Wednesday, March 31, 2010

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.

15 comments:

  1. “These parasites and speculators have replaced our once world-class industrial society with a “service” economy which is designed with but one purpose in mind: to destroy the middle class by job destruction, by excessive taxation and debt, and by creation of a closely-held system of monopoly capitalism wherein not only is the federal government all-powerful, but it is in actual partnership with the multi-nationals and the international financiers. This post-industrial transition to a service-sector economy is in fact Fascism”

    -Col. Donn de Grand Pre, Barbarians Inside the Gates, The Black Book of Bolshevism, Book I: The Serpent's Sting 276 (2000).

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  2. "[T]hey take out another loan from Aunt Sallie."

    I believe you should now say Uncle Obama. He is now the giver and taker of loans.

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  3. While it's true that there are more important things in life than money, 200k of debt on a non-profit salary will make impossible for you to fully enjoy those things. It's hard to he happy when you can't afford rent, food and life's other necessities. This kid makes it seem like 200k of debt means forgoing extravagances like fancy vacations or a nice car when it really means making it nearly impossible to support yourself and ensuring will you never have enough money to buy a home, send your kids to college or retire.

    Even if you work at a public interest job that you love, not being able to make ends meet because you are heavily indebted makes life exponentially difficult. If you want to save the world, go work at a non-profit, volunteer or do peacecorps. Don't give loan companies your youth and your money.

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  4. We passed ridiculous a long time ago and it looks like there's more crazy ahead!

    In a way it's kind of admirable to see people so blindly committed to a lie that they can be "polled" and say they don't mind having 6 figure debt. It's like someone on the Titanic, after hitting the iceberg, proudly declaring, "Even God can't sink this ship! Let's go lock ourselves in our bedrooms for the night near the bottom of the ship until this hullabaloo passes! Quick dear, bring the children."

    For a lot of people it's easier, or even necessary, to believe a lie than face the hard truth of what their lives will be. I'd love to see the school give this same poll to alumni a few years out and have the balls to slap those results on the brochure cover.

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  5. Maybe CU puts happy pills in the water?

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  6. I now understand why Commissar Obama wants people to "re-tool" and go back to school. First, by enrolling in school, the hapless lemmings are not counted in unemployment statistics, which is great for the Commissar's PR puppets. Secondly, it keeps our house of cards economy going by circulating student loan money through the greedy graduate/law school cartels that are perpetrating a fraud on students enrolling in their third and fourth tier toilets. The reality is that there is one job for every 4-5 JDs pumped out every year. The economy is not going to recover in the next 5-7 years so riding out the recession in law school is a foolhardy strategy. Pizza makers earn more than most law graduates nowadays. Oh, and the ABA has approved the creation of 4 new law schools in NY State. Just wonderful.

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  7. Disgust with the student loan scam brings together the communists and the teapartiers.

    Pretty impressive really.

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  8. *Rant about "research centers" boondoggle that devours tuition money and feeds ridiculous faculty egos while doing nothing to improve student opportunities deleted.*

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  9. I don't think the overall size of loan debts matter anymore when IBR caps payments at 10% of your income. That's a huge safety net.

    Nobody will be starving...
    that is, unless your income is zero. But aside from that, you're fine. Nobody will be starving due to forking over their income to loan payments.

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  10. "In related news: 9 out of 10 men are thrilled to get kicked square in the nuts!"

    Hello TTT administrator (at 12:31).

    Remember when CU said only 35% of its Class of 2009 had a job at graduation? Then, a week later the school "corrected" this figure to show that 65 percent were employed at graduation. The 90 percent figure is pure fabrication - jobs such as temporary research assistants, volunteer "attorneys" and taxi drivers are also considered employment.

    http://abovethelaw.com/2009/10/a-rocky-mountain-high-jobless-rate/

    Student loan calculators tell you that your total student debt load should be LESS THAN your expected starting salary:

    http://www.finaid.org/calculators/scripts/loanpayments.cgi

    These kids are clearly not living in reality. It is true that "there is more to life than money." However, if you cannot pay rent or buy food, your life will be a constant struggle. And your loans are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

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  11. As a relatively recent graduate who went straight through college and law school, I can explain why the huge debt doesn't bother students at CU (or anywhere else) - they don't think it's their money.

    I hadn't worked more than 10 hours a week when I started college, and the so had no idea how much money was actually worth. To that younger me (and most of the kids still in school) the money being spent on law school and college doesn't phase them because it's just a number, not something coming out of their sweat, sleepless nights, or bank accounts. And because of the way most financial aid offices counsel students, money earned during school tends to go to fun expenditures like new cars and vacations, rather than discovering how difficult it is to pay down interest.

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  12. Thanks for the additional info, Nando. I didn't see the ATL article before. Anon @ 12:31, private loans do not qualify for IBR. You pay them regardless of employment status or you keep deferring them while interest accrues on the loan. There is no way out of that situation.

    Ford, I absolutely agree with you that young people are the most gullible because they have so little experience with money and expenses. The universities know that so they continue to increase tuition with little protest from incoming students or the outgoing students who no longer care what happens at the school. I knew people in law school who blew their entire BigLaw summer savings on big screen tvs, vacations, and other junk that is probably useless today. Some of those people were laid off and even after a few years in BigLaw they have nothing. Young people always believe that they will beat the odds, that they'll end up with a good job, and will keep that job until they find a better paying job. They don't plan for emergencies or even reality.

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  13. You know, I am pretty sure that public interest jobs pay as much or more than MOST jobs that people get at firms. I still don't understand why people act like those who have public interest jobs make jack shit when in reality a lot of them have better deals than the majority of kids getting jobs in shit law.

    From the statistics, we know that at most about 10-15% of law students get big firm jobs. The rest pretty much make 30-60K, with 60K being at the high end and again only applies to maybe 10% of all law students. Somewhere around 75% of law students end up taking jobs that pay 30-50K. All this public interest talk is just smoke screens. The reality is that FAR more people in shit law are really getting shitted on.

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  14. I think Ford basically has it right. When you sign those student loan documents, it doesn't feel like real money.

    Also, it's natural to assume that an accredited not-for-profit law school is not crooked. And that the government would never allow a scam of such monunemtal proportions to operate so openly.

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  15. As one of the girls interviewed in the video, I can assure you all that I am living in reality. I know just how difficult it is going to be to pay back. And no one paid me, pre-selected me, ect, to be happy. I know it is real money. Please, I got into law school. I'm not an idiot. The tuition problem stems from the fact that voters in Colorado keep refusing to fund higher education. The University of Colorado, a "public" university, gets less than 10% of it's funding from the state. If you are all so concerned about the "gullible" young people going into debt, support higher education.

    I didn't go to law school to wait out the recession. I didn't go to law school thinking I would make a ton of money and pay those loans off in the blink of an eye. No one tricked me into it. I love what I am doing. I love what I am going to do in the future. There is something to be said for that.

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