The Administration Gets it Right: Boalt Won't See Further Fee Increases this Year

Dean Edl*y just sent an email to the student body stating that we'll all be getting roughly $1100 in scholarship money to offset the 9.6% increase agreed on by the UC Regents last week.

Edl*y wrote that the increase came too late and that the school would be able to absorb the rise for this year. He also predicts that UC tuition will continue to rise over the years as the state continues to defund the system.

Here's the full text of the letter:

Dear Students:
I am sure that many of you have heard about the recent fee increase approved by the Regents last week. At their meeting on Thursday, the Regents voted to increase system-wide fees for all students, including professional students, by $1,068 for the coming year. The Regents concluded, and I agree, that the budget deal struck in Sacramento left the UC system with no alternative. The state's retreat from higher education continues what has become a sad trend in recent years, not just here in California, but across the nation.

This state's retreat has been most acute at the professional schools. Bitter though this pill is for us to swallow, it does have one benefit: although we have less remaining state subsidy, we will have more financial flexibility, and more autonomy than do other academic units within the U.C. system.

I am choosing to exercise this autonomy in the coming year to effectively reverse this last minute fee increase for all three of our JD classes, including our new admits. Each JD student will receive an immediate, automatic scholarship in the amount of $1,068. The tuition increase is just too much, and it came too late. I am optimistic that the added costs to the law school of providing this financial aid can be offset by increased alumni donations as the economy recovers, and by continuing efforts to hold down less-than-essential expenses.

You may be wondering what, if anything, this portends for the future of fees here at UC broadly and at Berkeley Law School in particular. Unfortunately, it is likely that tuition at the University of California will continue to increase in the coming years. However, I am confident that total fees at Berkeley Law will not need to increase any faster than they do at other top-tier law schools in the years ahead. By our calculations—and murky disclosures make comparisons tricky—our tuition next year (net of the new automatic scholarship referenced above) will be comparable to those at the Universities of Michigan and Virginia and below those of many of our private competitors.

Obviously, I cannot make any guarantees about future tuition levels. What I can guarantee you is that Berkeley Law will remain a financially-competitive, intellectually-luminous, professionally cutting-edge, culturally-superior, and all around fabulous law school community in the decades to come. Count on it.

Maybe this was an easy decision, but it was still the right one.

Let's Talk About Debt

I've been meaning to write a post about this for a while, but thinking about my impending debt gives me a major case of the sads. Like death or what my scrambled eggs actually are, I find life is more enjoyable if I don't think about it too much.

But graduation approaches and the gig is up. And I face an important choice.

As some commenters have noted, my class (the class of 2012) will be the last Boalt class to enjoy a "pure" LRAP program. By pure, I mean not dependent on new federal programs like IBR and PSLF. So on the pure LRAP program, Boalt would help me make my loan payments for my law school debt, up to $100,000, so long as I do approved legal work and am within a certain income level. In ten years, my $100,000 of debt would be paid. If I left the program at any time (for a private sector job, presumably), I would then be on my own to make payments, but my debt would be smaller, because of all those LRAP payments already made.

The problem, of course, is that I won't have $100,000 of debt. I consider myself lucky because I don't have significant undergraduate debt. And I guess I'll be "lucky" to escape Boalt with a bill around $160,000... errrr make that $170,000. But for LRAP, that's not a pretty scenario.

While LRAP would make payments for $100,000 of my debt, I would need to make payments on the remaining $70,000 or so. The nice lady in financial aid handed me kleenex as she explained this to me. It works out to be about $800 a month.

I've done some math, and this is definitely possible. But it would probably only be possible if I left the bay area for a better cost of living, and if I were lucky enough to land a public sector job paying in the $40-$50,000 range.

