Here's a nice National Law Journal about law school from a law professor, which is basically the college problem on steroids.
I was glad to hear that my cousin had just graduated from Penn State with $100,000 in loans. She may yet follow in her mother's footsteps and become a prison guard (union, of course).
What is occurring is that prospective students are now recognizing that we reached Peak (Private) Lawyer in 2004. This problem has not yet really become apparent to the average 17 or 18 year old prospective college student:
"With the decline in jobs in private practice, the average starting salaries for all law school graduates has declined from $85,000 (for the class of 2009) to $74,000 (for the class of 2011). The median salary now hovers even lower, at $60,000 per year. To further compound problems, the largest entering class on record — those students entering law school in the fall of 2010 — are graduating this spring and entering a highly saturated legal market. Only 55.7 percent of their immediate predecessors found full-time, long-term jobs as practicing lawyers.
The current situation is politically combustible. Despite average debt loads in excess of $100,000 per year, nine months after graduation approximately one-third of all law school graduates do not have full-time, long-term professional jobs — the minimum desired outcome of virtually every student who enters law school.
Arguably, law schools are the bleeding edge of the growing problems facing all four-year colleges and universities: growing tuition and debt loads in combination with flat or declining earning for graduates.
The six-figure debt loads of unemployed or underemployed law students make them the poster children for a system of higher education that is rapidly on its way to becoming unsustainable. Sallie Mae, the government -chartered lender for higher education, is having difficulties selling its bundled student loans to large institutional investors, prompting concerns that the federal government is financing a student loan bubble that is destined to burst."
http://m.law.com/module/alm/app/nlj.do#!/article/980887792
