Did this collusion affect the wages of people with PhD or MS degrees?
Also, the opportunity cost for law students is different than it is for engineers, since you can attend law school with a degree in art history.
When I was in grad school in engineering at UC Berkeley, I saw the average salary for MS and PhD level graduates relative to law and MBA programs in various surveys. It was pretty remarkable - not even a PhD in CS matched the average salary for a JD or MBA out of Boalt and Haas, respectivel. This was just during the first dot com boom, when silicon valley companies were lobbying congress for an increase in visas due to a severe shortage of UC citizens pursuing these degrees.
I always wondered why this question so rarely came up during the debates - why do you think you should be able to hire someone who majored in physics and went to 6 years of a PhD program in EE for 2/3 of what people are paying top law grads? I remember one part of a floor debate with Feinstein and a biotech CEO - the CEO was trying to get someone with a PhD in Biology with a focus on genetics, unix ability, and programming skill - and couldn't find one in spite of offering 90K, stock options, and a "lease on a new BMW" (which makes it sound like they're giving a BMW, but really they're just letting the worker drive it, a perk probably worth about 6k a year). Feinstein replied "what was the name of your company again?" and everyone laughed. Feinstein didn't say "why do you think you can hire someone like this for 2/3 the starting salary of an art history major with a law degree that can be completed in half the time with 1/50th the attrition rate?"
I get the feeling the gap isn't as pronounced as it used ot be, but it is still a good question for framing this debate.
Also, the opportunity cost for law students is different than it is for engineers, since you can attend law school with a degree in art history.
When I was in grad school in engineering at UC Berkeley, I saw the average salary for MS and PhD level graduates relative to law and MBA programs in various surveys. It was pretty remarkable - not even a PhD in CS matched the average salary for a JD or MBA out of Boalt and Haas, respectivel. This was just during the first dot com boom, when silicon valley companies were lobbying congress for an increase in visas due to a severe shortage of UC citizens pursuing these degrees.
I always wondered why this question so rarely came up during the debates - why do you think you should be able to hire someone who majored in physics and went to 6 years of a PhD program in EE for 2/3 of what people are paying top law grads? I remember one part of a floor debate with Feinstein and a biotech CEO - the CEO was trying to get someone with a PhD in Biology with a focus on genetics, unix ability, and programming skill - and couldn't find one in spite of offering 90K, stock options, and a "lease on a new BMW" (which makes it sound like they're giving a BMW, but really they're just letting the worker drive it, a perk probably worth about 6k a year). Feinstein replied "what was the name of your company again?" and everyone laughed. Feinstein didn't say "why do you think you can hire someone like this for 2/3 the starting salary of an art history major with a law degree that can be completed in half the time with 1/50th the attrition rate?"
I get the feeling the gap isn't as pronounced as it used ot be, but it is still a good question for framing this debate.