Summary: Recent research has shown that fewer students are enrolling in legal programs, and more are joining engineering programs.
Where are all the would-be lawyers going? Yes, enrollment has been down these last few years, reaching a nadir unseen since the 1970s. Fine, we can accept that, even though there are yet a lot more law schools out there than the seventies, aching for fresh minds to indoctrinate with the law. So students are getting smart and seeing that law schools have become a less sure bet since the legal market crashed in 2008 and still has not improved, while, meanwhile, law school tuition has nevertheless mysteriously increased. In fact, it has increased 66 percent since 2005 in private schools, and double in public schools.
More debt, less job: the answer is obvious, avoid law school. But that doesn’t mean go jobless. Where are all these promising young could-be lawyers ending up?
Engineering, it seems. US business school enrollment has stayed flat before and after the recession. Enrollment in engineering, however, has grown 38 percent since 2005, outpacing the second most lucrative market, medical school, which grew 11 percent. It is imagined that would-be JD’s have applied their acumen in one of these more promising industries in the last few years, and, perhaps, will continue to do so, until and if the legal market balances out, and demand outpaces supply once again.
