<p>no kidding- I know doctors who are only practitioners because they didn't get into vet school.
Also Vets don't make half of what some doctors do ( of course their malpractice ins is probably cheaper too!)</p>
<p>Garland, do you honestly think that what you just wrote is a fair and accurate reflection of what I was saying, or do you just think it was worth saying to score points in some kind of a game? I never wrote anything even remotely approaching what you claim I have been "saying". You may want to address the points I actually make instead of the straw men you feel comfortable attacking. My point isn't that the requirement of significant debt scares off the mercenary, it's that that requirement selects the mercenary. Most of the parents posting on this thread seem to view law, medicine, etc. as simply meal tickets. If that's all there was to it - professional degree = big salary, nothing more, then you'd all have valid points. If that was all there was to it I'd have no problem with requiring that upfront investment for the payoff. Let the mercenary do the math for themselves. My concern is that we're creating that premise, not that it is a necessary fact of life. Read what Ariesathena wrote up in post #83
[quote]
We have too many lawyers who are in it for the bucks and who work for money. I'm not sure how any rational person thinks that not lowering the cost of the education makes that better. Last time I checked, those with extraordinary debt are forced to follow the money. We have enough Brooks Brothers attorneys - but not enough people who use their law degrees to help the country.
[/quote]
Do you really want the criteria for who your next doctor will be to be who was willing to borrow the most money as a 25 year old? Should the judges of the 21st century be selected from a pool that only includes those who were born wealthy and those who planned to get the highest paying job they could find straight out of law school so they could pay off those loans? </p>
<p>Let me spell it out in simple terms: </p>
<p>Me: graduate from law school, 1974, debt free, an option available to me as a middle class person with minimal financial assistance from my family.
Ariesathena, graduates from law school in 2008, $150,000 in debt; no other option.</p>
<p>You all feel good about that? As a parent, I don't, even though I doubt that any of my kids will be going to law school.</p>
<p>Kluge, Education is becoming more expensive. Law school is becoming more expensive.</p>
<p>What I don't accept is the way to cut the cost of law school is to give tax deductions on interest to law students. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>I'm pretty sure that tax deductions on interest won't work to keep law school costs down. What I see happening is you get the tax deductions and the schools raise their prices. The schools make more money. The tax savings goes to the schools, not the students.</p></li>
<li><p>It is the personal responsibility of the student to pay for law school. There are plenty of scholarships and cheap loans out there to help.</p></li>
<li><p>If we are going to collect less in taxes, I'd rather that money go to special ed kids, saving the environment, alternative energy sources, health care that is affordable, pension reform, etc. Maybe when those needs are met, we can talk about subsidies for law students.</p></li>
<li><p>Why not open more law schools and make it easier to become a lawyer? Then you will see costs go down (and the income of lawyers go down).</p></li>
<li><p>For many lawyers $60,000- $100,000 debt is chump change. The lawyers that are making hundreds of dollars an hour are driving the costs of law school up. People who see the large incomes think, "I want a piece of that". They will pay the large costs to get that income. Those students that want to work in lower paying law are affected by that. So my answer is lawyers work it out among yourselves. If you want law school to be cheaper, get the money from the rich lawyers.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Whoa -tax deductions? I'm not sure where that came from. I know Xiggi was in favor of that - maybe Ariesathena, too. Personally, I think it's the least effective way to go at the problem, since it provides the maximum benefit to those who need it least. I'm not in favor of collecting less in taxes - I think the worst thing our state and federal governments have done recently is cut taxes into a deficit budget - to me that's all part of the same mentality which raises tuition at state universities - a process which is designed to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the very wealthy. (We've been talking professional schools, but regular undegraduate tuition at UC is close to $7,000 a year now, too.)</p>
<p>I think a lot of the disconnect in this thread is that people have a grossly inaccurate idea of the reality of being a lawyer. 50% of the law school graduates in California fail the bar exam, and can't practice at all. Of those who practice in this (high income) state, 50% make less than $100,000 per year. Obviously income tends to trend upward with age and experience so young lawyers tend to make less. Starting pay at a District Attorney or Public Defender's office is $50 - $60,000 per year - in a high cost of living area. Many lawyers leave the practice within 10 years of admission to the bar for various reasons - including not being able to make a living. "The Practice", "Boston Legal", L.A. Law" - fiction, folks.</p>
<p>Kluge, I didn't perceive myself as setting up strawmen, and I am not trying to score points. I am stating something I feel very deeply, that there's something very wrong with a society that has created the premise that it's unreasonable to select a profession which will make affluence difficult is an unwell society. </p>
