paperwork who aren't thinking about risk in that way, don't you have some lawyers reviewing the global plan for risk of it all blowing up and leading to default and litigation? Someone who could have been standing athwart the tide of new financial instruments crying Stop!


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:10 PM
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282: Huh, ok. I guess I assumed there'd be some concerns about liability if the clients happened to be selling a totally bum product, but apparently the law firm doesn't do any of the due diligence on that. Ouch. That makes the consulting-before-rating arrangements even worse.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:10 PM
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I really don't think you can pin that on the transactional lawyers.

Yeah, just cause they don't fit in your neat, little cisprivileged gender categories doesn't mean they brought down the economy, too.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:11 PM
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285: I actually worked for a bit on drafting form derivatives contracts, which, as you say, had no math in them.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:12 PM
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I really like team-based research and sometimes wish I'd done an M.D./Ph.D and gone into academic medicine with a translational research focus.

this is an ungodly difficult career path, although great if you're an incredibly disciplined, focused, and directed person with a ton of patience and the ability to take a 10-15 year apprenticeship in poverty. Are you?


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:13 PM
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284: How'd you guess?!?


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:13 PM
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lawyers reviewing the global plan for risk of it all blowing up and leading to default and litigation?

Um, no. Lawyers just put boilerplate risk factors and disclaimers in the documents. If they're really worried about it blowing up, they might beef up that language to make clear that it's really risky, and we're really no promising any good results. And sternly warn their clients that the documents don't matter that much if they're out there saying something else to potential investors, so stay on message and don't hype this up undeservedly, etc.

I mean, I guess if a lawyer had a real sense that a product was financially toxic, and had a sense that the client didn't grasp that, sure, you'd let them know. But how is a lawyer ever going to get that knowledge? The background stats likely aren't going to show up on his desk without his asking. You think the client wants to pay to have the lawyer rerun the models and rethink the risk assessments? It's not entirely inconceivable, but at some point you've stopped doing legal work and started doing something else.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:18 PM
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oh, yeah, but all that's almost completely invisible to the transactional lawyers drafting the paperwork. It's not a matter of understanding it or not--it's just not even a part of the world in which they're involved.

right, lawyers are not financial risk managers. Nor do their clients want them to be.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:18 PM
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290: PGD, I'm not about to embark on it now, and my friends in certain areas of academic medicine have no lives. Hmmm cardiology hmmm. I said that I sometimes wish that I'd done it, like known when I was 20 that I found it interesting. I'm obviously not yet focused enough or directed. Come on, I'm commenting on unfogged.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:18 PM
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Come on, I'm commenting on unfogged.

There's no reason to get insulting -- hey! The ice cream truck!


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:22 PM
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292: Huh. I've done some of sort of thing I'm thinking of as a litigator: a client is thinking of doing something, and asks for analysis of what the legal exposure is (you know, like torturing prisoners). And while you're mostly doing legal analysis when you answer that kid of question, you do look at the factual situation in as much detail as you can. I guess I'd assumed that a more thorough version of that happened on the transactional side as a matter of course when a client was getting into an unfamiliar or non-routine transaction.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:25 PM
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295: I have described the Internet as an infinite source of shiny balls of tinfoil to bat around with my paws. Which is why I never get anything done.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:26 PM
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259 and following: to a mathematician, math isn't calculation or even calculus; if forced to pick one common word, I think 'logic' would win, although my undergrad profs are reminding me that modern mathematics includes at least three and, when pushy, six of the original liberal arts.

Not that everyone shouldn't learn a bit of calculus and probability for their practical and humanistic worth, too, of course.

"Let's face it, some jobs are so desirable that plenty of the haves in this society will pay to take them,"; well, what about Craigslist/Google/etc apparently ruining the newspapers? Is it going to become more obvious that surviving papers are mouthpieces of particular groups? Is that better than disguising membership in the investment class as journalistic merit? (Thought-experiment for self; what has all this done for art and music? But a&m don't make claims for objective truth, or the same claims for policy influence, etc.)


