Originally posted by: soccerballtux
I still want government out of the student loan and pell-grant business.
The student loan mess is a prime example of good government intentions gone horribly wrong.
Most of these student loans are little better than subprime NINJA (no income, no job or assets) loans.
Originally posted by: waggy
Originally posted by: Wheezer
on top of the fact it took him ten years to get through school.....christ he is not only a shitty student but as the case proves a shitty lawyer too.
fuck him.
who cares how long it took him. i know 2 people that have been in school around 10 years. why? they work and have a family.
to say he is a idiot because it took 10 years is retarded.
Originally posted by: piasabird
I know a little something about federal student loans. Before you can get a loan you have to review and understand how student loans work and that you are required to go through loan entrance counseling. No one enters the loan process ignorant. This is required under federal law. Student loans can not be forgiven, and bankruptcy law can not negate the requirement to repay the loan. Being in default of course will ruin your ability to get any federal financial aid unless you start making payments. This is how the system works. So dont be infantile. Your mommy will not be able to bail you out of every problem you get into.
Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
Originally posted by: piasabird
I know a little something about federal student loans. Before you can get a loan you have to review and understand how student loans work and that you are required to go through loan entrance counseling. No one enters the loan process ignorant. This is required under federal law. Student loans can not be forgiven, and bankruptcy law can not negate the requirement to repay the loan. Being in default of course will ruin your ability to get any federal financial aid unless you start making payments. This is how the system works. So dont be infantile. Your mommy will not be able to bail you out of every problem you get into.
I suspect that most students who are taking on loan debt understand that. What they don't understand is the reality of the employment market and their prospects for success. That's the problem. We've all been indoctrinated since childhood into believing that education was essentially a guarantor of at least a stable middle class lifestyle and this message is continuously reinforced everyday from multiple sources. Just read a newspaper, listen to news-talk radio, or listen to one of the President's speeches (or to that of any politician who wants to sell education as a panacea for our economic problems in order to assuage the angry masses rather than address our nation's real economic problems). The message is all around us.
Originally posted by: miniMUNCH
Originally posted by: waggy
Originally posted by: Wheezer
on top of the fact it took him ten years to get through school.....christ he is not only a shitty student but as the case proves a shitty lawyer too.
fuck him.
who cares how long it took him. i know 2 people that have been in school around 10 years. why? they work and have a family.
to say he is a idiot because it took 10 years is retarded.
10 years of high priced law school isn't stupid? Um, yes it absolutely is...
10 years of junior college is one thing... putting ~20k a year down a program for 10 years is another thing all together.
A lot of the problem is that universities and MBA/law/medical schools do lie and project this persona that 'your education' is worth 100k of debt for undergrad, or 100-300k for a MBA, JD, or MD.
Well that is horse crap... I had a work friend who got a ChemE BS from MIT, i went to a crappy Cal St. school for my ChemE BS. We compared books and course notes... wow! imagine that.... our classes used all the same books, our profs taught the same stuff.
MY BS cost me 10k total out of pocket for five years... i worked construction part time and summer internships and paid my way through college with a little tuition help from my parents (plus i was living at home).
My work friend graduated from MIT with 80k+ in debt from his undergrad experience... and i was making more money than him at the company we worked at, although he was definitely being underpaid... very smart guy.
I went back to school after working for 5 years and got a PhD in ChemE from a top 10 engineering school... I got paid 21-24k a year plus tuition while i was working on my PhD (which is a pretty standard arrangement for PhD engineering/science programs). No debt.
Some of my school friends took out max student loans every and invested them in CD's and whatnot and actually made more money on the side.
Originally posted by: Patranus
What college did Bill Gates and Steve Jobs graduate from?
Originally posted by: miniMUNCH
Some of my school friends took out max student loans every and invested them in CD's and whatnot and actually made more money on the side.
Originally posted by: RU482
is there a point where we (as a society) just say fvck em?
I mean....especially a lawyer that can't find work.
This guy has had TWO lawyer jobs since he got out of school and he quit both of them.Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
Originally posted by: RU482
is there a point where we (as a society) just say fvck em?
I mean....especially a lawyer that can't find work.
You make it sound like it's easy to find paying work and appropriate employment as an attorney. Am I wrong that the law schools have been flooding the market with a huge oversupply of attorneys for years? Or is it that you just dislike attorneys and yearn for a society where people resolve their differences with firearms?
If we were talking about a down-and-out scientist, accountant, historian, or MBA, would you feel the same way?
Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
Originally posted by: RU482
is there a point where we (as a society) just say fvck em?
I mean....especially a lawyer that can't find work.
You make it sound like it's easy to find paying work and appropriate employment as an attorney. Am I wrong that the law schools have been flooding the market with a huge oversupply of attorneys for years? Or is it that you just dislike attorneys and yearn for a society where people resolve their differences with firearms?
If we were talking about a down-and-out scientist, accountant, historian, or MBA, would you feel the same way?
Based purely on personal, anecdotal evidence, I have to disagree about JDs. Before I entered law school in 2002 I read nearly identical info about employment and salary information. My law school wasn't elite but it was considered decent (top 50 and best in the state). There was optimism that you could be at least gainfully employed once you graduated and got your license. By the end, however, I was surprised how many of my classmates were struggling to find work - any work, including a $40K state job. And this was in 2005 - I've only heard that it's gotten worse since then.Originally posted by: Evan
Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
Originally posted by: RU482
is there a point where we (as a society) just say fvck em?
I mean....especially a lawyer that can't find work.
