Student loans in the upcoming election
 

With the upcoming elections there is a lot of interest, no pun intended, spent on student loan issues. Lately I've been hearing many arguments made toward the decrease of interests and the reduction of the cost of public education at the college level. In particular, I heard a graduate speaking about the high amount of his student loans, making a point toward how tuition is extremely expensive and the interest outrageous. Now, what bothers me is in the cases I've heard lately there is no remark as to what was the subject of study. This student in particular just goes ahead and says: I owe 250k in loans, the system is broken.

Now, I am of the opinion that the student loan situation is an individual responsibility. It seems strange to me that there is no mention as to what field was studied and I think is purposely left out due that it most likely was a bad decision to spend that amount of money in a field with no potential return and now someone needs to pay for it. What are your opinions?

I would suggest the speaker revise his speech to: I owe 250K in loans, I dont even have a job, I am a moron.


the ease of loans/subsisides makes colleges raise tuition, because they can. (think housing bubble)

tuition and fees at my college was around ~$5000 a year when I went to school, today it's over $13,000. That does not include room and board.

I took a graphic novel class for my literature credit.

All I have to say is that I will not vote for Hillary. Someone so insanely power hungry cannot be good.

at this point what difference does it make?

And in the housing bubble, individuals took on more debt than was reasonable in order to buy things that they didn't have a clear plan for repayment of, then complained about "predatory lending practices" and started shouting about how they shouldn't be required to pay their debts.


$250k is way too much to pay for school, unless your definition of "school" includes one of the two following courses of study:

Or, poor people shouldn't buy Mercedes. (Although they still do.)

There are a lot of interrelated subjects that all feed into why the student loan issue is coming to a head right now.

My personal experience: Where I went to college, the tuition increased 250% just while I was attending, and MANY new buildings were constructed during that time. I paid $1100 per semester when I started, and tuition is over $5000 now. I've been out of school for 8 years now, and go back to that campus once a year (Flagstaff, AZ is a great city to visit. Wish I could've found a job there to continue living there) just to see how it's changed. The construction has continued to the point that there is almost no open space left on the university's "footprint", and many of the dorm buildings have been replaced by extravagant (by broke-ass 18 year old student standards) furnished apartments. Many of these new dorms are operated by an external contractor (big-money government contracts aren't just in the defense industry).

So, what's the problem with all of this?
Don't people want to go to the nicest school with the best facilities and technology available to them at all times? Absolutely. And the universities need to have those facilities to be competitive and attract the high-dollar out of state students (who pay triple the in-state rate). But how do the universities pay for all of this stuff, and how is it cost-effective for them? The ever-rising costs of tuition and dorms are paid for by the students. And it's easy for the university directors and board of regents to justify the increased costs (Just look at all the new buildings!). The problem is that the university isn't really "paying" for these buildings the same way a private business would. The university has a never-ending line of funding in the form of students who need a degree to get a job, and will take out loans to get it. The hoards of students are paying all of the interest on government money that's funneled straight into the university. When a public university views students as part of their business model for operations, as opposed to the benificiary of an education, all while still billing themselves as community of learning, there's a problem with the system.

I'm not advocating that a college education should be free at all. But this is exactly why Elizabeth Warren has been trying push through legislation to revise student loan interest rates such that the students pay the same interest rate as the banks do. As it currently stands, banks can borrow money from the federal goverment at a significantly lower interest rate than students do. Kids signing up for their loans at 18 have no idea what any of the terms mean or how it will impact their future financial standing. They're just coming out of high school with no clue about how to budget for anything other than lunch and gas, and the university/student loan finance system takes extreme advantage of that.

And all of these issues are multiplied in severity when you start looking at the for-profit entities like University of Phoenix. People end up $70k in debt for a bullshit tech degree from online courses. They're constantly reassured by the marketing department that all kinds of Fortune 500 companies have leaders with degrees from UoP, but most HR departments and hiring managers aren't going to view a resume with DeVry or University of Phoenix on it in high esteem.

I would not either, but this "college must be free" idea is getting quite popular... again.

I am in the same page as you guys.