The alternative option for me (and the only option for the classes of 2013 and beyond) is to use IBR or PSLF in combination with LRAP (if I'm doing approved legal work). This means I enroll in either IBR or PSLF, which both allow you to make very small monthly payments on your loans. If I'm doing public sector legal work, LRAP will make those tiny payments for me. Which means no monthly payments! Woo! But it also means my debt is rapidly getting bigger over time. And if I leave PSLF at any point, I will have to pay off a lot more debt than when I started. No bueno my friends.

I'm pretty committed to a career in the public sector, but no level of commitment can make me feel totally comfortable with eliminating any private sector work as an option for me in the next ten years. Not to mention the concern that IBR and PLSF could be eliminated in this spending-cuts-only political climate. Dean Edley told some concerned students that he thinks the elimination of the programs is unlikely. I'm sure he'll forgive me for being skeptical. Would we be grandfathered in? I have no idea. Do you?

None of this is to whine. I know so many of my classmates who have it worse. And I'm really grateful that there is something in place that makes it possible for me to pursue a public sector career. I chose this path. Financial cushion is something I knew I was giving up in exchange for doing the kind of work I find fulfilling. But the two options certainly don't leave me feeling at ease. In case you're interested, I'm leaning towards traditional LRAP (and if any graduates have wisdom to share, I will gladly take it).

Future Boalt students pursuing public sector work won't even have my daunting choice to make. They have to use the IBR/PLSF + LRAP option. That's something I hope incoming public sector students are aware of.

Regents Hike Tuition by 9.6%

This is on top of an 8% hike that was announced in the Spring.

It's not clear how this will affect Boalt students because as the Administration has said they are trying to come up with ways to mitigate the raise, but hasn't specified anything.

The timing of the raise is inappropriate because it has given only a month's notice to students coming back in the Fall and the raise was also made at a time when it is difficult to organize a response from students.

California's budget priorities are completely skewed- the death penalty costs us $184M a year and the prison budget for this year was over 7% of the state's total spending. In fact, in the 2011-12 budget, prison spending increased 2.3% while higher education spending decreased by 11.7%. Total statewide expenditure is down 6.1% over last year.

Of course, there's been no change in California's minimal property taxes.

As we get more information on how this will change Boalt's tuition this year and beyond we'll let you know.

Bad People and Fools

Below, I have excerpted a comment "ibz" posted in the bar exam thread. The comment makes a great starting point for discussion, but first, the cliff notes: law schools (including, perhaps, our very own) have been inflating their stats on employment rates and average starting salaries. Many prospective law students do not fully comprehend this situation until they enroll, pay three years of tuition, graduate, and find themselves un- or under-employed. Recently (and rather predictably, given the particulars of their education and their relative idleness), unemployed alumni of Thomas Jefferson School of Law sued their alma mater, alleging various versions of detrimental reliance and fraud.

Here is ibz's take:

I had only skimmed the coverage of the newish lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson School of Law, but David Lat pointed out today that the complaint was filed by a Boalt grad named Brian Procel. Cool.

The complaint is pretty detailed and worth reading, if you are interested in this sort of thing. My own intuition (moral, not legal) is that schools are bad if they misrepresent what happens to their graduates, but students are foolish if they rely on what schools say about employment statistics. Caveat discipulo, so to speak. (Third declension, right? It's been a while.)

My intuition is in line with ibz's. Absent other strong feelings I will root for co-Boaltie Procel as an extension of principle, but my enthusiasm wanes when it comes to the merits. The world is full of crookely people who will do crookely things to relieve other people of money. I can think of no good reason to believe that the individuals who run our academic institutions are magically above the fray when it comes to those impulses. But--as ibz points out--neither should prospective law students: if it sounds true good to be true, it isn't. I don't know what "caveat discipulo" means, but I have yet to be convinced that caveat emptor shouldn't apply here.

All of that is why I have a hard time getting fired up about this issue. I feel for the students who feel afraid for their futures and more than a little duped (most them went to law school to AVOID the school of hard knocks, only to graduate with an advanced degree) but I'm not yet convinced they are blameless enough to be entitled to a refund. A jury, I suppose, could see things differently.