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:34 PM
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282: How can you draft risk disclosures if you don't understand what puts the investment at risk? One group of investments I'm forced to examine was priced based on an assumption that mortgages in different parts of the United States have uncorrelated default rates, which turned out to be completely false (and had been false in most historical periods). The risk disclosures didn't discuss the effect of a nationwide real estate slump on the investment, and the Prospectus touted geographic diversity.

If not the lawyers, someone should have been paying attention. The rating agencies caught on to this issue way to late.


Posted by: unimaginative | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:35 PM
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296: well, yeah, that does happen on the transactional side. And certainly a lawyer helping to set up a CDO would want to look at the factual situation in as much detail as possible, and understand what these products are, how they work, who is buying them and why. (None of which involves any math, really.) But lawyers aren't going to re-run the statistical risk assessments. I mean, if a client asked you about their potential exposure for marketing some medical device, would you routinely re-run (or even look deeply at, beyond just reading and accepting the conclusions) the medical testing that had been done on the product's efficacy and safety? That's more or less the same thing.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:36 PM
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that modern mathematics includes at least three and, when pushy, six of the original liberal arts.

That's pretty extreme pushiness.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:45 PM
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One group of investments I'm forced to examine was priced based on an assumption that mortgages in different parts of the United States have uncorrelated default rates, which turned out to be completely false (and had been false in most historical periods). The risk disclosures didn't discuss the effect of a nationwide real estate slump on the investment, and the Prospectus touted geographic diversity.

Okay, wait: that's an obvious one. Every assumption is itself a risk (that the assumption is false), so one of the risk factors here would have been that mortgage default rates might be correlated in diverse geographic areas (a national slump). So I'd call that bad lawyering, although I haven't read enough of these to know if it was a common oversight. (And legal risk disclosures in a prospectus are in some ways stupid things anyway--they exist as protections against liability, and for no other purpose. If this risk factor had been fully disclosed it wouldn't have changed the real world behavior of anyone, anywhere.)

But if you're saying something more--namely, that the lawyers should have realized that the real-world risk of correlated mortgage default rates was higher than the models assumed--I just disagree. That's doing something other than lawyering.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 1:46 PM
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And legal risk disclosures in a prospectus are in some ways stupid things anyway--they exist as protections against liability, and for no other purpose. If this risk factor had been fully disclosed it wouldn't have changed the real world behavior of anyone, anywhere.

In a somewhat similar area, what I used to tell clients about balancing between comprehensiveness and comprehensibility was that we weren't really writing for the nominally intended audience, we were writing for their hypothetical future lawyers.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:03 PM
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173

Read failed because she was often cruel and unwilling to engage in well-intentioned dialogue. At other times she was lovely and made a positive contribution, but the former is why she failed.

This conveniently assigns all the responsibility to read which I don't think is accurate.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:03 PM
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That's doing something other than lawyering.

Well, that's where I don't really know where the lines of lawyering fall. One thing that becomes pretty clear with some investigation into the structure of subprime mortgage securitization and the models used for packaging CDO-squareds is that they are intensely sensitive to the input parameters. Someone who isn't a complete believer in efficient markets and who knows a bit about how trading desks assess the input parameters would also realize that there's sizable estimation error in the estimates (especially when any sort of consideration for uncertainty about future conditions is added in). These two considerations would seem like a hefty potential liability in need of further investigation.

I can see why a corporate lawyer would want to close their eyes and take the paycheck just as much as every one else in the line, but it still would've been another layer of people potentially going "Wait a second...".


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:05 PM
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another layer of people potentially going "Wait a second...".

Right. It doesn't seem as if it should have taken that much mathematical sophistication to say "You've put a bunch of high risk securities into a meat grinder, turned the crank and produced only low risk securities. Are you really sure that works?" Mostly, the amount of mathematical sophistication you'd need would be enough not to be so overwhelmed by the existence of a mathematical model that you couldn't question it.

