Posted on 10/06/2014 8:20:46 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
The question, "Is that degree worth it?" is coming up a lot more often these days. There's little question how "Lisa S." would answer.
Forbes.com tells the story of Lisa (her full name's not given), who's a 39-year-old Minnesota lawyer making about $20,000 a year and on public assistance. She is $350,000 in debt and realizes she'll probably die before paying it back.
Lisa started out studying at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, graduating with under $25,000 in student loans that she paid off in two years. The problems began when she moved to California for a master's degree at the University of Southern California, hoping that it would open up new jobs. When it didn't, she sought out Pepperdine Law School, exiting with more than $275,000 in loans.
A single mother, she took another loan to help study for the bar, then had to take the bar again when she moved back to Minnesota, where the cost of living is lower.
(Excerpt) Read more at bizjournals.com ...
Most people who enroll in law school are greatly overestimating their future earnings.
Without a picture it is difficult to determine her possible earnings.
Logical Seven Point solution to the student loan crisis:
Yes, the taxpayer takes a 30% hit up front to liquidate this crisis, but that is far better than continuing to grow this monster.
Same income level as her yet she’s on welfare and we’re paying for it. Lovely.
Yup, another over-schooled, under educated, liberal dumbass. Wish she would have stayed at home in Cali. Minnesota has waay too many of them already!
I just cannot be in favor of “forgiving” these debts due to the stupidity of the debtors.
And this Lisa, she is likely to be on public assistance regardless of her degrees.
I struggle with seeing her as the victim.
Perhaps if students would not go to schools that they cannot reasonably afford, those schools would be forced to create more affordable programs.
Just a few thoughts.
It didn’t say she was from Cali...she started in MN, went to CA and then moved back to MN...you can keep your liberal trash...we have enough home grown and dregs from the other 49 thank you very much.
Since your first point suggests that you're doing this after the fact for pre-existing student debt, an insuperable problem is that you can't legally execute most of your plan, as you'd be forcing parties to accept contractual terms that they may not want to accept.
You can't force the colleges to assume debt they never signed on for in the first place.
You can't cancel degrees of folks who don't pay their debts unless that was a pre-exiting contractual term between them and the college issuing the degree.
You can't attach the assets of a college or university for failure to pay a debt to the government they never voluntarily, contractually entered into in the first place.
This is something that could possibly be legally permissible moving forward, but there's already a trillion dollars worth of student debt, and your “plan” offers nothing to ameliorate that problem.
sitetest
Check out the data from Salary.com http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Attorney-I-Salary-Details-55442-Minneapolis-MN.aspx
The median Attorney I (entry level attorney) in MN makes $85K per year. The lowest 10th percentile lawyer makes $65. The question should be why is the lady making half of what the lowest 10th percentile of lawyers in her town are making? This is not an education/cost problem.
It does not look like the author of this article explored the details of this story. With zero scholarships and grants, according to Google, the cost of Pepperdine Law School - apparently a top rated schools - is currently $78K per year. Where does the $275K come from? Does it include interest? What did this young lady do during her summers? How come she went to Pepperdine instead of University of Minnesota Law School where the cost is $59K per year? By my math that is roughly $19K per year difference?
Why would anybody hire a lawyer who was so clueless about her own finances?
Because there’s so many of them in the marketplace, the average income of a lawyer in Minnesota is $36,000.
No..
1) Get government OUT of student loans
2) let the private sector figure it out.
There is the fix to the problem.
She was living in California and she may have wanted to remain in California and to practice law there. If so, then it wouldn't make sense for her to attend the University of Minnesota Law School.
Minnesota's usually considered to have a much better law school than Pepperdine, BTW.
Anything is possible under the law. Bankruptcy does all sorts of “contract cancellation” action, and see that the government has the power to force people to buy a product, as long as the law is styled or disguised as a tax.
It’s also possible she applied to MN law, and was rejected.
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