The Futurue of LRAP?

Dean Edl*y sent out this email earlier today:

Dear Friends,

I recently received a petition signed by several Boalt students concerning the state of Boalt’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program (or LRAP). Realizing how important LRAP is to the School and to many of you, I write to share some of my current thinking about LRAP in the context of the University’s budget turmoil.

First, let me offer some background. Approximately fifteen years ago, Boalt established LRAP to enable our graduates to pursue careers in public service by assisting them with loan repayment. As Boalt tuition increased with state budget cuts, funding for LRAP similarly increased, most notably in 2006 (my second year here) when it was substantially reformed. Under the original guidelines, only a relative handful of students participated in the program because the parameters were so conservative. This reflected the lower tuition, and the consequently modest typical debt loads of students but also the far smaller Boalt budget, of which tuition revenue is by far the largest component. Under this revised LRAP, graduates became eligible for up to 100% repayment assistance on as much as $100,000 of law school debt. For students working in qualifying public sector employment, the result could be a $0 out-of-pocket debt repayment for LRAP participants as Boalt absorbed the tab on the amortizing loans.

Although this revised program was one of the most generous in the country, two developments prompted a further modification of LRAP in 2009. The first was rising tuition rates across the country at both colleges and professional schools, including here at Boalt. With 1Ls arriving with already significant undergraduate debt-burdens and 3Ls leaving with even larger ones, it quickly became clear that even our commitment to repay $100,000 of law school debt may not be enough to assist Boalt graduates interested in pursuing public interest careers.

At the same time, however, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 (CCRAA) created both the Income Based Repayment (IBR) program and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program that provided a way to address this challenge in a fiscally sound fashion. Under these two programs, any graduate who enrolls in IBR for their federal loans will make minimum monthly payments based on their income. And for those who consolidate or have all of their federal loans with the Direct Loan Program and make 120 scheduled monthly payments while working for qualified public interest employers, their remaining loan balance will be forgiven by the federal government. Based in large part on Boalt student input in 2008, we revised LRAP to take advantage of these benefits: Graduates pursuing a career in public sector work could consolidate law school as well as college loans and elect IBR. Berkeley would then provide assistance with making all or a prorated amount of IBR payments for ten years, at which time the remaining debt balance would be forgiven.

In my judgment, the move to IBR seems undeniably a win-win for both Boalt and our students.[1] Graduates can now pursue a career in public interest work regardless of the size of their law school and college debt burdens. Meanwhile, Boalt benefits by making the most efficient use of scarce financial aid resources, freeing up more money for other important grants and fellowships. That so many of our competitors have since emulated the manner in which we have integrated LRAP and IBR/PSLF seems to confirm the wisdom of this strategy.

Notwithstanding these benefits, however, the student petition as well as research by the Financial Aid Committee this year have highlighted two areas in which this strategy merits further review to ensure that LRAP is the best that it can be. One relates to the cost students could incur if they leave public sector work prior to making their 120 payments under IBR; the other focuses on the chance, which in my political judgment is remote, of adverse changes to CCRAA by Congress.

For this reason, I wanted to let you know that we will be inviting BHSA to work with the Financial Aid Committee next year to undertake a substantive review of these issues and to investigate the different approaches Boalt might take to address them in a reasonable fashion. BHSA’s involvement is especially important because almost all LRAP resources necessarily come from tuition revenue, making the program one in which students cross-subsidize each other over time and across careers. At this point I have no strong view about what alternative approaches might look like. We don’t even know how much further our state funds will be cut in the next six months, much less beyond that.

But for those of you graduating and who worry about the issues raised in the petition, I assure you that absolutely nothing is more important to me, or the faculty as a whole, than the robustness of our Financial Aid programs. They shape the character of the student body, and express a core component of Berkeley Law’s mission. Therefore, the Financial Aid Committee and BHSA will have my focused attention on this matter as they analyze these issues next year. I can also assure you that if we adopt positive changes to LRAP, I will make sure they are retroactive for the class of 2011—the “Hardhats”.

