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American Universities generally follow a two-two system where the 4 year college curriculum aims to develop breadth in the first two years of college followed by two years of deep study. For the most part, American students at 4 year institutions do not enter college with a career or a major in mind and will study a liberal arts education before specializing in a subject for the remainder of their college experience.This is in contrast to the rest of the world which mostly applies to a specific major within a college and then studies that subject for 4 years.It is my opinion that this small but critical difference in higher education is the reasons why the US simultaneously has both the top Universities as well as produces so many useless graduates.I'll leave to Former Yale President Levin to explain:This distinctively American approach to undergraduate education is not the prevailing pattern in most other countries with strong universities. In most of Europe and in China, students choose their major field of study when they apply for admission. Once admitted, they do not have the freedom that you have to test your interest in a wide variety of subjects; they specialize immediately. Similarly, in much of the world, students choose a profession in their final year of secondary school; they begin the study of law and medicine as first year undergraduates.- Richard Levin - 2004 Freshman Address [1] emphasis mineThis discussion in higher education stems from debates between John Henry Newman and Wilhelm von Humboldt. von Humboldt sought to focus undergraduate education to create young specialists and professionals with a sophisticated knowledge. He would go on to establish the TU and Gymnasium systems of learning in Prussia.On the other hand Newman proposed that the undergraduate education should be "the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them".[2] This would go on to be the foundation of the liberal arts system.In the 19th century Harvard President Charles William Eliot took it upon himself to study the European education system. While he largely found that the Gymnasium system was incredibly effective at producing qualified men for the industry, he was concerned that businessmen would be limited to the only the knowledge that they knew about.Upon returning to Harvard from his European tour, he took in upon himself to create the concept of the undergraduate "major" and allowed students to selectively craft their education using electives. Doing so shifted Harvard from a religious clergical college into the modern college. Furthermore, he began to integrate the professional schools with the undergraduate colleges in order to compensate for those changes and massively expanded the facultyEliot's vision of an American university involved three central elements: an undergraduate college devoted to general education without premature specialization, opportunity for those with an undergraduate education to pursue advanced study and research in the arts and sciences, and a set of professional schools such as law, medicine, and divinity for those who had already experienced the rigors of a broad and general undergraduate education. To get from the Harvard of 1869 to this ideal model of an American university required moving the institution in two different directions: toward the European model of graduate education in the arts and sciences, and away from the European model of early concentration on professional education.- Richard Levin, Beijing, China [2]Likewise, this style of education extends into the graduate and professional programs. The departments are flexible and penetrable by design which allows students to pursue courses and collaborations outside of their home department.So far, I have covered the differences between the American systems and the German system but it isn't clear why this makes a huge difference. The Gymnasium system is incredibly effective at producing specialists and is a large reason why countries like Germany are incredibly efficient. High Schoolers coming out ready to enter the workforce an absurd notion in the US.However, at the highest level, specialists are good at making things better but not necessarily innovation. There is a remarkable ability for US trained scientists to leave a field, enter another field, and extend their knowledge from a previous. Polymaths like Joshua Engel (Quora user). Erez Lieberman-Aiden is another popular name that frequently gets mentioned as a polymath.A good example of how this affects science is that it took biochemists and chemist several decades to realize that the Michaelis-Mentis equation and the Langmuir equation follow the exact form. Now, it is a mere matter of time where a newcomer to a field will enter and will have the prerequisite background to make an immediate impact on that subject.The flexibility of the American academic as well as a large wad of cash enables a lot of US Universities produce truly groundbreaking research and leapfrog