In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.
But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.
“Applicant has not made any substantial payments on the loans,” the judges wrote in a terse decision and an unusual rejection of the committee’s recommendation. “Applicant has not presently established the character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law.”
Again it would appear that the loan industry largely has itself to blame here – why did they allow him to keep taking out loans when he was not paying his existing ones?
Most student loans do not require payment while the student is still in school. So they rack up each year. Form the “praise for his persistence” I gather it took him longer than usual to get thru law school, so his debt may be more than usual.
Now he is in a catch-22 situation –
can’t pay off the loans til he gets a job, can’t get a job til he passes the bar,
can’t pass the bar til he pays off the loans.
Sad, that anyone should owe more than
than they expect to make in a 2 years time, when they finish school, but it happens.
Student debt is toxic, especially in large doses.
I graduated with what seemed like a huge amount of debt at the time(although it was a tiny fraction of what this guy incurred). My wife and I paid it off five years early (one of the best things I ever did). (No, I don’t pretend to have any great financial savvy – or I would not have taken on the debt in the first place. My wife is much smarter about these things than I am).
Among the problems: This guy should have taken some time between degrees, and paid down at least some of his undergraduate debt before continuing.
He took too many degrees. He should have stopped after the JD, and never bothered with the masters. You don’t need the latter to practice law. If you want to get that masters, do it later.
Students need to think about how they are going to pay the loan back before they take the money. There was a piece on NPR last night about student loans. It featured someone in Orlando who had incurred a fantastic amount of debt to get a degree in music therapy at a private university, and then seemed surprised that her loan payments were more than her salary. The problem exists in the legal profession as well. Many many lawyers make far less than most imagine (if you doubt me, see what the State of Florida pays its lawyers these days).
I was lucky. I did not do too much damage to myself when I was young and financially ignorant. I hope to instill a little common sense in my kids. We need to do more to do so with all students thinking about student loans.
I’ve sometimes wondered if one couldn’t commit to paying an added increment on taxation for the rest of one’s life instead of taking out loans. The loan option would still be there for those who wished to be self-financing.
I suppose, though, as Franz’s anecdote illustrates, those who would take advantage would be those who ended up being paid at the lower end of the scale and even a lifetime of additional taxes wouldn’t redeem the debt (unless set absurdly high).
When I was first licensed to practice law in 1987, the attorney who “interviewed” me on behalf the Character and Fitness Committee asked me exactly one question: “Do you understand that you have to pay off your student loans?”
Of course, in 1987, after having spent seven years at the public Big Ten college/law school in my state, my student loans were a total of $10,500…which was far less than a year of my starting salary. Although the loan was on a ten year repayment schedule, I was able comfortably to pay it off in two or three years.
Alas, things have changed in the law biz, and the education biz. Nowadays, the costs of law school are much higher. My annual budget for law school in the mid 80s, incl. tuition, books and living expenses was $6,000.00 year (I confess to having led a Thoreauvian existence, however). They screamed when, during my last year of law school, the tuition for professional students in the next academic year was raised to–$1,000 a semester. Now, the annual in-state TUITION at my old law school is $33,000.00.
Meanwhile. starting law salaries are much more spread out…there are truly winners and losers as far as compensation goes. If a student has to take out educational loans now, he/she is making a big gamble. If the law student finished in the top 10% at a prestigious scholol, and works for a major law firm,the loans will likely be, at most, a moderate burden. He/She won’t have a life, but the student loans won’t be the cause. On the other hand, if a student graduates at a more modest place in the class, or attends a less-well esteemed law school, his/her student loans may set the tone for his/her financial affairs for most, if not all, of his life. This is a calculation which is beyond the ability of most 21 year olds to accurately calculate.
We had a fairly robust conversation at the Ministry Committee in Columbus on the impact of student debt on new ordinands, especially as they enter the deployment system. Seminary tuition is modest in comparison to tuition for medical or law schools, but lingering debt from undergraduate studies, a not-unusual $25,000 – $30,000 additional from three years of seminary, and a projected full-time ministry compensation beginning at best in the low 40’s and pretty much topping out (except for a very few anomalies) in the 70K range, and you’re talking about a life framed by financial pressures. There’s an article in the current Living Church about efforts that SIM (Society for the Increase of the Ministry) is attempting with the seminaries, but their support is down right now as well, so it’s a cascading effect: fewer scholarships and grants mean more loans . . . .
Bruce Robison
An additional compounding factor in the case of clergy is, as I understand it from a study done by the Alban Institute about 15 years ago, most clergy see very little real (post-inflation) growth in their salaries after about five years in the priesthood, unless they are in that small group of clergy who fill fairly large parishes, cathedrals, or are on the staff (incl. the episcopate) of the wealthy diocese. This situation should be contrasted with attorneys, most of whom do see post-inflation growth in their compensation for the first 20-30 years of their careers. Physicians, esp. primary care doctors, are in the middle (as I understand from reported data, and know first-hand from being married to one throughout her career), in that they don’t have quite the post-inflation increases of lawyers….but there compensation generally starts out higher.
Kevin: I have seen a similar increase in tuition at my law school. When I started (in 1986), tuition was under $8,000 a year. I was offered a scholarship, which made it possible for me to go. I elected not to attend another (more prestigious, but much more expensive) school to which I had been admitted. The tuition differential (especially with the scholarship) and the difference in cost of living between the two locations were substantial factors. I also led a fairly frugal existence, which I’m not sure the subject of the article above did. After all, London has got to be one of the most expensive cities in the world in which to live and study.
Clergy are another issue. Although there is a huge discrepancy in what lawyers can make, even right out of the blocks, I suspect it is pretty much a given that most clergy will be living on modest compensation. There probably ought to be a system by which each diocese supports a major portion of its seminarians’ education. If there are no funds at the diocesan level, perhaps there ought not to be as many seminarians.
I do agree with most of the comments about the callousness of the lenders & the outrageous increase in tuition costs, but no one seems to look at the person himself. I didn’t sit in on the bar association interviews or look at his application materials or read the official decision but the size of his loan may speak to his character more than the actual amount. The NYT articles praises his perserverance but what about the lack of prudence? Why didn’t he take time off school to get work? Warning bells should have kicked in when his loans were nearing $100,000. A prudent person would have heard them. I know lots of people who got their law degrees at night & held full time jobs. In fact, some employers help with the tuition. The decision of the bar association may have been spot on. Also, when I was borrowing money to go to graduate school in my later 30’s I always knew exactly how much my debts were. I didn’t have to request someone to figure them out for me. There is a lot more to this story.