Sincerely,

Christoph[*]r Edl[*]y, Jr.
The Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr. Distinguished Chair and Dean

[1] I can’t resist adding that in 1987, presidential candidate Michael Dukakis proposed a very similar program, designed by Gene Sperling and me. I was national issues director for the campaign, and Sperling was my junior staffer on economic policy. He’s now director of the White House National Economic Council. I’m a fundraiser. But I’m not bitter.

It seems like he provides some good context for why he is transitioning the program to be based on IBR. Admittedly I do not have the most complete knowledge of this issue, however. For example, I do not know what exactly the petition in question contained.

At any rate, I am sure opinions will be diverse on this issue! I look forward to seeing them in the comments.

Law Students do NOT Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win

New York Times business writer David Segal is fast becoming journalism's expert on law students and law school. That's good, because we need one -- although I love David Lat, Elie Mystal at Above the Law has been a pretty sorry oracle. Segal, in case you don't know him, is the author of January's excellent and on-point article entitled "Is Law School a Losing Game?" Over the weekend, he published another detailed piece entitled, "Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win."

This weekend's piece points out something that most lawyers and law students either know or intuit, which is that lower-ranked law schools attempt to boost their U.S. News & World Report rankings by using merit-based grants as a carrot to entice students with high LSAT/GPA's. In a typical arrangement, the student is allowed to keep a partial or full scholarship through all three years of law school, contingent on the student's ability to maintain, say, a 3.0 GPA. If the student fails to do so, the grant or scholarship goes away and the student begins paying the same price as his or her peers. Because schools know that the grade curve means not all of these students will be able to maintain the grades they need, the schools are able to offer more three-year scholarships than they will in fact pay for three years. In short, the thesis of Segal's article is this: students "lose the grant game" because although everyone who accepts a grant or scholarship enters law school expecting to graduate with a high GPA, not all do; law schools "win the grant game" by using students' irrational optimism about their own scholastic abilities to advance the school's status in the rankings. Although it is true that both sides are gambling (students on their grades, schools on the rate of grant-program attrition), in Segal's view the house (i.e., the school) generally has better odds because it both set the grade curve and holds crucial data, like the average number of students who lose their scholarships each year. As a result, the casual reader of the article comes away with the nagging feeling that students are victims, and that schools are engaging in what can only be called exploitation.

I don't buy it. I do buy that 'average' schools use this tactic to purchase entice 'above-average' students. And I do buy that some, perhaps many, grant-getters experience unexpected and genuine hardship when they start paying full tuition because they are unable to maintain their GPA's. What I don't buy is that these particular students are victims of their law schools.

Here is why. First, of what have these students been deprived? The ability to attend law school for free even though they are ultimately average law students? That hardly strikes me as an entitlement. Remember: students who fail to maintain their grades and lose their scholarships are no worse off than their peers. It means only that they will start paying the same price as everyone else. Put another way, a student's decision to accept this type of scholarship is really a risk-free bet on their own ability -- win, and get free money; lose and be no worse off than their non-betting peers. (You may say that a student who accepts a scholarship in return for going to the lower-ranked school gives up unique opportunities at the 'better' schools that likely accepted them. It's a fair point -- and not explored in the article -- but my suspicion is that a student who does not maintain a 3.0 at a lower-ranked school is unlikely to have benefitted from the marginal increase in value at a better-ranked school. That's harsh, I know, but it's also likely true.)

If you think that was harsh of me, wait until you hear my second observation: at some point, these students (who want to be lawyers -- i.e., represent other people's vital interests) need to read the fine print. A good time to start is when their own careers and tens of thousands of their own dollars are on the line. To be told "all you have to do for $80,000 in scholarships is maintain a 3.0" ought to make a prudent, college-educated person wonder, "exactly why are they willing to give me eighty grand?" or at the very least, "just how hard will it be to maintain a 3.0 at this place?"