But I really am being utopian here, the cultural barriers to raising a red flag are much more of an issue than lawyers' lack of math skills.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:10 PM
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it still would've been another layer of people potentially going "Wait a second..."

That's where the experience of the tax bar is relevant. Tax lawyers who said "wait a second" didn't get hired. Tax lawyers who provided legal opinions that basically said "assuming that a bunch of obviously false stuff is true, and construing the law in this implausible way while ignoring contrary authority, your deal achieves the intended tax results" made millions. A few of them got fired and went to jail long after the fact, but when business was good it was very, very good.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:10 PM
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Lawyers qua lawyers are not business advisors. People who enter law school always have this fantasy that being a lawyer is like being this all-purpose counsel and advisor on all kinds of stuff, which would be really neat. Then a couple of years out of law school they realize it's nothing like that. There's a particular very defined set of legal risks lawyers are there to manage by putting the right language in the contracts, and everything else they're not in the room for. It's not a generalized ticket to look for everything that might go wrong somehow. In fact, that would be a highly unwelcome intervention in most dealmaking settings.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:12 PM
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And there's NPH being much clearer than I am about the nature of those cultural barriers.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:13 PM
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It's not a generalized ticket to look for everything that might go wrong somehow.

Sometimes that actually is, at least on the surface, what the client's asking you to do.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:14 PM
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"You've put a bunch of high risk securities into a meat grinder, turned the crank and produced only low risk securities. Are you really sure that works?"

Except no, that's not how it works.

One thing that becomes pretty clear with some investigation into the structure of subprime mortgage securitization and the models used for packaging CDO-squareds is that they are intensely sensitive to the input parameters. Someone who isn't a complete believer in efficient markets and who knows a bit about how trading desks assess the input parameters would also realize that there's sizable estimation error in the estimates (especially when any sort of consideration for uncertainty about future conditions is added in). These two considerations would seem like a hefty potential liability in need of further investigation.

What do you mean by hefty potential liability? Financial loss or legal liability?


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:19 PM
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310: That's basically the general counsel role (whether performed by an actual GC or a very trusted outside lawyer), which is probably about the best legal job going.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:22 PM
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Sometimes that actually is, at least on the surface, what the client's asking you to do.

So, LB, a client marketing a medical device asks this--what's the scope of your approach?


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:22 PM
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312: a GC is going to have a lot more room to the judgment of the business professionals, but their role really is looking for everything that might go wrong legally, not everything that might go wrong. No one blames the GC is the engineering department screws up their calculations and the building collpases. (Except LB, who seems to be suggesting that even outside counsel should catch that kind of stuff, if they're hired to do the legal work on the construction.)


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:27 PM
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Seriously, if I happen to have the kind of expertise that lets me review medical testing documentation on its merits, I do. This may be impractical for time, resources, or expertise reasons, but if the sort of review I'm competent to do reveals that the testing was bullshit (or even if I have enough knowledge to be worried about the testing on the basis of the review I can do, but not enough to resolve my own concerns one way or the other) I raise that with the client, and advise that the deal stops until someone with knowledge is certain that my concerns are unfounded.

I'm not a finance person at all. I may be living in a fantasy world by thinking that it's possible that some of the lawyers might have had the expertise to note that there were large deals being done on the basis of shaky risk calculations. But that's pretty much my thinking.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:29 PM
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312: I have a lot of experience with general counsels in a government setting, and they don't generally advise on non-legal stuff. For some businesses, where legal issues are absolutely crucial to the business model, I suppose it's different. But from what I've seen lawyers play a quite circumscribed role substantively. This was also a realization that I watched all my friends who went to law school come to over their first few years in practice. It was not a happy realization.

This idea of "lawyer as general advisor" was just about the biggest reason, next to general confusion about what to do, that I saw people decide to go to law school.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:32 PM
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What do you mean by hefty potential liability? Financial loss or legal liability?

