Harvard to Homeless and Other Anecdotal Evidence Not to Go to Law School

First off, just in case you didn't know where you and the millions of unemployed graduates fall on the hierarchy of all things important:

On Wednesday, lawmakers passed a bipartisan resolution to honor dogs.

Specifically, service dogs. H. Res. 1614, which passed by a voice vote Wednesday afternoon, recognizes "the extraordinary efforts and dedication of these service dogs."

Don't get me wrong. We love dogs here at BIDER. But with one in seven Americans living in poverty and the unemployment rate at unprecedented numbers, you'd think there'd be more pressing issues on their agenda...such as the private loan bankruptcy bill. Well, that barely made it out of subcommittee and will likely never get passed:

The Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act of 2010 (H.R. 5043), which has been offered in several preceding congressional sessions, would restore provisions previously included in the bankruptcy code. In 2005, Congress voted to amend federal bankruptcy law to make private student loans unforgiveable debt in bankruptcy unless a borrower is able to demonstrate that loan repayment would be an "undue hardship."

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the bill faces long odds for a final passage. Many Republicans oppose the measure, warning that it would drive up interest rates and further shrink the market for private loans. Additionally, the congressional legislative session has only four weeks before the House's target date to adjourn.

Just say no to private loans. The Damned Generation will not find any student loan relief from the government beyond IBR and even that has its problems.

In other news, all of us has a story about someone they know or have come across who is facing a lifetime of soul-crushing student loan debt and unemployment. Several of us scambloggers who went to top schools know these people all too well. Some of our readers have shared their stories about making it into a top 14 law school only to see their world fall apart before their very eyes.

I have plenty of stories about classmates who graduated cum laude from T14 School of Law only to find themselves unemployed with $100k debt two years after graduation. Maybe I will share more of these stories with our readers sometime. That being said, I didn't attend Harvard Law where everyone assumes will guarantee their graduates a lifetime of wealth and success. Well, think again.

I won't give away all the details in order to protect the identities of everyone involved, but I know of someone who graduated from Harvard Law School and currently works at a motel. Not even a hotel, a motel in a seedy area where no one who graduates from Harvard Law School dreams of ever spending an hour of their life let alone the rest of their life. This HLS grad is forced to work there in order to have a place to live and to pay off the remainder of their student loans. I wish I could share more, but I won't embarass anyone with specific details. Have any of you come across a T14 or even a T3 graduate down in the dumps? Please share in the comments.

Has Lifetime considered a sequel to Homeless to Harvard? How about Harvard to Homeless: The Postgraduate Years. Just a suggestion.

The Old and Uneducated Finding More Jobs Than the Young and Educated. What Does It Mean?

Yesterday, Angel laid out the cold hard facts about the depression and the unemployment statistics for young people. In case you missed it, here is the chart again before I present more depressing employment figures.Over 50 percent of youth are unemployed, underemployed, or working part time. That doesn't include some of us over educated people working in full-time jobs that only pay $10 an hour. This is a catastrophe. We are the damned generation: no jobs, no savings, no future, an unprecedented student loan debt crisis, and probably no social security and medicare by the time we reach our parents' age.

I have more bad news that probably won't surprise most BIDER readers but will at least shut up the shills who come here and try to tell us that college educated youth are doing a-okay at only 4 percent unemployment. I came across job data at the Center for Economic and Policy Research that shows African Americans and the college educated hit especially hard by job losses. Again, not surprising but here is the proof (emphasis mine):

African Americans were also hit especially hard. The EPOP for African Americans is back at its low point for the downturn and the EPOP for African American women hit a new low at 54.4 percent, 0.1 percentage points lower than the December ratio.

By education level, the less educated appear to be the big gainers, with a 1.8 percentage-point increase in the EPOP for those without a high school degree. Those with some college had a 0.8 percentage-point decline in their EPOP and those with college degrees had a 1.1 percentage-point drop to 72.7 percent, the lowest level of the downturn.

By age group, the big gainers continued to be the over-55 cohort, which added 54,000 jobs in July, bringing the 3-month gain to 182,000. Older women accounted for 167,000 of this rise in employment. By contrast, employment for women between the ages of 35-44 fell by 253,000 (1.8%) and for women between 45-54 by 186,000 (1.2%) since May.
There were substantial declines in all the measures of duration of unemployment. This likely reflects many long-term unemployed dropping out of the workforce after losing benefits. The percent of multiple jobholders dropped by 0.3 percentage points to the lowest on record. This presumably reflects difficulty in getting jobs.

Let me first say it amazes me that Washington does not seem to care enough to make drastic changes to stop the bleeding given that the current administration got into office riding on a huge wave of support from the young and minorities. The 22-year-old who voted in 2008 won't be the same voter in 2012 as a 26-year-old welfare recipient still unemployed four years after graduating from college with $100k loans. We are going to see that affect on the electorate in 2010 and 2012.

This doesn't mean life is good for the old and the uneducated, far from it, but it does point to a lack of real jobs with good wages and benefits being created. What kind of jobs do you think older women and high school drop outs are getting in this economy? Likely retail and restaurant work and a few manufacturing jobs that the majority of our college educated readership are considered overqualified for.

No one other than the political elite and the CEOs are coming out winners in this depression, but at least the uneducated have a better chance at the few service sector and manufacturing jobs. When there are no jobs, you have educated people willing to take practically anything for extra money to stay afloat even if it means driving a taxi or working at the shopping mall or grocery store.