So, there's my take on Segal's latest article. I think that in this case he's barking up the wrong tree. I do appreciate the attention he is paying to law schools and to the plight of law students who are currently being ground to pieces by the current, cruel shift in supply and demand in the market for young lawyers. Many law students are victims. Some are victims of schools' promises about employment. Some are victims of the great shrinking economy of the late 2000's. Some are victims of their own apathy ("well . . . might as well go to law school") or of their own inability to critically examine a dominant cultural message ("a law degree is versatile and will always have value"). But students who are offered free money to get good grades, and who lose that money because they end up without them, aren't victims at all. They're ordinary speculators who placed a risk-free bet on their ability to compete in an unfamiliar environment, lost, and ended up no worse than the rest of the pack. (Better, actually, because they got that first year for free.) I realize people will disagree with me. Or worse. That's okay. I do feel for students who made a prediction about their future, and even acted in financial reliance upon it, only to find themselves somewhere they never planned to be. But in my view that experience, however painful, doesn't necessarily mean they are victims of their law school.

Anyway, part of what I hope this post does is shed some light on whether students at Boalt feel our own school's financial aid practices are predatory. I have my own views on this (and in light of the above they may actually surprise you) but I hope to hear first from the anonymous masses. Fire away.

A Message From a 3L: I've Got More Debt Than You. Seriously, I Win.

A 3L friend asked that I post this to encourage all of you to give as you graduate:

300k. By the time I pay it off, it'll be >600k. That's a house - my debt.

And, I'm giving $100 to the Death Penalty Clinic, because it can do better with $200 than I can. I give $100, and it becomes $200, because alumni double whatever 3Ls give to the Class Campaign. For this, I get a t-shirt, pint glass, key chain, and satisfaction that the kids in the DP clinic can buy a new printer (they really need one).

I'd have 400k of debt, but I got a ton of grants here. I worked with the center for law and technology to fund a conference on HIV and neglected disease technology platforms. When we wrote a letter and asked Edley to sign it and send it to dozens of Congresspersons and Senators, urging repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, he did it, and he took the lead in recruiting other deans to join him. MSVH let us listen to Aqua in class. Amy K introduced me to the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases, a campus unit that later gave me a fellowship. T$lley brought donuts to Corp-Fin; B*mberg*r fed us chocolate and whitefish (in a sense); and Skl*nsk* challenged us to kill the felony murder rule.

The point is that our school, for all its flaws, educated and supported me, and it was able to do that because folks who came before us supported it. Our faculty are in demand - the ones who actually changed your life, they're not free.

Each one, teach one, and each one, support the thing that supported him. Some of us have complaints about financial aid (good, put your money where your mouth is); and others about LRAP (good, support the program, because Sacramento won't).

And, I'm going to the Unveiling Party.

See y'all in the next episode. It's been a blast.

Administration Announces Haas To Take Over New Addition

Add this to the list of Dean Edley's failures.

Because of the financial predicament that the law school is in, they've decided to lease the new addition to Haas in exchange for roughly $10M a year. Apparently this will be enough to keep tuition from rising above $50k/year in the near term.

In an email sent out to student leaders this afternoon, Edley stated:

I know times are tough and I realize students are concerned about rising tuition. In response to these concerns, we've worked out a deal with Haas where they will be taking over the addition and we'll move some classes back to the annex. Students should be prepared to be excluded from the new addition unless they're wearing sports coats and can verify they have paid employment upon graduation.