When I was 18 I knew damn well I could not afford $15K/yr much less $50K/yr. I mean is not that difficult to realize limitation. In turn I know Rubio proposed an idea that would limit the amount of money that a student is allowed to borrow based on the projected return of a particular career. In this case people are upset to the idea of having someone tell them what is a good investment and what is not.

F(*# for profit Universities. I had some co-workers that are doing programs in schools like that and I feel bad for them, but they take no criticism toward their choice. So there isnt much you can do there.

To the politics section!

good read on this: Subsidized Education : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

I don't know how you do it, but I think forcing parents and students to be rational about how much they're spending and what they're actually going to make is important. I finished with $50k in debt and an engineering degree, student loans have been annoying but not a big deal. My sister graduated with about the same and a film degree, not quite the same scenario. My parents (college educated) took my experience as the usual. It's especially hard on families that have never had members go to college. I don't think this is the sole responsibility of schools, but they do bare some of the responsibility.

The interest is what kills me. I'm paying way more in interest on government loans that bankruptcy doesn't get me out of and that I'm paying full payments on than I did on a new off the lot Miata note. Interest is supposed to reflect risk, and in my opinion those two things are disconnected.

<p>I went to a public school and lived in a house with 5 people to reduce living expenses on top of working part time all through school. If you are smart about it you can get a college education without going deep into debt.&nbsp;</p><p>I do agree that interests on public loans are pretty high. I think my unsubsidized loan&nbsp;was about 8% and acquired interested immediately. However, that made me focus on living below my means to pay it off very quickly and lift that debt off my shoulders as soon as I could after graduating.&nbsp;</p>

Thank the large amount of doctors and lawyers who would immediately declare bankruptcy after graduating with the large student loans for getting rid of that ability.

<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>ICWUDT <img alt="likecat" src="https://www.miataturbo.net/images/smilies/likecat.png" style="height:20px; width:25px" title="likecat" /></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

I always wondered why bankruptcy didn't cover student debt.

Because if it did, there would be *massive* fraud.

The only real disincentives to an individual declaring bankruptcy are liquidation of assets and the black mark associated with bankruptcy on one's credit report. A recent graduate presumably has no assets to liquidate, and is less likely to care about their credit report (having little to no extant credit history) than an individual who is older, owns a home, car and personal property, etc.

Thus, there'd be no reason for the vast majority of students to amass large student loan debt and subsequently default on it all immediately after graduation. This would lead to the collapse of the student lending industry, which I'm sure some people would view as a net positive outcome.

My biggest problem with student loans in the Federal sense is that they don't cover my total cost of tuition. I'm pretty much completely paying out of pocket for my degree with no financial aid. I don't make good money but I make enough.

I came back to school later in my 20s, I'm 26 now and started only 2 years ago. I had an established credit of about 650 when I started with no real debt other then a car note that was paid off after the first year of school. BUt obviously I get hit with the not long established credit ding since I only got my first credit card and car note when I turned 21 and not 18.

Anyways it's BS that I only get approved for so much on my fed loans which really only covers half of tuition at my school. The rest the school assumes I can pay out of pocket. Which at about $4500 a quarter(10 weeks) I certainly cannot pay. I make $31,000 a year before taxes and live at home with my parents. (My parents make about $70k combined income so household income with around $100k yearly) I am forced to take out private loans to cover the difference left that Fed loans don't cover. So now I have federal loans and private loans to pay out on, not to mention my private loans absolutely rape me in interest and I cannot consolidate the 2 after graduation.

Combined loan total for a Bachelor's in computer science from Robert Morris University in downtown Chicago right now in my senior year is ~$70,000. It'll prbably be about $80,000 when I graduate.

My saving grace has been my pops co-signing for me on the 2 private loans I've had to take to cover left over costs. I'm going to need to apply for a 3rd and it freaks me out if by chance for whatever reason I or my dad don't get approved. The way my school works is basically even though they have all my fed loan money and previous private loan money, they will still keep me from graduating or continuing class if my personal balance with them gets over like $4k. Which would be complete bullshit if I can't finish my last 2 senior year quarters on time because I had to take off a quarter to try and pay down my balance.