to the top of most of the college rankings. The horizontal flexibility that this provides also allows Universities to excel at multiple fields.There are clear disadvantages of American Higher Education. A bachelor's degree is unnecessarily expensive and doesn't suitably prepare students for the workforce. American companies constantly complain about the readiness of American graduates and there is an annual discussion about increasing the availability of H1B visas to import the necessary skills into this country. Graduates from Elite institutions overwhelmingly go into a narrow range of professions. [4] America could benefit from more junior colleges and real technical schools. [5]It is also clear that the UK system is doing very well despite staying within the conventional 4 year system used by the rest of the world. The Max Planck Society is also at the forefront of the field.It is because of these differences that there is so many attention given to the formation of Yale-NUS College in Singapore and to a lesser extent KAUST.These colleges are hoping to combine the best aspects of the innovative and flexible natures of the liberal arts colleges and combine them with the technological momentum and energy of these countries. Whether or not these broad breadth institutions will create a workforce that will significantly impact their economies and an academic environment that will carry them to the top of the rankings will be yet to be seen. [6]For further reading[1] Freshman Address: Back to School[2] President's Inaugural Address[3] Keynote Address: Chinese-Foreign University Presidents’ Forum[4] Do students at elite colleges go into certain professions due to social pressure, even though they'd rather do something else?[5] It is important to note that schools like MIT and Caltech also follow the 2-2 system despite their reputations as technical universities. They aren't tech schools, they are universities.[6] Joseph Boyle has made a very good observation that both HKUST and HKU, recently shifted to a common core model back in 2010 and 2012 respectively shifting credit requirements away from the major.[7] This has been a hypothesis that I have been thinking about for awhile and only now have been able to write it all down. I welcome and encourage comments and critiques to further flush out this argument.

U.S. perspective.Asking “aside from the student debt, why is going to law school a bad idea?” is kind of like asking, “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”But, like all good legal answers, it depends.For some of my classmates and for me, going to law school was a good idea and a prerequisite to careers we wanted to pursue. Those of us who are likely to be successful at that went into it knowing that the job market is very tight for attorneys right now. So, those of us who made plans to be successful after law school got a J.D. either:fully intending to avoid oversaturated markets or content areas,with very specific plans to get into J.D. advantage jobs that don’t involve the practice of law, orwere already independently wealthy enough to avoid going into massive debt or without a good plan to repay it, andknew precisely what we were getting into.Because honestly, being an attorney can suuuuuck.Here are just some of the reasons that you might want to place that law school application in your hands into the circular file bin.If you are averse to working 60, 70, 80, or more hours a week on a routine basis, going to law school is a bad idea.Every job can be demanding sometimes when there’s a deadline, and ask you to put in a long week.Now, imagine doing that every week, all the time. This is not an occasional thing. This is the norm.Pretty much anywhere you’re going to work that isn’t your own solo/small practice is going to have a billable hour requirement. On average, expect that to be about 2,000 billable hours a year. If you take two weeks of vacation, that’s an average of 40 billable hours a week. It’s pretty safe to assume that you’ll need to work 60–70 hours a week to achieve 40 billable hours in that span.Do the math and realize that not taking that two weeks of vacation literally only knocks it back by about 2–3 hours a week. Then cry.You have a family and ever want to see your kids? Go to their ball games or dance recitals? Heh, heh. That’s cute. What has two thumbs, a filing deadline tomorrow, and needs to draft and upload their answer and counterclaim?You.You do.There are some areas of legal work where more regular hours are possible, such as being a judicial clerk. These jobs are not all that easy to come by and usually don’t pay amazing.Additionally, none of that work will be the kind of cool stuff you see on television, tearing down witnesses on cross-examination or debating precedent.You know what you will do?Write. All day. Every day. Hours on end.And read. All day. Every day. Hours on end.In a little cubicle with a flickering fluorescent tube light overhead, not in a wood-paneled office with a window surrounded by copies of leather-bound