<p>sakky - part of the difference – no one expects the art history major to make money. the person taking out large loans to pay for that undergrad knows what they are getting into. (also re undergrad – isn’t there a limit on what a student can borrow in their own name? don’t larger loans usually require either the parent to be the borrower or a co-signer?) family and friends, whether they supported the decision or not, won’t be surprised when the student asks to move back home because they can’t pay their own rent. </p>
<p>few people have much sympathy for a lawyer who cries poverty. its not just the prospective student who may not have a realistic view of what job prospects await, but the family and friends as well. which can emotionally make it even harder on the law school grad who has trouble making ends meet. </p>
<p>also, my understanding re law school loan forgiveness programs – i think they usually apply if you work in the public interest – not merely end up in a low paying job. (if i’m wrong on this, please correct me.) and just because they pay a lot less doesn’t mean that public interest law jobs are easy to get. also , i think it is the top law schools that often offer the best such loan forgiveness programs – and its not their grads who are going to be faced with this problem, unless they choose to take the low paying public interest jobs – ie, YLS and HLS are not turning out law grads who are reviewing documents for $20 an hour. the import of this article is for those who aren’t attending those top schools and whose employment options will be far more limited.</p>
<p>no one is saying you have to have sympathy for anyone. the point of all of this is to try to make prospective law students aware of what may lay ahead for them. a good sense of reality is useful no matter what you plan to study – that’s much more important for someone than anyone’s sympathy.</p>
<p>Obviously, that’s a huge difference. And the art history major won’t be 100K in debt, nor is it likely that his school outright lied to him and said their art history majors make six figures after graduation.</p>
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<p>Name a few professions where the average student loan debt is as high as law. The only one I can think of is medicine, where the employment prospects and salary are a lot better than in law.</p>
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<p>I’m about 95% sure you just completely made this up. </p>
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<p>Great, and that’s why nobody is talking about them here. Virtually none of their graduates qualify for loan forgiveness and those who do nearly all voluntarily chose lower-paying positions. The loan repayment programs are much worse at low-ranked schools, where the students are often 100K+ in debt and lucky to get a 50K job.</p>
<p>Oh? Again, have you compared the current FA policies at Harvard vs. those at the state schools? The truth of the matter is, Harvard offers tremendous financial aid packages if you don’t have much money - often times better than what state schools will offer. </p>
<p>Harvard states explicitly that families do not have to contribute a dime if they make less than 60k a year. How many state schools can say the same? And the truth is, plenty of families in the US make less than 60k a year. </p>
<p>I’ll give you another example. I know a guy who didn’t get a dime of aid from his state school but got a full ride + stipend to go to Stanford, even though his family is quite rich. Weird? Not really. What happened? Simple. Football. Basically, his state school had a far better football team than Stanford did (as Stanford football is terrible right now), and Stanford was willing to give him a football scholarship whereas his state school (a national championship contender) did not have any scholarships for him, but just wanted him to walk on. But, hey, it’s still a mighty good deal. He gets paid to go to Stanford vs. having to pay to go to his state school. </p>
<p>The salient point is that the top private schools are not always the expensive option vs. a state school. Sometimes the private schools are actually the CHEAPER option. </p>
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<p>Morgoth brought them up in post #57. If you don’t like it, take it up with him. I wasn’t the one who introduced that topic into the conversation. </p>
<p>Again, the salient point here is that you should not be badly hurt by attending HLS and YLS and then taking a low-paid (i.e. public interest) law job, because of their highly generous loan forgiveness programs. I don’t know what was going on in the past -i.e. when Morgoth’s father was going to law school - but I think we can all agree that right now, those law school forgiveness programs are pretty darn generous. </p>