<p>You have been arguing that high law school loans forces students to choose high end positions after law school. I argue that that's only true if they are looking for extrinsic rewards. but it seems like choosing anything else is what you have called an unusual choice. that's what perplexes me. Why should it be unusual?</p>
<p>And if have those lawyers you referenced can't pass the bar, that sounds like a deeper problem than who paid for them to go to law school.</p>
<p>In sensible countries, arts and education are much more highly subsidized by government (at least in part raised by taxes on high-income types) and admission to higher education is based on educational qualifications (compare our AP and IB tests) rather than aptitude tests, ECs, essays, sports, or other less relevant measures. Their societies benefit from thus making higher education (and the cost of attendance at arts events) affordable to a much wider range of their citizens than is the case in the US. They don't have a student debt problem and they pay their physicians, lawyers and CEOs less.</p>
<p>Obviously I shouldn't be typing late at night. Please excuse all the writing errors in my above post :(. Most are probably still intelligible, but that should read "half" not "have" the lawyers in the last sentence. Argh.</p>
<p>Garland, since I suspect that you and I have a lot more in common than you probably think right now, maybe I can express my point better with an analogy: I know a paraplegic who can climb stairs in his wheelchair (He goes up backwards.) But I still think it's a good idea that public buildings are required to have ramps so that there is less of a challenge for less adventurous people in wheelchairs to get in. They could do what the other guy does - it's just hard. And I don't think it always makes sense to make things harder than they have to be - even if it costs society some money to install all those ramps. Just because it is possible for an unusually talented, persistent, or hard-working person to achieve a goal doesn't mean that the obstacles in the way of attaining that goal are reasonable or desireable. </p>
<p>Regarding how you have misinterpreted my posts - you seem to be focused on individual "affluence" as the issue. I'm not concerned about individual affluence (remember, I'm the guy driving the 9 year old minivan, OK?) What I'm concerned about the effect on society of financial disincentives to making certain life choices. Individual people make choices for different reasons, but in the aggregate people tend to do the rational thing. Loading people down with debt as the price of being allowed to practice law - with no merit-based exceptions - will result in a different society 30 years from now than would exist otherwise. And I don't think the result will be beneficial. It is just another factor tending to ossify and stratify our society, with increased concentration of wealth and power and lessened movement between socio-economic strata. Subsidized education at all levels is a democratizing force. I suggest that we're in the process of losing that democratizing force, step by step. </p>
<p>I've never suggested that everyone be provided a free law school education on demand. Just that there be a merit-based opportunity to obtain such an education for those best qualified to succeed, in addition to our current standard, in which one major weeding-out element is ability to pay (whether through wealth or willingness to take on substantial debt.) As to the passing rates - it's a different sort of weeding out process. Anyone can take the test if they finish the classes. Anyone can undertake the process of getting a law degree by some means. It's a type of freedom of choice, although the odds of succeeding are long for many who give it a try. The passing rates for UC law students, who still enjoy lower tuition than private school students, and who are subject to a strict merit-based selection process, is close to 90%.</p>
<p>many people are advocating state U's. Im going to be attending a state school this fall (SUNY Geneseo) and according to the financial letter I just received, about $8k is going to have to be loans. Since they work entirely off of FAFSA and on paper my dad has the money, they expect him to pay $12k/year when in fact the most he can shell out is $7k! Student debt is a fact of life but state schools arent always the answer</p>
<p>We seem to have fixated on law, but other professions are in the same boat, and GSB as well. One of our pharmacy students told me today that she had to borrow every single dollar for tuition and room. She works often and supports herself with that. At the end of six years of school, she will owe a whopping $180,000! She was highly motivated to become a pharmacist, but most people in her financial situation would not take on that amount of debt. </p>
<p>I agree with Kluge that massive tuition bills for professional schools futher cement social stratification. I would like to see some relief for these students.</p>
<p>Kluge: in short, the framework of structural incentives and disincentives discourages social diversity among those applying to professional schools, thus perpetuating a relatively static socio-economic elite. This is how I read you.</p>
<p>Uh, yeah. That's what I meant. </p>
<p>I also think it's a shame that we've given our kids' generation a tougher challenge than our generation got, for no particular reason that I can see.</p>
<p>I was under impression more students are attending college these days than when I was in high school.</p>
<p>College has become what high school used to be.