Unfortunately for the damned generation, being educated is a curse because not only do you have student loans, you will be passed over for the less educated candidate for most of the new jobs created. Nearly every job I hear about on the local news is in the manufacturing or service industry. What are the chances that a 20-something female with a college degree and JD such as myself will get one of these $10-20/hour jobs over the recently laid off man with 20 years of experience on the factory line? Slim to none. That means the person with the $15 hourly job is still doing better, however small, than the unemployed JD or PhD making nothing to pay the rent and buy groceries.

In the end it is all about just hustling to survive and the 18 to 29 educated crowd clearly isn't doing well in that area. For example, I am single and have a current net worth of zero while the neighbor who bypassed college to get a masseuse certificate just bought a new house with her husband and has no student debt. Remind me again why I worked my ass off to get into the best schools?

More Tidbits from the book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money And Failing Our Kids - And What We Can Do About It

A BIDER reader sent us an interesting statistic posted by author Sheril Kirshenbaum on twitter via the upcoming book "Higher Education?" which will be released tomorrow:

From 2005-07: 101,000 PhDs awarded & only 16,000 professorships created (via book Higher Education?) Recession undoubtedly increased spread 12:48 PM Jul 31st via web

So where are the 85,000 PhDs without an assistant professorship? They are likely writing blogs about their lives on public assistance, working as adjuncts, serving you fries at your local fast food joint, or sending out resumes as overqualified candidates for entry-level positions meant for GED and college graduates. I'm glad that this book seems to at least briefly touch upon the victims of the graduate school scam along with the college tuition scam. Maybe someone will someday write a serious book about the law school scam. I'm not holding my breath.

Several days ago, I briefly mentioned the book Higher Education? in a post about the college scam. With more information being revealed each day, I honestly cannot wait to get my hands on this book. I looked up the statistic and came across an interview with one of the Higher Education? authors, Claudia Dreifus, at More Magazine. This is a fascinating interview worth reading in its entirety, but I couldn't resist pasting some of the highlights below.

Why do you think a Harvard education may not be worth it?
First, it’s overpriced. Harvard has just raised its fee to over $50,000 a year, and that will trigger a cycle of increases throughout the system because Harvard sets the trend. Harvard says it’s raising the number of scholarships, and that’s well and good, but the overall effect of the tuition hikes on the rest of the system is thoroughly immoral—most schools are not nearly as well endowed and can’t award as much financial aid. I believe that the elite universities we call the Golden Dozen—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Stanford, Duke, Amherst, Williams—are, for the most part, overpriced prestige items.

But they have great faculty.
Over 70 percent of college teachers—even at top schools like Yale, Harvard and Stanford—are graduate students or adjuncts or gypsy visiting professors. That’s up from 43 percent in 1975. There are 181,000 teaching assistants at work in 280 research universities around the country. And it’s not just the elite colleges. Florida Keys Community College, for instance, has 24 full-time faculty and about 90 adjuncts per term. Using a contingent workforce costs the schools much less money. At Yale, for example, teaching assistants earn roughly $20,000 a year.

So the students are not taught by the stars?
Rarely. And this bothers me, because you’re cheating the young people.

Where are the adjuncts coming from?
Universities are overproducing PhDs way beyond levels anyone can use in this country. From 2005 to 2007, they awarded 101,000 doctoral degrees—but there were only 16,000 new assistant professorships created.

You criticize what you call “vocational training” at many colleges: Resort management. Equine science and management. Apparel and accessories marketing. Why does this bother you? Doesn’t it help kids get jobs?
I think 18-year-olds are too young to know what they’re going to do with their lives. We’re a rich enough society that we can give people four years to find themselves—to expose them for one brief moment to ideas and thinking, to take a hiatus from the world of commerce. We can afford an educated populace.

Even in these tough economic times?
Yes. It’s not a luxury to be educated.

What should colleges be concentrating on?
They should be exposing young people to the great ideas of the past and present, and they should be giving them a chance to stretch their minds. A return to the liberal arts: history, philosophy, English, physics. Science as a whole needs to be valued more on the undergraduate level. Too often science classes are taught by people who speak English too poorly to communicate clearly—all to save money.

What’s the solution?
De-emphasize professors’ need to publish and promote those who are good teachers. Abolish tenure. Pay adjuncts something like parity per course. Force professors, no matter what their ranking, to teach undergrads. Cap presidential salaries. And end sabbaticals: They’re a total waste of money—a raid on parents’ and students’ resources. If a professor wants to advance her career by writing a book, she should do it on her own time.

What can parents do?
The first value should be not starting your youngster off with five-figure debt. Consider alternatives to the most expensive schools. It’s not so important to be able to say, “My child is at Princeton.” What’s more important is to say, “My child has a good future,” which partly means a future without crippling debt.

Can any college deliver “a good future”?
A large number of CEOs of major corporations didn’t come from the Ivies but from second-tier schools. There are good things to be found anywhere; the system is big enough so there is something for anyone. The trick is to find the right match.

Why Your Career Services Sucks

bl1y explains why your career services office probably hasn't found you a job and never will, using the recent news of Emory Law School's career services' FAIL as an example:

Emory has seven people working as career services advisors, with one of them an assistant dean, and another a senior director. If we assume an average salary for the non-managers of $50,000, $65,000 for the senior director, and $80,000 for the assistant dean, we get a total of $395,000. There is also one administrative assistant, and let’s assume she works for $35,000, taking us up to $430,000, and I think I’m being pretty conservative here.