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<p>Who said anything about “professions”? I am simply talking about the costs of any education. The truth is, education at any private school for any degree without financial aid is expensive. </p>
<p>But since you asked for it - you want examples of professions? Fine. Here’s a bunch. How about pharmacy? Takes 4 years to get a PharmD degree. It takes only 3 years to get a law degree. Hence, the PharmD degree costs MORE than a law degree. Yet the median lawyer makes MORE than the median pharmacist. Yet nobody seems to be crying for the pharmacist. </p>
<p>How about optometrists? Granted, optometrists do seem to get paid more than lawyers when you factor in all of the optometrists that have private practices. Nevertheless, the question on the table is simply to identify professions in which the average student loan is as high as that of law. Optometrists must have a DO degree to be licensed, and that degree takes 4 years. </p>
<p>The point is, there seem to be quite a number of professions whose graduates have to carry comparable or higher levels of debt as law students do. </p>
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<p>Is that right? So if you go to a private undergrad school that charges 25k for tuition and ~15k for room/board, and you are there for 4 years, and you don’t get aid, that doesn’t add up to 100k+ in debt? Really? </p>
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<p>That’s a different story. I have seen no evidence that any law schools have outright LIED to anybody. Have they perhaps given false impressions? Have they perhaps been selective in the data they present? Sure, probably, just like any company will try to market its products in the best possible light (for example, when McDonalds markets its Big Mac, it is going to do so in a way that makes it look as juicy and tasty as possible while downplaying how many calories it has). But law schools outright LYING? I have seen no evidence of this. </p>
<p>For example, when some low-ranked law schools say that their graduates make 6 figure salaries, that’s not really a lie, as some of their graduates probably do indeed make 6 figure salaries. Granted, most of them did not, but some of them did. Hence, the statement that “graduates make 6 figure salaries” is not technically a lie. It may be misleading, it may arguably even be unethical, but it’s not a lie. </p>
<p>Seriously, if you are an aspiring lawyer, you ought to know that lawyers use tricky wording and disclaimers all the time. That’s how the law profession is. So as an aspiring lawyer, you should have learned to read with a cynical eye. You should learn to read statements carefully to understand what they do and do not say. </p>
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<p>And this gets down to where I see the real value of the article is - which is simply the unrealistic expectations of some law students. I agree that that is a problem. But again, I would ask, why should it be such a problem? After all, plenty of regular Americans undergo tremendous financial difficulties. Why would lawyers be immune from such a thing? Like I said before, petroleum engineering students who graduated in 1998 during the oil bust had great difficulty finding jobs. Many of them were carrying a huge chunk of student debt around. Most of them chose PetE because they thought they were going to get good jobs (because only a few years prior, the oil industry was booming). Similarly, plenty of people who graduated with CS or Information Technology degrees in 2002 during the dotcom bust had great difficulty finding work; many of them having been lured into those degree programs because 4 years prior, the industry was going through the huge dotcom boom. Many of these people took on boatloads of student debt thinking they were going to get high-paying jobs upon graduation. </p>
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<p>Not for HLS or YLS.</p>
<p>"In addition, full-time law-related jobs in the private sector are also covered under LIPP "</p>
<p>Like I said, I wasn’t the one who dragged in YLS and HLS into the conversation. That was Morgoth. </p>
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<p>What I am saying is that LIFE is uncertain. And that goes for anybody - lawyers, carpenters, art history majors, anybody. There are no guarantees for anybody. Plenty of Americans in numerous industries are not doing well financially. Plenty of Americans have problems. It’s unclear to me why aspiring law students would think they deserve to be immune to problems.</p>
<p>the simple truth of the matter is that young people often don’t have a realistic view of what awaits them at the other end of the educational process. regardless of what educational path they are pursuing.<br>
no reason to get angry about it. no reason to criticize them for thinking they deserve to be immune to the problems that face everyone in the real world. to some extent isn’t that really just one of the basic entitlements of youth?
