Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Hmmm... well, currently there are several trades/technical programs in which one can generate 20-30K in non-dischargable debt for a chance to be just as unemployable as before you started. While I realize that isn't quite so daunting, it probably is if you wind up only being employable at (or well below) minimum wage and still trying to pay off student loans. Oh sure, it's lower tuition. It's just two years, in many cases. But it sure does seem like a pyramid scheme to me, and a particularly cruel one which preys on those LEAST able to afford repayment for something that gave them so little.

At least if you've gone to law school, you CAN simply trade on your (potentially more valuable) undergraduate diploma on a vita.

I'm also trying to envision a future in which everyone is a pediatric dentist or orthodontist. wink

Silly person.

Only a select group of people have the ability to do that in the first place.

For those people, many of whom are in the UMC quest to find The Right Thing, and have the appropriate intelligence and Tiger Parents, that is the answer.

It provides the craved six figure salary (yes, I know that ideally you want *mid-six-figures) along with the social status that will allow you to lead a relevant and meaningful life.

Lawyers do work in minimum wage jobs.

And they they have the additional problem that they are "overqualified" and "failures" at being lawyers. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Or, if you are my cousin, you try to go to med school and find out that they hate lawyers *and* you lose your corner office in the process.

And if you are my *other cousin* (from my father's non-doctor drunk/abusive farmer family) you somehow run up a $100,000 bill at Penn State and *then* look into being a prison guard like your mother. I'm still trying to figure out that $100,000. Kind of leaves me scratching my head, but if that's what you leave Penn State with these days, whoa, then you're talking about leaving law school with $250,000 in debt!

Even my law school roommate, who first went to Harvard grad school and then law school got cut off at the $180,000 mark.

So, in sum, free tuition is better than larding up people with mammoth amounts of debt.

We need to immediately make college and law school free for everyone!