There were a number of frustrating moments at the October 16 Tuition Town Hall. Among the most frustrating was the re-presentation of the data on career choice circulated earlier this year by the Faculty and presented in the listening lunches.
A graph was offered and interpreted to demonstrate that there have been no significant changes in career choices made by graduates ten years ago and now. In the “Listening Lunches” held in the spring, compelling criticisms of this data (and the rest, including the diversity statistics) were provided. Still, it made it into Wednesday’s powerpoint unchanged.
Critiques of the data are hampered by the fact that students do not have access to the source material, methodology, or data over time. Wednesday’s graph presented data as covering the period between 2002 and 2012, suggesting multiple surveys in that period. Information provided in the spring suggested there were two sample years – 2002 and 2012.
The information provided in the spring (which is pretty much all we have to go on) raised a number of red flags with regards to its reliability and legitimacy. It certainly isn’t sufficient to address the correlation between post-graduation career choice and debt burden. For starters, the graph we saw Wednesday is based on data collected one year out of school. That is, it more or less covers the articling year. It is unsurprising that there has not been a significant change in articling decision-making: the hiring patterns of major Bay Street and small firms remain the same. Articling decisions are controlled first and foremost by articling position availability and the sheer need to get an articling position to get called. Those of us going through the process are intimately familiar with fellow students saying, repeatedly, that they are content to treat this year as a loss in order to become certified. In terms of career choice based on debt pressure, it is akin to surveying whether the decision to go into third year is affected by debt pressure. It is an essentially meaningless measure.
We were told on Wednesday that the Alumni office does their best to update career choice/alumni position data around the time of the reunion. Somewhere, this updated data exists. To the best of my knowledge, it has never been presented to students, though it would be the best, meaningful indicator of career choices. It could track changes among those facing debt pressures once they are actually in a position to make choices about their career. This data is problematic as well, however, as it seems to track the alumni the school can find online and those who self-select to provide their information. It seems likely that, over time, the most visible individuals, and those most likely to self-select into the sample, are those at larger institutions. In other words, it seems to me almost impossible that this data has not, always, over-represented those in large firms significantly. Those of us who searched for small firm summer positions will be familiar with the number of firms without websites, without Linked-In information, who are not registered with the firm-site-trackers to which we are directed to do our research, etc. My suggestion is that the small firm numbers have likely always been wrong and that the number of students entering those areas of the profession is unlikely to have been tracked. This is not because the Alumni office is not working hard to find the information: it is because the Faculty’s measure of this information is a thoroughly inadequate one.
Add to this that tuition increases have been rapid. Data from the last several years is, likely, only starting to be collected – these are the students who have seen the staggering prices and these are the years which are likely to demonstrate the changes. Even if we had a decent measure of the changes, it would be a surprise if we were able to say anything concrete about the last five years.
My entire articling position search included small to slightly less-small criminal defence firms. I sat through roughly a dozen interviews and in almost every single one the firm asked if I was able to do this work, given my debt. Not if I was interested. Not if I was able. Small to medium firms that do predominantly non-institutional client-facing work are seeing what we students are describing: people in their early career leaving the fields they are interested in because they are not able to service their debt there. I am not the only student who received this question from employers.[1] Many of us have sat through presentations and guest lectures from professionals in these positions who speak openly about their suspicion and distrust of University of Toronto Faculty of Law graduates because of their debt. There are places that have been explicit about not hiring us, because of their experiences with interested professionals whose financial realities have prevented them from remaining in that place of employment.
The Dean suggested on Wednesday that another indicator that finances are not tied to career choice is the sustained high application rates to public interest jobs. This is ludicrous. Those who have been through the OCI process are familiar with reassuring CDO emails reminding us that approximately 83 gajillion applications were received for these jobs (rough number). We are in an articling crisis in the midst of an oversaturated legal job market. Everyone is applying for everything. It is indicative of exactly nothing, except perhaps the level of fear we have about the future.
The point is this: the question of the relationship between debt and career choice is not settled. The Faculty has not provided source data, or engaged in a good faith discussion of why they feel this question is settled. Those of us on the ground, meeting employers, talking to new calls through the Alumni mentorship programs, etc. have an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence that what the Faculty is telling us is not true. I am skeptical, but open to the idea that these anecdotes are not reflective of reality. To be convinced, however, I would require real evidence. It is frustrating and insulting that the Faculty has not given the most straightforward answer to the question of whether debt burden is influencing career choice: we don’t know, but we don’t think so. The student answer is that we don’t know either, but we certainly think so. What we have received, instead, from the Faculty is: we can say with certainty you are wrong about your experiences. It is a patronizing and offensive claim, when not backed by convincing figures.
[1] My answer, incidentally, was “barely”. I had crunched the numbers before I went into the process because I had the same questions. Even with back-end debt relief, to do the work I love will be extraordinarily financially precarious. Without exaggeration, in a couple more years I truly believe it will be financially impossible to make payments above monthly interest on our average debt load on the salaries in these positions. God forbid someone going into one of these fields is considering the prospects of maternity leave, becomes ill, or in some other way faces a reduced income.