students who have always done well are often told by their families, teachers, peers, to expect to achieve the moon and the stars. this article would hopefully help both potential law students and their support group to be more realistic. just like an article telling potential doctors that their future income will be affected by health insurance companies and malpractice insurers would serve a similar purpose.<br>
there is nothing new about the idea that pursuing a “professional degree” will lead one to prosperity – its an idea that has been around for hundreds of years!! instead of criticizing those who are the victims of what may be a false “advertising” (and i use that term VERY loosely), why not accept that making more realistic information available is simply a good thing?</p>
<p>Well, look, I would hardly say that I’m “angry” - I’m simply mystified as to why some people seem to think that law students deserve special treatment. For example, it has been suggested that because lawyers have to take on student debt levels that no other profession save physicianhood have to take on, then they automatically deserve special treatment. Not only is that claim demonstrably false (in that there are quite a few other professions in which you have to take on as much or more debt as lawyers do), it’s irrelevent anyway. Just because you take on a lot of debt doesn’t automatically entitle you to a good job. It doesn’t automatically entitle you to immunity from the financial dangers that everybody faces. It is precisely that sense of entitlement that seems to be the real problem.</p>
<p>Look, at the end of the day, the average lawyer is still better off than the average American. As a matter of perspective, we could compare all the lawyers who don’t do well in their careers with all of the regular Americans who don’t do well in their careers. Let’s face it. There are a lot of regular Americans who aren’t doing well at all. In fact, plenty of them are doing very very badly. I’m quite certain that they would love to trade places with the lawyers, even the ones who aren’t doing well. Sure, those lawyers who aren’t doing well may indeed be carrying around a mountain of debt. But at least they have the chance to eventually get a decent-paying job as a lawyer sometime in the future. Plenty of Americans have basically no chance of ever getting a decent-paying job. </p>
<p>Look, I have always agreed that more realistic information is always a good thing, and yes of course, people should know that things don’t always work out well. But my point is, they should have know that fact already. At the end of the day, you have to be responsible for the choices you make. You can’t just pawn off responsibility by hiding behind the excuse of ‘false/misleading advertising’. I know full well that the Big Mac I buy at McDonalds is not going to be as tasty as the TV commercial made it seem to be. Let’s face it. If law schools are misleading some people through their advertising, it is also true that some people want to be misled.</p>
<p>sakky, I don’t know anyone who thinks lawyers should be given special treatment. I wouldn’t have a problem with using debt forgiveness to encourage lawyers to practice in certain areas of the country, however. The point of this thread can be to simply add some balance to all the talk about “biglaw” salaries and how in house jobs are the answers to all prayers. You say prospective lawyers should already know these things, but you seem to be attacking a post aimed at letting prospective lawyers know these things.</p>
<p>Look, I have always agreed that more information is a good thing. And of course, if some people have the wrong impression and the article serves to correct that impression, then that is clearly for the good. Hence, I have never attacked the post, or the WSJ article that generated the post.</p>
<p>In fact, I don’t think I am “attacking” anything at all, but if I am, it is that attitude of entitlement that makes the WSJ article and the accompanying post necessary in the first place. I would think that it should go without saying that some people in any profession are not going to do well. We live in an uncertain world where nobody is guaranteed a good job. It is therefore the responsibility of all of us to be realistic about our careers. We have to know that we can study very hard, study very hard, get all kinds of education and training…and still not get a good job anyway. That is possible. Some of the hardest-working petroleum engineering students who were graduating at the top of their class in 1998 were not getting good jobs. Such is life.</p>
<p>As a case in point, take that guy in the WSJ article who graduated from law school and then decided to work as an electrician with his buddy because he couldn’t find a law job. While that’s a sad story, the truth of the matter is, sad stories like that happen all the time. For example, a whole slew of software and IT people had to take jobs outside the industry during the tech bust of 2002. I know one guy with an EECS degree from Berkeley (one of the elite EECS schools in the world) who decided to become a real estate agent during that time (and now that real-estate is in a downturn, he has decided to go back to software). Plenty of other tech guys I know ended up taking odd jobs, including the aforementioned guy who ended up working as a security guard, one guy who ended up working as a loader in a FedEx warehouse, and other guys who ended up in a myriad of other odd jobs (I think one guy briefly worked as a DJ in a nightclub and one girl briefly worked as an aerobics/dance instructor). </p>
<p>The point is, you’re not always going to be able to get a good job in the industry that you want. That’s a truism of life. Law students should not think they are exempt from this truism. </p>
<p>So, to reiterate, I never said that the WSJ article or the post were bad things. In fact, they’re probably very good things. Looks like they’re saying things that apparently needed to be said. What is interesting to me is why these things needed to be said in the first place - as apparently people didn’t already know that some people in any profession, including law, don’t do well. I would think that these are things that people should have known already.</p>
