Not to go in for cheap lawyer-bashing, but was just chatting with a college buddy who complained that a "startling" percentage of social science majors were channeling their quarterlife confusion into law school applications. That tracks with my recollection too, where there just weren't a lot of obvious career paths save law school for smart kids lacking technical skills. It's the default future for a certain type of graduate. If we're overproducing lawyers, though, there's going to be a pernicious Say's Law effect, wherein the oversupply of lawyers begins creating its own demand (of lawsuits). Something similar goes on in medicine, where the oversupply of doctors, particularly in certain specialties and regions, leads to massive over-treatment.
Which is all sort of a shame, because if you're going to have ill-defined careers that suck up inordinate amounts of smart graduates, you'd probably want them in sectors where excess participants will serve some sort of social good. And given that you will have a vast swath of college kids with a vague desire for affluence and a degree that lacks any obvious relation to that outcome, you'll have to funnel them somewhere. Engineering would seem sound, but my engineering friends complain that the overwhelming majority of jobs in that sector come from defense contractors. And too many missiles make Jack dead. But maybe engineering could work with some new national investment strategies. Or maybe people should just learn a trade.