The Administration email continued with several other cost cutting measures including:

- Hiring unemployed 3Ls as library security guards in order to cut the amount we currently pay the security guards and to boost employment stats.
- LLM and transfer numbers will be increased by 100%. To support this, a quarter of Boalt classes will now be taught in French.
- Zeb Cafe will be turned into the bar, "Zeb After Dark," Thursday through Saturday from 10 - 2am in an attempt to draw some of the Greek business away from Kip's. Any law student over 25 will be turned away at the door.

So, after all of that, do we think these measures will even help? What about all of the money we've put into the new addition without even being able to use it?

Paranoia and Prognostications (About Fees)

Maybe it's because of last year's uproar over student fees, maybe it's because Dean Edley seems to be using the vaguest possible language short of "meeting... come if you want", but today's email from DE seriously creeped me out:

Subject: Town Hall with Dean Edley - 11/16/10, 12:45pm, Booth Auditorium

Dear students:

I write to invite you to attend a Student Town Hall. This will be an opportunity for the community to discuss the overall state of the law school as well as student fees. The meeting takes place next Tuesday during the lunch break.

Student Town Hall
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
12:45pm
Booth Auditorium

Christopher Edley, Jr.

By itself, the email seems mundane enough. But that's the problem: this time last year, students were just learning about larger-than-anticipated fee hikes... hikes to the tune of 22% (for residents), that took many by surprise and caused a great deal of frustration (although as a concession to Armen, it's true that information surrounding proposed hikes had been circulating for some time.) What followed was a week of student "strikes" (or were they boycotts?) and a hastily-planned Town Hall wherein Edley addressed a large group of fired-up law students, who came equipped with red and green signs that said things like "I agree" or "Are you kidding??"

Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but DE's email announcement of this year's Town Hall struck me as purposefully understated - the kind of half-assed due diligence that someone in the school administration can point to after a fee-bomb drops and say, "Hey, we invited you kids to the Town Hall. Remember?"

There's no question that fees will go up this year. But DE's vague email sparked my curiosity about just how big this year's fee hikes might be. On November 8, President Yudof issued an open letter to the campus community detailing a proposed systemwide fee increase of 8%. But the letter didn't mention professional fees... so after (very little) sleuthing, I dug up the 2011-12 professional fees budget proposal that the UC Regents will be voting on next week. Specifically:

Law (Berkeley – 12 percent increase in 2011-12).

Berkeley Law plans to use new professional degree fee funds to substantially expand its Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) offerings and a larger financial aid program, fund six new faculty, pay debt service on new construction and renovations to the law school complex, and expand public interest and public service career programs. Berkeley Law has recently overhauled its financial aid programs and provides “substantially greater assistance to students from low-income families…. [Berkeley Law] return[s] more of our tuition to students in the form of financial aid than any of our competitor institutions,” although student debt has risen in recent years. The program has seen “no statistically significant change in our minority enrollment since fees started to rise seriously in 2003-04” Enrollment of underrepresented minorities at Berkeley Law has been between 14 and 17 percent since 2005. Berkeley Law’s total proposed charges for 2011-12 are projected to be below the average charges at its public comparison programs.

So there you have it - the relevant details that DE should-have-maybe included in his email. If you're interested in discussing this proposal further, I recommend attending the Town Hall. Last year's was actually pretty fun. :)

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Raise Fees

Update 11/17 (Patrick): Deans E and H have promulgated a fact sheet (pdf) regarding fees, complete with a Kashmiri disclaimer and this cheerful observation: "With the sharp spike in system‐wide fee increases, we expect to meet our policy benchmark of 90% of market rate in 2011‐12, one year earlier than we had originally anticipated. You will note that fees for non‐resident students will be at market rates next year."

You can find a more detailed breakdown, courtesy of BHSA, by clicking here (pdf).

_______________________________

The UC Regents are voting next week to increase Boalt professional fees for residents by $6,072 (~22%) next year, part of which we will start paying for next semester. For non-residents, professional fees will go up by $1,827 (~7%). Yudof and his finance committee just released this yesterday: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov09/f2.pdf

The proposal charts out an astronomical climb in residents' fees from the current $36,487 to $44,220 next year, and $52,000 by 2013 (non-residents will see their fees increase from $48,732 to $52,220 next year.)

