Is Sticker Debt for a T-10 worth it in 2016? Forum

[totesTheGoat]

People on TLS could appreciate this more, I think. I was a chemistry/biochem double major and if you're not getting an MD, your job prospects are wayyyyy worse than law. At least in law, we have the t14 and supposed "guaranteed" jobs. In chemistry, this does not exist. You will be a post-doc for a while, and some people are post docs forever. Plus, even if you get an academic job, you're fighting tooth and nail for grant money. If you're in industry... it's pretty likely you'll get fired when your project gets dropped or outsourced to India/China.

The law market sucks, but other markets are much worse.

It's all about the debt. Other markets may be worse, but they don't average $180k in student loan debt.

Law is not unique in requiring lots of debt. Med, architecture, business, and vet schools also tend to be incredibly expensive. And as med school indicates, it's not actually all about the debt: I think few people would argue that being a newly-minted MD with ~$200k in student loan debt is generally preferable from a financial standpoint to being a newly minted PhD with $0 debt.

Ok, I'm getting rubber banded here. JKP was coming from the "objectively worse job markets" perspective, and I was saying that the reason that law school is considered a worse investment than a chem major is all about the debt. Obviously I didn't mean that the only consideration in choosing an education is the debt.

Roughly: Job prospects/Debt = Value of degree.

[Tls2016]

My friends who have chemistry backgrounds have found jobs in industry and in research just fine. And, no debt and they work decent hours. Rare weekends if neede for an hour for an experiment. No one is expecting them to be available 24/7.

There is no way it is as over saturated as the law market.
I would need solid statistics to believe that when 50% or so of law grads never even practice.

And of course medical school costs more than law school. That is at least justified by the need for labs and equipment. Law can be learned online with just a computer. There is no reason for law to be so expensive.

[fliptrip]

Law is not unique in requiring lots of debt. Med, architecture, business, and vet schools also tend to be incredibly expensive. And as med school indicates, it's not actually all about the debt: I think few people would argue that being a newly-minted MD with ~$200k in student loan debt is generally preferable from a financial standpoint to being a newly minted PhD with $0 debt.

Whoa, I'd definitely argue that the MD is in pretty good shape. A career in medicine isn't going to make anyone Ken Griffin rich, but it is a career, in that you enter, you grow, develop, earn more as you go, and then you retire to West Palm. You will be able to service your debt and over the long arc of your working career you're going to come out millions ahead (I didn't do the math, so please grant me a little leeway).

Your Classics PhD has no debt, but she realistically may never get a chance to do the work she trained to do. Beyond that, even if she does get to teach, she will likely be a very poorly paid adjunct who is exploited by a university to horde even more money. That sounds like real misery.

[fliptrip]

Roughly: Job prospects/Debt = Value of degree.

You got it, so long as you define value as solely pecuniary.

[WinterComing]

Law is not unique in requiring lots of debt. Med, architecture, business, and vet schools also tend to be incredibly expensive. And as med school indicates, it's not actually all about the debt: I think few people would argue that being a newly-minted MD with ~$200k in student loan debt is generally preferable from a financial standpoint to being a newly minted PhD with $0 debt.

Whoa, I'd definitely argue that the MD is in pretty good shape. A career in medicine isn't going to make anyone Ken Griffin rich, but it is a career, in that you enter, you grow, develop, earn more as you go, and then you retire to West Palm. You will be able to service your debt and over the long arc of your working career you're going to come out millions ahead (I didn't do the math, so please grant me a little leeway).

Your Classics PhD has no debt, but she realistically may never get a chance to do the work she trained to do. Beyond that, even if she does get to teach, she will likely be a very poorly paid adjunct who is exploited by a university to horde even more money. That sounds like real misery.

Based on the side of this argument that abl generally occupies, I bet he meant to say that Med/debt > PhD/no debt and just made a typo.

[fliptrip]

Well now we have real problems because if debt is zero, Totes' wonderful formula becomes undefined...oh my...