That’s just the salaries. You also have any sort of retirement plan the school has and health insurance. The office also takes up space and requires furniture, office equipment, software and office supplies (I bet they use a ton of paper; my own career services office sent me a 189 page book that was little more than a list of websites, which of course is least useful on paper, where I can’t just click on a link). And then there’s the added costs they bring to other departments, such as human resources, pay roll, IT, and maintenance.

The true cost for this 7 man operation is likely about one million dollars. Emory has about 700 students, so we’re talking roughly $1400 per student per year, or $4200 total per student. And what do they get for this fee? Advice such as “network” or “go on informational interviews.” It’s basically an admission that they can’t help you. The most they can do is suggest someone else who might be able to help you.

....

They’ll talk about how law degrees open all sorts of doors because they’ve heard a handful of anecdotal evidence. But, when they suggest working as a contracts specialist, do you think they’ve done the job before? Do you think they have any idea what the day to day work is like? Nope. All they can do is name the job title and assure you that someone with a JD has done it before.

I recently talked to my own career services office, and told them one of the things I was interested in is journalism, but it’s an extremely hard field to get in to if you don’t have prior journalism experience. She assured me I was qualified and there were lots of entry level positions in journalism. I guess she hasn’t heard that print media has taken a beating lately. Also, while there are entry level positions, they still require experience and a stack of clips (writing samples). Journalism majors get all this through summer internships and working on the school paper. A lawyer with an English degree could be qualified, but most places won’t look at you unless you have the specific credentials they’re looking for. And why should they? This is a buyer’s market? Why settle for something that’s not quite what you want when there are hundreds of highly qualified perfect matches?

Enough of that tangent though, my point is that the people working in career services know extremely little about the industries they’re placing people in and what it takes to get a job there. They don’t take your resume and peruse want ads looking for possible fits. They simply don’t know what a job search entails. They’ll tell you to network with alumni, but are extremely unhelpful at actually finding alumni for you to talk to.

Career services is just another example of your tuition dollars going to waste. The most career services do at the majority of law schools or graduate schools is to plan OCI or a similar form of job fair. One BIDER reader emailed me earlier in the year that her school's job fair was simply another publicity stunt to post on the school's website despite them knowing that most of the employers who came weren't interested in hiring entry-level candidates right out of school. A rough estimate of fewer than 10% of her class received any response from the employers who showed up at the career fair, and a lot of the responses came in the form of summer internship offers, not full-time job offers (the job fair was mainly for graduating students).

Once the yearly dog and pony show ends, career services pats themselves on the back and most of us are on our own when it comes to the real job search. As bl1y points out, career services does very little in helping students truly network by acting as an intermediary between the student and working alumni, introducing students with its connections, etc. Finding a job in today's economy takes much more effort on the part of both the students and career services. Unfortunately, I don't think most career services are up to the challenge or even want to go the extra mile for their students.

Tell us your experience with career services in the comments section. If anyone from Emory or another law school has followup news on career services they'd like us to share in a future post, please email me or Angel, and we will post what you have to say.

The Geography of a Recession

Doesn't the purple (10% or over unemployment) look like a disease consuming the entire nation? It's frightening to actually look at how much unemployment has grown across the country in the last two years.

In other news, I sprained my ankle while jogging. I don't know what I would've done if my injury had required surgery. Luckily it's not that serious. I went to the free clinic and the doctor said I should heal in a few weeks. That's what I get for trying to be physically active without any health insurance.

Are Higher Education Scam Blogs Racist and Sexist?

Lambert at Corrente linked to BIDER several weeks ago (thank you, Lambert and BDBlue!) along with a Yahoo/BusinessWeek article questioning whether college is still worth the student debt investment. The first two comments pretty much reiterated everything that Angel and I have been posting this year. Higher education, once a source of opportunity for some to move into the middle class, has now become an elitist and corrupt business that is perfectly fine with financially raping students into a lifetime of servitude to Sallie Mae, Access Group, and Direct Loans.

The third comment, however, came from a professor named “Historiann” who believes that higher education is worth the (insanely high) tuition cost because it enriches their inner lives. Teehee:

The article shows that college grads still on average make $400,000 more over 30 years than high school grads. Would you like an extra $13,000/year this year? I sure would. That's still real money to most people.

In any case: is a college education really only about the acquisition of money? (Pretend we're not living in the United States of Amnesia for a few minutes.) All things considered, universities have made the U.S. a better place, on balance. Not all students who enter leave it a better place, and there surely is a lot of wastage that the system encourages. But we shouldn't see the value of education as purely vocational.

I like to think that teaching at a university and introducing them to interesting, new ideas and writers helps young people develop rich and complex inner lives in adulthood. Even if we leave aside the value of those inner lives for artistic and creative thought and work, think of the savings in mental health services!

Um…that’s all well and good, but does inner enrichment pay off six-figure student loan debt and the feelings of absolute failure when you have to move back in with your parents, or you’re stuck in a dead-end job that can barely pay off those student loan bills and put food on the table for your family? One can argue that the massive amount of loans students have to take out to go to college and graduate school cause more long term unhappiness and mental anguish than whatever enrichment they get in the classroom.

As a starting point for any new readers joining us, I recommend reading Jobless Juris Doctor’s post about a day in the life of an unemployed graduate working a $10/hour part-time job with loans to pay back. Many of the comments are just a small window into the large numbers of young people who are depressed and on the verge of suicide because of student debt, especially in this new jobless era that could last for decades.

