Empirical Legal Studies has a postscript on the topic of bi-modal salary distributions for new law graduates. Bill Henderson notes that, among other concerns, there is some evidence that the salary gap may widen rather than close over time. This discussion made me wonder – is it possible that a similar employment prospects gap or bi-modal distribution exists (albeit in a different form) in academic careers, such as political science (or history, english, etc.). If we are thinking about placing “in field,” i.e. as a professor in the discipline, then Ph.D. programs may have an analogous distribution of opportunity. More thoughts on this below the fold…
Granted, I’m just musing here based on experience and observations, but let’s think about this possibility. The right mode on Bill’s original chart would denote higher paying, lower course load, higher resources tenure track jobs at research institutions (or possibly prestigious liberal arts schools). In other words, salary is supplanted somewhat by prestige of institution, research opportunities and resources. The left mode of the chart would be comprised of lower paying, higher teaching load, lower research resources positions such as non-tenure track gigs, community college positions and less prestigious teaching schools.
Now, let me go ahead and answer an obvious criticism of my analogy – “You’re examples suggest an arbitrary ‘goodness’ of research schools; many people select into teaching oriented schools.” Yes, this is true, but people also self-select into government jobs, small firms, public defender positions and other lower paying legal positions. In this way the phenomenon is constant across the law salary and academic opportunity situations. Now, what drives the distributions? Much like with the law salary situation, academic opportunities can be divided into two camps – elite school grads have a very high probability of placing in the right mode (assuming that they want to do so) and a very small percentage of non-elite grads will also place in the right mode (maybe 5-15% depending on your definition of non-elite grad). The left mode is made up primarily of non-elite grads and some elite grads that self select into it or fall into it for some other reason. Of course, the lay out of effort and lost opportunities while in grad school (and more often than you might think large loans debt) are constant although the opportunities are not. In this sense, there may be some common ground for analyzing investments in higher education degrees across disciplines (e.g. law and social sciences) although I’m sure that someone will be happy to correct me.
Voir Dire 
“Of course, the lay out of effort and lost opportunities while in grad school (and more often than you might think large loans debt) are constant…”
I doubt that outside options of those in first-tier grad/law schools are the same as those in mid-tier, on average.
In fact, my prior would be that people are choosing to go to law school only if their expected return is higher than their outside option.
This is an interesting point – it’s all relative, isn’t it? If you have great options before going to grad school (i.e. the scores/grades/institutional status/contacts needed to get in) then you probably are sacrificing more to go. On the other hand they also may have less at risk than the lower tier person who spends 4 years at a 2nd tier school – the former probably still has great prospects even if they drop out, whereas the latter may be even further behind the ball than when they started. I think that for some people plwarren’s second point is what they are concerned about – they argue that people are not calculating the expected return very well because of misinformation. Whether that’s true or not, or what is to be done about it are another matter.