Law Schools

Harvard Law School Students Forced To Give 90% Of Summer Job Money Straight To School

'We'll be taking that!'

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At its most abstract, Harvard’s summer contribution policy makes some sense. Students receiving need-based grant money go out and earn decent Biglaw money for a summer, taking them out of the need-based threshold. To remedy this, the school demands a portion of these funds are paid directly as tuition. Unfortunately, this policy crumbles under the scrutiny of math and common sense.

HLS isn’t the only school to use a summer contribution policy to address grantees earning summer pay, but they are the only one we’ve heard of asking for 90 percent of student pay (over the meager $8,200 summer living allowance — try to make that go 12 weeks in NYC). This money is deducted from the next year’s financial aid, requiring the student to either suck it up and just get by on less or take out an external loan. And that means students taking this financial aid package end up paying more for a year at HLS than students covering it through trust fund:

It’s not clear whether or not Harvard is aware of how taxes work. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a not-for-profit entity sitting on a $40B endowment. But that summer associate money is taxed at an annualized rate meaning the student doesn’t really have it in hand. So the school has taken away $32K worth of costs and told the student to cover it with the $32K they don’t actually have until filing next year’s taxes.

Speaking of math, do you think students can just work more and get around this? Nope! The more money they make at summer jobs actually leaves them worse off when all is said and done. Working 8 weeks v. 10 weeks earns a student $7,308 more in gross income, but leaves them with $300 less after the summer contribution and grant readjustment are finished.

And that’s what’s worse than the math not adding up: this policy gets all the incentives wrong. The point of offering need-based grants is — one would hope — getting students who can’t otherwise afford a Harvard Law degree into Harvard Law degree jobs. So incentivizing low-paying work, shorter summers, or foregoing summer work altogether runs counter to the whole mission. Maybe the goal of getting these students going on long-term Biglaw careers requires that they technically end up paying a few grand less than Lord Fauntleroy but that seems like a small price to pay.

Set a lower contribution percentage, keep the existing grant amounts but convert contributions and readjustments to loans they can pay out over the course of a career, and ensure that there’s only marginal gains to working a longer or more lucrative summer.

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Or, better yet, just take the $15K loss out of your $40B endowment and consider it a “contribution” to the future careers of these students.

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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