Please also read Cryn at Education Matters and put her under your blogroll even if your blog has nothing to do with education issues. Cryn is one of the few education advocates trying to change the system and fight for student loan victims. She regularly posts absolutely heart wrenching stories of educated American families being destroyed by student debt compounded by unemployment and our country not having a national health care system. Cryn herself attended an Ivy League and is now working in South Korea to pay off her student loan debt. Yes, many of us are being forced to flee the country to find anything resembling a respectable and decent paying job to pay off our student loans. This is the reality of higher education in America today and it doesn’t look like the situation will improve considering that many white-collar jobs along with manufacturing jobs are being outsourced, never to come back to the States. Below are links to reader stories Cryn has recently featured on her blog.

http://alleducationmatters.blogspot.com/2010/07/destroying-educated-american-family-one.html

http://alleducationmatters.blogspot.com/2010/06/cryns-story-as-student-loan-refugee-and.html

http://alleducationmatters.blogspot.com/2010/06/in-your-words-grandsons-anguish.html

http://alleducationmatters.blogspot.com/2010/05/son-who-wants-to-help-struggling-family.html

We should also be wary of the college versus high school statistics and some statistics that say the unemployment rate among college graduates is only 4 percent. Many of these studies offer an expansive range of numbers from $400,000 over 30 years to as much as a million dollars more than a high school graduate over the course of a lifetime. Personally, these numbers sound as fraudulent as law school employment statistics.

Some tenured professors and university administrators will want to believe that they are getting paid as much as $388,000 to make the world a better place while turning a blind eye to the adjunct professors who are suffering, the unemployed PhD graduates who are suffering, and the thousands of their very own students who are suffering. Other professors have fessed up to random luck to getting a good job in academia. A few have admitted to being okay with scamming students out of hundreds of thousands of dollars as long as they get their six-figure salary and funds to go off to some exotic place for vacation under the guise of an academic conference.

I decided to head over to Historiann’s blog and found that she had linked to Lambert in a post of her own accusing people who write articles questioning the value of a college education as possibly harboring racist or sexist beliefs:

Is anyone else skeptical of this current rash (h/t Corrente) of “is college really worth it?” (h/t RealClearPolitics) articles, now that women are the majority of college students, and black, brown, and first-generation college students are gaining more of a purchase in post-secondary education? It sure seems like an interesting coincidence to me.

These always appear in a recession, and it’s true that unemployed people with college degrees are just as unemployed as people who never made it to college, or even out of high school. But, seriously? My bet is that the authors and publishers of these articles all have college educations. Do they really think that more education was a big mistake for them, or do they just want to argue that it’s a mistake for their social inferiors?

Huh? If this was an attempt to discredit anyone who challenges the higher education industrial complex, it was a pretty weak one. Many of our friends and truth-tellers under our blogroll do in fact think that more education was a big mistake for them because it has caused them unimaginable pain, suffering, and financial ruin. These people should be lauded rather than accused of being racists or sexists. Angel and I are women and have posted many stories on the plight of women, minorities, and the poor during this recession and as victims of the higher education scam. Nando at Third Tier Reality is Hispanic. Cryn and Jobless Juris Doctor are women. A Law School Victim at Life’s Mockery is African-American. Educated people of all backgrounds are beginning to see the inequality and unfairness of the U.S. higher education system and it has nothing to do with seeing women and minorities as social inferiors or dissuading them from trying to have a better life. It is naïve to believe that a college education somehow magically breaks down all the barriers of privilege, rank, and connections – all those things that are most important to finding a good job in our new economy.

I have never questioned education as a valuable way of becoming a better-rounded, enriched, well-informed, and enlightened individual. However, it is possible to become educated and worldly through self-education and travel without having to pay a business (and that is exactly what universities and for-profit colleges have become – a billion dollar making business) up to $200,000 for a degree as some sort of proof that you are superior to those who don’t have a $100,000 - $200,000 piece of paper. Anyone paying $50,000+ per semester should feel entitled to a good paying job – and they should get an education that not only makes them more creative or analytical, but also provides them with job training skills to do something practical once they leave the protective bubble of the ivory tower.

There are other countries that put their money where their mouth is and make education accessible to more people by offering free or low-cost tuition. If their graduates can’t find a good job in a depression, at least they won’t have up to half of their wages garnished to pay off banks and loan companies breathing down their necks with threats and obscene phone calls to friends and family. Wanna bet that most university administrators, if asked whether they would rather work under the current system that keeps out many poor and minority students from getting a top tier education or take a salary cut so that more students can afford college/grad school, would be perfectly fine keeping out the poor and forcing their students into lifetime debt as long as their coffers are filled? Who’s the racist now?

I do not regret going to college because I attended a top tier institution that covered most of my tuition with financial aid and scholarships. I was one of the lucky ones. I do, however, regret being fooled into spending thousands of dollars for a degree that hinders me from getting any job outside of the legal industry due to the fraudulent employment statistics released by the ABA and law schools.

We are not against education. We are against a system that devalues the importance of education by turning it into a money making scheme. To swindle millions of dollars from hard-working Americans using fraudulent data and myths in order to convince parents and their children that taking out hundreds of thousands in private loans is worth it to become more self-enlightened is despicable and should be stopped. Tax attorney said in a comment last week:

Tax Attorney said...

I think you people are missing the point. The relevant point is, "do we want an America with undereducated people who reject advanced degrees due to financial rape, or do we want an America that wants its citizens to proceed with education as far as they can go?"

