Loans, Leaving Students, and Lower Salaries: The Law School Problem

"Law School Loses Luster as Debts Mount and Salaries Stagnate." The headline says it all. This is the unfortunate reality that law schools have met.

In the past few months, I've shared many articles and breaking news pieces about the plight of our nation's law schools and law students, particularly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Law school tuition is skyrocketing, causing student loan debt to skyrocket along with it, while post-graduation starting salaries fail to keep pace with inflation.

During the pandemic, law school applications also rose to unprecedented highs, leaving more students vying for even fewer spots. Now, students are graduating into crippling debt with fewer job prospects. What used to be a guarantee for financial wellness and stability has now become an insurmountable burden. But it shouldn't be that way.

The article features the University of Miami School of Law. This is how the article opens: "Recent graduates of the University of Miami School of Law who used federal loans borrowed a median of $163,000. Two years later, half were earning $59,000 or less. That’s the biggest gap between debt and earnings among the top 100 law schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data found."

The portrait these numbers paint is not uncommon, nor is it restricted to the University of Miami. Anthony Alfieri, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, said that law schools "foster this kind of cruel optimism” in students. "Law schools encourage a kind of magical thinking in order to keep the lights on."

As The Wall Street Journal writes, "Federal data suggest the value of a law degree from nonelite schools has diminished." According to data from the Department of Education, only students from a very select group of the nation's top law schools earn salaries greater than their debts after graduation. These schools include Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Even students from highly-ranked law schools in the Top 30, such as George Washington University and Emory University, are increasingly borrowing more than they will earn.

But the ability to pay off one's student loans and earn a comfortable income should not be restricted to only graduates of the most elite law schools. It is not that our recent law grads are not talented enough or bright enough to make more; it is that tuition increases are becoming unsustainable and ballooning to unethical levels. It is also the responsibility of these higher education institutions to counsel and support their students in the face of these ugly realities, not to encourage them to borrow more money.

If this trend continues, I believe our nation's law schools will find themselves on the other side of the curve, their esteemed reputations tarnished by tuition greed. Law schools should help students of all backgrounds climb out of student loan debt, not get buried in it deeper. We will always need good lawyers, but what will we do when our best students decide they can no longer afford to become lawyers?