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Unfortunately, after being beaten down for a decade, the law-school scam has been asserting itself anew, even opening hopeless scam-schools. Vigilance is as important as ever.
Take hope. See, e.g., For a Juris Doctor (JD) professional program, new federal student loan borrowers are limited to $50,000 per academic year in Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loans, with a lifetime federal professional limit of $200,000. As I have said before, many people see Law School as a three-year, all expenses paid vacation backed by Student Loans. Now, factually, tuition at most modern US law schools far exceeds 50K per year. So. . .being able to borrow only 50K means that the student will somehow have to pay for the rest himself, along with expensive textbooks, pens, notebooks, other study supplies, and, oh yeah, a full year's living expenses, for each and every year, for three years. They simply will not be able to do that, nor will most students have any motivation to do that. One could hit up Mom and Dad, but, unlike gullible 21-25 year old college grads who are working at menial jobs with their Bachelor's Degree in "Philosophy" or "Film" or whatever, Dad. . .or Mom. . .is likely to do some basic, online research, perhaps with the assistance of AI, into exactly what a J.D. is really worth these day. If a parent reads about licensed attorneys earning $22.00-$26.00 per hour, pre-tax, for Temporary Document Review Projects. . .well that's when Dad's foot meets Junior's. . .you know where I'm going here. . .so hard that Junior tastes shoe leather. Some law schools have already dramatically cut their tuition. . .but, in today's day and age, with rampant, ever-growing inflation, a paltry 50K a year, per student, won't go very far. Once you start playing games with fake "conditional scholarships" you really get into a situation of diminishing returns. It's probably easier to find another scam, at that point.
Now the task is to reduce funding for law school. While medical school may cost a fortune, law school should not: it is very cheap to provide some books and chalk, without having to provide laboratories and other expensive facilities. Allowing the same amount of borrowing for law school and medical school makes no sense. Keep lowering the cap until law school becomes unprofitable and the scamsters move on like those of InfiLaw.
The problem, 5:04, is BAPCPA, which was the 2005 law that extended the same federal bankruptcy protection that federal loans get to private student loans. I went to law school post BAPCPA and pre GradPLUS, so I saw how it worked.
The problem is that without GradPLUS, what used to happen is the private lenders would just step in to lend above Stafford limits, knowing that they got the same bankruptcy-proofing as a federal student loan thanks to BAPCPA, even though they had none of the protections of federal student loans like income-adjusted payments, disability discharges, closed or fraudulent school discharges, no cosigner requirements, etc.
So what happened in those bad old days was that people still borrowed hugely above the Stafford limits, they just did it through private companies like Access Group. And even worse, those places would often demand cosigners so law school could ruin not just your life but your parents' as well.
Make no mistake: The result of this won't necessarily be for law schools to cut their prices. It'll probably mean the students just have to borrow privately and their parents probably have to be on the hook too, either as cosigners or as the direct borrowers under ParentPLUS loan program. This is marketed as pressure to make college cheaper, but really it's more likely to just push more borrowing onto families.
By all means cap federal borrowing. But unless they ALSO regulate private loans e.g. to prohibit cosigners and make private student loans fully dischargeable in bankruptcy, it's unlikely to exert much downward pressure on tuition.
There is no need to denigrate philosophy or movies as subjects; the root cause of this dysfunction is the student loan program is a giant scam that led to insane pricing. It still goes on - just shut down the program and fund public schools with normal prices like we used to.
There's nothing wrong with philosophy or movies; what is wrong is the false suggestion that a degree in one of these fields will lead to work. In the days of the baby boomers, any old BA was indeed good enough for a decent job. Those days are long gone.
It's approaching farce, as a college degree is now about the same as a high school diploma 100 years ago. Yet every student is encouraged-really almost ordered-to attend college, any college and major in anything. Then May rolls around, and the hand-wringing starts, with gloomy reports of unemployed college graduates. This happens every.single.year.
