Boston College 3L Asks for His Money Back; Hilarity Ensues
abovethelaw.com
abovethelaw.com
It's easy to judge the author for feeling "entitled" to a high-paying post-law-school job, and - just to get this out of the way - obviously he isn't (entitled). Yes, he made his own choices, and just like he would have been screwed getting his telegraph-repairman certificate circa 1900, there's always a certain amount of risk one takes choosing a career.
That said, the way many law schools - particularly top-50 schools like BC - market themselves is indeed as pathways to high-paying Big Law jobs, and indeed is the only way they can justify the tuition. His complaint (which I obviously have no way to really evaluate) about BC Career Services being less-than-helpful is very relevant here.
All that said, the underlying problem is more complex than "BC is greedy" or "the author made a boneheaded career choice" - there's a structural shift in the market for lawyers (there were too many, market was oversaturated), and a bunch of people who made choices based on market conditions in 2007 are pretty screwed. Yes, they all bear some responsibility; what now, though - does this guy go back to teaching and have $100K+ in debt while pulling down "normal-person" wages? Law school tuition, to a large extent, reflects expected earnings. You radically change half of that equation, and things start to break (and yes, you can declare personal bankruptcy... except that student loan debt is among the most difficult to dispose of, even via bankruptcy).
Over time, I suspect (though who really knows?) that either salaries or tuitions or both will adjust, if not in nominal than in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. But what about the several "lost generations" of JD's with mountains of debt but no jobs? I don't have an easy answer - "universal JD loan amnesty" doesn't sound like a great idea either, and who would fund such a thing anyway? - but it's a problem worth considering.
This is actually somewhat similar (though of course not identical) to the structural problem confounding many health care reformers. Medicine in the US is really expensive; part (though by no means all) of the problem is that doctors, especially specialists, are paid a lot. A big part of the reason why (though maybe it's more accurate to say it's a correlation - I'm not really sure what the causal direction is) is that after a really long time in school, you graduate with ~$500K of loans, and then (in most cases) live in penury during your residency. You sort of have to be able to cash out at the end of the rainbow, otherwise it's not just unattractive but borderline impossible for anyone who isn't otherwise independently wealthy.
So what do you do? It's straightforward and simple to say, "doctors should just make less, and tuition should be correspondingly lower." But of course we're not in a giant central planning system, and even if we were, it's not like that's a switch you can flip overnight. If you suddenly started paying all doctors less, how would the class of 2010, with that half-mil in loans, make good on those? Everyone (or at least a great many people) realize that there's a structural problem, and the vague outlines of a better equilibrium... but how you get from A to B is a lot less clear.
(Disclaimers: there's all sorts of other reasons why medicine isn't really a proper perfect market, etc. It's not a perfect analogy, etc.)
Fun exercise for the reader: why are new minted MBAs not in the same boat? Anecdotally, many are, but not as many as new lawyers.
I worked for a bankruptcy trustee for a couple of years, and it was an enlightening experience. Generally speaking, the greater the security, the higher the dollar amount you will be loaned. An example: A bank will loan you hundreds of thousands of dollars for a home, but only $10k in credit cards. Why? Because they mortgage security is the house. The bank has something to take. With credit cards, the debtor simply has to file for bankruptcy in order escape the debt. This introduces a level of accountability on the behalf of the lender.
Rewind to student loans. There is no accountability to the lender. You cannot escape student loan debt. Period. As a student lender, rather than evaluating the risk of default, I am left to focus on the debtor's ability to service the debt. I may even loan them more money than I think they can realistically pay back. Why? Because I'm able to borrow money at such low rates that I can generate a tremendous cash churn at a rate that is many times my borrowing rate. Even if I have to write off a portion of the loan value at the end of the term (the debtor dies or flat defaults and goes to jail), I'm still ahead of the game because I've been compounding my earnings for years.
It's a sick system with no escape for student debtors. The system was created to incentivize higher education, but the unintended consequence is that an entire market has sprung forth from a custom tailored opportunity for predator lending. Big surprise.
You literally end up on the run from your debt. That's not a life you want to live.
In regards to the MBA question - the reason as many MBA's are not affected is because of the life experience MBA candidates have before applying. A decade of life experience, in the form of an undergrad degree and some time working, means that MBA candidates have a much more realistic understanding of the benefits of further study. Add to that the fact that MBAs are generally slightly shorter, and as a group they are making wiser decisions.
In terms of the medical problems, I believe the free market will solve this problem if given a chance. The problem right now is that because such a large percentage of people do not pay for medical care out of their own pocket, they don't care about value for money. How do I know my Medical Insurance Company is not getting ripped off? Well, I don't. And infact, I'm insentivised not to care - it doesn't directly effect me.
Specific MBA concentrations, notably marketing and possibly finance, are nearing saturation though.
1) Your degree will not get you the salaries you expect. You will be paying these loans off forever. 2) Most law school grads hate being lawyers 3) There is an extremely high level of dis-satisfaction with this degree and this career path. 4) If any of this bothers you, LEAVE NOW.