<p>Still not buying your story. Aside from the simply implausible claim that you know two students who both ranked their state school above Harvard and yet still applied to Harvard anyway (as what, a safety?), the fact is that every state school I’m familiar with gives huge merit aid to top scoring students. If they had the numbers for Harvard, it’s real tough to believe they wouldn’t get a full ride at their state school.</p>
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<p>And virtually none of them send their kids to Harvard. The median family income for Harvard students is around $150K. </p>
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<p>There are both limits to how much you can borrow as an undergrad and need-based financial aid for undergrads, which is not the case for law students.</p>
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<p>Of course, you haven’t actually presented any evidence that people in these professions actually carry as much debt as lawyers, but no matter. I can just about guarantee that the levels of un- and under-employment for optometrists, pharmacists and vets is nowhere near that of lawyers, to say nothing of the quality of life. I doubt very many pharmacists find themselves pushing pills for $15/hour in terrible conditions and cursing the day they decided to pursue a PharmD. And in any event, the total number of pharmacists, optometrists and vets combined is well under half the total number of lawyers in the country, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to hear less about them. </p>
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<p>No one is talking about HLS and YLS. In fact, nobody brought them up at all; one person mentioned HYP undergrad to make a tangential point, and you seem to have seized upon this as an excuse to extol the virtues of their loan repayment programs in response to every claim made about other schools. The reality is that loan repayment programs at third- and fourth-tier schools (where the students really need them) are either non-existent, unavailable to most grads or offer very little help.</p>
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<p>The fact that bad things happen to everyone doesn’t make them less newsworthy, and the vast majority of Americans probably don’t know that many people take out $150K in loans for law school only to wind up flipping burgers. It raises serious questions about the ABA’s willingness to accredit more and more schools, or to allow schools to manipulate the employment data they present or increase their class sizes.</p>
<p>While there are a number of law schools that currently offer some measure of loan forgiveness to their students who make little money after graduation, please keep in mind that there are often strings attached, including a minimum number of years of service (or be forced to repay any amount of forgiveness granted), qualifications on the types of employment you are able to have (typically public interest 501(c)(3) organizations, though a very few schools like Harvard Law offer broader forgiveness for anyone employed as an attorney), how spousal income is counted, which student loans are eligible at all (typically, private loans and loans used to replace expected contributions of family or student are not included) and restrictions on the kinds of assets you can own before losing eligibility. For example, under the Harvard Law LIPP program, if one was to purchase a home, that asset would be counted against them in determining their eligibility for loan forgiveness, regardless of income. </p>
<p>You might want to check out these links, which are just a few examples of these loan forgiveness programs:</p>
<p>Many professionals, including lawyers, have gone back to school to obtain secondary professional degrees. As the article suggests, for many the money is just not out there as was expected with having a J.D. I have many friends who have returned to school for Nursing degrees.</p>
<p>“Like I said, I wasn’t the one who dragged in YLS and HLS into the conversation. That was Morgoth.”
No I did not. I mentioned that my father got admitted to their undergraduate colleges; he did not apply to either HLS or YLS. I am sorry if you misunderstood me. Also he could not afford either school for undergraduate as his parents made over 60K a year but had 3 other kids in college and debts. He only applied to in state law schools .</p>
Huh? First off, when did I say that those students “ranked” their state school above Harvard? I said no such thing. If you believe otherwise, please point to the quote where I specifically said that those guys actually ranked their state school above Harvard.</p>
<p>What I said is that these students applied to both Harvard and their state school, and after receiving their packages, actually found out that Harvard turned out to be cheaper than their state school, once FA was calculated in.</p>
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<p>Then I’ll show you my cards. You are clearly not familiar with Berkeley, as that is the state school in question. And the fact of the matter is that, other than the special case of athletes, Berkeley does not give automatic “huge merit aid” to top scoring students. Not exactly.</p>
<p>What Berkeley offers as far as merit aid are the Regents/Chancellor’s (RC) Scholarships. It is true that these RC scholarships are awarded on the basis of merit. The interesting issue with the RC scholarships is that the amount of aid you get for the RC awards * is predicated on how much your family makes*. The more money your family makes, the less the RC will give you. These students were far from rich, but not dirt poor either. Hence, what they received from RC was not very much at all, such that their total tuition at Berkeley would have been more than what they would have had to pay at Harvard.</p>
<p>But hey, if you don’t like it, don’t take it up with me. I personally think the way that the RC funding is doled out is stupid. But don’t blame me for that. It’s not my fault that the RC is set up that way.</p>
