Damn Debt

jd2b recently linked to some uplifting thoughts about the debt involved in law school. First, the title of "The Indentured Generation" pretty much sums it up: People are going deeper and deeper into debt, which then limits the choices they make in their lives. The best thing about this is that the demographic hardest-hit by this phenomenon is, not surprisingly, the group of people w/the fewest resources to begin with:

Students who graduate with the highest levels of credit-card debt also have the highest levels of loan debt and are more likely to have attended expensive four-year colleges and be from low-income families. This suggests that they're either using their credit cards to supplement their loans for educational expenses or for the higher level of personal expenditures that are the norm at institutions geared toward the wealthy.

Gotta love those "institutions geared toward the wealthy." And if that wasn't enough to shock you silly and make you immediately write your law school to withdraw this fall, there's more. Fun.

Finally, on a related note, check out this gem from The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Four-year colleges have increased their financial-aid offerings in the past decade, but students with the highest incomes have received the largest increases, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Education.

Sounds fair to me. Not. So if we're going to continue stacking the deck so that the rich can just get richer, does this mean the poor will just eat cake?

Posted May 2, 2003 12:51 PM | law school