I am the only member of my class who actually listened, and left after one semester.
Nobody can blame the schools, as they seem to be very clear on these issues.
The first year should definitely tell you if you want to spend your life in a law related capacity. Personally I'm glad I stayed but it isn't for everyone and like the guy in the article has found it's a very difficult path to leave.
Exactly. We are bombarded by claims of "give us money and good things will happen to you" every single day. The message from "society" (and colleges themselves) about the benefits of college may have somewhat nobler-than-average motivations, but in the end these claims must be scrutinized in the same way as spam about Viagra or late-night infomercials.
In the end, unfortunately the issue of whether or where to go to school is entangled with many soft issues that make it difficult to employ a strictly rational analysis. For instance, if I believe the advice that I should do what I love, it's harder to come to grips with the fact that the schooling required to do so is a bigger financial bet than I can afford to make. I don't think we need special mechanisms (like tuition refunds) for people who made this particular bad bet though.
And the soonest everyone realizes this, the better off they will be. The problem, as I see it, is that they present themselves as this romantic ideal of higher purpose / education.
At least ITT Tech has the decency to tell you that they're focused on getting you a job. Even though they usually don't (from what I've heard).
And to be honest, you don't know if his financial problems will deteriorate to the point where he'll have to sell his home. Assuming he got a 50% stipend (he probably didn't), he still owes BC $60,000. How will he pay that back on a teacher's salary?
Still, his degree's ROI is probably very negative right now. No harm in trying, and his letter has created a great discussion.
You know who else will say those things? Web designers, web developers, and pretty much anyone else in a service industry. Designers/developers can only promise you a well-functioning web site, not a successful web-based business. Likewise, a school can only promise to give you decent classes, not a successful career.
Lack of success does not entitle you to a refund on work already performed on your behalf.
When I, as a web dev, contract with a business, we're both aware of the commercial aspect of the relationship.
Schools, OTOH, present themselves as mentors. Who happen to drive you hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in order to build a grander institution.
I think schools (esp JD school) is more similar to the methods described in "Economic Hit Men". Briefly, the World Bank would overlend money to developing countries at the behest of U.S. political and corporate interests. Those U.S. based interests would pretend like getting so much lent to countries like Indonesia and Saudi Arabia was in their best interest, when it really was done for the benefit of the US groups. Schools appear similar to that, to me.
As someone who is facing the same problem as this BC student it's scary to think about the decisions I made 4 years ago to get to this place. I never dreamed of being in BigLaw and have always seen myself practicing law in an alternative area but I know people who were counting on law school/college/MBA to be a generic meal ticket.
The direct link has the whole letter but the ATL writeup had interesting commentary: http://eagleionline.com/2010/10/15/open-letter-to-interim-de...
And let's be honest. Every school offering professional degrees is pretty much advertising, implying, and pushing the idea that if you come to this school, you will get a degree that will get you a well paying job. My school (Waterloo) does this with their engineering program (which I am enrolled in), and so does nearly every other 'top tier' engineering, law, and medical program. Granted, none of them outright say it, or promise it, but it's so heavily implied, that you have to cut our generation a bit of slack. Not that it completely excuses us.
Edit: These sorts of lessons would best be taught by parents but right now many seem to have lost the same skills through marketing to their belief that their child is the best ever and that they have to do everything to make sure their child has all the advantages possible.
It's hard to accurately calculate your degree's ROI when, between applying in 2007 and finishing in 2011, this country experiences the worst recession of the last 70 years. No one expected this job market four years ago.
I've got no sympathy for this guy. I challenge him to come up an actual promise by the Law School that he'd have a "fulfilling and remunerative career". Oh, sure, they might have published starting salary statistics from recent years, but how is this different from any other case where you assume good times last forever? Did you found a dot com in late 1999? Did you buy a house in 2006? Did you invest in silver in early 1980? In fact, in this case, he's even better off that the people who made these other investments, because it's entirely up to him what he does with this education. John Cleese and John Chambers both have law degrees, but were never hired by a big name law firms.
It's also very strong in IP and corporate law. It is a feeder school for many "biglaw-esque" IP law firms in Boston and NYC. It's the back up plan of many MIT engineering students who feel like they are underpaid and did not have the foresight to work on wall street during the 2000s.
It's apparently ranked #30 in terms of # of partners at BigLaw firms. It's an objective metric, but I readily admit that it's of unclear significance since it's not weighted for class size and cannot account for interest or lack thereof in BigLaw at these schools.
But this kid (and thousands out there like him) did not go to law school to gain some intangible brain stimulation. They went to law school in order to get a job. That’s the whole point of a professional school. Deans who don’t understand that point do a disservice to their students.
Now this is just sad. Is this not why the education system sucks? A part of the problem is the difference between agendas of students (even among themselves) and institutions.
The latter is a self-perpetuating cycle so long as people buy into the credentialism of a college degree, but that road is utter uncritical of the quality and so is ultimately destructive (of the quality of knowledge and experience imparted by degree programs and also of the time and money spent pursuing them).