Don;t even get me started on how fucking terrible my school's finance office is with help and advice. They are just money grabbing jackasses. I've had to pretty much figure out everything on my own, their typical response for when I ask for help struggling to come up with money is "Just go take out another loan". Fuck you guys, it;s not that easy to just go get a loan. :vash:

The whole idea "don't spend what you can't afford" approach for school is horse shit. Most schools work in trimester or 4 semester financial periods. They will not tell you total cost of attendance. Sure you can put 2 and 2 together to get an idea. But I honestly thought my education was going to be in the 50s-60s. BUt they have since hiked tuition so much even in 2 years it's easily in the 70s-80s now. In the scheme of things I still feel ok that the cost of my bachelor's is still under 100k. Especially upon graduation I should be able to land an easy $60k-$70k job. Paying it down shouldn't be all that bad. I just wish schools would just be upfront about the real costs of attendance and not fight with me and bleed me dry. Working with finance office is a nightmare and they take advantage of students. If I don't stay ontop of my class coordinator they sometimes try throwing me some completely BS class I don't need for my degree. RAAAGGGEE

*Breaths* I could rant for hours.

But anyways yeah, the whole system is fucked and I really think that Government needs to fucking do something about it because these for-profit based schools are killing our generation and future. If I woulda known better when I started I probably would have tried to get into a not-for-profit school. Or atleast kept with my local community college classes I was taking to completely finish my associates there before transitioning.

To be clear, I have no issue with it being immune from bankruptcy. However, that should come with a corresponding, low interest rate.

<p>&nbsp;</p><p>Quite a few years ago they eliminated the income tax deduction for interest on any loan except for residences (yes, I know that's been pretty much abused now) I.E. credit card interest, personal loan interest etc.&nbsp; Look for the interest on student loans to become tax deductible sometime in the near future.&nbsp; It's something the schools will push for to continue the tuition hikes they've enjoyed over the past couple decades.</p><p>Small help but a help nonetheless.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

I agree 100% with Phil's post.

Personally from my own experience it seemed a little 'too' easy for me to get signed up with ITT Tech and owe $70k+. Turned that down and went to austin community college instead, realized later my advanced IT classes were for me to be spoon fed with knowledge. Though more hands on, any higher learning acquired there I could of done at home in my free time & become qualified via certification.

<p>Oregon just passed a new bill that makes community college free for high school graduates. Combine 2 years of community college and 2 years of state school there is no way in hell you should ever have 250k in loans. If you can't afford to go to a 60k a year school then....DON'T FUCKING GO.</p><p>I worked hard in high school, got a good scholarship to my state school and paid very little (~1k) a year in tuition (because engineering classes). I had help from my parents, but also had paid internships every summer.</p><p>I have absolutely no sympathy for students graduating with 200k in loans, its stupid.</p><p>70-80k is a lot more reasonable.</p><p>I also agree that it is horse shit that you have to pay high interest rates on a loan that you have absolutely no chance of getting out of.</p>

The biggest reason I left community college was just because the only one local to me it would have taken me 4 years just to finish my associates because of their class availability being so shitty.

When I got to RMU I did finish my associates in about a year and that was only with a handful of credits that transferred. Basically all of the cisco stuff I did at CC was forfeit because all of that shit expires after 3 years anyways. So I had to take it all over again.

For sure I was def spoon fed and could sleep my way through all my classes and get A's-B's. I'm into my 400 level classes now for CIS and I have to admit they are challenging now atleast. Not much time is spent in class, pretty much just check in once a week and spend the quarter working on bigger projects to turn in for a grade.

Currently my senior project I just finished a 50 page paper and had to design and implement my own theoretical IT business.

So I can't say my classes feel like a waist of money, I'm definitely being challenged in this last leg of school. I for sure put my education over ITT and Devry Graduates. I'm friends with quite a few guy's that went and it sounds like their programs were a complete joke.

you didnt build that.

But isn't that inherently the problem? The people that do not want to own up to the responsibility?

Phil, I was in a similar position when I went to school... in my 20's and paying little by little. My first two years were the longest due to that. I was at a crossroad at a point wherein I could have gone to a highly ranked engineering school and decided not to when I saw the tag price. Do you think in your case there was no option other than the one you took? As in attending another school with a lower price tag?.

<p></p><p>Now that was too obvious...</p>

^ This.