Well, that's what I don't know. There's certainly substantial risk of drastic financial losses, probably to a higher extent than is being publicized in the initial calculations and sales pitches, and they will follow a somewhat unexpected distribution (due to the loading on systemic risk, rather than the idiosyncratic risk that people tend to be more used to dealing with).

Whether all that translates into a sort of legal risk, I don't know. If it doesn't, then obviously it's not the role of the lawyer to worry about it.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:34 PM
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pwned by Brock.

LB knows more about this than I do, but all I can say is her job sounds like a lot more fun than my friends' jobs in big corporate firms.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:35 PM
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(or even if I have enough knowledge to be worried about the testing on the basis of the review I can do, but not enough to resolve my own concerns one way or the other) I raise that with the client, and advise that the deal stops until someone with knowledge is certain that my concerns are unfounded

But "the deal" is earning your client millions of dollars. And everyone else in the industry sells the same products, on the basis of the same testing. And the FDA [/ratings agency] is this supposed other "someone with knowledge", and they've looked at this very concern of yours and concluded its fine. You're really going to put your foot down about this?


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:36 PM
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LB's job sounds a lot more fun than mine, too.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:37 PM
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315: Part of what's driving my thinking here, I'm realizing, is that the situations in which I've been involved in reviewing a situation for possible liability have been with fairly small business clients. That's a situation where the lawyer is, to a certain extent, a general advisor, because the client's general level of sophistication isn't that high. I had been sort of thoughtlessly assuming that scaled up, but maybe not.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:38 PM
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they've looked at this very concern of yours and concluded its fine.

That'd end it -- I'm not talking about 'putting my foot down', I'm talking about raising concerns.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:39 PM
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That's basically the general counsel role (whether performed by an actual GC or a very trusted outside lawyer), which is probably about the best legal job going.

Not long ago, and within a relatively short period of time, a whole passel* of law-school educated acquaintances of mine made the transition from Big Law to being a general counsel with a nine-to-five. There's no doubt it's a great gig.

*what is the venereal term for lawyers, anyway? A bar? A cabinet? A mischief? A conspiracy?


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:40 PM
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323: A motion of lawyers.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:41 PM
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This idea of "lawyer as general advisor" was just about the biggest reason, next to general confusion about what to do, that I saw people decide to go to law school.

You forgot "would like to drive a BMW, but isn't good at / doesn't care for math".


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:42 PM
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A council of counsel?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:45 PM
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may be living in a fantasy world by thinking that it's possible that some of the lawyers might have had the expertise to note that there were large deals being done on the basis of shaky risk calculations. But that's pretty much my thinking.

Well... There's a large part of fantasy in assuming that lawyers might have the expertise. As I said earlier, I've mostly been staggered how few people actually seemed to have the expertise. After being in the classes where people trained to be among the elite quants who actually priced and assessed this crap, it was sort of amazing how few questions were raised regarding the methods used, and how few people actually understood the underlying models further than applying the mathematical formulas.

Then there's the more important layer of fantasy, which is that the lawyer would never be able to sink the deal even as it went on. They'd have a chance with, say, the first CDO-squared. But after that, it would be pretty much impossible.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:47 PM
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316: Varies quite a bit depending on the GC and the organization, I think, and government lawyers would be less likely than most to have a broader role. And I'm not talking about redoing the technical work of non-legal folks, but just the sort of stuff that involves having enough smarts and enough experience of how things can go wrong to say "hey, have we checked out thus and such?" or "are we really sure we want to do this?" or "I think we'd better run this by so and so before we move forward."


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:48 PM
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This idea of "lawyer as general advisor" was just about the biggest reason, next to general confusion about what to do, that I saw people decide to go to law school.

Some people I know who went to law school didn't seem to have much rationale beyond "my parents say I should be a doctor or lawyer".


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:48 PM
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"... and I flunked gen chem, so..."


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:54 PM
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"my parents say I should be a doctor or lawyer".

