Law Schools

MSU Law School Students Don't Have Loan Money Right Now Because Of Larry Nassar & Betsy DeVos

Law school's planned merger with university has hit a wholly preventable snag.

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Quite the pair. (Photos by Scott Olson & Chip Somodevilla / Getty)

Whenever a law school opens a food bank for its students, you know there’s a serious problem.

Michigan State University Law is a couple of weeks into virtual law school right now, but has opened a small food pantry to service students and “reportedly bought several Meijer gift cards for those who need them,” according to the Lansing City Pulse.

Why are these students struggling? It all starts when you realize that MSU Law is the artist formerly known as Detroit College of Law. Detroit College was a private school that moved to Lansing in the 1990s and took on the Michigan State moniker — even though it remained a private school. This year, the university integrated the law school into the public entity.

What they forgot about was that the decades the university spent recklessly enabling Larry Nassar to sexually abuse athletes resulted in sanctions preventing the school from accessing Department of Education-backed loans for students without prior formal approval from the DOE. Hence, a law school full of students hitting the food bank.

Dean Melanie Jacobs told students in an email:

“We had been led to believe it would happen seamlessly in conjunction with our integration, so all of us at MSU are surprised by this development,” Jacobs wrote in an email last week apologizing to students for the “financial snafu.”

“But our surprise should not be your stress,” she added.

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In the meantime, MSU has temporarily waived a 7-percent interest rate on short-term loans of up to $1,500 for those struggling to make ends meet amid the delays and we hear that most students are using them. Additional short-term loans are also available for students that need more than $1,500. That’s all well and good, though it seems as though students could have just gotten a cash advance under the pre-integration financial regime meaning this waiver is less an accommodation than the bare minimum for students disadvantaged by the merger.

Which brings us to Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration Secretary of Education who could greenlight this integration and get the money flowing, but is instead focused on trying to steal public COVID funds for private schools. Even if university officials failed to alert the DOE early enough about the proposed integration — which strains credulity — the DOE knows now that there’s a problem. They know now that action could be taken to release the funds.

DeVos just isn’t doing it.

Nassar fallout delays student loans for hundreds at MSU Law [Lansing City Pulse]

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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