JDs, MBAs, and JD/MBAs

I found a little bit more on the previous subject of JD/MBAs. It seems that generally, an MBA is seen as an enhancement to a JD, but that a JD adds less to an MBA.

JD/MBAs are often seen as neither fish nor fowl within either professional track. Law firms worry that they'll jump to more lucrative non-legal job opportunities, and businesses don't know what to do with the JD half of the degree. The exception seems to be specialized fields such as investment banking, or related M&A work, where the combination of legal diligence and business analysis becomes more important.

http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/hilden/20080414.html

My Fantasy Alternate Reality

Lately I've been perusing the possible specializations I might obtain with my degree: Strategy, Economics, Operations, Law & Business. This last is particularly interesting to me right now.

It's difficult to explain why I'm interested in law and business. Maybe it's because regulation and politics - both firmly rooted in the law - are kind of hot right now. Maybe it's because I tend to be far more qualitative than quantitative. Maybe I just like making arguments. 

I spent three years simply being interested in the law, not counting post-college mental perambulations. Five years ago I was reading about law, talking to lawyers and almost-lawyers. I read www.nylawyer.com every day over my morning coffee. I toured Fordham and Brooklyn law schools. I paid off all of my consumer debt, then studied for over a year and took the LSAT.

I bombed. Still, the allure of law persists.

It's tedious and detailed. I work in IT, which is already tedious and detailed. There are kinds of rules, regulations, the mechanics of our society. Come to think of it, I was first enamored over ten years ago, when I worked at a dot.com startup and the telecommunications industry started to deregulate. What does it all mean? How does this work? Instead I moved to NYC to work in media, and ended up in IT instead.

When I first set out for an MBA, I was going to go to Baruch. They have a JD/MBA program with Fordham and Brooklyn. Granted, these are not toppity-top ranked schools but they are well-regarded in the city. As it stands now, getting my MBA at NYU significantly impacts the kind of opportunity cost I'm willing to take on for a second professional degree.

But still, I dream of law school. Reading up on contract law, torts, interstate commerce clause. It all sounds so fascinating, at least until there's a test on it.

Maybe I'd be better positioned now as a full adult in school, not a young'un trying to be cool and high-achieving and encountering setbacks for the first time. I have much more fortitude than I did in my twenties.

More than anything else I like to know what I'm talking about, and these days, I'm more interested in talking about government and business than, say, the annual politics of a film festival, or the latest album by some arty Canadian band.

Law school, we never had ye, but ye be missed.

Recession, Worker Pay, Health Costs

Slate's "Slatest" has two oddly juxtaposed items today.

First of all, a recent poll indicates that many employers expect to shift the cost of health care more to their employees, noting that costs are increasing rapidly; an estimated 166% in the next ten years to an average of $30,000 per employee.

Second, people are getting raises - and it's not just financial seers. Apparently, for those who managed to keep their jobs, not much has changed, pay-wise, beyond the ongoing fear, uncertainty, and doubt permeating the economy in general.

Unrelated: Lego, Boeing

Two articles in the NYT caught my eye today. Oddly both mention business news about two companies I liked when I was a kid.

I loved Legos, and spent all kinds of time building moon bases, spaceships, houses, submarines, and much more. I would be one of those adults slightly disappointed that all Legos seem to be based on licensed settings now. That said, it seems to be a strategy that works.

I built spaceships because I was into aerospace, and my granddad would take me out to the airport to look at planes; we greeted the Concord when it came to Tulsa. Boeing was one of those Big American Companies I saw mentioned all the time, and it's been interesting to read about them in some of my classes - in particular, my microeconomics class featured a case about the Airbus SuperJumbo vs the Boeing Dreamliner.

I have to admit I was partial to the Dreamliner, partly because so much of the case history told the story of what Airbus was doing wrong and Boeing was doing right. Either way, they both pursued different markets. The case history stopped around 2005, when Airbus was first encountering production delays - and now, apparently, Boeing is as well, in large part due to their outsourcing model.

(Tangent - this is the kind of problem outsourcing always brings about. I don't believe outsourcing is particularly good or bad, but it certainly requires more orchestration on the part of the outsourcer, something most are not prepared for. In my current position, it's clear that we can't just turn over functions to our outsource partners, though I doubt that, as Boeing has, we'll end up buying one of those partners).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/global/06lego.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/06boeing.html

An MBA Candidate Looks at Health Care

While the health care debate in the US ebbs a bit, I've been finishing up Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man, an account of the Depression that goes into the contemporary politics of the time. I understand it's considered at least slightly revisionist, critical of missteps by the Roosevelt administration, as well as a bit more forgiving of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, though in my opinion she doesn't outright condemn or condone either. In any case, what I find most intriguing is how much the debate over power utilities during the Depression matches the debate over health care in the current period.

The most similar argument is that a government option will put private providers out of business, or at least make the fields so unprofitable as to be not worth pursuing. Roosevelt built the Tennessee Valley Authority and similar public power works; Obama's much-debated and ill-defined public option arguably will provide the same.

I don't believe I know enough about either arrangement to make a cogent argument for or against. What I do believe, however, is that while the free market may be the most efficient provider of services, this is not always true, and there are certainly gaps that the market does not address. In the case of electrical power (and telecommunications, I might add), the market does not have the incentive to develop service in areas that are not profitable, such as rural homes and smaller municipalities. Similarly, the market has no incentive to provide health care coverage to those who are unemployed, underemployed, self-employed (except at a steep premium than corporate policies) or simply not profitable such as consumers whose premiums no longer cover the cost of care.

Creating an incentive mechanism to cover these gaps is just one of the many problems in health care reform. The more I learn about health care as an industry, the more clearly I can see why health care reform is and always has been so difficult.

There's the method in which doctors are paid. There is the complex relationship between government and hospitals, as well as the distinction between public and private service. There's preventive medicine, catastrophic care, end of life and long-term disability, pharmaceuticals, advanced imaging, prosthetics, and research.

Oh, and we still can't cure the common cold, Airborne notwithstanding.

Add politics to the financial complexity of health care, and you'll get an entanglement of cables, doused in molasses, encased in ice.

Ask most Americans about health care reform, and they'll agree it is needed. Where to start? If they have any idea at all, it usually comes from personal experience. If someone tries to stand up and offer a specific idea, all their opponents need to do is convinced the uninformed that that person is wrong.

It's frustrating to watch.