Go to any guidance counselor's office in a high school--they will sell you a bill of goods that education is always profitable. Maybe that was true 30 years ago, but now it is just a business used to exploit the intelligent and ambitious. And as a country, unless we curtail free trade and the offshoring of jobs, we need educated people. But when the cost of the education exceeds its value, then how do we get there?

The European model with free education and vigorous testing to qualify, seems the most rational to me.

July 9, 2010 12:27 AM

Low-income, minority, and single parent (usually women) students bear the brunt of the higher education scam. Too many of them end up in for-profit schools or low ranked, third tier schools that offer a crappy education and few job opportunities at the same tuition rates as the Ivy League. Many must gamble with the possibility of absolute financial ruin for life by taking out huge loans to attend college. So when someone asks whether or not college (or graduate school) is worth it, they are asking a very serious question that no one in higher education is willing to answer directly. Is taking out $50k, $100k, $150k, $200k – even $300k (I know an Ivy League and T14 graduate who owes more than $300k) in loans worth the risk? Is anything that doesn’t offer a money back guarantee or an absolute guarantee of a good paying job worth taking such a huge financial risk?

Anyone who can justify not questioning these exorbitant costs is either rich, clueless, or profits in some way shape or form from the system currently in place.

Prof. Tamanaha and My Place in the Higher Education Scam Movement

Much has been said throughout the law blogosphere about Professor Brian Tamanaha's thoughts on the law school model and the "vulgar" law scam bloggers. I recommend taking the time to read all of the responses from Jobless Juris Doctor, Exposing the Law School Scam, Outside Lies Magic, and Shilling Me Softly under our blogroll. I especially recommend reading Jobless Juris Doctor's very powerful post, "Student's Pay So Professors Can Play", in response to Professor Tamanaha's admission that he is perfectly fine earning as much as he can with lots of time for research and conferences, even if those costs come from charging students with little job prospects hundreds of thousands of dollars. No mention of actual teaching said students, but never mind that. We all know a passion for teaching is not the main reason why law professors do what they do.

In doing so, Tamanaha recognizes himself and his colleagues on the side of the ruling class who have little to no concern about the masses that struggle to survive in order to make sure that they remain well fed. These accommodationists know they are part of an unjust system and, to his credit, Tamanaha is the first to acknowledge his role in it. The condescension dripping from his admission came at no surprise. This feeling is common for the elites when they are forced to admit that their riches come at the expense of destroying (or being part of a system that destroys) thousands of lives, both literally and figuratively.

Like the BP executives and their chairman who "wants his life back", they care enough about the "small people" to acknowledge that we exist, that they make lots and lots of money off of our existence, but that our lives aren't important enough for them to make any significant changes that could jeopardize putting even a dent into their wealth and fine living. Do I expect much to come from Tamanaha's admission? Not really. But it's a step in the right direction if we get more of the "serious people" talking about the problem, if only to give our blogs more traffic and make more people aware that we exist as a source of support and awareness for prospective law school students as well as unemployed graduates and attorneys.

This is why Angel and I continue BIDER. We aren't "vulgar" and we aren't "angry, unemployed graduates and bloggers trying to write their way out of debtor’s prison". Elie Mystal of all people should know this. He wrote a post in January admitting that he graduated from Harvard Law School with $150k in student debt:

I graduated law school in 2003, owing Harvard University just under $150,000. At the time, I had no idea what starting my professional career $150K in the hole would do to my life. I figured I’d work hard, make money, and pay my loans out of my general non-disposable income funds — kind of like my cable bill.

Seven years, two careers, numerous deferments and defaults, and one global economic meltdown later, I still owe a ton of money. Now, however, I pay it to various debt collection agencies and lawyers. When prospective landlords run a pro forma credit check on my application, they come back looking at me like I’ve been convicted of multiple war crimes. Every raise I’ll ever get will be eaten up by the collection agencies until sweet death allows me one everlasting and satisfying default. And, oh yeah, I don’t even want to practice law anymore — I quit my Biglaw job because, despite the debt, I really wanted to have a job that I enjoyed. So I essentially purchased a $150,000 disposable good. My time working in Biglaw was kind of like a very expensive vacation that I debt financed.

I mention all this because I am the cautionary tale prospective law students never want to think about. I mention all this because it is noble to crush false hope. I mention all this because there are way too many people poised to follow in my financially ruinous steps.

And isn't that what the scam bloggers have been doing all along for little or no compensation? Warning people each and everyday that law school and taking out $100K+ in student loans is a really bad idea, especially in a jobless era? So, it's only cool to leave the law profession entirely with $150k in debt if you attended a top law school. But if a similar fate befalls others, either willingly or unwillingly, we are angry bloggers trying to write our way out of debtor's prison? Sure, whatever.

Here is a little recap. Our regular readers know that I attended a T14 law school and Angel attended a top 30 law school. We have both interned or worked at NYC law firms. Angel was laid off from Biglaw. Maybe I wasn't smart enough to decide against law school, but I was smart enough to have most of my college education paid for with scholarships and financial aid. I owe less than $50k in private loans with low interest rates. I have been underemployed for most of 2009 and 2010 and have a non-law related, full-time job offer that starts in several months. Plenty of my friends and classmates from law school who graduated from both the bottom and top of their class are unemployed. In the end, it didn't matter that they went to Harvard undergrad or graduated magna cum laude from a prestigious T14, because they are still in the same horrible position as the rest of us. Go figure.