Neither my husband nor I have ever attended a 4yr college, but we recognize that you often need a college degree now even for entry level jobs.
So d who graduates from a prestigous ( well in some circles) LAC this spring will be first gen!</p>
<p>Umm, great arguments Kluge, Dad and others, but do you have any evidence for this claim? With all the lawyers and would-be lawyers on this thread, you'd think one of you would want to make an argument based on facts in evidence????</p>
<p>I don't have data, and I'm not a lawyer, but people act in very paradoxical ways when it comes to risk and money. I also think many of you are missing a point.... the reason most lawyers don't go into public service isn't because they can't... because they have to pay off their loans.... they go into the private sector 'cause that's where the money is and THAT"S WHY THEY BECAME LAWYERS IN THE FIRST PLACE. One could argue that the drive to become affluent via a law degree is for sure more appealing for the middle class than the upper class, who already have family wealth. So maybe all this uber competition to get into law school is driven precisely by all these kids that you claim can no longer go to law school.</p>
<p>B-school is only two years long vs. three; kids who come from money are more likely to know an investment banker or hedge fund manager or two than a middle class kid making a career in business a lot more appealing than law; law school culminates in the bar which is hard work for anyone, let alone a rich kid who frankly, doesn't need the headache in order to achieve social recognition. So-- perhaps the high price and competition in law school is driving the elites into B-school, leaving more room for the strivers.... who regardless of the cost, regardless of the high hurdles of the bar, regardless of the dicey prospects of earning a living, still think that grabbing that brass ring is their best ticket out.</p>
<p>Am I wrong? You provide the data, I have no idea.... but it makes me uncomfortable to hear these lawyers arguing that just because something costs a lot, and since I personally wouldn't want to take out loans to get it, ergo, middle income people must feel the way I do. Aries is self-funding law school-- and she's an engineer, so surely she's done the math and has decided that it's "worth it" on some level.</p>
<p>I also don't see any evidence that these public sector/non-profit legal jobs go begging. Surely they'd be having a hard time hiring lawyers if your argument... that most law students can't consider these jobs since they're crushed by their loan payments.... holds true.</p>
<p>I also cringe when I read the posts about how grad student need nice apartments, a car, cellphones, etc. because school is so stressful that they need to unwind. It is really a sign of an affluent society gone amuck. Didn't we all grow up in an era when everyone understood that being a student meant eating ramen noodles, having 6 roommates, and taking the bus? And the waitress down the street from me at the waffle house should be subsidizing law students by paying higher taxes?</p>
<p>Blossom, I'm sorry, but you are projecting your argument on to me, just as Garland did. I know that you think you are responding to what I'm saying, but you're not. I agree with you that people are frequently paradoxical, and that most lawyers go into law for the money (much as with every other job.) My point doesn't rest on a disagreement with those facts. </p>
<p>My three points are: (1) Placing a substantial financial barrier in the way of entering a profession will tend to keep at least some (not all) middle and lower income students out, thereby reducing socio-economic mobility by some degree, which I think is a bad thing; (2) eliminating low cost, merit based education for potential lawyers will tend to ensure that an even higher percentage of lawyers are "just in it for the money", either by design or by necessity; and (3) I think we have failed our children's generation by eliminating the opportunity to earn the right to practice simply by demonstrating aptitude for it, instead of by willingness to pay a lot of money for that right. I had that opportunity. Ariesathena doesn't. I take no joy from that fact.</p>