Where I live, each and every May lots of young men and women come home from college, move back in with their parents, and get low-paying, menial jobs at our local grocery stores. Most graduate from college, but some drop out. I don't have sympathy for them. I knew exactly what I wanted to do at college long before I started, which was to successfully complete the Army ROTC program, and get into a good law school. That was back in the late 80's, when the job market for JD's was actually pretty good. My father was a lawyer, my mother had been a college professor, they both strongly supported and assisted me in reaching those goals. There were lots of fools who went to college for the wrong reasons, did not apply themselves, and got bad outcomes back in the 80's, just as there are today. There were also a small number of people who went to college for the right reasons, studied hard, and got excellent outcomes, then and now. Yes, I understand young high school students are "encouraged" to make bad choices. So what. Being a successful adult means learning to think for yourself, and make good choices, not to just follow the herd. I knew people in college who worked very hard, did well, and got great jobs afterward. I didn't know many students like that, but they did exist. Perhaps, at that school, in that time frame, 10 percent of the class was really serious about their studies. Most were just there to have a good time.
8:28 nice job patting yourself on the back on your anonymous accomplishments in life that completely misunderstand the failures of America's economy. We are creating less living wage jobs than ever before and tuition prices have increased significantly since the Reagan administration. Maybe run for office so we can all worship your greatness. Lots of minor league baseball players don't make the majors - they move on and don't have 200k of debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy.
First of all, the late 1980s were almost forty years ago. Things have changed since then. Second, being "strongly supported and assisted" by a father who was a lawyer and a mother who was a professor gave you advantages that few people have. You might consider that before issuing sweeping condemnations.
"being 'strongly supported and assisted' by a father who was a lawyer and a mother who was a professor gave you advantages that few people have." Agreed 100%. That said, the US, unlike other countries, celebrates college as a four-year long party focused on alcohol, sex, fraternities/sororities and semi-professional football and basketball teams, played in massive stadiums and arenas, with coaches, who, at least football coaches, are often paid millions of dollars a year. I saw through that nonsense, and focused on my studies, instead of fraternities, casual sex, and football games, from Day One at college. With nothing but respect--and I like your blog and have been posting on in for many years--there were lots of "party schools" in the late 1980's, and there are lots of party schools today. I am sorry if it sounds like am boasting. Two of my close friends at college were both Aerospace Engineering majors with close to a 4.0 GPA. They were both much smarter than I was, studied harder than I did, and probably got much better post-graduation outcomes than I did. I was nothing special, but I did take college seriously, and it worked out well for me. I have always despised the party culture that surrounds US colleges and universities. Films like "Animal House" portrayed college as a 4 year long party in 1978, and films like "Old School" do the same today. I have always hated the anti-intellectual attitude toward college that is prevalent in US culture. I think students, and our culture generally, should take higher education seriously. That is all I am trying to say.
In my view the 80s were the beginning of the decline. That was when the offshoring of jobs started often replaced with lower paying jobs with fewer benefits. The elimination of company pension plans began in earnest replaced with 401k's. These trends continued to accelerate into the 90s and beyond to the wasteland we have now.
As to sports at college. Sports have been a part of college life for maybe 150 years now. I think in balance taking in a game on a Saturday afternoon might be a good diversion from 'studying hard' 24/7 as is joining a team if you have the talent. It's not all about 'studying hard' and 'working hard' anyway. Intelligence factors into it. If someone isn't that smart then they can work as hard as they want but the results might not be that good. All night keggers certainly don't help however.
The decline started in 1980 or 1981, with the rapid depletion of blue-collar work and the various other changes that accompanied it. In 1979, any able-bodied high-school dropout, at least if male, could get a high-paying blue-collar job in almost any place with even a modest population. Ten or fifteen years later, people with bachelor's degrees couldn't find work.
There is nowhere else in the world where male football and basketball teams dominate universities as they do in the US. Most of the world doesn't even have official teams. Oxford and Cambridge do have rowing, but it's strictly an amateur tradition, not a billion-dollar piece of commercial bread-and-circus vulgarity. Leave it to the US to ruin academia.
Intelligence and industry are by no means sufficient for finding good work. Old Guy is the poster boy for that.
We have often discussed "universities" that were elevated from teacher's colleges, religious establishments, and the like just a few decades ago, as well as the foolishness—really found only in the US—of making a professional male football or basketball team central to what is nominally an academic institution. We have also discussed the trend of treating university, including law school, as a protracted orgy.