You don't need to attend a private university and pay $60k a year. If you WANT to, and can AFFORD to, then by all means, do it. Otherwise, do two years at the local CC and then transfer to a public university.

(Or, even better, study a skilled trade like welding or diesel mechanics. Your job prospects will be much greater after graduation, and you'll have less debt.)


By the same token, if you can afford to buy a new Porsche 2016 911 ($160-$180k), then by all means do it. But if you can't afford it, buy a used Miata. Nobody would take seriously a person who takes out a huge loan to buy a $100,000 car, then realizes they can't pay for it, blames the TV ads for making the car look too attractive and affordable, and pleads for auto-loan reform.





People cheat on their taxes, too. Doesn't mean that we should codify tax-cheating as law.

<p>Also in my mind there are 2 reasons for going to college.</p><p>1. Investment in your future.</p><p>2. To get an education</p><p>Number 1. Don't pick a major in hispanic transgender history if you consider college an investment in your future. Pick business, engineering, etc.</p><p>Number 2. Understand that you are going to school to receive an education and learn shit, not always to get a job. Have fun in hispanic transgender history, but don't expect a job when you get out.</p><p>Pick #1 if you don't have unlimited fund, pick #2 if you are a trust fund baby.</p>

Yeah, that's a whole different area of insanity...

I personally know a few people (who I went to high school with), who studied things like philosophy and psychology. Mind you, we're all now in our late 30s. The philosophy grad works as a bartender and teaches philosophy at the local public college. One of the psych majors went on to get her masters and Ph.D and works as a psychologist, the other has worked a bunch of secretarial / retail jobs and is still without a "career."



Never mind crap like Art History, Religious Studies, English Literature, Anthropology, and so on. I can only assume that people who graduate with degrees like this go into college with absolutely no clear idea whatsoever what they want to study, and wind up in those departments by default (or because they flunked calculus and organic chem too many times.)

<p>I have a friend who did philosophy, but also a bunch of pre-law stuff. Now in law school and doing great.</p><p>There are definitely reasons for those degrees to exist. And the top .0001% of those grads will do great things with their degrees. But the career for an average engineering graduate vs the average art history graduate are very different.</p>

My economics professor would have said
"The demand for a prestigious college experience is outpacing the supply of prestigious colleges"

He also would have noted that the increase in demand has a lot to do with the relative ease of coming up with the money, which creates a perception of the affordability of said "prestigious college experience".

Finally he would have finished by saying that the only monetary policy that the government could enforce to lower college prices would be to make borrowing money less affordable (Higher interest rates).

He would probably be right on all counts.

I love my 2% perkins loans. I had about $8k in student loan debt upon graduating a state college; my parents spent about $800 total on my college education. My business degree has made me some bank since.

Almost every university will oppose "free" college because it's a financial loss to them.

I worked like a slave through high school and college. Had a paper route and after school dishwasher job. Shoveled driveways and raked leaves over school breaks. No car, no spring break trips. I saved every dime.

Went to a state school, and got student loans, even though I didn't need them. But interest rates were high (16-18%?), and I put the money in bank CDs. When I got out of school (4.5 years later), I used the still untouched money to by a Corvette. 2-3 years later, I sold that car to buy my house.

That's how you get ahead; not by going to expensive schools. Nobody wants to hear that the American dream is working your ass off for dividends later in life.

In retrospect I could for sure have spent more time researching a more affordable school to attend. I partly went the route I did because of a good friend whom was an alumni and said his overall experience was good. I had also just been fired from a tech job I had been at for about 6 months that I took to get out of my comfort zone of a cushy IT position in a gradeschool. Basically falling flat on my ass as a failure it was pretty solid motivation to get my butt back in school and make something of myself. Spending 2 months or so searching for work really opened my eyes to the possibilities I could have with a degree vs. just good job experience and some certs. I realize in IT you can make it by fine without a degree but I literally missed out on a handful of jobs simply because I was on the same level with another guy but didn't have the degree and they did.