So sorry to disappoint the law school cartel and ATL who like to generalize all of the scam bloggers as bitter TTT losers, but a lot of us are quite accomplished, at least on paper. Which goes to show our readers that unemployment, underemployment, and life destroying debt can happen to anyone regardless of law school rank. Debt is debt regardless of who you are or where you went to school. It doesn't matter if you go to Harvard Law or Cooley Law, $150k in student debt will destroy your life unless you are one of the few graduates today who will go on to make Biglaw partner or become part of the law school scam. Don't want to hate your life at the expense of making a Biglaw salary? Then don't go to law school, even if it's a T14. You will never be able to pay off your debt otherwise.

This is why Angel and I continue to blog and maintain a place for the unemployed to vent their frustrations. Get used to us because we are making a positive difference and we expect to blog for a very long time considering that the economy is not expected to get back on track until at least 2015. There will be thousands more joining us in the coming years. At least we know we're on the right side of the fight.

Must Read From Escape From America Magazine!

I can't believe I didn't know about Escape From America Magazine before last night! I've been trying to escape from America for about a year so I wish I had come across this online magazine sooner. Thank you once again to the Angry Future Expat and MedicineSux for alerting us to this magazine and the article called America-The Grim Truth!

The Angry Future Expat has already pasted the best excerpts from the article in his latest post, so go read that along with the article in its entirety on the Escape From America website. I just can't resist including a few more excerpts for you to read here. There are ways to escape from a life of massive student debt, slave labor and wages, unemployment, and expensive health insurance without the health care. Sallie Mae & Friends would rather have you indebted to them for life by staying right where you are now, but you do have options. You still have a chance at a comfortable, healthy, happy, and debt free life!

You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.

I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.

Consider this, you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once, your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.

This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.

...

If you’re young, you’ve got plenty of choices. You can teach English in the Middle East, Asia or Europe. Or you can go to university or graduate school abroad and start building skills that will qualify you for a work visa. If you’ve already got some real work skills, you can apply to emigrate to any number of countries as a skilled immigrant. If you are older and you’ve got some savings, you can retire to a place like Costa Rica or the Philippines. If you can’t qualify for a work, student or retirement visa, don’t let that stop you – travel on a tourist visa to a country that appeals to you and talk to the expats you meet there. Whatever you do, go speak to an immigration lawyer as soon as you can. Find out exactly how to get on a path that will lead to permanent residence and eventually citizenship in the country of your choice.

You will not be alone. There are millions of Americans just like me living outside the United States. Living lives much more fulfilling, peaceful, free and abundant than we ever could have attained back home. Some of us happened upon these lives by accident – we tried a year abroad and found that we liked it – others made a conscious decision to pack up and leave for good. You’ll find us in Canada, all over Europe, in many parts of Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and in most other countries of the globe. Do we miss our friends and family? Yes. Do we occasionally miss aspects of our former country? Yes. Do we plan on ever living again in the United States? Never. And those of us with permanent residence or citizenship can sponsor family members from back home for long-term visas in our adopted countries.

In closing, I want to remind you of something – unless you are an American Indian or a descendant of slaves, at some point your ancestors chose to leave their homeland in search of a better life. They weren’t traitors and they weren’t bad people, they just wanted a better life for themselves and their families. Isn’t it time that you continue their journey?

Read the entire article now!

Census Worker Horror Stories and the May Jobs Report

The May jobs report is being touted as good news by the government just like the "good news" that was reported in the April and March jobs report. Haven't found a job yet? Well, it's probably because 411,000 of the 431,000 jobs created in May were temporary Census jobs with little improvement in private-sector employment. So without the crappy Census jobs, only 20,000 jobs were created last month for the millions of unemployed and underemployed looking for a job. The decrease in the unemployment rate was because of a decline in the participation rate. This is not good.

And if you've found a Census job, there is still a chance that you will find yourself without a job within several weeks of being hired to inflate the job numbers. Yes, I know it is FOX News, but listen to one whistleblower claim the Census Bureau is using temporary layoffs to pump up employment numbers. “What they do is hire you, they train you like a few weeks — 35, 40 hours of training and give you six hours of productive work and lay you off.”



The New York Post also published other census worker horror stories that backed up Maria's claims:

* I was hired four times by the Census Bureau: spring 2009 for address canvassing; fall 2009 for general quarters verification; late winter 2010 as a quality assurance clerk; and, spring 2010 [as an] enumerator non-response follow-up. I've just been laid off. In each case I spent more time training and going to meetings than actually working. Please don't use my name, I still may be called back.

* I was hired four times, counting last year and this. There's lots of waste and poor management. I've wondered about the handheld computer (used by door-to-door workers.) I've no idea how many of these were purchased. They were only used last year in one effort and my understanding is there were a lot of problems.

* I'm in south Orange County in Southern California and I'm going door-to-door to people the Census says have not turned in their form. At least 60 percent of the people I speak to swear they've turned it in. We are supposed to visit a residence three times. (If we can't contact anyone) we are supposed to try up to three proxies (neighbors or other people) to get information on a particular resident. So basically your neighbor can report how many people live in your home.

* Everything you reported is absolutely true. I was fired three times and rehired. I earned more going to training classes than (working). Several classmates didn't get any work after completing training.

* I was hired by the Census on March 16 and my last day was April 19 at the bilingual question answering center in Rome, Ga. We had two days of training, of which one was just to get hired officially as a federal employee. I had a total of two people come by my location and ask a question -- costing taxpayers $250 per question.