tomes.Seriously, document review is honestly something that I think Satan will force those in the seventh circle of hell to endure for eternity, with a big dashboard showing your statistics compared to everyone else while a junior partner comes by every so often to remind you that you’ll need to come in Saturday. And Sunday. And Sumonday, which was created as an eighth day of the week, on which day it will be always sunny and 70 outside and you will be periodically and randomly reminded of that throughout the day because you will never ever get to experience it again.If you think that law school is any sort of a golden ticket in life, going to law school is a bad idea.The job market is terrible. It’s been terrible for more than ten years. Depending on where you want to live and what you want to do, it’s not getting any better and likely won’t. There are too many law schools churning out attorneys, and their continually lowered admissions standards to keep the doors open and lights on is showing up in the ever-decreasing bar passage rates.That means that every year, there are more and more people out there with a J.D. who are competing for jobs, including those that are not considered the practice of law requiring a license. So, even if you don’t pass the bar, your J.D. is no longer as door-opening as it was even fifteen years ago.One-third of J.D. graduates are taking jobs that do not require that degree. There are far cheaper and less demanding avenues to get the education to qualify for those jobs. Even an MBA is half the cost, two-thirds the time sink, and doesn’t include the terrifying nightmare that is the bar exam.If you think that just being smart is going to cut it in law school, going to law school is a bad idea.Far too many people just don’t understand just how hard law school really is. I cannot stress this enough. It is not like any other form of graduate study apart from maybe medicine, in terms of the amount of work that you will have to do.The bottom third of almost every incoming 1L class is made up students who were big fish in small ponds, or people who are smart but lazy. They breezed through high school, skated through college on their ability to BS.And they utterly fail in law school. Many of them will drop out in the first couple of weeks or months; we lost about 5% of our incoming class to just pure attrition this way.I hate to break it to you, but being smart, even genius smart, will not earn you success in law school or the legal field.I graduated sixth in my class and it wasn’t because I was smarter than my classmates. It’s because I worked at it every. damned. day. I read every case before class. I wrote briefs for every case. I attended every study session the school offered. Hour after hour after hour after hour. I was at my desk doing the work when all but criminals and insomniacs are abed.Why? Because that’s how you succeed in law school and the legal career. You out-work everyone else. That’s how you discover the obscure precedent that saves your case. You just work harder than everyone else around you.You thought you’d be able to have a social life in law school? Hahahahahahahahhhahhahah!! That’s cute.Guess what? While you’re off having a beer with friends, someone like me is outworking you and taking your spot in the class rankings. Which leads me to…If you don’t handle stress well, going to law school is a bad idea.The practice of law is not just hard because it’s demanding. It’s a really horrifically depressing line of work most of the time. Pretty much every client is coming to see you on the worst day of their life. The biggest culprits are family law and criminal law, but even estate planning is usually a mega-downer. Even contract drafting is a process of thinking about, “God, what is every conceivable way that these people could possibly screw this up and how can I preemptively deal with that?”Legal practice is a contentious, adversarial process where the slightest mistake can have incredible consequences. If I make a mistake, an innocent person could go to prison. Failure to meet a deadline could result in loss of my license. Missing a word in a sentence could be the difference between an enforceable and unenforceable contract. Writing a will with one bad ambiguity in it could cost someone tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation costs when it gets probated.And on the other side of things is another probably equally well-trained attorney looking to exploit every mistake I make.According to a study by Johns Hopkins, lawyers are the most prone to clinical depression of literally any profession and least happy in their careers.All of this is why lawyers have some of the highest substance abuse and suicide rates in any professional field.If you think law schools actually care about you personally, going to law school is a bad idea.My law school really wanted me to believe that they care about me personally. And the professors and most of the faculty really do. I had a good relationship with the president. The admissions