When it came down to school choice, I mean there's the common choices. ITT, Devry, Phoenix, etc. All fucking terrible rated schools and I've worked with their grads and they were complete dipshits. I was attracted to RMU because it was something different and I thought it stuck out to potential employer's over the common school choices. I could have gone the route of University of Chicago or Columbia or Roosevelt but at the time I looked their adult education evening classes took longer and were more expensive. I didn't really realize the difference between for-profit and public schools. I just wanted to get in somewhere and get done asap so I could move on with my career. I basically took a not entirely ideal job where I currently am at. Not making the money I want but it works with my schedule and doesn't stress me out so I can concentrate on school. I've basically put my life on hold while in school, I'm not making the money I want to be but that's ok. I'll be extremely set up once I graduate and there will be no reason I shouldn't find a much higher paying position that I will enjoy and have room to improve.

I basically went with my choice because the program seemed to work best with my schedule and the recommendation of my close friend. I didn't look hard enough at overall school cost since I figured I'd be up to my eyeballs in debt anywhere I went so what was the difference? Just go where I wanted. :giggle:

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying my experience at school and would probably go the same route again if I went back in time. There's just a few things I know now, that I would have done differently. The sucky part is, you just really don't know until your financially invested and stuck. I generally don't understand people who go to college and drop out. This shit is costing me so much money the idea of not finishing kills my soul.

Some words of warning for this route (which I have gone (and left)):

Patent law is a subset of law practice, not a subset of engineering. At the beginning, there is a huge emphasis on credentials and on having a resume that looks a certain way. It is vitally important to have the right degrees from the right schools or you're going to have a bad time. Your chances of scoring biglaw in general are not good. This isn't the 80s.

0) The legal profession has been deeply in the shitter since summer 2008 and it hasn't gotten much better. In 99 percent of circumstances, you're better off becoming an engineer than a patent attorney. You'll be out tons less money for tuition and you'll have better employment opportunities. Yes, there are special snowflakes who defy the odds and are swimming around in a scrooge mcduck money bin filled with billable hours, but don't count on it being you. This whole thing is a long shot unless you do everything exactly right and even then it's a very fickle industry.

1) You need to pick your undergrad degree very carefully (ie, you need to anticipate what sort of patent practitioners will be in high demand 8 years from now). Keep in mind a lot of patent work will only accept bachelors for a handful of fields like EE/CS/CE. The rest want doctorates. Good luck becoming a patent practitioner in biology or chemistry unless you are a published phd.

2) You absolutely need to go to a top 10-20 law school if you want this to work with any degree of reliability. Employment prospects outside of the top 10 are really shitty. You can't go to some 100+ ranked school and graduate in the top 5 percent anymore.

3) Age discrimination is rampant. Forget about doing this unless you're going straight through from high school to bar exam. Employers are looking for 25 year olds at the entry level. As soon as you start missing years (because you did something else for a few years, had a career, practiced some other type of law, etc), it counts against you. 25 and no experience is fine. 30 and no experience is odd. 35 and no experience is leper. Obviously this doesn't apply to people who are 45 because they are nobel prize winning geneticists who went to stanford law school to do patent work after discovering the cure for cancer, but you aren't one of these people.

4) You absolutely have to want to practice in NY, CA or MA. There is patent work elsewhere, but not nearly as much of it. Sure, there are patent attorneys in Nowhere County, AL, but we're talking like one practitioner with 30 years of experience in a 50 mile radius who eats all of the tiny amount of work that comes through.

5) Once you pick an area, you're pretty much stuck. Lawyering in general has awful mobility. Moving from one state to another is a pain in the ass because of per-state licensing. This isn't mitigated by the patent bar being a federal thing- every firm wants locally licensed practitioners. Also, if you do any sort of litigation, your knowledge of judges and the jury pool is a local thing that you can't take with you.

Conclusion: don't fucking do it.

thanks, obama.


:fael:



I know plenty of people that didn't graduate college and got decent jobs. I know a few that make much more money than me. Get skillz.

i went to a cheap school and make 6 figures...

IMO, the main problem with student loans is that they aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy and the feds will give unlimited amounts of them... which produces the two main problems- unlimited growth of educational costs combined with unlimited slavery for the 18 year olds that get suckered into taking these loans out with no conception of the consequences.