[abl]

Law is not unique in requiring lots of debt. Med, architecture, business, and vet schools also tend to be incredibly expensive. And as med school indicates, it's not actually all about the debt: I think few people would argue that being a newly-minted MD with ~$200k in student loan debt is generally preferable from a financial standpoint to being a newly minted PhD with $0 debt.

Whoa, I'd definitely argue that the MD is in pretty good shape. A career in medicine isn't going to make anyone Ken Griffin rich, but it is a career, in that you enter, you grow, develop, earn more as you go, and then you retire to West Palm. You will be able to service your debt and over the long arc of your working career you're going to come out millions ahead (I didn't do the math, so please grant me a little leeway).

Your Classics PhD has no debt, but she realistically may never get a chance to do the work she trained to do. Beyond that, even if she does get to teach, she will likely be a very poorly paid adjunct who is exploited by a university to horde even more money. That sounds like real misery.

Based on the side of this argument that abl generally occupies, I bet he meant to say that Med/debt > PhD/no debt and just made a typo.

Yep, haha. That was a typo.

[totesTheGoat]

Well now we have real problems because if debt is zero, Totes' wonderful formula becomes undefined...oh my...

I noticed that, but I didn't want to write "total outlays" because it would muddle the point. I hereby define "Debt" to encompass opportunity cost and other non-debt outlays.

[js7981]

Beyond that, even if she does get to teach, she will likely be a very poorly paid adjunct who is exploited by a university to horde even more money. That sounds like real misery.

This is part of it too, that this scenario is the rule, not the exception, if you are trying to teach at the university level. This has been my experience over the last year. I got my PhD in 2015. Got hired as a 2015-16 adjunct in April 2015. My contract is nine months long and non-renewable. In short, a humanities PhD feels literally like a dead end. You do a ton of work to get to the end of it, and then you just slam up against a void.

Of course, as someone just pointed out, the legal market is oversaturated as well, and a result, a whole lot of people are going to end up underemployed or in a position they don't want. Or jobless. But it's a difference of (pretty significant) degree: Most T14 grads who do okay are able to find work (it seems to me), whereas in academia, I graduated from a top 10 program and no one in my program -- and I mean literally no one in the six years I was there -- was able to secure a tenure-track job. I know plenty of Harvard PhDs who are in the same position.

Sorry, this is a tangent, but I can't emphasize enough how bad the academic job market is. If you graduate from a T3/T4 law school, it's going to possibly be a comparable scenario for you. But if you're a T14 grad, you might be in for a bumpy ride, and nothing is guaranteed, but it seems like apples to oranges to me, when compared to academia. I'm obviously really biased here.

[fliptrip]

I graduated from a top 10 program and no one in my program -- and I mean literally no one in the six years I was there -- was able to secure a tenure-track job. I know plenty of Harvard PhDs who are in the same position.

There literally are no jobs, yet your program is undoubtedly continuing to enroll students! Amazingly, there are folks at universities even more morally suspect than law school deans.

[Otunga]

I graduated from a top 10 program and no one in my program -- and I mean literally no one in the six years I was there -- was able to secure a tenure-track job. I know plenty of Harvard PhDs who are in the same position.

There literally are no jobs, yet your program is undoubtedly continuing to enroll students! Amazingly, there are folks at universities even more morally suspect than law school deans.

Well, grad students are often instructors to the undergrads. Cheap labor.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Yeah, while I chime in on the "retake" and "don't go," the outcomes for law school are still SO MUCH BETTER than in academia.

And the lack of debt is a little misleading - first, because a lot of people end up with debt anyway (although not law school levels), and second, if you spend your 20s earning a PhD and chasing a TT job, it is REALLY fucking hard to retool, both emotionally and just the logistics of getting a job. You're overqualified and underqualified for everything both at the same time, and you've also been brainwashed into the cult that is academia.