<p>Of course! But that’s not the point. The point is, if you’re poor (or at least under the 60k threshold), then Harvard is an excellent financial deal. Sure, I agree that very few people who are under that threshold will be able to get into Harvard (just like very few people of any kind are going to get into Harvard). But that’s not what I’m talking about. The point is, if you are one of those people, then Harvard is a great deal. </p>
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<p>I agree with a former poster that your parents are probably cosigning your loan. But that’s irrelevent to this discussion, as, at least in my family, you’re still ultimately responsible for paying what you owe (unless you’re so cold-hearted that you’re willing to welsh and stick your family with the bill). At the end of the day, it’s all just “family money”. </p>
<p>Besides, look at the situation in terms of law school. You can have your parents cosign your law school loans. You can also have your parents just give you money to help you afford law school. Hence, at the end of the day, somebody (either you or your family) ends up paying. Hence, the debt is the same. </p>
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<p>How much “evidence” do you need? Pharmacy school takes 4 years. Law school takes 3. Just from a lost-wages perspective, pharmacy school is more expensive.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I am not aware of any evidence that pharmacy schools have lower tuition than comparable law schools (i.e. public vs. public). For example, the tuition for a private pharmacy school is basically the same as a private law school. Hence, it is entirely logical that pharmacy debt is going to be as much or more than average law debt. Why would you think otherwise? </p>
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<p>First off, the fact that there are fewer of them does not make them no less of an issue. As I have shown, the median salary for vets and pharmacists is substantially lower than that of lawyers. I therefore see no reason to believe that lawyers are worse off. </p>
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<p>If this point is not relevant to you, then don’t read it. I don’t have a gun to your head. But let others who want to read about it be allowed to do so. If nobody finds it relevant, then nobody will read it, and that’s perfectly fine. </p>
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<p>Look, I agree that if lawyers don’t know that they won’t be immune from problems, then that fact is indeed newsworthy. But I simply question why they would ever think they were immune in the first place? Just because you have a law degree doesn’t automatically entitle you to immunity from financial problems. It is precisely that sense of entitlement that I find mystifying.</p>
<p>I misunderstood you regarding the law schools. But anyway, I don’t see the harm in my talking about HLS and YLS. If people find my discussion regarding HLS and YLS to be irrelevent, then they are free to not read it. </p>
<p>Regarding HYP undergrad, like I said, I don’t know what happened in the past, but I can tell you that nowadays HYP all offer quite excellent FA packages to the poor.</p>
<p>If we are talking about undergrad, Sakky is absolutely correct because it is definitely the case in my house where we would have been full freight payers at our state U (not many “full rides” to be gotten). However, we are definitely paying less for D to an Ivy than we would have paid to attend state U (and as a GC, I have seen it year over year). NYS schools that participate in HEOP will be virtually free to low income student (A double portion at Columbia between their low income initiative and HEOP a NYS resident will gradate debt free and pretty close to debt free at Cornell) A student who gets HEOP can go to NYU for free (and they are notorious for having bad Financial Aid). These students will probably also be strong contenders for the Chase Smartstart scholarships which not only offers full tuition & book money but a summer internship at JPmorgan chase.</p>
<p>With almost every Ivy along with Stanford and the Elite LACs having some sort of low income initiative in place (Harvard has raised their low income initiative to 80k, and Princeton does not believe in debt), a “low income” student or a student from a “average” family income (which is less than 60k) can graduate from these schools virtually debt free (where at minimum they would have Stafford Loans if they were to be admitted through the state U)</p>
<p>Let’s all keep in mind here that if we are talking about law schools, financial aid policies differ radically from undergrad. There is nothing such as “need blind” or “guaranteed to meet need” for most law schools when it comes to financial aid. Whether state programs, such as HEOP, are available for law school I do not know.</p>
<p>The availability of loan forgiveness in limited circumstances is one thing, but generally, especially since most law students will have to include their parents’ income in their applications for financial aid regardless of whether their parents will actually be helping out with law school tuition, financial aid is not extraordinarily generous for law school. Most law school financial aid comes in the form of loans and more loans. Most students will be expected to max out their Stafford loans and Perkins loans, if available to that student, before the school will even consider offering financial aid money in the form of grants. Many law students at private law schools take out Stafford loans plus private loans to make it through each year. This is also why a potential law student’s credit worthiness can make or break that student’s ability to actually live up to the financial commitment that law school brings. Loan forgiveness is only an option depending on your circumstances and choices following graduation – it doesn’t exempt you from taking out the loans in the first place. </p>