You make it sound like it's easy to find paying work and appropriate employment as an attorney. Am I wrong that the law schools have been flooding the market with a huge oversupply of attorneys for years? Or is it that you just dislike attorneys and yearn for a society where people resolve their differences with firearms?
If we were talking about a down-and-out scientist, accountant, historian, or MBA, would you feel the same way?
It's truly intriguing that you keep posting the same stuff about the oversupply of college graduates, lawyers, etc. with absolutely zero statistics to back it up. Peruse BLS.gov because you are woefully misinformed, especially about professional certificates/degrees that are nearly always recession proof such as JD's or Engineering.
Originally posted by: Evan
It's truly intriguing that you keep posting the same stuff about the oversupply of college graduates, lawyers, etc. with absolutely zero statistics to back it up. Peruse BLS.gov because you are woefully misinformed, especially about professional certificates/degrees that are nearly always recession proof such as JD's or Engineering.
The new reality is that very few law school graduates actually make either the median or mean starting salaries, and so it is neither helpful nor accurate to describe starting lawyer salaries using those modalities. (For the Class of 2008, the median starting salary, the red line on this graph, was about $72,000 and the mean starting salary was about $92,000.) It is important for anyone considering a legal education to understand that half of all starting lawyer salaries are less than $72,000 and in fact 42% of them are between only $40,000 and $65,000.
Originally posted by: stateofbeasley
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
NALP statistics
And that's if you are lucky enough to even find a job! I know new law grads who could not find jobs and had to go into bar tending or construction work to pay the bills.
Even getting a document review job, once considered the lowest of the low, is now highly competitive.
The NALP #'s rely on self reported data, so the bi-modal distribution is likely even more dramatic than the graph represents. A lot of the unemployed fall through the cracks.
Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
That Evan would be wrong about the value of the JD really makes me further question his credibility on other topics. I've had him pegged as being a right-wing capitalism-is-good dogmatist for some time now. Evan, you've totally missed the boat on the value of the JD (7 years of college education).
Speaking from anecdotal experience (based on my having spoken to large numbers of attorneys and law students over time), we even have an oversupply of <gasp> people who want to work as patent lawyers! Not only do they need JDs, but also engineering or (preferably) advanced science degrees. What happened in that area is that many PhD scientists fled the science career graveyard for law school, creating an oversupply. A JD-PhD possesses a minimum of 11 years of college education (4 undergrad, 4 graduate which is fast, and 3 law) and more likely 12 or 13 years. A great many unhappy engineers also come to law school, which suggests that people might be unhappy in the engineering field as well.
My first-hand, second-hand, and anecdotal knowledge of the science and legal job markets and the fact that that knowledge almost completely contradicts what the media and government says is one of the factors that makes me question all of the government and media statistics about job markets in general. (Besides, it's not as though the media, politicians, and the government would ever lie to or try to mislead the public about anything, they'd never do anything like that.)
You DO see the impossibility of your last statement, don't you?Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
Originally posted by: Acanthus
The debt seems high unless he was going to a premiere school. If he was attending a premiere school he should have no trouble finding work... as a lawyer... in the United States.
Even at a Top Ten law school, you still need to graduate in the top 60% of the class to get a job at a large or a medium-sized law firm, especially today. (Earlier I read an anecdote on another forum about how even the students at the top of the class at the top schools are having a rough time now.) It's also possible to graduate from a Top Ten school with decent grades but questionable people skills and then fail your job interviews even though you have the ability to do a great job.
Originally posted by: ProfJohn
If student loans were treated like other debt the cost of school loans would go sky high and thus millions of people who do pay off their loans would suffer because of a few people who don't.Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
If student loan debt were treated like other debts that can be discharged in bankruptcy, we'd have less irresponsible lending and quite possibly a decrease in the overproduction of college graduates (which would make it easier for borrowers to repay their loans).
Originally posted by: EvanYour evidence amounts to bupkis as does your observations as your observations themselves are questionable. You may not even realize how terrible your opinions truly are, considering you are a self-admitted layman that has claimed in the past that no education is really required to understand topics that take years of actual work to process and analyze. You'll believe stats that "make sense" to you, but not stats that we know to be true. Even someone that provides their own link doesn't understand the numbers within.
Originally posted by: shiraCase 1) A person has awful people skills, fails all job interviews, and never gets a job: On what basis can we conclude that the person has "the ability to do a great job"?
Originally posted by: shira
Originally posted by: ProfJohn
If student loans were treated like other debt the cost of school loans would go sky high and thus millions of people who do pay off their loans would suffer because of a few people who don't.Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
If student loan debt were treated like other debts that can be discharged in bankruptcy, we'd have less irresponsible lending and quite possibly a decrease in the overproduction of college graduates (which would make it easier for borrowers to repay their loans).
Not to mention that affordable student loans would go extinct.
Originally posted by: BoberFett
I have to laugh every time Evan calls someone a layman. He installs video cards. Some expert.
Originally posted by: Evan
Originally posted by: stateofbeasley
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
NALP statistics
And that's if you are lucky enough to even find a job! I know new law grads who could not find jobs and had to go into bar tending or construction work to pay the bills.
Even getting a document review job, once considered the lowest of the low, is now highly competitive.
The NALP #'s rely on self reported data, so the bi-modal distribution is likely even more dramatic than the graph represents. A lot of the unemployed fall through the cracks.
Nothing about my statement was wrong; in one of the worst recessions in modern history lawyers with 0 experience out of law school (not the best law schools, either) are averaging $92K. Boo hoo. It's a surefire money-maker.