.. and med school looks like a real slog.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:58 PM
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230
So, I'd like to find a job where people can dress well and get paid, don't look like clones, run their organization efficiently, not be total leeches and never have to use leverage as a verb. I know that it's impossible, but I can't figure out what would be tolerable.

Did you ever consider journalism? The money's crap compared to basically anything that requires a post-graduate degree, but money is present, unlike volunteering for nonprofits. And other than the money, it fits your request to a T. Not only will you never have to use "leverage" as a verb, but depending on the publication, you might get to publically mock people who do.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 2:58 PM
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Adding on to 332, one problem with journalism as a career is that whole "run their organization efficiently" thing, because doing so will likely be bad for the journalist. Any in-house reporters after the first are low-hanging fruit for cutting expenses. Every publication varies, of course.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:10 PM
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As I said earlier, I've mostly been staggered how few people actually seemed to have the expertise.

there were people around who understood it. They knew the potential problems. They just didn't care.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:10 PM
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No one blames the GC is the engineering department screws up their calculations and the building collpases. (Except LB, who seems to be suggesting that even outside counsel should catch that kind of stuff, if they're hired to do the legal work on the construction.)

As a follow-on to this, I should say, they sometimes do blame the GC (or outside counsel, if appropriate) for not thinking "what if the engineering department screws up their calculations and the building collpases?" in advance, and taking (or at least suggesting) appropriate liability-mitigation strategies. That's the sort of "generalized ticket to look for everything that might go wrong somehow" that I'd generally associate with lawyering. But that's very diffierent from personally checking the accuracy of the engineering specs, which is literally what's being suggested in this thread.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:13 PM
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Or have any real incentive to care.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:13 PM
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330, 331: When I TA'ed the intro physics for biosciences class I know that I helped send at least ten people from pre-med into pre-law. Sadly some of the ones most deserving of having their medical careers strangled at birth managed to get really good grades.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:13 PM
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This thread took a distinctly math-and-the-law turn that I did not anticipate. I used to be a math major -- for one semester, my first semester in college, when I ran up against multivariable calculus. After that, I was a government major, and law school beckoned!


Posted by: NCProsecutor | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:20 PM
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334: Yeah, there were certainly some. Clearly, or else Goldman Sachs and a couple other firms would still have had higher exposure when everything hit. The structured finance personnel at the banks also made enough due to the bonus structure to not care.

But places like AIG? They just hosed themselves at outrageously low prices. Even the bonus structure shouldn't be enough to excuse that kind of behavior. It clearly indicts the risk management ability of someone on the chain of command, where there really shouldn't be such a weakness.

Plus, similar problems affect volatility pricing models and others still in use. And really big deals are made over the "amazing insights" of people like Talib Wilmott, who don't do much but point out the obvious shortfalls of these models' assumptions and how they would systematically affect pricing.

The average practitioner kinda sucks at their job, even if it's what they're supposedly at expert at. I was just surprised that finance, despite its obscene payscale, was no exception.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:20 PM
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"collpases" in 335 was a copy-and-paste. I actually do know how to spell that word (I think).


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:27 PM
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I helped send at least ten people from pre-med into pre-law.

Ha. I was just thinking today that I'm 0 for 15 or so on my campaign to dissuade people from law school. Either I have an ego problem or a communication problem or both. (And I try really hard too, with substantive examples and real-life data and blunt facts. All of that would have worked on me! Why doesn't it work on them?)

Yeah, maybe it is an ego thing.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:27 PM
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The average practitioner kinda sucks at their job, even if it's what they're supposedly at expert at. I was just surprised that finance, despite its obscene payscale, was no exception.

The correlation between being good at what you do and making a lot of money (or occupying an exalted position) just isn't all that strong.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:31 PM
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The correlation between being good at what you do and making a lot of money (or occupying an exalted position) just isn't all that strong.

There are countless exceptions to this rule, but of course many of those exceptions involve vocations where "being good at it" isn't particularly laudable in the eyes of the disinterested, public-spirited observer.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:38 PM
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I was just surprised that finance, despite its obscene payscale, was no exception.