<p>Let me turn this around and put the question before you squarely: Understanding that private law school tuition runs about $100,000 for three years, and is available to all who are willing to pay for it, if taxpayer supported education included providing the opportunity for some students to attend law school for only a nominal fee, based solely on academic merit, would you suggest initiating a $70,000 charge on those students, so that no student could qualify without paying at least that much of an "entry fee"? If so, what would be your reason for doing so? Because that's basically what happened over the course of the past 20 years. Why?</p>
<p>Also: I'm not suggesting that grad students "need nice apartments, a car..." (I'm not sure who posted that, or where.) I also don't think that your waitress should be paying higher taxes to support subsidized college education - she isn't the one whose tax rates have declined by 20% since 1985 (which is when public school tuition hikes started to take off. No, not a coincidence.) That privilege belongs exclusively to the top 1% of Americans - with an average annual taxable income of $880,000. Your waitress is probably paying about the same total taxes now as she was in the 80's. And at UC, anyway, the tuition for an MBA is also subject to a "professional school" surcharge which is even higher than for law or medicine.</p>
<p>Kluge, I'm sorry but I just don't buy your arguments about law school students.</p>
<p>In 20 years, many lawyers in the private sector are going to be making over $1,000 an hour. Even the public sector lawyers are going to be making enough money to cover the loans and I bet their health care and pensions are going to be better than most in the private sector.</p>
<p>You can't just look at the costs. Yes, the costs are higher than they used to be when we were young. The potential benefits for future lawyers are very large and many believe the costs today are worth it. These many include those that have to take out loans.</p>
<p>Some people that are going to law school and paying with loans are not going to see future benefits. That's the way it goes. You roll the dice and see what happens.</p>
<p>I want to offer a different perspective than the main one presented by parents in this thread. I know you guys have tons of life experience and knowledge, but I feel like showing you the young, naive, and ambitious perspective.</p>
<p>I wanted to discuss this with other students, so I posted this in the College Admissions portion of the site and no one has really replied. I think they're all too afried to discuss this.</p>
<p>The reason why so many kids are willing to take on 60-150k in debt for elite undergrad is because they believe that it's going to open a lot of doors for them. Top firms like i-banks recruit heavily at the ivys and other top 25 univs. Also, for graduate school, the best grad schools are the ivys and they take a lot of their own kids. Therefore, people take on a lot of debt in the hopes that they will gain something.</p>
<p>I feel huge pressure right now. UMiami offered me their 3/4 Tution scholarship which would mean each year would cost about $20k. UConn gave me some money that would bring my cost to $17k (I'm in state). My other schools are mainly those 42-45k privates and my EFC is 30k... I'd be taking on like 10-20k a year in debt and making my family have a significant drop in lifestyle.</p>
<p>It's hard to balance the desire to succeed with the desire to be financially smart. I want to work in a financial field, so this topic holds a lot of importance for me.</p>
<p>(Now you know how us kids feel)</p>
<p>
[quote]
The economy will suffer from having a large segment stuck with $90 a month discretionary spending money. Maybe, just maybe, we'll realize that not even Ivies are worth $40,000 a year.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Or the importance of free higher education. I think the gov't needs to pay everyone's tuition, at least through their bachelor's degrees. Then none of this would happen.</p>
<p>then everyone would get their degrees...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think we have failed our children's generation by eliminating the opportunity to earn the right to practice simply by demonstrating aptitude for it, instead of by willingness to pay a lot of money for that right. I had that opportunity. Ariesathena doesn't. I take no joy from that fact.
