Bucket, Meet Drop, or Why We Shouldn’t Tolerate Electoral Sunk Costs

I won’t say people had high hopes for President Obama’s student loan proposal, but its underwhelm does impress. By my understanding it does the two things: (1)  Accelerates the IBR reforms to allow 2012 university grads to use the repayment plan. This means their interest rates will be 10 percent of their discretionary incomes instead [...]

NYT Publishes More Shock Doctrine from Clifford Winston

Clifford Winston, “Are Law Schools and Bar Exams Necessary?” New York Times FOR decades the legal industry has operated as a monopoly, which has been made possible by its self-imposed rules and state licensing restrictions — namely, the requirements that lawyers must graduate from an American Bar Association-accredited law school and pass a state bar examination. [...]

Quick Links on Student Loan Bankruptcy Reform

There are two. (1) Reuters, “Obama to announce help on housing, student loans,” in The Raw Story Don’t bother clicking on the link. All it says is, “In Denver on Wednesday, he will announce a student loan initiative.” If I know my B. H. Obama, I predict the proposal will be underwhelming. (2) Karina Frayter, [...]

THE LAW SCHOOL DEBT BUBBLE: $53 Billion in New Law School Debt by 2020

So we know that in 2010, a majority of 44,245 law graduates took on $3.6 billion in student debt based on comparing Official Guide and U.S. News data. Without back issues of U.S. News, is it possible to figure out how much debt previous classes took on, and—*gasp*—project it into the future? Yup. The ABA [...]

Update on News in the Law School World

There were a bunch of articles I couldn’t get around to this past week, and they’re worth consolidating into one post. (1)  Law School Lawsuits “New York Law School fights class-action suit over job rates,” Thompson Reuters. NYLS’s attorney states: “The allegations are not only baseless, but also belied by the plaintiffs’ own complaint, which [...]

Federal Student Loan Debt Will More Than Double by 2021; GDP, Not So Much

A few weeks ago I painstakingly projected where the federal government’s Direct Loan Program was going, and for the last several months I’ve been tracking growth in government holdings of nonrevolving debt as a proxy for the government’s Direct Loans balance to prove that. Here’s what I projected: Then a reader directed me to the [...]

Richard Vedder Thinks Student Loan Debtors Are Lucky Duckies

Are you an overpaid university administrator? A professor who works a couple dozen hours a week while receiving a six-figure salary for publishing unread journal articles? Feeling whispers of guilt as your students graduate into crippling debt and destitution? Fear no more, for Richard Vedder is here to put your conscience to rest. Turns out [...]

2010 Law School Grad Debt at $3.6 Billion

A reader recommended I calculate total law school debt for 2010 grads. How? By taking the number of grads from each law school in the Official Guide and then multiplying them against the average debt levels and the percentage of students taking on debt in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings. Why this isn’t in [...]

Consumer Credit Update (2011 October)

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 nonrevolving consumer credit is growing faster than the economy. While the G.19 Release doesn’t quantify how much nonrevolving debt is student debt, it [...]

The Law School Problem Is Vertical, Not Horizontal as Most Law Professors Believe

I take [the LawScam critique] to be that legal education is hoodwinking prospective law students into law school and conspiring to produce an oversupply of lawyers that face diminished job prospects and crippling debt loads. –Usha Rodrigues (Associate Professor of Law, University of Georgia), “ScamLaw: The Master’s Forum,” The Conglomerate So, if I’m right, then [...]