people make a significant point about being a student-centered school and that is part of the mission statement.But at the end of the day, you’re only useful to to a law school as a statistic. They will not care about you unless they can get you gainfully employed to buttress their numbers, because where they sit on the US News and World Report rankings is crucial to their success as a school.Getting on law review, doing well at OCI, having good 1L grades, passing the bar… very little of it is really about what is good for you personally. Schools need their bar pass rates up and their marketability rates up because of the increasingly competitive and tight market.It doesn’t help that there are too many law schools out there, and now there aren’t enough students to go around because there aren’t enough jobs to go around, so enrollment is declining. So, they’re getting increasingly desperate for students, which leads to lowering standards, which leads to admitting students that don’t pass the bar and are less likely to get employed, and the cycle perpetuates.If you look like you’re a lost cause to them? If they don’t think they can get you to pass the bar and get employed? Hello, academic probation and dismissal. They’ll offer you the tutoring and support right up to the point where they don’t think it’ll make a difference.Also, that line is nowhere near where it was in undergrad. You might have gotten out of college with C’s and a 2.4 average. In law school, fall below a 3.0 and you’ll be having chats with the academic dean.If you think you should go to law school because you like arguing and being opinionated and your friends think you’re pretty good at it, going to law school is a bad idea.These people are called “gunners” and everyone hates them.They change every hypo in torts class and ask the professor about it.They want to argue about the potential application of Citizens United to some upcoming case in Constitutional Law. They drag their pet political bugaboo into class. They argue with the professors.Don’t. Be. That. Person.I speak from experience. I was a kind of accidental gunner in my first year. I wasn’t trying to be argumentative. I was just trying to figure it all out, so I asked those kinds of questions and tried to stick up when I thought a case was wrongly decided. I put a target on my back and alienated a significant chunk of my class. I am absolutely indebted to some upperclassmen who pulled me aside and mentored me out of it. When some folks who eventually came around and became my friends rib me about it, I always have to act like the peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: look around sheepishly and quietly say, “well, I got better…”There is only one opinion that matters in law school, and it’s going to be a written one by a judge, and it will be sitting in a case book, which you are supposed to read and understand how the court arrived at that conclusion. Whether you agree or disagree with it is utterly irrelevant in class.Legal argument is nothing like just being strongly opinionated. Legal analysis is a very specialized form of argument that requires the ability to be utterly objective one moment and then to turn around and apply that objectivity to zealous advocacy.Persuasiveness isn’t about being loud. It isn’t about appeals to ethics, or emotion, or even logic most of the time.It’s about application of the law to the facts.You have to understand how to set up legal tests and standards, and then use those legal tests and standards to identify the relevant facts (because literally 90% of them won’t be,) and then demonstrate how those legally dispositive facts apply to the tests and standards to arrive at a legal outcome.An old trial attorney once told me, “If you don’t have good facts, pound the law. If you don’t have good law, pound the facts. If you don’t have either, pound the table.” While it’s good advice, everyone knows it and when you do pound the table, everyone’s going to know it’s because you’ve got nothing.If you think that you should go to law school so you can “change the world,” going to law school is a bad idea.I have to sheepishly raise my hand here. I went to law school at least in part because I wanted to have an impact on the world that I wasn’t having as a high school English teacher.Now, I didn’t think I’d be on the Supreme Court someday or anything, and I do make a difference in the lives of the people I work with. I am hopeful that I can use my extra training in alternative dispute resolution to make larger changes on the communities that I’m in and do some work in larger scale peacebuilding someday.But any area of the law where you’ll really make the most difference will pay like garbage. Like poverty-line-for-a-family-of-four level wages.Public defenders barely make enough to keep the lights on. Immigration attorneys trying to make a difference in the system right now are mostly volunteering. Working at legal aid is great, but get used to eating ramen because it’s all you can afford.Ironically, you’ll have