As 1Ls, we feel blind-sided by an increase of this magnitude. For many of us, the comparatively reasonable cost of attendance at Boalt was an important factor in our decision to attend. We anticipated the university would act reasonably and in good faith, entailing increases of - gee, I dunno... 3-5% annually? But 22%?

Thoughts.

- L'Alex and Jackie O

Two Articles on the Entry Level Legal Market

This comment from the thread below deserves a stand-alone post:

John Steele has left a new comment on your post "2009 OCIP Callbacks":

Although these two pieces by Bill Henderson are sobering reading, if you are interested in the economics of law school and how the changing economy might affect legal education, you will want to read them:

• Drawing the Right Lessons from the Bleak Entry-Level Legal Job Market.
• The New Math of Legal Education [pdf].

-John Steele

How Are You Paying for School?

I received an email, requesting insight from the N&B community:

"Sweet Jesus! Tuition & Fees this year total nearly $36k. I scoped out my "offer letter", only to find $20.5k in federally subsidized & unsubsidized loans. The money I made this summer will cover my rent for the year, plus a little food here and there. Minimally, I need about $15k to make up the tuition gap. How the hell are other people paying for this? Private loans? Does anyone have any recommendations?

I have no savings, no parental assistance, and my wife is a student as well. I'd rather not just grab my ankles and accept the grad plus loans, as the terms seem quite unfavorable to students, and the commercial loan market has better alternatives. Right now, including my grad school debt, I'm sitting at $100k in loans (prior to this year). Thoughts?"

I'm in a similar boalt. Well?

Help is Nigh on the Student Loan Front

Do I understand all of this? No, to be honest, I don't.

But undoubtedly many students will find the article, which features various boalties in its summary of changes in law school loan forgiveness and repayment programs, helpful.

Sixteen Tons

[Update 5/08/2009 (Patrick): Higher Salaries for UC's New Administrators.]

As a commentator notes in the thread below, it will cost $2,864.68 $4,903 more to attend Boalt next year. But hey, it's always darkest right before it gets even worse, right? Just think: we could be in the class of 2015. What will tuition be then?

Now, that's a load off.

Forgive Me, Uncle Sam, For I Have Not Sinned

There's been some talk about student debt forgiveness as a way to stimulate the economy. (See ATL, University Business, and The Huffington Post.) My first thought was, "Yeah, right." My second thought was, "Please God, make this happen!" I'm no economist, but, at first glance, forgiving student debt makes about as much sense as any other piece of the bailout. Moreover, it seems much more politically palatable than bailing out the auto industry, bad mortgages, or wall street. Students, after all, didn't make questionable (read: bad) decisions that got them into this mess; they relied on a system that failed. Besides, everyone loves education!

So I guess the real question is, would this work? And what would you do if all of your debt was forgiven tomorrow?

Goodbye grants, you will be missed...

The financial aid office has released offer letters on Telebears. It's official: if you plan to work at a firm, you will (most likely) lose any chance at a grant.

I don't feel this is getting enough attention. The $4k DE grant for summer public interest work is well-known among current and future students. But, given the financial aid grants were in the neighborhood of $9k, this new grant policy makes that $4k seem trivial.

Effectively, a job in public interest will now result in grants upwards of $13k [or more] from the school. I only say "or more" because the extra money that isn't going to the students working for firms will most likely be redistributed to the public interest kids as well.

Any thoughts?

Does LRAP Need More Funding?

More than 40 Boalt Hall Student Groups have signed on to a letter encouraging the Dean to "take substantive and expeditious action in improving LRAP to keep pace with the rapidly increasing tuition."

I have copied the letter into the comments (rather than post here) due to its length.