I think the best thing to do would be to initiate bankruptcy reform:
-allow discharge of student loans starting 5 years after graduation. But instead of wiping them out, leave the school on the hook for the debt. This leaves enough time for students to try and establish themselves and pay off reasonable size debts, but if someone is 250k in debt (plus another 100k in interest) to law school and working at starbucks after 5 years, it's time to let them start over.

Leaving the schools on the hook for the student loan debts that get discharged will annihilate the for-proft schools that are getting rich turning out armies of unemployable idiots carrying a mountain of debt.

We really ought to do the same for auto loans as well- those are extremely easy to get. And, really, it's Pagani's fault that buying their car didn't transform me into a jet-setting superstar, so I don't see why I should be expected to continue paying the note on a car which didn't bring me fame and fortune.

yeah but cars are easily reposessed. when people cant pay a car note, the bank takes the car.

when you cant pay a student loan, what should they take from a basement dwelling troglodyte with no job?


the loans are also on a schedule baes on risk. older cars require a higher APR. a brand new car might be 1% APR where a 10yo car might be 6.99%

We're not talking about repossession, we're talking about the use of bankruptcy to avoid repossession. And specifically, I'm proposing that I be allowed to declare bankruptcy and yet be allowed to keep my Pagani Zonda which I can't afford to pay for.



Future wages. It's called garnishment.

The same rules apply to child-support judgements. If I knock a girl up, and the court imposes child-support payments on me, I can't get off the hook just by declaring bankruptcy, even if I am an out-of-work crackhead.




That's exactly my point. Pagani made the 2015 Zonda too attractive to me by enticing me with a low APR. Thus, my fiscal irresponsibility is really their fault.

If the government were subsidizing car loans and the cost of a used corolla with bad ball joints was 250k, I think this would be a legit approach.

The way it is right now, if your car is a worthless pile of shit and you owe a ton of money on it, you can just stop paying and they will come and repossess it and maybe come after you for an unsecured debt. If I go to a third tier law school and end up working in mcdonalds as a fry cook, I can't just stop paying my student loans and let them repossess my worthless law degree. I can't declare bankruptcy and have it discharged either, even if I'm well below the poverty line.

The really sad part is that there are over a trillion dollars in student loans that have been packaged into student loan backed securities. And even though most of those loans are in some sort of non-paying status, the criteria they use to determine "default" mean that 99 percent of these loans count as being "good" debt.

The sort of basic assumption underlying the entire auto lending industry is:
1) the car is worth something to the bank upon repossession
2) the car is worth something to the borrower so long as they pay

If the average car was a worthless pile of shit that exploded into flames the second you drove off the lot (much like your average law degree), every auto lender and dealership would be out of business by the end of the week, no matter how much money anyone owed them. You aren't going to collect payments on a car that is not providing value to the borrower.

Ok, so I'll go ahead and make a big concession- how about you can trade in your debt for degree. You give up the degree and the school has to pay back the federal government instead of you. Given that something like 75 percent of JDs aren't practicing law, this wouldn't be a loss. It would drive the bottom 75 percent of lawschools out of business overnight... but again, this wouldn't be a loss, as they produce virtually nothing of value- it's a scam to soak up billions in federal student loan money in return for producing hundreds of thousands of people who will never find employment as lawyers.

There is some merit to this idea, though I would need time to really mill it to determine if it would be successful or not.

You would also need to revoke their licenses and other legal ability to practice law unless they submit a fine equal to the amount of forgiven debt plus interest. By doing this, you would immediately reduce the pool of aspiring lawyers by a considerable amount. The remaining unemployed lawyers would immediately have a greater chance of being hired as a lawyer. Crappy law schools that know their students stand little to no chance of seeing success with their degree would either leave the business of teaching law, or else they would need to dramatically reduce their cost of educating aspiring lawyers. If many reduced their costs, then we might see the price (and quality) of lawyers reduced dramatically in 10-15 years. The more likely alternative is that many schools would just abandon teaching law. Most states would be reduced to 1-3 schools that taught general law, and there would probably be 1-3 national options for any sort of highly specialized law. Getting into any of these schools would be damn near impossible, and the demand for those few seats would probably double or triple the costs of the law degree. In the end, the price of a poor attorney at least doubles, and the price of a "good" attorney probably increases between 5 and 20 fold. You still have a few that are out $500k and can't find a job, but those law schools can afford the 35% degree reimbursement rate because of the overwhelming profits they are raking in based on the demand for their services.

