Article on CU Law Tuition Increase States 9 Out of 10 Grads Find Jobs, Are Fine With Owing $200k

Did the University of Colorado pay the person who wrote this article? Despite that tuition at UC Law will go up by 15 percent, the law students interviewed seem fine and dandy with paying the increase and owing $200k in student loans:

When he finishes law school at the University of Colorado, Sean Dormer expects he'll be saddled with $200,000 of student-loan debt.

The first-year law student is leaning toward a modest-paying, public-interest field and says "there are more important things in life than money." His in-state tuition tab next year will be $24,264, up 10.5 percent from this year's rate.

Maybe these incoming student haven't been hit by reality yet or maybe they just come from rich families. But where is the outrage from students with the foresight to understand that they can't afford the increase in tuition without a job or if they plan to work in public interest? We need someone like Harlan Ellison to set these kids straight, aka tell them to drop out of law school before they take out another loan from Aunt Sallie.

Law students said they're resigned to taking out more loans, and some plan to graduate with debt in the six figures, contending with their aspirations to pursue careers in service-oriented fields.

Wow. Does CU have a top notch loan forgiveness program because that would be the only reasonable explanation why these students are okay with owing six figures and graduating during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Did CU screen students for the interview making sure that anyone against the tuition increase was kept in the TTT basement when the cameras arrived? Here is an outrageous statistic in the article provided by the law school, naturally.

Nearly nine out of 10 law graduates are employed within nine months, according to the law school. Of those students, 14 percent worked for government agencies with pay ranging from $43,000 to $102,000. Seven percent worked in public interest and nonprofit fields, with salaries ranging from $35,000 to $50,000. The highest-paid graduates worked in large firms, starting at up to $160,000 a year.

Can law schools stop using employment statistics from 1998? Does anyone really believe that 90 percent of UC Law grads from the last two years found law related full-time jobs that paid more than $50k? Even the false statistics provided by the school seem fishy. Only 21 percent of students are accounted for who found jobs in government and public interest. They don't give us the percentage of grads who allegedly got $160k jobs in BigLaw. I'm guessing that is because grads who find jobs in BigLaw are an anomaly at UC Law. We can only guess what happens to the majority of the students who don't find BigLaw or government jobs.

Second-year law student Elise Aiken said she expects to graduate with $100,000 in debt, which wouldn't be such a daunting figure if she had aspirations to work for a big law firm. Instead, she said she wants to take on a career in environmental law, which she doesn't expect to pay a colossal salary.

If she finds a job at all. Working off a $100k loan wouldn't be so bad if we still lived in the 90s. At least most of the students could be assured that they'd get a job that would keep them from moving back home with the parents and allow them to slowly pay off their loans for the next 20 years. Graduates today aren't as lucky. When will students get it through their heads that the jobs aren't coming back and the economy will never recover to 1990 levels in our lifetime. Jobs have been permanently outsourced. There are no jobs.