Initial reactions:

1) If the school's going to represent to its public interest students that loans will not be a future problem, they should honor this promise.

2) I'm not in-the-know, but how does this dove tail with the Federal Government's new loan forgiveness program?

and 

3) Those who work at firms this summer lose their grants starting next year. 

To many, that's a $9,000 hit each year it would apply.  Yes, I know that $9,000 is less than the $30,000 they make while working for a firm.  

I assume this money is being re-distributed to those who work for public interest. Given that there are far more students who work for firms their 2L summers, that's a lot of extra money being dumped on a relatively small portion of the student body, thus reducing their debt burden before they even graduate. 

Again, I'm not in-the-know, but is there a problem here in the first place?

Note: These comments apply to the suggestion of raising the tuition limit of $90,000 - not on the proposal to expand to additional people who are currently not covered by LRAP (other than maybe to ask about how much the federal government plan would apply to these people as I stated above).

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children?

[Illustrious Co-Blogger Disco Stu is having problems with Blogger. He asked me to post this in his stead. -- Armen]

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Alumni, specifically Boalties who were there in 2003. Surely you've seen the news that you're getting a refund. It could be over $10,000 for some of you. I've got an idea. A wonderful awful idea. For those of you getting a refund and those of you able to afford it, give it back to Boalt. I'm not suggesting those of you in public service making $60K / year return this refund, although that would be great. I am suggesting those of you that took your summer job at 125K, then were at 135K by the time you started and are now making above 170K, give this money back to the school and state that has given so much to you. The state can't afford to hand out an extra $40+ million. Boalt surely can't afford to get reduced funds from the state.

Sure, this is easy for me to say, as I'm not getting a refund. And maybe I wouldn't be advocating giving back such a high lump-sum that could reduce my debts further. But I honestly think that if I got this money back from the state, I would return it to Boalt. And I think this for the same reason I don't mind that the democratic president I vote for will almost surely raise my taxes: I can afford it, others less fortunate than myself, cannot. Our state and Boalt needs money badly. And you're all in a position to give it to them.

Let's see this big hit for the state turn into a big win for Boalt.

Who's coming with me?

Let's give grants to the [poor] rich

Just as our Dean is celebrating his recent win to raise our tuition (err- the UC calls it "student fees" because the state supposedly doesn't charge "tuition" - but that's a long story), I see Harvard's recent announcement.

I'm not offering any solutions with this post, and I know there will come a time I need to put my money where my mouth is (when DE comes calling). I'm just evoking discussion among those who seek to procrastinate (as I am).

My take: Call it envy, call it frustration, call it a huge "motha-*#*$&@$@" debt load, but I'm hoping that those elected to be in charge of this state (and the university) are taking notice. There's something fundamentally wrong with the notion that a private school is performing the task of providing education second-to-none at a price that remains affordable (laughably so - capping at 10% of family income for even those making $180k?!) and our public school system cannot.

The consensus in previous discussions regarding our raise in tuition was that the extra cost would be worth ensuring our place among the best universities. The problem with that line of thinking (in light of new developments) is that those higher fees could hinder our ability to fill the seats with the type of students who would have their choice among those best universities. If any further evidence were needed, see here.

PS: good luck on [remaining] finals everyone...

BLF???

Is the BLF Auction really happening this year? I looked at the list of auctions and it seems really short and unimpressive. Didn't we have three times as many auctions last year and the year before? Or is there normally a last minute crush of donations in the hours leading up to the event?

Although the faculty auctions totally outnumber the student ones, I notice that no professor I've ever taken a class with is donating anything. Lester, Moran, Peterson, Talley, Rakowski, & Caron - I'm talking to you! Since the rest are at Harvard this year, I suppose they get a pass.

I also notice there's no link on the webpage to donate products and services for auctions- is there any way to donate besides signing up in person in the lobby? The only way I even found out about this website was from a friend who got it from the c/o 2009 email list.

Are people going to BLF?