better odds arguing a case before the Supreme Court and creating some sort of world-changing precedence by working as a small-firm attorney in the outstate rural boonies somewhere rather than by working your way up to senior partner at Dorsey and Whitney.You want a job at the ACLU? So does everyone else. You’ll be better off financially selling your soul to the Heritage Foundation or being a lobbyist, and you’ll have more influence with any of the movers and shakers in the world who actually create policy.If you’re not prepared to take eight to ten weeks off to study for the bar exam as a full time occupation and you have any anxiety issues about testing, going to law school is a bad idea.Seriously. Part of why the bar passage rates are so low is because there are more part-time students or even just lazy full-time students who think they can wing it because they heard that someone’s sister-in-law somewhere studied for two weeks and did just fine.Effectively studying for the bar exam takes, at best estimation and assuming pretty smart people, in the neighborhood of 400–500 hours. This is not a joke. This is assuming you spend the bare minimum on each subject tested on the bar and enough on practicing writing.Taking the bar is insanely stressful.On the multiple choice portions, you’re presented with questions that are, on average, half a page each. You have, on average, one minute and 46 seconds to read and analyze the problem, isolate the correct rule and remember what it is, and then try to guess which way the bar examiners are trying to fool you. It’s two to three days, eight hours per day, of absolutely mind-numbing tediousness.It’s also panic-inducing. You’ve put up anywhere from $500 to $2000 to take this test (depending on jurisdiction). If you fail, you have to do it again. It’s only offered twice a year, so your next shot is 5–7 months away (it’s only offered in July and February, not even every 6 months straight.) That level of stakes is what often what drives up people’s anxiety to the levels where they can’t focus and biff it on the test.I can’t tell you how many people have taken the first day and only came back for the second because they wanted to see just how badly they failed. It’s insanely demoralizing.If you don’t have a serious and specific plan about how to market yourself and in what area you plan to practice (both geographical and content area,) going to law school is a very bad idea.There are some areas where an attorney can do very well for herself these days. As oversaturated as many legal markets are for attorneys, there are other geographical areas that are desperate for attorneys, particularly rural areas in the Upper Midwest. A healthy attorney to population ratio is generally considered about 1:750. Around where I am, that ratio is often more like 1:1200, and where I want to work is frequently 1:2000 or 1:2500.You’ll need to be a generalist or at least more than single-subject specialization. Family law, low-level criminal defense (drugs and DUIs,) estate planning, and real estate will be your bread and butter.You’ll need to be willing to take appointments for public defense that will eat into your hours and pay what will amount in practice to minimum wage for tipped workers.You might need to be okay getting paid in chickens and firearms. This is not a joke.You will need to have very good conflict-checking software and a lot of your paperwork will be informed consent to conflict waivers.That said, it can be very rewarding. An attorney in some of these areas is usually a pillar of the community and a highly respected gig if you do your job well. You’ll never make the $250,000 a year large-firm-senior-partner money, but you’ll do all right. Plus the cost of living is usually much lower than the big city.In brief, if you know you want to be a lawyer, and you’re ready for a life of pain to be one, and you are going into law school with your eyes wide open, understanding that it’s very difficult work, not just in school but once you get out, and you really want to actually practice law, then it’s not a bad idea to go to law school.Otherwise, run away; don’t walk.

★★★EDIT Aug, 2015: Since I am being PMed with queries from young people on what to do to get into Law Fac, I am editing this review to attend to some of the common questions.1. What is the cut off: Keeps changing each year, but since the question paper is tremendously easy, it is often the case that the cut off moves upwards.2. Reference material for the entrance: Universal's guide book, previous years question papers (available in the faculty) and competition magazines like CSR/Pratiyogita for the GK portions. You may look at Mrunal's current affairs (Mrunal - Competitive exams Preparation)3. Which is the best center: Jyotsna Yaduvanshi's answer to What is the difference between the three law centres in Delhi University?4. Which other colleges offer 3 year law courses: I cant come up with an exhaustive list yet, I have completed my graduation and now want to pursue law. What colleges offer such a course?5. What are my views on XYZ/The Emperor's balls/feminism: Pliss! Dont!