I don't see why this is surprising at all, in fact it's sort of anti-surprising to me. Anything with a pay scale all out of proportion with similar work (i.e., much of finance) will attract a number of people who are mostly interested in the payscale. Some of them are bound to be better at getting the jobs than doing them. Once a lot of money gets sloshing around, your only hope to keep merit a relevant factor in hires is to have a strong dependence on measurable outcomes for results and incentive structures. That doesn't describe a lot of finance work.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:41 PM
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0 for 15 or so on my campaign to dissuade people from law school

I think we won with Teo. LB deserves a lot of the credit for that, but others of us had a hand in it. Maybe you are 0.2 for 16!


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:43 PM
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345: That's kind of you, but I don't think I can take any credit.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:46 PM
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343: Say more. There are certainly lines of work in which the correlation is stronger or weaker, but I can't think of too many where either salary or position in the hierarchy is reliably sorted in accordance with who's best at the work.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 3:53 PM
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347:
- lobbyists
- real estate agents
- con artists
- used car salesmen
- voter supression gurus

Shall I continue?


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:05 PM
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I don't see why this is surprising at all, in fact it's sort of anti-surprising to me.

Well, it's mostly surprising because I've only been in the workforce for 4 years. All that time through high school and college, I assumed there was this vast body of experts who I could never hope to match. I knew plenty of people who were as smart or smarter through school, and presumed that would be nothing compared to the professional world. I never really thought through the consequences of just how thinly spread that talent would be in the future.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:07 PM
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Bummer. Next time some sweet young thing comes through asking if s/he should go to law school, you should take the lead. It will surely be a group effort, with the lawyers batting clean-up, but we can get your percentage up!


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:07 PM
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Cyrus--I'm surprised by your suggestion of journalism. I'm not a quick enough writer or a good enough one. That's like suggesting that mcmanus go into governmental relations.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:28 PM
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The average practitioner kinda sucks at their job, even if it's what they're supposedly at expert at. I was just surprised that finance, despite its obscene payscale, was no exception.

The job of people in finance is to make themselves money. They're extremely good at it.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:31 PM
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Well, it's mostly surprising because I've only been in the workforce for 4 years.

I can sort of see where you're coming from, but the idea that the money goes where the merit actually lies is is naive on a level different than lack of work experience. Or at least shows an unusual amount of youthful optimism, in my view.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:33 PM
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The job of people in finance is to make themselves money.

is an important distinction.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:34 PM
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I'm not surprised that the distribution of money is unrelated to merit, but it makes me pretty unhappy to see prestige, honors, awards, and status as a role model just go to whoever is also receiving the money.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:38 PM
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327.2: And were these people bad at applying the formulas, or just bad at realizing what they were saying? Applying math is a whole 'nother thing.

essear: the argument as I recall had a lot to do with what constituted the liberal subjects back in the day ( which I recall even more faintly than my profs' arrogation). assuming you take logic, arithmetic, geometry as givens: Aristotle's music depends on understanding ratios, and we get to the comma and irrationals and (later) groups; I think astronomy came in under either geometry or an attempt to include physics; and grammar with the argument that the ancients thought grammar was a formal, not a descriptive, subject.

But to back up to this original wonderment at the strange advice, if law involves close reasoning on subjects you know little about and must take as givens, well, sure, math should be good practice.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:38 PM
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and status as a role model just go to whoever is also receiving the money.

In a culture where status (as a role model or otherwise is largely, but certainly not entirely, ordered by the amount of money one is perceived to have, this is hard to avoid.

But like I noted earlier, large amounts of money involved plus difficult to define (or easy to manipulate) metrics of success is a recipe for throwing merit mostly out the door, and moving to patronage and networking as more strongly determinative. But I don't think it's entirely causal in that direction. Some of this has to do with leverage, as there is a system in place to use such network effects, and it will largely move into whatever area(s) it is possible to leverage, if not out and out game. I don't mean this in a grand conspiracy theory sense, no such planning implied.

