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October 4, 2005

Women in the Workforce

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Posted by Elizabeth Albrycht

Richard Posner offers an economic analysis of the issue of elite professional women leaving the workforce (mainly to have children) from the point of view of the university/professional school. He states that given roughly half (see his post for numbers) of professional women from elite universities drop out of the career world, the full value of their places in the university is not achieved. This means that places didn't go to a number of (mostly) men, who would have more fully "productive careers."


But I have to try to be precise about the meaning of "more productive" in this context. I mean only that if a man and woman of similar ability were competing for a place in the entering class of an elite professional school, the man would (on average) pay more for the place than the woman would; admission would create more "value added" for him than for her.

The article is an interesting read, and his economic analysis and proposed solutions to the problem are correct from an economic perspective:

A better idea, though counterintuitive, might be to raise tuition to all students but couple the raise with a program of rebates for graduates who work full time. For example, they might be rebated 1 percent of their tuition for each year they worked full time. Probably the graduates working full time at good jobs would not take the rebate but instead would convert it into a donation. The real significance of the plan would be the higher tuition, which would discourage applicants who were not planning to have full working careers (including applicants of advanced age and professional graduate students). This would open up places to applicants who will use their professional education more productively; they are the more deserving applicants.

The problem I have is with his unspoken assumption that labor market practices (not to mention US tax policy) will remain static. Today, these labor practices (and tax policies) are problemmatic for professional women (and men who want to spend more time with their family). I am not going to go into all of the difficulties, but let's state that there are serious issues with work-life balance/family-friendly policies. Enlightened companies are getting on the bandwagon and changing these policies to keep their valuable employees. I would argue that given real change is now possible in the way work is conducted (particularly knowledge work), given technological change and new business models, that the assumption of status quo is a dangerous one.

By focusing as Posner does on economically based measures universities can take, for example, we miss the most important player for in keeping women in the workforce who want to stay: the employer. Any action the university takes in such a vacuum can only have unintended consequences. Better for universities to engage with employers to look at the problem holistically vs. from their individual silos.

Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Education | Work-Life


COMMENTS

1. Frank Walsh on October 6, 2005 12:51 PM writes...

As stated, the article is interesting from an intellectual exercise point of view. While Posner works very hard to keep the discussion on the economic benefit level, the recommendation ignores one very important economic point. By raising the barriers to entry with increased tuition, the professional education institutions will cause a defacto reduction in the value they add to the marketplace. Why? Because such barriers will indiscriminately impact certain income classes regardless if they would contribute full careers to the market. Such costs are very likely to be greater than any potential benefit of weeding out those who are not “serious” about a full career. Is it possible to offset the impact with additional financial aid? Possibly, but this creates a new set of problems about distribution of aid.

I had never really considered how motherhood issues impacted universities, so all in all this was quite interesting. Still, I find it wanting of a well thought out solution.

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