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Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

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Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#11

Post by mohap »

woah wrote: post #8

We'd better improve our interview techniques before the flood of lawyer-like engineers who are only in it for the money arrives. My recommendation- avoid brain-teasers that can be crammed for. Assess based on open-source contributions, which show craftsmanship, architecture, and love of coding.

What I don't understand is why can't somebody love to code and not maintain a public github repo? Sometimes you want to keep things private-- it shouldn't have to mean the best stuff you developed has to be on github in order for you to get a good job as a programmer. It's on the technical interviewer to test out programmer's skills. Too many non-technical recruiters these days are passing on candidates because they don't have a big github repo. That's a cop out and an insult to the profession.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#13

Post by geebee »

Another factor to consider here is a rise (if any) in engineering undergraduate degrees. I know that grad engineering degrees to law degrees seems like more of an apples-to-apples comparison, but there's a big difference. A history major who goes to law school goes from not lawyer to lawyer (assuming he or she passes the bar).

Engineering graduate students, on the other hand, almost always have a background in their field of graduate study. This is often very substantial - for instance, an EE major doesn't need a grad degree in EE to get to work. And even if a student is using grad school to build some general knowledge of a new field (such as a physics or math major going to grad school in CS), they're much closer than a history major would be to law [1].

In this case, the growth in grad enrollment might understate the transition, since a student who wanted to be a lawyer who instead decides to become an engineer might just change majors and avoid grad school altogether.

[1] I actually think that if people were allowed to take the bar without attending law school, you'd find that a lot of people could become extremely talented lawyers without the graduate degree.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#14

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #10
krschultz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, there are already large swathes of people that get engineering degrees because it is a good paying, stable, respected job. Probably 1/3 of my graduating class would have said their primary motivation for getting an engineering degree was the solid salary.

Historically, the solid pay and good prospects have been a primary driving criterion for people going into engineering. The Silicon Valley idealists who want to "change the world with food delivery" is the new phenomenon, not the other way around.

> The Silicon Valley idealists who want to "change the world with food delivery" is the new phenomenon

The Silicon Valley idealists who want to "change the world with food delivery" are (as a broad class, not every specific instance) largely PR faces created for marketing purposes by and for people who want to make lots of money, and know that having some kind of compelling mission (even if that "compelling mission" might change to something radically different later on) is important both for attracting customers and for attracting investors.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#16

Post by jdhawk »

mohap wrote: post #11
woah wrote: post #8

We'd better improve our interview techniques before the flood of lawyer-like engineers who are only in it for the money arrives. My recommendation- avoid brain-teasers that can be crammed for. Assess based on open-source contributions, which show craftsmanship, architecture, and love of coding.

What I don't understand is why can't somebody love to code and not maintain a public github repo? Sometimes you want to keep things private-- it shouldn't have to mean the best stuff you developed has to be on github in order for you to get a good job as a programmer. It's on the technical interviewer to test out programmer's skills. Too many non-technical recruiters these days are passing on candidates because they…

No joke. If I code for a living, usually I want to spend my free time doing something OTHER than coding. The projects I DO work on in my free time are for me - usually silly little things (maybe in a new lang that I'm playing with), and not indicative of standard of code quality I produce in the "real world."

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#17

Post by kps »

woah wrote: post #8

We'd better improve our interview techniques before the flood of lawyer-like engineers who are only in it for the money arrives. My recommendation- avoid brain-teasers that can be crammed for. Assess based on open-source contributions, which show craftsmanship, architecture, and love of coding.

  > Assess based on open-source contributions, which show craftsmanship, architecture, and love of coding
... and personal time allocation that reveals things you're not legally allowed to ask directly.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#18

Post by theVirginian »

geebee wrote: post #13

Another factor to consider here is a rise (if any) in engineering undergraduate degrees. I know that grad engineering degrees to law degrees seems like more of an apples-to-apples comparison, but there's a big difference. A history major who goes to law school goes from not lawyer to lawyer (assuming he or she passes the bar). Engineering graduate students, on the other hand, almost always have a background in their…

Actually, engineering students statistically score highest on the LSAT out of any undergraduate degree

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#19

Post by woah »

kps wrote: post #17
woah wrote: post #8

We'd better improve our interview techniques before the flood of lawyer-like engineers who are only in it for the money arrives. My recommendation- avoid brain-teasers that can be crammed for. Assess based on open-source contributions, which show craftsmanship, architecture, and love of coding.

> Assess based on open-source contributions, which show craftsmanship, architecture, and love of coding ... and personal time allocation that reveals things you're not legally allowed to ask directly.

Is cramming on brain teasers in any way different?

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#20

Post by kylestlb »

geebee wrote: post #5

Interesting data, but I'm not sure the title is supported by the conclusion. The title reads "US students are fleeing law schools and pouring into engineering." This is backed up by data that shows law school enrollment declining and engineering graduate enrollment increasing. However, it's not exactly a secret that engineering graduate programs have higher international student enrollment than law schools. So we'd n…

This is my thought. What percentage of the engineering grad school bump is non-US citizens? What percentage of people who go to law school are non-US citizens?

From purely anecdotal experience, I would guess that a significant portion of the rise in grad school attendance is from international students.

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