Start with those old enough to be graduating from law school. The law business ain’t exactly what it used to be — so hungry for new lawyers that anyone with a law degree could find work and earn enough to start chipping away at his or her student loan, unless responding to government incentives to wipe the loan from the books seemed more attractive. Those halcyon days may never return, but the worst seems to be over. Law school enrollment is down almost 30% from its 2010 peak, meaning that even without any growth in demand for lawyers, reduced supply should create some upward pressure on starting salaries and better chances of landing a job for graduates. Last year 93.2% of the graduates of Georgetown Law School found work, 60% in the private sector, where the median salary was $160,000. For lesser-regarded schools the figures are lower, but not disastrous. And long-term prospects are good: the American Bar Association reports that lawyers who graduated in 2000 with low grades from low-ranked law schools were earning median incomes of between $85,000 and $95,000 in 2012.
Younger students, mostly undergraduates, are also finding life more congenial. According to a New York Times headline, they are succeeding in “Hiding From Scary Ideas.” Find a debate upsetting? Students at Brown University set up a “safe space” to which students who attended a debate about sexual violence but found it “damaging” could repair for cookies, coloring books, Play Doh, calming music, a video of frolicking puppies and advice from “A sexual assault peer educator” who “was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs.” Times contributing opinion writer Judith Shulevitz notes that “Now students worry rather any acts of speech or pieces of writing may put them in emotional peril….” Many university administrators cancel debates “citing threats to their [students’] stability.” So all is well at universities where never is heard a destabilizing word.
Finally, as we move down the scale to high school students, we find even greater serenity. The Wall Street Journal reports that sellers of prom dresses now keep registries to ensure that no two identical dresses are sold for the same event. “Dress registries are the new norm for dance-going teenagers from New York to California…. Some [shops] refuse to sell the same style, regardless of color.”
So young lawyers can look forward to better job prospects, undergraduates can repair to safe spaces with crayons and Play Doh, and teen agers can be sure, as one vendor put it, that “everyone can look amazing” because every girl will have a different dress at the prom. As my father was wont to say, “Only in America.”