[pterodactyls]

Not to mention academia sucks if you're trying to settle down with a SO. I know some professors who have to live in a different state M-F vs. weekends, because that's the only place they could get a job (and their SO is still working/living elsewhere). At least with law, there's a good chance you'll end up in a big city, where your SO can find work. In academia, the only job you may find could be in the middle of nowhere.

[js7981]

Yeah, while I chime in on the "retake" and "don't go," the outcomes for law school are still SO MUCH BETTER than in academia.

And the lack of debt is a little misleading - first, because a lot of people end up with debt anyway (although not law school levels), and second, if you spend your 20s earning a PhD and chasing a TT job, it is REALLY fucking hard to retool, both emotionally and just the logistics of getting a job. You're overqualified and underqualified for everything both at the same time, and you've also been brainwashed into the cult that is academia.

Yeah. I was lucky to come out with no debt, but I know plenty of people who weren't.

So yeah, law school administrators can no doubt be sleazy and exploitative, and 'retake/don't go' is still the right answer for many, if not most, prospective students. But if you do everything right in preparing for law school, and you apply yourself throughout school, you have a pretty good shot at a decent to good outcome. There are careers where that's not the case. Not sure if you guys can tell, but I am pretty psyched to finally leave academia.

[Keilz]

The answer is of course no, but amazingly, there are plenty of folks out there still doing it:

Here's the % of sticker payers at "T-10" schools per the schools' 509 reports:

Yale-40%
Harvard-52%
Stanford-52%
Chicago-22%
Columbia-52%
NYU-62%
Penn-52%
UVA-57%
Berkeley-40%
Michigan-22%

This doesn't include people who have savings. I'm living at home for three years and work full time as a paralegal, so I will have one year of tuition + col paid off.

[cavalier1138]

If you're interested in public sector work, it's also important to consider LRAP. Especially at the top 3-5 schools that do non-IBR repayment. If you're planning to do PI work and have a lower salary, you could cover much of your debt this way. But, I know this is only a consideration for a small portion of students attending law school.

yeah only learning this nuance recently... even at NYU, the LRAP doesn't actually pay any of your debt, just holds you off until the (supposed) PSLF payoff

I know I'm a little late to the party, but just to clarify this point a little bit (since I spent most of my pre-decision time poring over LRAP data)...

NYU has you on an IBR program if you're eligible for PSLF, and they still cover most of your monthly payment (all of it, if you earn less than $80k). If you are in a PI job that is not PSLF-eligible, they help you pay off the loans within 10 years in the same way that other schools do on the non-IBR system. If you transfer from the PSLF-eligible job to one that isn't (after at least three years of being on that plan), they pay out a lump sum to bring you into line with a 10-year repayment plan.

And at least at NYU (and I have to believe this is true at most of the T10), they've been very clear that in the unlikely event that PSLF were to go away, they would go back to the LRAP system they had before PSLF existed. It's not like every PI attorney was hung out to dry prior to the Obama administration.

[pterodactyls]

And at least at NYU (and I have to believe this is true at most of the T10), they've been very clear that in the unlikely event that PSLF were to go away, they would go back to the LRAP system they had before PSLF existed. It's not like every PI attorney was hung out to dry prior to the Obama administration.

Yeah most schools have some sort of guarantee like that, I know Berkeley does.

You can also google "PSLF risk" for some informative articles about the likelihood of PSLF going away. My impression was that the risk is pretty low for current borrowers.

[cavalier1138]

And at least at NYU (and I have to believe this is true at most of the T10), they've been very clear that in the unlikely event that PSLF were to go away, they would go back to the LRAP system they had before PSLF existed. It's not like every PI attorney was hung out to dry prior to the Obama administration.

Yeah most schools have some sort of guarantee like that, I know Berkeley does.

You can also google "PSLF risk" for some informative articles about the likelihood of PSLF going away. My impression was that the risk is pretty low for current borrowers.

Definitely. The way they phrased it at NYU's admitted students weekend was that the likelihood of congress voting to leave all their staffers (and every other government employee) in mountains of debt after promising that they'd be covered was very low.