Re: JD Unemployment Reaches New High (15%)
Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 12:52 pm
I get the general gist of JCougar's view but his posts have so many overstatement and made up statistics that it actually becomes amusing to read.
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I don't really find it amusing at all. His general view point is correct and the old people sitting in academia shouldn't be colluding with the government to offer cheap financing to a bunch of 23 year old English majors who don't understand compound interest. I saw a recent film on vice of people who are just leaving the U.S. because of their ridiculous student loans and quite frankly, while it was in fact their decision to make that choice, you can't really blame them.Alive97 wrote:I get the general gist of JCougar's view but his posts have so many overstatement and made up statistics that it actually becomes amusing to read.
How many years of practice do you have under your belt?Alive97 wrote:I get the general gist of JCougar's view but his posts have so many overstatement and made up statistics that it actually becomes amusing to read.
I mean, this has been obvious for quite a while. There's two ways the ABA could be handling this: 1) immediately start shutting down law schools or at least forcing schools to trim their ranks dramatically; or 2) do absolutely nothing and let the entire trainwreck play out over a 10-year timespan, costing the federal government tens of billions of dollars in bad loans all for the benefit of the salaries of a couple thousand law professors and administrators.1. Law schools are in deep trouble. Moody’s downgraded the California Western School of Law and gave the free-standing private law school in San Diego a “negative outlook,” adding that its financial pressures are “likely to continue for a period longer than expected.”
California Western is not alone in its struggles. Fewer students are going to law school and fewer graduates are obtaining the jobs that they went to law school to get.
Well you can't fix it if you aren't in control. Here's a thought- completely get rid of student loans except for grants for the absolute poorest. The second you would do that the demand for law school would plummet at current prices as no one would have the capital. Then of course schools would be forced to lower prices and compete based on pricing thus greatly driving down the cost of education and those cushy teacher salaries.FredTheFish wrote:This thread is super interesting but can we talk about potential solutions now? Most of the people on this site are aware of the situation with the legal market and how it is overall very shitty. Everything from the ridiculous curriculum found in law school to how the ABA is literally the devil is common knowledge for those on this site applying to law schools, currently in law schools, or who have been practicing (or unemployed) for x number of years. Solution time?
I'm sure solutions have been discussed in this thread but to recap, the incredibly simple solution is a basic one requiring just two steps:FredTheFish wrote:This thread is super interesting but can we talk about potential solutions now? Most of the people on this site are aware of the situation with the legal market and how it is overall very shitty. Everything from the ridiculous curriculum found in law school to how the ABA is literally the devil is common knowledge for those on this site applying to law schools, currently in law schools, or who have been practicing (or unemployed) for x number of years. Solution time?
I never said it was. They are simply the beneficiaries of the government artificially driving up the price of education by providing capital to a bunch of creditless 22 year olds who, for the most part, have no idea how compound interest works. Sound familiar to the mortgage market? I am really hoping the next scam will be to start charging money for high school, then we could move down to grade school, then maybe preschool.PeanutsNJam wrote:According to Paul Campos, teacher salary is not the reason tuition is so high. Too lazy to dig up the post but it's there.
Also a solution is to cap law school class sizes/number of law schools.
With all the staff reductions, how is that possible?General_Tso wrote:Crazy world we live in, we can't find a moderately experienced legal secretary for $75k but lawyers are chomping at the bit for $35k.
75k, in what location?General_Tso wrote:Crazy world we live in, we can't find a moderately experienced legal secretary for $75k but lawyers are chomping at the bit for $35k.
Bay Area cost of living is all I can say. $2k rent is 1/2 your disposible income on a 75k salary.Desert Fox wrote:With all the staff reductions, how is that possible?General_Tso wrote:Crazy world we live in, we can't find a moderately experienced legal secretary for $75k but lawyers are chomping at the bit for $35k.
Of course no one wants to do that. You could get a job in Nebraska at a Call center for $15 an hour or a grocery store bagging groceries in Iowa and have a better standard of living.....Not to mention lower crime, cheaper education, lower housing prices, less corruption and shitty winters!General_Tso wrote:Bay Area cost of living is all I can say. $2k rent is 1/2 your disposible income on a 75k salary.Desert Fox wrote:With all the staff reductions, how is that possible?General_Tso wrote:Crazy world we live in, we can't find a moderately experienced legal secretary for $75k but lawyers are chomping at the bit for $35k.