<p>Academic scholarships at top law schools are few and far between. Typically, only a handful of each law school class will receive academic scholarships from the law school itself.</p>
<p>I am going out on a limb and guessing that most parents do not insist that their children repay them, with interest, what they pay for college. It’s not an issue of parents co-signing for loans. The point is that law schools don’t even claim they will meet demonstrated need. And to the extent that they give need-based aid at all (which they typically do not), it is based on your projected need after assuming you max out on Stafford loans ($20,500 a year) and family contributions. So even if you had nothing at the school gave you 100% of your calculated need (which is unheard of), you’d still be over $60K in the hole, which is by itself far more debt than the average undergrad has. </p>
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<p>Lost wages don’t add to your debt load. The fact that pharmacy school takes longer doesn’t mean pharmacists have more debt than lawyers. Similarly, undergrad takes longer than law school, yet the average undergrad debt is nowhere near the average law debt. And doctoral programs take even longer, yet with the number of fellowships and TAships, I doubt the cost is comparable to law school. And for all I know pharmacists do have more debt; you just haven’t demonstrated that.</p>
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<p>Well, then maybe you could look at the data, and see that the 25th percentile income for pharmacists is more than $10K higher than the 25th percentile income for lawyers. The vet numbers aren’t as good, but if you look at the breakdown, it seems that this is a result of low-paid vets working with livestock in (presumably) low-COL rural areas. And you should probably also consider that the “lawyer” statistics almost certainly don’t include law school graduates who could not find legal employment at all. The point is that there doesn’t seem to be a pharmacy or veterinary equivalent to temporary/contract attorneys. That’s why people write articles about them.</p>
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<p>There is no sense of “entitlement” or “immunity” from financial problems evident anywhere. Your perception of any such thing is clearly driven by some resentment of the legal profession. The purpose of the article is to highlight both the massive gulf between the top and bottom in law and the dire conditions faced by those at the bottom. This makes law very much unlike comparable professions.</p>
<p>I have never disputed that FA for law school works differently than that for undergrad. But I don’t think that’s a relevant point. Whether you personally get stuck with the bill (as with law school), or perhaps your parents ultimately get stuck with the bill (as for undergrad), the point is that somebody in your family is getting stuck with the bill. </p>
<p>Like I said, I don’t think anybody here is so cold-hearted as to just want to deliberately stick our families with bills. So even if undergrad debt is technically not yours (but instead belongs to your family), I would still imagine that you would have a moral obligation to your family to pay it off. Hence, at the end of the day, law school and undergrad debt is basically the same for, either way, you end up paying, either because you’re legally obligated to do so, or you’re morally obligated to do so. </p>
<p>Now I can agree that perhaps the terms of the debt are probably different and easier for undergrad. For example, if your parents cosign, you can probably secure a lower interest rate because the bank is drawing upon a more stable repayment source. Also, I suppose it’s easier to delay or renegotiate payments to your own family than to the bank. But at the end of the day, I would have to imagine that you’re still going to pay your parents back. At least, I hope so. </p>
<p>Now, of course, if you just happen to be born in a rich family that is willing to foot your whole bill for undergrad without repayment, then that’s great. But that’s really no different than if you family were to foot your whole bill for law school. So it’s a wash. </p>
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<p>First of all, they should. You should be factoring in ALL costs into your equation, including opportunity costs.</p>
<p>But secondly, even if you don’t want to factor in opportunity costs, you still gotta eat. You still gotta put a roof over your head. Where does that money come from when you’re in pharmacy school? Answer - debt. </p>
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<p>Why would you believe otherwise? </p>
<p>Let’s take a comparable example. To attend USC Law School is estimated to cost about 40k a year (not including room/board). USC Pharmacy School (which, interestingly, I could only find for the 2005-2006 year) was 36k. Hence, 3<em>40k = 120k for law school, whereas 36k</em>4 = 144k. Hence, just on tuition alone, pharmacy school costs more. And that doesn’t even include the extra year of living costs incurred because PharmD students have to hang around for another year (and I have no reason to believe that PharmD students would incur lower yearly living costs than would law students).</p>
<p>And that’s why I didn’t talk about PhD programs. You haven’t demonstrated that pharmacists have the kinds of fellowships and TAships available to PhD students. I highly doubt that they do. But, by all means, we can go the pharmacy students here (there are some) and ask.</p>
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<p>Uh, you haven’t demonstrated that they don’t have more debt. </p>
<p>I am simply saying that there is no a priori reason to believe that law students are carrying more debt than are pharmacy students. If neither of us has any proof beyond that, then I think we should go with what the a-priori evidence shows. </p>
