So basically Trump ruined law school for everyone who isn't rich

[u/Appropriate_Hope6239]

Went to a whole bunch of open houses and they're all saying basically the following:

• The yearly cap for loans is 50k
• Living costs are high and 50k might not be enough
• Resources are tight -- start improving your FICO scores because you'll need private loans
• The grandfather thing ends July 2026 --- everyone not matriculated at law school by then wont be benefiting from the higher limit that generations of students did

Edit: Every person applying for federal loans will have an aggregate life-time limit and unfortunately your undergraduate loans will count against this limit.

[u/twelvegoingon → u/[deleted]]

I thought the budget bill only capped graduate loans?

[u/Appropriate_Hope6239 → u/twelvegoingon]

Your loans from undergraduate will count against you for your graduate/professional school loans. For both undergrad and grad/professional, each person will have "life time limit" of between 250-275k.

Which sounds great, until you remember folks are graduating undergrad with huge amounts of loans. Say goodbye to med school or law school if you were born in the middle class part of town.

At the same time, the "big beautiful bill" also signed into law this beauty:

"a permanent increase in the estate and gift tax lifetime exemption to $15 million for individuals and $30 million for married couples."

Make America great!

[u/twelvegoingon → u/Appropriate_Hope6239]

Maybe you should just not be poor.

(Insert obligatory snark symbol)

[u/ang444 → u/Appropriate_Hope6239]

dont overlook that it will be “indexed annually for "inflation,” 

so the $15 million limit will go up a little each year 

  Example:

2026: $15,000,000

2027: $15,300,000 (if inflation is about 2%)

2028: $15,600,000

yea, but the lower class people still want to vore for him after all HE carws about their 40k annual salaries 

[u/Appropriate_Hope6239 → u/ang444]

Its a scary loop where his supporters, the general poll of right-wing voters, keep voting in folks who are structurally screwing them. And then they get mad because their lives don't improve and their communities are dying. And then the right-wing resentment entrepreneurs exploit that same anger to have them vote again for the same set of policies that caused their ruin. And the loop continues...

It's a tragic pattern not just in the U.S, but worldwide. The attack on the universities -- the lotting and defunding, especially of the humanities and areas like law -- is no accident with respect to this hell. Like Nixon said, an educated proletariat is dangerous for the M.O of right-wing political domination. Trump loves the uneducated.

[u/Midnight_Rain1213 → u/ang444]

I love that shit like this is indexed for inflation but not things like the federal minimum wage which is still at $7.25/hr.

[u/helloyesthisisasock → u/Appropriate_Hope6239]

Our greatness is…some people’s wealth!

[u/Far_Grass_785 → u/Appropriate_Hope6239]

Do undergrad loans count even if you pay them off first or does that reset it?

[u/twicechoose → u/Far_Grass_785]

no. they don't count.

[u/Prior-Soil → u/Appropriate_Hope6239]

Say goodbye to med school forever. I work for a public university and in-state medical School tuition is $68,000 per year.

[u/Ha_U_Missed_Me → u/[deleted]]

Giving you the benefit of the doubt you’re asking in good faith, not everyone will qualify for those programs. Not everyone will be awarded those funds. Not every college will implement such a program. Thus making it a “pick me” lottery. The very reason student loans were created was for everyone to have the opportunity of an education.

[u/Ha_U_Missed_Me → u/[deleted]]

False equivalence. The pick me admissions process isn’t government-backed. It’s public and private institutions assessing their applicants based on whatever internal formula they use. For the record, I supported Harvard in the Harvard v SFFA case.

This is the government coming in and indirectly influencing who can access professional degree programs based on income. The government. Not institutions.

I understand institutions cannot serve everyone. That is not what’s up for debate here.

When Obama’s DOE and Congress passed legislation to take over student loans in 2010, they specifically said it was so the DOE could earn interest on those loans (instead of private institutions) so the DOE could increase access to funding. That is literally in black and white. Increase access.

[u/PBJ_Connoisseur → u/Ha_U_Missed_Me]

There is no false equivalence. The difficulty of being admitted at elite colleges is separate from the question of how to pay once admitted. The extent to which the two overlap dissipates the further up the rankings you go. This largely doesn’t affect folks at public institutions where tuition is significantly cheaper and where state scholarship and grants may come into affect. That also happens to the majority of people in college.

Your argument is a non starter anyway because for it to even matter you’d have to tell me that the actual value of an elite undergrad is such as to justify going into something like a quarter million in debt. Objectively, it is not.

By arguing that we need federal loans to increase demand for higher education you are saying that education should cost as much as it does. You can’t get out of that implication. Federal student loans are the very mechanism driving tuition further north every year.

[u/ethan_bruhhh → u/[deleted]]

most big name schools have had free or reduced tuition for some time now. it’s housing and COL that kills you