Good Grief: These Law School 'Debt Per Job' Numbers Are Ugly
For every job obtained by a graduate of these law schools, an extraordinary debt burden has been accrued.
The legal education industry is such a reliable source of gloomy trend stories that by now there is an understandable tendency to just tune it all out. However, once in a while, someone will rearrange familiar information in a new so way that it has the capacity to startle. Such is the case with some law school “debt per job” statistics shared with us by our friends at M7 Financial.
When researching their Credit Ratings for Law Schools report, M7 became interested in analyzing the data for some of the less prominent law schools. According to M7, “What we found shocked us.” A look at the numbers shows this is not hyperbole.
To wit: there appear to be five law schools who in 2013 produced in aggregate almost 1,500 graduates that collectively borrowed an estimated $200 million in student loans to pursue their studies. However, only about 500 of these graduates, or 35%, appeared to have full-time long term jobs that required a J.D. within 9 months of graduation. That is approximately $389,000 of student debt for each employed graduate.
The calculations here are straightforward and based on public information (including data reported to the ABA and U.S. News). Let us take, for example, Thomas Jefferson School of Law:
Size of 2013 TJLS Graduating Class: 293
% Employed 9 Months After Graduation: 41% (Estimated # of Graduates Employed: 120)
% of Graduates That Borrowed: 91.1% (Estimated # of Graduates That Borrowed: 267)
Average Amount Borrowed: $172,445
Estimated Aggregate Amount Borrowed: $46,029,537
Estimated Aggregate Amount Borrowed/Number of Employed: $383,164
It’s worth saying again: behind every job attained by a TJLS grad (using the law school-friendly metric which includes all those so-called “JD Advantage” positions), there looms $383,164 worth of debt. Other examples:
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North Carolina Central Law School: $183,234 per job
Whittier College: $442,189
Golden Gate University: $460,870
Florida Coastal School of Law: $400,301
This situation is not just “unfortunate” or “imperfect.” This is insane.
Coincidentally, today’s Washington Post includes a germane op-ed by one David Lat. Lat’s piece makes a compelling case that the blame for this state of affairs does not lie solely with the schools, but that the federal government also has a lot to answer for. The government “subsidizes the production of even more lawyers by lending the cost of attendance to basically anyone who decides to enroll in law school, without regard for the quality of the school or the job prospects of its graduates.”
We will have the “debt-per-job” stats for all schools reflected in our forthcoming 2015 ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings, so stay tuned.
Law school is way too expensive. And only the federal government can fix that. [Washington Post]
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