At Least the Strib Didn’t Call It a “Golden Ticket”

“Law school is no longer a sure bet. Would-be students are noticing.” –Jenna Ross, “Slump in law school applicants,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) Progress perhaps? *Sigh* The swell of students applying to law school — despite growing debt and contracting job prospects — has slowed. ?? “Despite” growing debt and contracting job prospects? Not “Because [...]

ED Data Tell Us Why Researchers Shouldn’t Lump Law Degrees with Other Professional Degrees

If you read large scale studies on higher education that include law degrees—such as the Pew Center’s “Is College Worth It?” and Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce’s “The College Payoff”—you’ll find that researchers tend to lump law degrees in with all other first professional degrees. In doing so, they commit an ecological [...]

Direct Loans One Year On: Government-Held Nonrevolving Debt Grows 66%; GDP, 3.7%

In March 2010, President Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. One of its provisions terminated the infamous Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP), leaving the Department of Education as the sole originator of all federal student loans via the Federal Direct Loan Program, which has existed since 1993. Starting July 1, 2010, [...]

Petitions and Protests

Here’re a few things for you activists to keep an eye on: two petitions and a protest. There’s one petition going around the Internet asking the House of Representatives to pass a resolution favoring forgiving student loan debt per Michigan representative Hansen Clarke’s proposal (H. Res. 365). It’s close to getting the 90,000 signatures it’s [...]

Consumer Credit Update (2011 September)

It’s the fifth business day of the month, which means the Federal Reserve has updated its G.19 Release, its estimate of outstanding consumer credit. One problem the U.S. economy faces is that consumer credit is growing faster than the economy. While the G.19 Release doesn’t quantify how much nonrevolving debt is student debt, it is [...]

A Hypothetical Class of 2014 Law Student’s Journey into Debt

Recently, Inside the Law School Scam’s LawProf discussed the amount of law school debt a student may expect to take on and provided NALP figures of starting salaries as a comparison. LawProf used some research I provided, and I’m grateful for his linkback to the LSTB. Unfortunately, some of what I sent him was inaccurate [...]

The Economist Has Never Heard of the Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Neoliberal paper of record, The Economist, torments humanity again with a brazenly titled editorial, “Not Enough Lawyers? Lawyers keep their numbers carefully pruned, pushing up costs.” “Carefully pruned,” eh? I sure hope The Economist doesn’t imply that the ABA maintains an artificial attorney shortage through the law school accreditation system operated by the Section [...]