Why should private loans be dischargeable in bankruptcy? This would just give people an incentive to borrow money for pieces of paper and again drive up the price of education just through a different way of financing.Paul Campos wrote:Increases in faculty compensation over the past few decades are a small (but not trivial) factor in the exploding cost of legal education. Per capita faculty compensation increases probably account for about 5% to 10% of the increased cost. By far the biggest drivers of the increased cost of law school have been:
(1) The explosion in the number of faculty. Faculty-student ratios have gone from about 29 to 1 in the late 1970s to around 13 to 1 today.
(2) The big increase in clinical legal education. Clinics are by their nature very expensive, since you have to have a very low faculty to student ratio in them, plus they usually require quite a bit of administrative support.
(3) The proliferation of administrative services. Non-faculty staffs are far larger now than they were a generation ago. For example 30 years ago the vast majority of law schools had skeletal or even non-existent career services offices. Today almost every law school has several full-time CSO staff members .
(4) The amenities race. Schools push to build expensive new facilities, justifying this with arguments that they're necessary to compete for students and for rankings (this is of course the very definition of a negative-sum competition).
The result: average PRIVATE law school tuition in 2014 dollars:
1974: $11,057
1984: $15,721
1994: $25,295
2004: $33,777
2014: $43,398
Average RESIDENT PUBLIC law school tuition in 2014 dollars:
1974: $3438
1984: $4200
1994: $8013
2004: $14,863
2014: $24,946
Again these numbers are inflation-adjusted. ( Median household income in the US has barely risen over the past 40 years in constant dollars.)
As for what to do about it, I agree that by far the most efficient solution would be hard caps on federal loans plus making private loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. You have to do both things, however, as doing only the first would simply be a giant giveaway to the financial services industry.
Unless they just tranche them up and start selling them to one another..... I agree that would be better than the current system, though. My point is there are ways around that and no one should be in the business of preying on 22 year olds trying to get an education because the education wouldn't be so expensive in the first place if the capital wasn't available.General_Tso wrote:But it would disincent lenders from making irresponsible loans . . .
The whole point is to make the capital unavailable by removing the federal guarantee. You'd be pretty insane to loan someone 200k to get a law degree from Cooley but right now a private lender who does that takes no risk.asdfdfdfadfas wrote:Unless they just tranche them up and start selling them to one another..... I agree that would be better than the current system, though. My point is there are ways around that and no one should be in the business of preying on 22 year olds trying to get an education because the education wouldn't be so expensive in the first place if the capital wasn't available.General_Tso wrote:But it would disincent lenders from making irresponsible loans . . .
No I do not eat farts.smaug wrote:Lord Randolph McDuff, the only people who I know who post like you eat their own farts.
Do you eat farts, Mr. McDuff?
I guess I'd be fine with this because then banks would never make the loan. If you are going to do this you have to ensure that banks can't just play hot potato with the risk by tranching them up and selling them as Student Backed SecuritiesTiago Splitter wrote:The whole point is to make the capital unavailable by removing the federal guarantee. You'd be pretty insane to loan someone 200k to get a law degree from Cooley but right now a private lender who does that takes no risk.asdfdfdfadfas wrote:Unless they just tranche them up and start selling them to one another..... I agree that would be better than the current system, though. My point is there are ways around that and no one should be in the business of preying on 22 year olds trying to get an education because the education wouldn't be so expensive in the first place if the capital wasn't available.General_Tso wrote:But it would disincent lenders from making irresponsible loans . . .
To be annoyed would suggest your comments registered at a level beyond "lol" for me. They didn't.Lord Randolph McDuff wrote:No I do not eat farts.smaug wrote:Lord Randolph McDuff, the only people who I know who post like you eat their own farts.
Do you eat farts, Mr. McDuff?
I don't mean to annoy you. Did I annoy you because you are annoyed by optimism, which is the case with many who frequent internet message boards, or simply because I am annoying?
I suppose I can be pretty insufferable, especially to the doom and gloomers.