Posted by Ilya Somin: Some Evidence on Relative Job Satisfaction Among Law Professors: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_12_30-2008_01_05.shtml#1199044995
Those who read and debated [1]my recent post on the question of whether law professors are "miserable" may be interested to see some actual evidence of relative job satisfaction among law professors as compared to other law school graduates. In 2006, Yale Law School surveyed members of the Yale class of 2001 on a variety of career-related issues including job satisfaction. Here are the results, broken down by the graduates' areas of employment: Very Satisfied Satisfied Somewhat Satisfied Not Satisfied Academia 67 33 0 0 Public service 51 30 15 4 Business 30 54 8 8 Law firm 30 36 28 6 It is striking that job satisfaction among academics is high not only relative to those in private practice, but also relative to graduates employed in "public service," which is often viewed as a career path chosen in large part to maximize personal happiness rather than income. There are, of course, some limitations to this data. First, only Yale graduates are surveyed. The average Yale graduate in academia may have a somewhat better job than the average academic in general. On the other hand, the average Yale graduate in private practice or public service also probably has a better job than the average graduate of most other law schools. A more serious problem is that there are only 12 total academics in the sample. This is just enough to be statistically significant, but is a small group nonetheless. n addition, the survey question measures only the respondents satisfaction with their jobs. It doesn't measure their overall level of happiness. Some academics might be happy with their jobs, but miserable more generally. However, the former is the better measure of the marginal effect of the job itself on personal happiness, which is after all the point at issue. Finally, I should emphasize that the data does not prove that all, or even most law school graduates would be happier in academia than in other kinds of jobs. Obviously, academics are a self-selected group that draws disproportionately from those who would enjoy the job most. However, the survey does suggest that those law school graduates who choose to become academics are, on average, happier with their jobs than those who choose other careers. References 1. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_12_23-2007_12_29.shtml#1198962326 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