The harder it is to game the system, the more likely honors etc. accrue in a way at least correlated to merit, but this again is much easier if the money isn't great.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 4:47 PM
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348: I'd put those (and consultants and lawyers) toward the merit-based end of the distribution but wouldn't concede anything approaching perfect correlation. I do see where you're coming from and I don't think we're arguing about very much.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 5:04 PM
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And of course it depends a great deal on how you define the job. Is a real estate agent's job just making sales, or is getting a good deal for the client part of the job? Is a lawyer's job practicing law, or does it also include marketing and such? And so on.


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 5:07 PM
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353: I don't think I ever believed that the most meritorious people got the most money. I think my earlier thinking on finance was more along the lines of:

"For that kind of money, the stakes would be huge. Surely that entails enough oversight by clients that the least inquisitive/perceptive practitioners would be weeded out."
mixed with a bit of:
"And surely they'd (both the money running side and the vetting-the-money-runners side) attract so many damn smart people that they'd positively be bursting at the seams with people who can deeply understand this stuff."

This was my thinking through most of college, and for the earlier part of working, since I knew a fair number of extremely bright folks who had gone into various investment banks, hedge funds, and financial consultancies (one of whom, when working on a risk model project back in '07ish, actually produced a new means of testing debt portfolios that would have identified these problems, especially if it included the refinements that he and I spoke about at the time to reflect potential systemic risk).

Since then, I think I've realized how rare a group the people I knew through high school and college actually were, especially now that I've spent a couple years seeing the people in graduate school for high-end quantitative finance. I've also realized just how many different areas there are within these organizations that don't talk to one another (not going to get much input on debt risk models from the person who's programming auto-trading systems), which further dilutes the talent pool.

Also, I'm a relentless optimist. Somewhat by choice, somewhat by nature, somewhat by circumstances.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 5:49 PM
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352 is why I really like being on the independent research side of finance, and would like to do regulatory work one day.

357 is also just plain right (as usual for soup). The easier the output is to measure, the more likely pay is to match merit. That's why salespeople are so rarely on salary, yet the good ones never starve.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 5:52 PM
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Conversations here and elsewhere helped me decide not to apply to law school. But, sadly, I don't remember Witt herself being a big part of that.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 6:49 PM
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I just then briefly considered going to law school, then had a mental image of Witt talk me out of it.


Posted by: Nakku | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 7:01 PM
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SHE SAVED YOU!!!


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 7:05 PM
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No LL.M. for me. Thank you, Witt!


Posted by: Not Prince Hamlet | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 7:31 PM
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Nobody's asked me for career advice, but if they ever did I wouldn't bother trying to talk them out of law school. They probably see it as their only shot at avoiding downward mobility, and chances are they're right.


Posted by: Michael Vanderwheel, B.A. | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 7:35 PM
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My impression is that Wall Street is relatively meritocratic, and not any less meritocratic than academics or law. Wall Street would probably be less of a threat to the economy if it was just a big Good Old Boy network, rather than a bunch of hard-charging alpha personalities who feel that they've gotten where they are on merit. Meritocracy is just as sucky a system for promoting inequality than any other.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:21 PM
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I was about to achieve satori, the state of total enlightenment, but then in a dream Witt talked me out of it. Thanks Witt!


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:23 PM
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Po-Mo, what you're saying is helping me understand the crisis better. If the average practitioner doesn't have a good handle on the models, then of course they're not going to understand the limitations. This is an explanation that never occurred to me.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:28 PM
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You wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway, Walt.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 8:31 PM
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369: Eh, my word probably shouldn't be given too much credence. I don't work for a credit rating agency, or an investment bank, or a hedge fund, or a regulatory agency. It's just blown my mind how few people whose jobs it would have been to say "stop" didn't, and the only explanation that seemed to make sense came from how few people in my classes (which did supply a good deal of people to those sorts of places) actually thought in much depth about the models used and their proper implications.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 9:20 PM
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But places like AIG? They just hosed themselves at outrageously low prices. Even the bonus structure shouldn't be enough to excuse that kind of behavior. It clearly indicts the risk management ability of someone on the chain of command, where there really shouldn't be such a weakness.