Again, however, much has changed since the late 1980ş. Law school is no longer viable at all for most people. I even discourage young people today from seeking a bachelor's degree unless they are going into medicine or very few other fields. What worked so brilliantly for the baby boomers doesn't work for today's youth. It didn't even work well for Generation X.
No longer viable since 1980s? How about the 1890s?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Monnier
An aristocratic family locked their daughter in a dark filthy room for 25 years. They preferred to let her go insane and feral over the shame that would have come from her marrying a "penniless lawyer."
I looked it up and apparently, even in 1800s France, lawyers were known as a profession with a vast gap between perceived prestige and actual earnings for all but a tiny fraction of them. Then as now, trying to escape one's caste by entering a profession with mere physical proximity to your betters is a fool's errand. It obtains (at best) an outcome similar to a butler: Inches from the table physically, light years from it in reality.
Campos is back with an article on SSRN estimating that about 70 percent of law schools are in financial trouble. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7238678
1) You mention "the foolishness—really found only in the US—of making a professional male football or basketball team central to what is nominally an academic institution. We have also discussed the trend of treating university, including law school, as a protracted orgy." Thank you. That is exactly the point I was trying to make in my earlier posts. 2) You are 100% correct. Law school is, in fact, longer viable at all for most people. Yes, if your father owns a law firm and is getting ready to retire, or if your mom is an Assistant Public Defender who can help you get a job, and student loan forgiveness, at the PD's Office. . .if you have close family connections and guaranteed post-graduate employment, then law school may make sense. Otherwise, it will probably be a waste of time and money. 3) You point out that young people should not even get a Bachelor's Degree, and you are right. Many of the highest-earning, most successful clients I represent went to Trade School. A person who becomes, for example, a Master Electrician can easily make much more money each year than anyone at the Public Defender's Office, or the DA's office, etc. We need Electricians, Plumbers, Nurses, Accountants, Airline Pilots, CDL Truck Drivers, Auto Mechanics. . . there are hosts of fields that badly need workers. Law is not one of those fields.
Take hope. See, e.g., For a Juris Doctor (JD) professional program, new federal student loan borrowers are limited to $50,000 per academic year in Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loans, with a lifetime federal professional limit of $200,000. As I have said before, many people see Law School as a three-year, all expenses paid vacation backed by Student Loans. Now, factually, tuition at most modern US law schools far exceeds 50K per year. So. . .being able to borrow only 50K means that the student will somehow have to pay for the rest himself, along with expensive textbooks, pens, notebooks, other study supplies, and, oh yeah, a full year's living expenses, for each and every year, for three years. They simply will not be able to do that, nor will most students have any motivation to do that. One could hit up Mom and Dad, but, unlike gullible 21-25 year old college grads who are working at menial jobs with their Bachelor's Degree in "Philosophy" or "Film" or whatever, Dad. . .or Mom. . .is likely to do some basic, online research, perhaps with the assistance of AI, into exactly what a J.D. is really worth these day. If a parent reads about licensed attorneys earning $22.00-$26.00 per hour, pre-tax, for Temporary Document Review Projects. . .well that's when Dad's foot meets Junior's. . .you know where I'm going here. . .so hard that Junior tastes shoe leather. Some law schools have already dramatically cut their tuition. . .but, in today's day and age, with rampant, ever-growing inflation, a paltry 50K a year, per student, won't go very far. Once you start playing games with fake "conditional scholarships" you really get into a situation of diminishing returns. It's probably easier to find another scam, at that point.
ReplyDeleteNow the task is to reduce funding for law school. While medical school may cost a fortune, law school should not: it is very cheap to provide some books and chalk, without having to provide laboratories and other expensive facilities. Allowing the same amount of borrowing for law school and medical school makes no sense. Keep lowering the cap until law school becomes unprofitable and the scamsters move on like those of InfiLaw.
DeleteThe problem, 5:04, is BAPCPA, which was the 2005 law that extended the same federal bankruptcy protection that federal loans get to private student loans. I went to law school post BAPCPA and pre GradPLUS, so I saw how it worked.
DeleteThe problem is that without GradPLUS, what used to happen is the private lenders would just step in to lend above Stafford limits, knowing that they got the same bankruptcy-proofing as a federal student loan thanks to BAPCPA, even though they had none of the protections of federal student loans like income-adjusted payments, disability discharges, closed or fraudulent school discharges, no cosigner requirements, etc.