***Tips to those who do take admission this year: Make sure you score well in your first two semesters, dont hesitate to write improvements. They wont give you more than 60 percent easily in the 2nd/3rd year.Also, since the university is tinkering with the website almost each month, some of you may get exhausted with trying to find the links you last looked at. So bookmark stuff.Thanks for the A2A Kunal.Law Faculty of University of Delhi offers a three year regular course for graduates in three of its centres- Campus Law Center (CLC), Law Center-I and Law Centre-II.Entrance testLaw entrance happens in June, forms are released somewhere around Feb-March.Keep a tab on this Home - University of Delhi as well as this Campus Law CentreThe entrance is exceedingly easy. There are 4-5 sections and some 200 questions. All multiple choice.Sections are:1. Comprehension2. Mental Ability+Logical Reasoning3. General Knowledge +Current Affairs4. Quant5. Legal AptitudeThere is a guide book from Universal which works well for the traditional areas, for GK and stuff one can look at MCQs from competition magazines.Centre specifications:CLC: Time Schedule 8.30 am-3.30 pm (a lot of free slots in between classes, you may have one class at 8.3o and the next at 1.30)CLC students ostensibly feel that they are the creme de la creme of the legal world.Politically this centre is the most indulgent, elections are a grand affair. (I will upload photos later)Faculty is decent, some senior teachers are excellent.If you are looking for a typical DU experience, this may be the best centre, although our college festival is a drag.LC-I: Classes from 11 am-2-pmTeachers are good here as well, some feel that LC-1 has better faculty than CLC. However I cant vouch for this since I am a CLC student.LC-II: Classes from 6:30 pm to 9.30 pmUsually people who are working find this centre most convenient.About 1800 seats and an exceptionally easy entrance ensures that one can get in with some very basic preparation.Course work:There are 6 semesters with 5 papers each.Bar Council rules require the students to have interned for a minimum of 12 months.The course work is extremely easy, with three-four classes a day (of 1 hour duration).Placement Scenario:The placement cell is fairly active. Students get referrals for internships through the placement cell, although campus placements are fairly few.However, the placement (pre/post college) scene largely depends on the students. One of my friends is working with Amarchand, someone I know worked with lexisnexis. It depends highly on contacts that you may make during internships or may have in the field through your family members. Good law firms are also known to have hired people solely because they were good candidates. But the students have to be extremely proactive.Campus placements are not akin to the ones in Engineering colleges or NLSs.Why Law Fac and not some other university?1. Law Faculty treats you like adults:There are no assignments, no mid semester exams, no 25 marks internal assessment. A minimum 66% attendance requirement is strictly enforced in first 2 years but relaxed(informally) in the third year.The end sem exams are for 100 marks, you must score 45 to pass.In the first year, you must pass 5/10 papers, in second 15/20 to advance to the next year.If you have back papers in your third year, the college gives you supplementary exams to clear them (in July) and graduate with your peers! No other DU course gives you so much leverage.This gives you ample time to pursue other avenues like part time work, internship, preparing for competitive exams like Bank PO and UPSC, Judicial Services.The library is open 6 days a week from 9 am-8 pm. People from outside Law Fac have made nests in the library. Those who want to study can make as much use of the available resources.2. Law Fac lets you have a fresh start: Most of us, DU people graduate with no subsequent plan in life and minimal employability skills. Law Fac allows you to learn and really learn the Law.3. This is probably the cheapest education in law available: My yearly fees is somewhere around Rs. 13,000. In an era of Jindal Global Law School(!) this is nothing. If you put in a little bit of effort and get a decent (under 50) rank in the entrance, you can get admission to the university hostel.4. Unparalleled Alumni : This is where we own everyone else. You have a college churning 1800 students a year into the profession, almost every third legal guy has some connection to a Law Fac graduate. Faculty of Law, University of DelhiFor a more readable review see http://www.gyancentral.com/articles/graduate/law/a-look-at-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-side-of-clc-delhi-universityEdit: 11.3.2015Law fac has run into some trouble with the Bar Council, please read: http://www.legallyindia.com/Law-schools/delhi-univ-law-schools-should-be-closed-down-read-leaked-bci-report-on-du-s-17-alleged-failings-a-rein-of-terror