Zatera Ul

This is the first time I’ve seen a woman actually agree with Linda Hirshman. (Some of my past reaction to Hirshman can be found here.) The focus this time is on women who get advanced degrees in law, medicine, and business from the best schools, and then drop out of the work force, and “waste their educations.” Supposedly middle-class women who have to go to less-elite schools and pay their own way are jealous of them, and supposedly society is getting cheated.

I guess one benefit for these women (and society) is that the degrees serve as insurance, in case they have to earn a living for themselves later on. I don’t agree that we need to aggressively pursue a return on the money that went into subsidizing these degrees (wherever it comes from). Even a rich student will have invested a substantial amount of their own time and effort to get the degree, and will probably end up using it in one way or another. Just because a woman is taking time out to raise children, doesn’t mean that she won’t be working later. Law, business, and medicine are fields where it’s difficult to balance professional practice with child-rearing, because of the long working hours, but also they are relatively easy to drop out of for a while, and then re-enter later on.

Middle-class women get subsidies, too–I had scholarships at my college (partially from the state) that added up to full tuition. Then in graduate school I had a fellowship and a research assistantship–tuition plus a stipend. It’s only for my current degree program that I’ve had to pay for my schooling. I did fine competing academically against women from richer families, although they’ve always had the advantage over me in social skills. Smart, talented women, of whatever class, tend to find worthwhile things to do–if one door if closed, there’s always another.

At the other end of things, what about making welfare benefits partially contigent on having or getting a high school diploma or G.E.D.? That might actually do some good.