25 years old and deep in debt

[Count]

I'm gonna owe over 200k when I graduate from law school. 

Got a big law gig lined up for next summer (at a place with a 100% offer rate for summer associates, so it's relatively secure). Don't actually want to do big law but can't complain; figure after a few years I can get the debt down to about 100k or even lower, then bolt.

I was worried about the debt going in and tried to make a rational decision (and I think I did), but the loans don't seem like real money. I think that's one of the things that gets a lot of people in trouble.

[katmai]

Seriously waaay too many lawyers/law students on this board.

[Eddie Teach]

And not enough pornographers. You should do it for the forum.

[katmai]

really not that exciting. so pass.

[Razgovory]

Count, you should ask Ide how about being a lawyer.

[DontSayBanana]

Ya know, that shot's ruined by the kid with the flip flops.

[Ideologue]

What I want to know is not the default rate (you do have to give nearly no shit about it to default), but the IBR rates.  I expect they would tell a very dour story about the higher education bubble.

What I'd love to see is an organized mass default--choke the rivers with our debt as it were--but that's never happening.  Americans simply can't organize a collective action any more.

[Admiral Yi]

What I'd love to see is an organized mass default--choke the rivers with our debt as it were--but that's never happening.  Americans simply can't organize a collective action any more.

Then Dep of Ed responds with a organized mass wage garnishment.   

[HVC]

What I'd love to see is an organized mass default--choke the rivers with our debt as it were--but that's never happening.  Americans simply can't organize a collective action any more.

Then Dep of Ed responds with a organized mass wage garnishment.   

How dare they lend you money with full discloser and then expect you to repay the loan!

[Count]

What I want to know is not the default rate (you do have to give nearly no shit about it to default), but the IBR rates.  I expect they would tell a very dour story about the higher education bubble.

What I'd love to see is an organized mass default--choke the rivers with our debt as it were--but that's never happening.  Americans simply can't organize a collective action any more.

how about going back to having loans dischargeable in bankruptcy? the reasoning for getting rid of the discharge in the first place were apparently bullshit (there was an idea that lots of lawyers and doctors were declaring bankruptcy immediately after graduating and then living large, but apparently that was really overblown)

[Barrister]

I'm gonna owe over 200k when I graduate from law school. 

Got a big law gig lined up for next summer (at a place with a 100% offer rate for summer associates, so it's relatively secure). Don't actually want to do big law but can't complain; figure after a few years I can get the debt down to about 100k or even lower, then bolt.

That's everyone's plan.  Look how many people actually do it though.

They're called golden handcuffs for a reason you know...

[Count]

I'm gonna owe over 200k when I graduate from law school. 

Got a big law gig lined up for next summer (at a place with a 100% offer rate for summer associates, so it's relatively secure). Don't actually want to do big law but can't complain; figure after a few years I can get the debt down to about 100k or even lower, then bolt.

That's everyone's plan.  Look how many people actually do it though.

They're called golden handcuffs for a reason you know...

yeah i'm aware. talked to a bunch of public interest lawyers about it, including some who spent time in big law, and that's what they warned about more than anything. i think my incredibly pedestrian taste and my bleeding heart will save me. also my aversion to working 80 hour weeks. it's certainly a concern though

[Ideologue]

What I want to know is not the default rate (you do have to give nearly no shit about it to default), but the IBR rates.  I expect they would tell a very dour story about the higher education bubble.

What I'd love to see is an organized mass default--choke the rivers with our debt as it were--but that's never happening.  Americans simply can't organize a collective action any more.

how about going back to having loans dischargeable in bankruptcy? the reasoning for getting rid of the discharge in the first place were apparently bullshit (there was an idea that lots of lawyers and doctors were declaring bankruptcy immediately after graduating and then living large, but apparently that was really overblown)

There are a number of better systems than the one we actually use.  Restoration of BK protection would be one of them.

Other solutions, less rife with moral hazard, just make too much sense.  As a statist, I'd vastly prefer that we nationalize our colleges under a bloated and glorious new bureaucracy, ushering in the new era of direct Education Department control by lining College Street with the crucified corpses of our country's worst parasites, deans and school administrators.  But other, easier-to-implement ideas would rid us of most of the problem by reintroducing a measure of market discipline--for example, forcing schools to start picking up the tab on any SL account originating from their institution that winds up on IBR.  At present schools are permitted to almost completely avoid punishment for their institutional failures manifesting in the form of graduates on what essentially amounts to public assistance.  University faculty and staff are the welfare queens we've been looking for.

Oh, and I remember what I meant to tell Joan a long time ago in response to a question of his: NALP collects lawyer salary stats, not JD salary stats.

[Count]

Do you have any interest in cutting off the loan spigot? The fact that virtually everyone can get loans seems like a huge driver of the insane increase in costs.

[Ideologue]

Count:

It's against my political leanings, but yes.  I think a complete privatization of the market--including a return of BK protection which would entail a return to normal underwriting standards--would be superior to the situation as it stands.  Something needs to be done to get rid of the massive waste and effective, if not legal fraud, upon the taxpayer and student that presently occurs.  Privatized lending would accomplish that.  The well-off are already the ones who benefit most of the higher education system; student loans and other access initiatives have been qualified successes at best in that regard.  I don't relish setting that in stone, but the alternative we chose has been worse.

More ideal and probably easier to implement would be better oversight, and squeezing the flow of student loan funds based on (for example) B. of Labor Statistics projections or some metric of perceived market need (e.g., no loans for any Cooley campus, no loans for Charleston School of Law), as well as possibly by academic criteria (i.e., no loans for schools with median LSATs that prove their median student can, at best, write their own name and show up to a testing center on time), rather than turning it off entirely.

N.B.: I use law school examples because that's the aspect of the higher education bubble that I'm most familiar with, and also because the legal academy seems to be one of the most egregious offenders, with aspects to the industry that really should shock the conscience, but its problems really do appear to be a reflection of the much, much larger problem in the transformation of American colleges into the Soviet chandelier factories of our time.