The More Things Change ...
A recent NYT article discusses the perils of going to law school, accumulating debts, and then being unable to get the sort of job that will pay them off. Part of its explanation is misrepresentation by law schools of how well their graduates can be expected to do, but it suggests that much of the fault is with the students. Even if they know that most law school graduates do poorly, each student believes that he is the exception, that when he graduates he will end up with one of the handful of really good jobs. Relevant quotes:
"Independent surveys find that most law students would enroll even if they knew that only a tiny number of them would wind up with six-figure salaries. Nearly all of them, it seems, are convinced that they’re going to win the ring toss at this carnival and bring home the stuffed bear"
"“This idea of exceptionalism — I don’t know if it’s a thing with millennials, or what,” she says, referring to the generation now in its 20s. “Even if you tell them the bottom has fallen out of the legal market, they’re all convinced that none of the bad stuff will happen to them."
Which reminded me of an earlier discussion of the same issue:
"The lottery of the law, therefore, is very far from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honourable professions, are, in point of pecuniary gain, evidently under-recompensed. Those professions keep their level, however, with other occupations, and, notwithstanding these discouragements, all the most generous and liberal spirits are eager to crowd into them. Two different causes contribute to recommend them. First, the desire of the reputation which attends upon superior excellence in any of them; and, secondly, the natural confidence which every man has more or less, not only in his own abilities, but in his own good fortune.
...
The contempt of risk and the presumptuous hope of success are in no period of life more active than at the age at which young people choose their professions."
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
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P.S. Apropos of an earlier post, it occurs to me that the Smith quote could be taken as an early example of behavioral economics.