Right now (and for some time, actually) the supply of lawyers has been several times larger than the demand for their services. On top of this, the amount of work available has shrunk drastically over the past 10 years. It has nothing to do with how good the lawyers are- there just isn't enough paying work for them to all do. Poor people have poor access to lawyers because (having represented such people) the poverty is often a symptom of their general lack of ability to cope with day to day life. They can't pay you because holding down a job is difficulty when you're a sociopath with a room temperature IQ and impulse control issues. The notion of drug dealers saving their money for a good lawyer is an idea that died in the 80s. Everyone gets the public defender now.

Law schools are pretty much in two pricing tiers- state and private. A private school will run you roughly 50k a year plus expenses for 3 years. With interest, you can reasonably expect 200-300k in debt when you graduate. This is true for attending Harvard Law where you can pretty much choose between a dozen great options upon graduation. It is also true if you attend Cooley School of Law where your chances of any JD related employment are slim at best. A state school with in-state tuition will generally run you a lot less- 10-20k a year. Some state schools are high ranked, some are not.

A lot of prospective law students have figured this out and application rates have plummeted over the past 5 years or so. The T10 schools haven't had to compromise their admissions standards to admit full classes. Outside of this area, it's looking really grim. Down in the old tier 3 toilet schools, they're admitting people with LSATs in the low 140s, which is about what a dyslexic chimpanzee could get by smearing poo on the test form. These are people who will never pass the bar, let alone competently practice law.

There's plenty of lawyers who already have JDs (and law experience) who could resume the practice of law if it became worthwhile again. The problem is that it's just a pit of misery for 90 percent of lawyers. Even when it paid well, practicing law was basically drudgery. Without the pay or the stability of having a good job, it's just pure suffering.

This is pretty much why I decided to exit law school before having sunk too much money into it.

Didn't take out any loans, though. Made sure I had enough cash on hand to cover the whole 3 years before I committed to it.

how about you fucking hippies go get a job. I hear burger joints pay very well... enough to support entire families.

I owe $480k. Beat that bisshes.

Despite having a law degree become the equivalent of a liberal art undergrad, the number of students seeking a JD does not decline. This part i don't understand :dunno: However, there are still ways for these attorneys to make money, actually a lot of it, via institutions like 411-Pain and Traffic Ticket Clinics. They require little skill and work and the volume of customers that seek this service is rather large.

So, would it be necessarily politically incorrect for a politician to go ahead and tell all this unemployable students that fundamentally is their fault they are not employable? I know no one would win an elections this way, but baby sitting adults should not be a thing.

In the absence of other evidence, I think suggesting that "you win" might be viewed as a contrarian argument...

Read my post at the top of the page. The number has dropped enormously since 2010. It took a while for the scamblogs to get the word out about how bad outcomes are for law students, but once the big shock of 2008-2009 happened, everyone caught on that things were really bad.

In response to this massive drop in qualified applicants the following has happened:
-the elite schools (HYS) have changed nothing. The rest of the T14 are getting increasingly bad outcomes, but they're all lying and trying to preserve their prestige for as long as possible.
-some schools have shrunk class sizes and maintained pre-crisis admissions standards. Besides the reduced revenue, it's basically business as usual except for the challenging job market.
-some schools have dropped standards and are aggressively recruiting from low-IQ cohorts who don't realize that they're being suckered yet. To compensate for the reduced quality of their students, they're doing things like lying about employment outcomes, paying people not to take the bar. This way they can tell incoming students about how they have a 75 percent bar pass rate and good employment stats. Which is all blatantly untrue, but the courts have been really hostile to the idea of allowing suits against the schools for what is basically fraud.

Really, outside of HYS, employment outcomes are pretty grim. I went to a tier 1 school and most of my class mates are employed as lawyers, but mostly in very meh positions. Insurance defense, state/local govt, solo shitlaw dominate. A handful got midlaw or boutique work and are doing fine. A few ended up in fedgov doing admin law. And this is considered waaaaay above average. Down in the underworld of the third tier, JD-required employment is rare. You're as likely to be working as a public defender as you are to be making lattes in starbucks.