So what happened in those bad old days was that people still borrowed hugely above the Stafford limits, they just did it through private companies like Access Group. And even worse, those places would often demand cosigners so law school could ruin not just your life but your parents' as well.
Make no mistake: The result of this won't necessarily be for law schools to cut their prices. It'll probably mean the students just have to borrow privately and their parents probably have to be on the hook too, either as cosigners or as the direct borrowers under ParentPLUS loan program. This is marketed as pressure to make college cheaper, but really it's more likely to just push more borrowing onto families.
By all means cap federal borrowing. But unless they ALSO regulate private loans e.g. to prohibit cosigners and make private student loans fully dischargeable in bankruptcy, it's unlikely to exert much downward pressure on tuition.
There is no need to denigrate philosophy or movies as subjects; the root cause of this dysfunction is the student loan program is a giant scam that led to insane pricing. It still goes on - just shut down the program and fund public schools with normal prices like we used to.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with philosophy or movies; what is wrong is the false suggestion that a degree in one of these fields will lead to work. In the days of the baby boomers, any old BA was indeed good enough for a decent job. Those days are long gone.
DeleteIt's approaching farce, as a college degree is now about the same as a high school diploma 100 years ago. Yet every student is encouraged-really almost ordered-to attend college, any college and major in anything.
DeleteThen May rolls around, and the hand-wringing starts, with gloomy reports of unemployed college graduates.
This happens every.single.year.
Where I live, each and every May lots of young men and women come home from college, move back in with their parents, and get low-paying, menial jobs at our local grocery stores. Most graduate from college, but some drop out. I don't have sympathy for them. I knew exactly what I wanted to do at college long before I started, which was to successfully complete the Army ROTC program, and get into a good law school. That was back in the late 80's, when the job market for JD's was actually pretty good. My father was a lawyer, my mother had been a college professor, they both strongly supported and assisted me in reaching those goals. There were lots of fools who went to college for the wrong reasons, did not apply themselves, and got bad outcomes back in the 80's, just as there are today. There were also a small number of people who went to college for the right reasons, studied hard, and got excellent outcomes, then and now. Yes, I understand young high school students are "encouraged" to make bad choices. So what. Being a successful adult means learning to think for yourself, and make good choices, not to just follow the herd. I knew people in college who worked very hard, did well, and got great jobs afterward. I didn't know many students like that, but they did exist. Perhaps, at that school, in that time frame, 10 percent of the class was really serious about their studies. Most were just there to have a good time.
Delete8:28 nice job patting yourself on the back on your anonymous accomplishments in life that completely misunderstand the failures of America's economy. We are creating less living wage jobs than ever before and tuition prices have increased significantly since the Reagan administration. Maybe run for office so we can all worship your greatness. Lots of minor league baseball players don't make the majors - they move on and don't have 200k of debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy.
DeleteFirst of all, the late 1980s were almost forty years ago. Things have changed since then. Second, being "strongly supported and assisted" by a father who was a lawyer and a mother who was a professor gave you advantages that few people have. You might consider that before issuing sweeping condemnations.
Delete"being 'strongly supported and assisted' by a father who was a lawyer and a mother who was a professor gave you advantages that few people have." Agreed 100%. That said, the US, unlike other countries, celebrates college as a four-year long party focused on alcohol, sex, fraternities/sororities and semi-professional football and basketball teams, played in massive stadiums and arenas, with coaches, who, at least football coaches, are often paid millions of dollars a year. I saw through that nonsense, and focused on my studies, instead of fraternities, casual sex, and football games, from Day One at college. With nothing but respect--and I like your blog and have been posting on in for many years--there were lots of "party schools" in the late 1980's, and there are lots of party schools today. I am sorry if it sounds like am boasting. Two of my close friends at college were both Aerospace Engineering majors with close to a 4.0 GPA. They were both much smarter than I was, studied harder than I did, and probably got much better post-graduation outcomes than I did. I was nothing special, but I did take college seriously, and it worked out well for me. I have always despised the party culture that surrounds US colleges and universities. Films like "Animal House" portrayed college as a 4 year long party in 1978, and films like "Old School" do the same today. I have always hated the anti-intellectual attitude toward college that is prevalent in US culture. I think students, and our culture generally, should take higher education seriously. That is all I am trying to say.
