NYU LAW SUCKS Forum

[Stinson]

It is sort of wrong to hold yourself out as the "public interest" alternative to other similarly ranked schools, and then basically to operate as a profit machine for your top administrators and professors. One of the constant complaints about elite schools is that the debt burden makes it impossible to sustain low paying public interest work. Whether that's actually true is another matter.

It's also just fucking hypocritical. You 0Ls will know what I'm talking about when you get there and these "poor" lawprofs are joking about how everyone in the room is going to work for big evil corporate law firms- and it turns out these guys pull in huge salaries and live in apartments you'll never be able to afford. Or some of the libertarian professors that rail against government intervention and subsidy but feed off the teat.

Eh. Lots of NYU grads are PI-or-bust and use LRAP. And I never had a law professor at NYU claim he or she was "poor." Quite the opposite, more often they'd joke about how we were supporting their lifestyle.

I don't love it, but the cost issue is more systemic than this. Again, if NYU charges the same tuition as every other top school, then why does it matter what they spend their money on? It would be different if they were particularly gouging people, but they're just playing the same game as everyone else, and are just as culpable as everyone else for the state of things.

Just to address the LRAP thing real quickly (because overall I agree that NYU is still better than schools that fleece their students and offer nothing in return) after Obama took office and revised IBR, NYU overhauled their generous LRAP to put the vast majority of payments on the federal dime. The result was to switch between an HYS style LRAP that pays as you go and offers students more flexibility to one in which NYU essentially makes IBR/PSLF payments on behalf of the students. (In fairness, Columbia and Chicago did the same, with the only difference being that Chicago was brazen enough to actually say it made it's LRAP program better than all others.)

That works out if you do come straight out and work in an IBR eligible job for ten straight years, but for many people it is way less flexible than what NYU used to have. Not a huge deal, but I think NYU could do more, especially as LRAP eligible jobs right out of law school are incredibly rare right now. Just saying.

NYU still pays down your debt on a pro-rated basis if you leave before ten years. They made a big deal of saying that no one will be worse off than they were under the old program, and from what I've read and heard that is almost always the case, maybe just always full stop.

Fair enough. Wasn't aware of all the rules. Like I said, I don't mean to get too down on NYU whatever the shenanigans because they do right by most of the students.

[you'rethemannowdawg]

Just to address the LRAP thing real quickly (because overall I agree that NYU is still better than schools that fleece their students and offer nothing in return) after Obama took office and revised IBR, NYU overhauled their generous LRAP to put the vast majority of payments on the federal dime. The result was to switch between an HYS style LRAP that pays as you go and offers students more flexibility to one in which NYU essentially makes IBR/PSLF payments on behalf of the students. (In fairness, Columbia and Chicago did the same, with the only difference being that Chicago was brazen enough to actually say it made it's LRAP program better than all others.)

This isn't quite true. Columbia offers 2 LRAP choices. One of them is tied to IBR and the other is based on a standard 10-year repayment plan. The IBR option has a higher income eligibility cap than the other.