[/quote]
Thank you, Kluge.</p>
<p>I cannot cite sources but will find them - but I have heard that a substatial percentage of law students change their focus. They do the math, realize what their loan payments will be, and realize that they can't make ends meet unless they work in the private sector. One of my friends turned down a job at the Attorney General's office because it pays $35,000/year, and, after taxes and loan payments, she'll have about $6,000/year to live on. Even though her husband makes a nice salary, it won't really work - everything will be going towards her loans.</p>
<p>I really HATE the argument that our lives would radically improve if we ate Raman noodles. I'm sorry, but you're missing a fundamental point. If I save two thousand dollars per year by living with more roommates (I already have one), ditch my cell in favour of a land line and run up long distance bills (not really a $$ saver when my family is scattered throughout the country - it's basically a few dollars per month either way), eat pasta more than I do now, drive an old car (wait, already do that), I'm still in insane debt.</p>
<p>Do the math. If tuition, books, and fees - non-negotiable, fixed costs - are over $30,000/year, how do you think saving an extra few thousand is going to help? Sure, every little bit helps, but an extra 3% of debt isn't going to suddenly make or break my career. </p>
<p>My rent is $400/month - because I chose a cheap area of the country for law school. I have a roommate, so my bills are split. We keep the heat at about 64 or so in the winter. I drive an old car, switched residency to save on insurance, rarely eat out, eat pasta a lot (well, being vegetarian is part of that!), tutor for extra cash, and do everything that students are supposed to do. </p>
<p>If I lived an absolutely bare-bones lifestyle, I would probably save, at most, $200/month. That's $2,400/year and about $7,000 over the course of law school. I would still have six figures of debt. </p>
<p>Given that, why don't you suggest something realistic? Fixed costs for entering professions are quite high. Gone are the days when replacing chicken with Raman would have any recognizable effect on student debt. </p>
<p>The reason that I don't live a completely bare-bones lifestyle is that it doesn't make sense to sacrifice my grades. I'm paying so very much already for school that it's not worth a thousand bucks to bring down my GPA - made the decision to sacrifice everything for my grades and academic success.</p>
<p>Parents on this board will talk about not wanting their kids to wait tables in college, because they aren't paying $40,000 a year to have their kids put their education on the sideline for a few hundred in spending money. It's the same concept. Why spend about a hundred thousand in tuition but not get everything out of it? I highlight and make notes all over my books - they are a complete wreck by the time I'm done with the semester - but I get As when I do that. Should I keep my books pristine so they can be sold back? Should I take the B+ and save $20 for a course that costs ten grand? Last year, I had the roommate situation from hell - ended up spending a lot of time not there or completely stressed - and it affected my grades. When I'm paying thirty grand in tuition, should I try to save fifty bucks a month by living with too many people and watch my GPA slide down a few tenths of a point?</p>
<p>FYI: subsidized federal loans cover about 1/5 of my COA.</p>
<p>I have no idea how we're going to continue being a dominant country when we are already starting to undo the huge gains in expansion of education. What this really comes down to is a de facto reversal of the massive de-gentrification of both college and professional schools. The professional schools are the canary in the mineshaft; you'll start to see the same issues with undergrad, as scholarship money and federal loans cover an ever-decreasing proportion of the costs of school and state schools get out of reach of the non-wealthy. College costs should sting, not maim. </p>
<p>Personally, my ultimate solution is to have the ABA do what it does best: use accreditation as a weapon for social change. It forced integration of law schools in the '70s by that method; it's trying to force affirmative action on law schools by pulling accreditation of schools that don't follow the UMich standard for admission; why not pull accreditation of schools whose costs are completely insane?</p>