DeleteSo he was born on third base and thought he'd hit a triple....
DeleteIn my view the 80s were the beginning of the decline. That was when the offshoring of jobs started often replaced with lower paying jobs with fewer benefits. The elimination of company pension plans began in earnest replaced with 401k's. These trends continued to accelerate into the 90s and beyond to the wasteland we have now.
DeleteAs to sports at college. Sports have been a part of college life for maybe 150 years now. I think in balance taking in a game on a Saturday afternoon might be a good diversion from 'studying hard' 24/7 as is joining a team if you have the talent. It's not all about 'studying hard' and 'working hard' anyway. Intelligence factors into it. If someone isn't that smart then they can work as hard as they want but the results might not be that good. All night keggers certainly don't help however.
The decline started in 1980 or 1981, with the rapid depletion of blue-collar work and the various other changes that accompanied it. In 1979, any able-bodied high-school dropout, at least if male, could get a high-paying blue-collar job in almost any place with even a modest population. Ten or fifteen years later, people with bachelor's degrees couldn't find work.
DeleteThere is nowhere else in the world where male football and basketball teams dominate universities as they do in the US. Most of the world doesn't even have official teams. Oxford and Cambridge do have rowing, but it's strictly an amateur tradition, not a billion-dollar piece of commercial bread-and-circus vulgarity. Leave it to the US to ruin academia.
Intelligence and industry are by no means sufficient for finding good work. Old Guy is the poster boy for that.
We have often discussed "universities" that were elevated from teacher's colleges, religious establishments, and the like just a few decades ago, as well as the foolishness—really found only in the US—of making a professional male football or basketball team central to what is nominally an academic institution. We have also discussed the trend of treating university, including law school, as a protracted orgy.
ReplyDeleteAgain, however, much has changed since the late 1980ş. Law school is no longer viable at all for most people. I even discourage young people today from seeking a bachelor's degree unless they are going into medicine or very few other fields. What worked so brilliantly for the baby boomers doesn't work for today's youth. It didn't even work well for Generation X.
No longer viable since 1980s? How about the 1890s?
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Monnier
An aristocratic family locked their daughter in a dark filthy room for 25 years. They preferred to let her go insane and feral over the shame that would have come from her marrying a "penniless lawyer."
I looked it up and apparently, even in 1800s France, lawyers were known as a profession with a vast gap between perceived prestige and actual earnings for all but a tiny fraction of them. Then as now, trying to escape one's caste by entering a profession with mere physical proximity to your betters is a fool's errand. It obtains (at best) an outcome similar to a butler: Inches from the table physically, light years from it in reality.
Campos is back with an article on SSRN estimating that about 70 percent of law schools are in financial trouble.
ReplyDeletehttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7238678
1) You mention "the foolishness—really found only in the US—of making a professional male football or basketball team central to what is nominally an academic institution. We have also discussed the trend of treating university, including law school, as a protracted orgy." Thank you. That is exactly the point I was trying to make in my earlier posts. 2) You are 100% correct. Law school is, in fact, longer viable at all for most people. Yes, if your father owns a law firm and is getting ready to retire, or if your mom is an Assistant Public Defender who can help you get a job, and student loan forgiveness, at the PD's Office. . .if you have close family connections and guaranteed post-graduate employment, then law school may make sense. Otherwise, it will probably be a waste of time and money. 3) You point out that young people should not even get a Bachelor's Degree, and you are right. Many of the highest-earning, most successful clients I represent went to Trade School. A person who becomes, for example, a Master Electrician can easily make much more money each year than anyone at the Public Defender's Office, or the DA's office, etc. We need Electricians, Plumbers, Nurses, Accountants, Airline Pilots, CDL Truck Drivers, Auto Mechanics. . . there are hosts of fields that badly need workers. Law is not one of those fields.
ReplyDeleteNurses and Accountants usually obtain Bachelor's Degrees. The higher paid ones at least have them. Accounting isn't a sure thing either.
DeleteAirline Pilot? Is it easy to become one?