* I am a Census worker. I, too, can confirm that they are checking and checking. I checked homes that have already been checked by the "enumerators." The next phase is to go and re-check the checks that we already did twice..

* It's not much better in Florida. Our first day of training was a total joke. The supposed crew leader knew nothing. She didn't even open the manual to prep herself. We spent four hours signing six pieces of paper, one of which we signed on the day of the initial test ing. The nightmare didn't end when we got to the field. No work was available so we would sit in a meeting waiting for work for hours, which went on our timesheet.

* I have personally experienced the very same thing (in Missouri)) and have said from the beginning that this is strictly political and for jobs numbers. It is a waste of our tax monies. Our area appears to be very disorganized. However, I believe that it is intentional. Just another way to increase outlays and jobs.

I'm not wasting another year of my life waiting for the employment situation to improve. My pessimism about the future seems to have rubbed off several of my friends who are unemployed or hate their slave wage jobs and they are looking into the few good opportunities abroad that are left. If you're thinking about it, do it fast before more unemployed graduates with student debt jump on the bandwagon and those jobs become nonexistent as well.

Quotes of the Day (Updated)

The generation before me came to the conclusion I was worth the investment. Maybe my generation is a little too selfish.

- Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Paul H. Anderson who graduated in 1968 with no debt and a 1965 Mustang.

The more urgent question is: What do you tell people who are thinking about going to law school? I don't recommend it to people looking to make a lot of money. ... If you're not interested in helping people in some way or providing service to your clients, it's not for you.

- From the same Star Tribune article, law school shill Niels Schaumann, vice dean for faculty at third tier toilet William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota.

How about not recommending William Mitchell College of Law to anyone who wants to find a full-time job after spending $52,000 yearly tuition? That way, shills like Schaumann would no longer make an average of $104,832 yearly blaming unemployed graduates for being too greedy.

- HardKnocks from But I Did Everything Right! in response to Niels Schaumman's dishonest and shameful comment in the Star Tribune.


Update, May 30th: A William Mitchell College of Law graduate stopped by with the following comment below. Are you listening Schaumman and WMCL shills? This is one of your many graduates drowning in debt and working for $11 an hour doing temp work. What are you doing about it besides blaming them for being greedy or not hustling enough? How can you sleep at night knowing you make six-figures off the backs of your unemployed graduates and still have the audacity to ask them for contributions?? Thank you to the WMCL grad for stopping by and sharing your tragic story and pointing out that the job shortage is nothing new. It's just that the media is jumping on this story now that the top tier grads are suffering too.

Hope all of our readers are having a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. I'm back to helping out with the backyard BBQ.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this article, Hardknocks. I am a WMCL grad - although I have pretty much severed all ties to that place after the Dean sent me a letter begging for MORE money AFTER I had already made a contribution and stated in his letter, "[Insert my name here], would you really be as far as you are today if not for your law degree?" As you can imagine, this irritated me to no end and I decided to never give one cent to that place again.

As for the gentleman featured in the story, I actually know him. Ironically, right after I graduated from WMCL with HONORS, I was working as a TEMP for $11/hour at the same place where he was working for the summer doing some humiliating clerical type of work. This was back in the early 2000's. He was going off to Korea to be with his girlfriend. Anyway, the reason I mention this is because there was a legal job shortage even back then, but nobody believed it. This is NOT new, people, so I don't understand why everybody acts like this all happened it the last 2 years. I have been out of school for almost 7 years, and a majority of my classmates are drowning in debt and working piddle a$$ jobs just to make ends meet and pay their student loans. It annoys me that suddenly now this is "news" - why wasn't it news seven years ago? Maybe some of these people wouldn't be in the shape they are in, if the media had listened or cared back then!

Another NYU Graduate with Six-Figure Debt. Quelle Surprise!

Or not. New York is an expensive city, folks. If you go to an elite school there (NYU or Columbia) expect to fork over your life savings unless you get a lot of financial aid and scholarships.

The New York Times has found another student loan slave in the Big Apple, not really a difficult task. I have a friend who is getting her second Master's degree at NYU. I don't understand why anyone needs two Master's degrees, but this is what happens when young people can't find a job and buy into the higher education myth that an elite degree is sure to bring in the big bucks after graduation, which we have learned is no longer the case.

Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it.

Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she’s been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments.

I don't think most graduates in a similar position as Ms. Munna are idiots or irresponsible. They were misinformed like the rest of us. Students and their parents invest $100k for a degree from an elite institution because they believe it will land them a job that pays enough to pay off those loans in a reasonable amount of time. No one plans to default or flee the country when they sign up for a student loan. You get a degree from an Ivy League or top tier college and you expect to get a decent paying white collar job. I can't speak for third tier graduates, but back in the good ol' days, the majority of graduates from my college and law school found jobs that paid more than factory line workers. That is why people, and especially working class people with academically gifted children, believe higher education is a good investment - perhaps the only investment - that will allow their children to enter a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle.

I don't understand why people are beating up on Ms. Munna in the comments for majoring in Religious and Women's Studies. And? I know people who are unemployed who majored in Humanities and Science. T14 law students are graduating without any job offers. Does your college major really matter that much anymore unless you are in Pre-Med or Engineering? Any degree in the Humanities is going to end you up in the unemployment line these days, whether it be Women's Studies or Political Science. More people should start questioning the financial aid offices and banks who take advantage of clueless teenagers by allowing them to take out a $40k loan in the first place.