<p>Besides, we have to be careful about what we mean by “law school debt”. Let’s face it. Lots of law students are night students. By their very nature, they don’t carry very much debt, because they hold a fulltime job while studying and hence have a source of income that helps to reduce their debt level. In contrast, there are very few part-time PharmD programs and those are generally only available to those who hold the now-defunct BSPharm degree. I don’t believe any schools currently offer the BSPharm to new students, hence anybody who wants to be a pharmacist today basically has no choice but to attend a full-time PharmD program (and hence rack up a bunch of debt). </p>
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<p>Certainly, I agree that the lawyers who don’t do well are not doing well. That’s a simple tautology. But my point still stands - the average lawyer does better than the average vet or pharmacist. That is something that the data is quite clear about. </p>
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<p>Uh, I think this very thread has demonstrated the very sense of entitlement of which I am referring. You continually try to assert that law student problems are somehow unique, when in fact I think I have shown that others (i.e. pharmacists, vets) have comparable problems. Lawyers are not unique, and shouldn’t feel that they have the right to portray themselves as martyrs. Sure, some lawyers have problems. But lots of people have problems.</p>
<p>I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I don’t resent the legal profession. What I resent is that lawyers or law students automatically feel that they’re automatically entitled to a good job. Nobody is entitled to a good job. Sure, you have some law students coming out with a lot of debt and not getting good jobs. Yet, nobody ever said that you were guaranteed to get a good job, and you should not have presumed that you would. .</p>
<p>this is a law school forum. shouldn’t be surprising that articles regarding employment prospects for lawyers are posted and discussed here. there are a lot of hs and college students who read here to get information about the law school application process. i think it also is extremely helpful for them to be able to read information about what life is like once you get to the other end of law school. </p>
<p>i find it much more presumptuous for someone to say that prospective law students should just KNOW that life as a lawyer can be rough, than for a prospective law student to look forward to their intended career with optimism – that type of optimism isn’t wrong, or presumptuous, or reflective of a sense of entitlement. it is normal for young people, no matter what career they may be entering. </p>
<p>for someone with perhaps a more “informed” or “mature” view of life to scorn the optimism of youth, rather than recognize that optimism can be educated without being demonized, is, in my opinion really counterproductive – making it only more likely that the message won’t be heard. and i think pretty out of place on a forum for prospective law students.</p>
<p>on the forums for undergrads we often see wildly optimistic hs students who assume they’ll get the coveted spots at the top schools. posters who tell them to wake up they’re delusional, rarely get thru to them. posters who gently explain the realities of the harsh admission scene, encouraging the dreams, but counselling the importance of safeties seem to me to be much more frequently able to get thru to the students. so i guess an issue for those responding on a forum like this is always whether you really want to be helping students, or just showing that you know more than them.</p>
<p>It’s relevant because there is no need-based financial aid for law school, and because the loans are taken out by the student, not their parents. So the initial claim that law school graduates were somehow in the same position as college graduates is unreasonable. The average college student has less than 1/4th the debt of the average law student. It is almost impossible for an undergrad to end up with as much debt as the average law student has.</p>
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<p>It’s not really my job to disprove baseless conjecture. I think it’s pretty clear that graduates of four-year schools do not necessarily have more debt than graduates of three-year schools. You’re the one claiming the analogy; it’s not especially persuasive that your only evidence is that neither of us knows for a fact that it isn’t true. </p>
<p>And in any event, the debt itself isn’t the issue so much as the inability to pay it back. What is the un- and under-employment rate for pharmacists? How many pharmacy or optometry schools grade on a curve designed to fail out some percentage of the class each year? How many entering pharmacy and optometry students either fail out or fail to ever be licensed? How many of the ones who do graduate and are licensed simply cannot find work in their field? How many of them end up making $20 an hour with no job security, hope for advancement or benefits? </p>
<p>Another difference is that there aren’t $160K entry-level jobs in these fields. There is a level of risk and competition in law that doesn’t exist in many other places. </p>
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<p>How many is “lots?” Do you have even any idea how many law students are night students? It also takes them (at least) four years to graduate. You provide no evidence that part-time students, who are a small minority of all students, actually have less debt. </p>
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<p>The point is that lawyers who aren’t doing well are doing worse than pharmacists or optometrists who aren’t doing well. The average is completely irrelevant when you’re asking what happens to the people at the bottom, which is the subject of the article. And again, law school graduates who cannot find work as lawyers aren’t included.</p>
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<p>No, you haven’t, because they simply don’t. In fact, thinking that law is just like these other fields is precisely the mistake that many people are making. If they believe the legal profession is anything like pharmacy or optometry, and decide to attend a low-ranked law school, they’re in for some serious disappointment.</p>