I don't find it surprising. AIG was a typical picking nickles up in front of a bulldozer business model disaster which seems to happen over and over again on Wall Street.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:05 PM
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362, etc.: This is all the funnier because all of the 0-for-15 I mentioned above were all in-person conversations, brought to mind not only by togolosh's comment but by the dewy-eyed young person I interviewed today. 'Tis the season -- graduation season.

No, wait, one was an e-mail attempt. But it was with a young woman I've known since she was five.

And 370 was exactly my thought.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-18-09 10:16 PM
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"Wall Street" is a big place, and broad generalizations will rarely be true without exception, but 367 contains a lot of truth, IMO, with two important caveats: (1) the tournament structure; and (2) the role of sheer luck or good timing.

Perhaps a better description than "meritocratic" would be "utterly intolerant of low performance", with "performance" being often defined in ways that most of us would scarcely recognize.

In this sense, High Finance is much more merit-conscious than it was, say, 40 years ago. (Michael Lewis made half a career out of narrating this transformation in the 1980s.)


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 5:18 AM
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I'd like to find a job where people can dress well and get paid, don't look like clones, run their organization efficiently, not be total leeches and never have to use leverage as a verb

It's so obvious, I don't know why I didn't think of this before: BG should enter the Episcopal priesthood! It's a perfect fit! She wouldn't have to convert or anything!

Now I realize you're supposed to feel a "vocation" and all that, but the Lord works in mysterious ways, man. I see Ch/loe Br/eyer as a role model, here.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 5:25 AM
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picking nickles up in front of a bulldozer

I've always heard this as "picking up nickels in front of a steamroller". A bulldozer doesn't seem nearly as treacherous. Depending on the quantity of nickels at issue, co-opting the bulldozer might even be a useful way to gather them.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 6:57 AM
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So, Brock, with an Evangelical preacher your Mom won't be going to a priest or other minister for premarital counseling, will she?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 7:30 AM
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375: Lost bread, there's an oversupply of priests in the MA diocese. If I wanted to move to Eastern North Carolina, I might have a better shot, but I don't know how they feel about women priests.

Virginia Theological Seminary gives people a free ride, but they're really trying to get the 20 somethings. Everywhere else it's pretty damn expensive. Plus, you know I'd have to move to find a diocese that would sponsor me.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 7:38 AM
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don't know how they feel about women priests

Looks like they're okay with it.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 7:42 AM
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Now, Pittsburgh would be another story. The Bishop there (in Pittsburgh, that is) might be a big enough reason for me not to move to Pittsburgh even with all the nice houses and lovely unfoggeders.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 7:46 AM
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I haven't looked at the web page yet., but the diocese that I heard was short of priests was East Carolina>/a>.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 7:51 AM
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Ah. Well, the EC diocese's history page says they ordained their first female priest in 1977, but doesn't address it beyond that.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 8:11 AM
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Lost bread, there's an oversupply of priests in the MA diocese

Move south. You can pick up the liberal rump of some congregation that affiliates with Rwanda. You'll be getting in on the ground floor!

With your Latin and Greek skillz, you'd be a real prize for one of those parishes. And writing sermons would be a snap; every second or third* homily could be about how some key word in that week's Gospel reading / Epistle is commonly mistranslated, and that your unconventional, superior translation illuminates the reading in new and unexpected ways.

*My town once had a preacher who did this every week, and it got old pretty quickly. So use judiciously.


Posted by: pain perdu | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 8:44 AM
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You are correct that steamroller is scarier but bulldozer is the way I remembered it. According to google both are in use. "picking up nickels in front of a bulldozer" gets 2220 hits. "... steamroller" gets 687. "... steam roller" gets 885.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 06-19-09 11:10 AM
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