Which is why I am glad the author questions how Munna was allowed to take out a $40k Citibank loan when she was only 17-years-old. In the process, the article reveals a bit of the the higher education scam at work, and why students are able to take on massive debt without any warning or advice from the financial aid office (emphasis mine):

The financial aid office often has the best picture of what students like Ms. Munna are up against, because they see their families’ financial situation splayed out on the federal financial aid form. So why didn’t N.Y.U. tell Ms. Munna that she simply did not belong there once she’d passed, say, $60,000 in total debt?

“Had somebody called me and said, ‘Do you have a clue where this is all headed?’, it would have been a slap in the face, but a slap in the face that I needed,” said Cathryn Munna. “When financial aid told her that they could get her $2,000 more in loans, they should have been saying ‘You are in deep doo-doo, little girl.’ ”

That’s not a role that the university wants to take on, though. “I think that would be completely inappropriate,” said Randall Deike, the vice president of enrollment management for N.Y.U., who oversees admissions and financial aid. “Some families will do whatever it takes for their son or daughter to be not just at N.Y.U., but any first-choice college. I’m not sure that’s always the best decision, but it’s one that they really have to make themselves.”

The complications here go well beyond the propriety of suggesting that a student enroll elsewhere. Colleges don’t always know how much debt its students are taking on, which makes it hard to offer good counsel. (N.Y.U. does appear to have known about all of Ms. Munna’s loans, though.)

Then there’s a branding problem. Urging students to attend a cheaper college or leave altogether suggests a lack of confidence about the earning potential of alumni. Nobody wants to admit that. And once a university starts encouraging middle-class students to go elsewhere, it must fill its classes with more children of the wealthy and a much smaller number of low-income students to whom it can afford to offer enormous scholarships. That’s hardly an ideal outcome either.

Finally, universities exist to enroll students, not turn them away. “Aid administrators want to keep their jobs,” said Joan H. Crissman, interim president and chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “If the administration finds out that you’re encouraging students to go to a cheaper school just because you don’t think they can handle the debt load, I don’t think that’s going to mesh very well.”

That doesn’t change the fact, however, that the financial aid office is still in the best position to see trouble coming and do something to stop it. University officials should take on this obligation, even if they aren’t willing to advise students to attend another college.

Is Munna to blame or should we start criticizing the universities and banks for lending young people money knowing that students usually start college with little idea of how to manage their finances or any sense of their income prospects in 4 years. What do you think?

Purdue Graduate Tries to Sell His Diploma on Ebay

Do you feel this way about your degree?

Back in February of this year, a Georgetown Law graduate attempted to sell his JD on Ebay for $59,250 to pay off the remainder of his student loans.

Today, Purdue University graduate Nick Enlow attempted to do the same thing, placing an ad for his 2008 B.A. in psychology for $36,000 to cover his $470 monthly loan bill to Sallie Mae. He also has a degree in philosophy from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Enlow works as a substitute teacher and lives with his fiancé who is working for Teach America. This is what Enlow had to say(emphasis mine):

"Going to college made my life worse," Enlow said Wednesday from near Jacksonville, Fla., where he lives. "That is something that I don't keep to myself. I tell everyone."

His line of thinking isn't the kind that Purdue officials find amusing, nor are they too keen on the auction itself.

But Enlow, 29, said he considers himself stuck in indentured servitude to Sallie Mae, his lender, because he is unable to get a decent-paying job with his current degrees to start paying a $470 monthly student loan bill. In addition to the Purdue diploma, he obtained a philosophy degree from IU through IUPUI. That one is not for sale.

The eBay sale is part stunt and part hopeful act of desperation that an "eccentric millionaire" will pick up the tab. Either way, the Indianapolis native is serious about kick-starting conversations on the worth of a college education and how it can be paid off.

"The universities are handing out too many degrees that have zero real-world application," Enlow said. "It seems to me, almost any major in the humanities or liberal arts will not gain you employment with a bachelor's degree."

Enlow admits to not having a clear post-college career path. During school he fell in love with learning -- reading classics and learning history -- and he assumed that after earning a diploma a job would come easily.

"I think that some of us still believe that when we walk across the stage and get that diploma that we are going to have some type of social status and businesses are going to look at us differently," he said. "But that is not true."

I hope Enlow finds BIDER and the other school scam blogs just so he knows that he is no alone and that he is even better off than most law and graduate school graduates who owe much more than $36,000 in student loans. Several days ago, Angel posted a CNN story about a NYU graduate who owed $275,000 in loans. Of course, Enlow's alma mater is not amused and fired back with a lame response that didn't address the student loan and unemployment crisis facing most graduates today:

"A degree in the liberal arts is not an automatic ticket to a job, but then again, no degree is," said Irwin Weiser, interim dean of Purdue's College of Liberal Arts."However, studying any of the disciplines in the arts, humanities, or social sciences prepares students to be successful because they learn to think creatively, critically and ethically, and to communicate what they think effectively."

"However, studying any of the disciplines in the arts, humanities, or social sciences prepares students to be successful because they learn to think creatively, critically and ethically, and to communicate what they think effectively."

Ebay later took down the sale today which violated its terms of use. Enlow even caught Sallie Mae's attention. The loan company contacted him yesterday to "discuss payment options". Hah. They contacted him to make sure he has enough money for next month's payment. Just another publicity stunt to act like they actually care.

Enlow said he would not contest eBay's decision.

"The dialogue has been started," he said. "What's done is done."