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I don't get their hand-picking of a woman who went to law school and ran up a 100K+ debt and then never even tried to pass the bar or worked with what she learn

I don't get their hand-picking of a woman who went to law school and ran up a 100K+ debt and then never even tried to pass the bar or worked with what she learned. I get that the tuition was inflated because of the increased demand created by easy loans that have the ironic intention of making education more affordable, but this doesn't sound like a case that warrants a lot of pity.

graeme 11y ago
This is pretty common in the law school domain. People take the degree, realize that they'd be miserable as a lawyer, decide to finish the degree because of sunk costs, and then don't practice. Common to end up with 200K+ debt. It's a real mess.
- graeme 11y ago
  Edit: forgot one major element. A lot of schools have such poor placement that their unemployment rate is significantly worse than the national average. This is all hidden on the front end by school marketing and the age old idea that law school is the ticket to the upper middle class (used to be, isn't now). There are great tools now to see how a school performs, but they've only been around a couple years. A lot of graduates who enrolled about 4-5 years ago found out they're more or less unemployable as lawyers, and it's not even worth taking the bar.
otterley 11y ago
As a law-school graduate who did pass the California State Bar but is not in active practice, I sympathize with her. Our culture portrays law school as a path to an interesting job with great pay and fine suits, but in practice, law practice can be a dull, soul-crushing career with a high drug and alcohol abuse rate. One of the clerks at a Prestigious Court at which I interned one semester even said to me once, "you're really good at technology. Why are you here?" And most attorneys, despite paying over $90k just in tuition for private law schools (which make up the majority of law schools), don't even make a six-figure salary. Sure, if you graduate from a top-tier university or in the top 10% of your class at a second-tier university, you might get a job at a Big Firm making $165k/year in exchange for 100-hour work weeks, but the rest of us don't even cross the 6-figure mark. The salary curve looks like a rollercoaster elevation with a big bump on the left and a little bump on the right. A camel's back, if you will. Florida Coastal, BTW, isn't even on the map in terms of law school ratings. It might as well be the University of Phoenix. If the subject in this story is going to make it, she's basically going to have to run her own practice and hustle for clients -- that is, if they even educated her well enough to pass the state Bar. And that's rather difficult to do if you're ill and possibly taking care of children. In short: I returned to my technology career after an expensive sabbatical in law school. I am still mired in debt almost 9 years later, but I probably earn more now than at least half my graduating class does today. I cannot declare bankruptcy and rid myself of student loans like I would have been able to 20 years ago (which, BTW, helped keep tuition in check and abusive loans relatively rare). But at least I'm lucky enough to be able to pay them off.
kolbe 11y ago
You act like it's carelessness on her part. The bar exam is usually paid for by an employer (exam and study materials are very expensive), and she couldn't find any employer who would be willing to accommodate her illness and her desire to help with her parents' illnesses. So, even if she self-financed it, there aren't great prospects of being hired anyway.
barrkel 11y ago
OTOH, creating large lifetime financial obligations on the basis of poor decision-making by people who are by definition immature, seems like a set-up for indentured servitude. Part of the point of using debt to fund education is to improve economic efficiency - ideally courses that students can't follow through to profitable conclusion wouldn't be taken. However, young people aren't necessarily sufficiently rational actors, and impairing young people's lives with debt they can't repay is probably not in the greater social interest.

graeme 11y ago

This is pretty common in the law school domain. People take the degree, realize that they'd be miserable as a lawyer, decide to finish the degree because of sunk costs, and then don't practice. Common to end up with 200K+ debt. It's a real mess.

graeme 11y ago
Edit: forgot one major element. A lot of schools have such poor placement that their unemployment rate is significantly worse than the national average. This is all hidden on the front end by school marketing and the age old idea that law school is the ticket to the upper middle class (used to be, isn't now). There are great tools now to see how a school performs, but they've only been around a couple years. A lot of graduates who enrolled about 4-5 years ago found out they're more or less unemployable as lawyers, and it's not even worth taking the bar.

otterley 11y ago

As a law-school graduate who did pass the California State Bar but is not in active practice, I sympathize with her. Our culture portrays law school as a path to an interesting job with great pay and fine suits, but in practice, law practice can be a dull, soul-crushing career with a high drug and alcohol abuse rate. One of the clerks at a Prestigious Court at which I interned one semester even said to me once, "you're really good at technology. Why are you here?" And most attorneys, despite paying over $90k just in tuition for private law schools (which make up the majority of law schools), don't even make a six-figure salary. Sure, if you graduate from a top-tier university or in the top 10% of your class at a second-tier university, you might get a job at a Big Firm making $165k/year in exchange for 100-hour work weeks, but the rest of us don't even cross the 6-figure mark. The salary curve looks like a rollercoaster elevation with a big bump on the left and a little bump on the right. A camel's back, if you will. Florida Coastal, BTW, isn't even on the map in terms of law school ratings. It might as well be the University of Phoenix. If the subject in this story is going to make it, she's basically going to have to run her own practice and hustle for clients -- that is, if they even educated her well enough to pass the state Bar. And that's rather difficult to do if you're ill and possibly taking care of children. In short: I returned to my technology career after an expensive sabbatical in law school. I am still mired in debt almost 9 years later, but I probably earn more now than at least half my graduating class does today. I cannot declare bankruptcy and rid myself of student loans like I would have been able to 20 years ago (which, BTW, helped keep tuition in check and abusive loans relatively rare). But at least I'm lucky enough to be able to pay them off.

kolbe 11y ago

You act like it's carelessness on her part. The bar exam is usually paid for by an employer (exam and study materials are very expensive), and she couldn't find any employer who would be willing to accommodate her illness and her desire to help with her parents' illnesses. So, even if she self-financed it, there aren't great prospects of being hired anyway.

barrkel 11y ago

OTOH, creating large lifetime financial obligations on the basis of poor decision-making by people who are by definition immature, seems like a set-up for indentured servitude. Part of the point of using debt to fund education is to improve economic efficiency - ideally courses that students can't follow through to profitable conclusion wouldn't be taken. However, young people aren't necessarily sufficiently rational actors, and impairing young people's lives with debt they can't repay is probably not in the greater social interest.