The staggering debt burden taken on by law students to finance their degrees is hardly a secret. ATL features a seemingly endless parade of stories about law grads who are struggling to get out from under the loan obligations for a degree that, in many cases, they aren’t even using. But taking a step back, how does law student borrowing compare with that of medical students, MBAs, or other graduate programs? (Spoiler: Not well.)
NPR recently pulled some comparative data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study. Only 16% of law students graduate debt-free, a figure that looks even worse compared to the 45% of unencumbered MBAs and 69% of debt-free PhDs. In fact, according to this data, the median debt for PhDs is zero.
Check out the NPR/NPSAS findings: