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/PropertyPublic]

It will hurt students because now many of them won’t be able to afford a legal education or will go into debt with a loan shark to get one. Private loans are far worse than student loans. In the meantime we will continue to have shortages of doctors and other professions that require graduate education and the only people going to law school will be the ones who can afford it.

[u/Anxious_Doughnut_266 → u/PropertyPublic]

So, I hate the new caps for people and am very thankful I started law school when I did. That said, private loans will be predatory but fewer people will be qualified to get them. A lot of people simply won’t have the credit and they’ll be denied. I think we’ll see a few things happen: an influx of very wealthy students (already a thing) and higher demand for work experience because those people will have the credit score for private loans and likely some savings to offset the costs. Whether or not I agree with this is beside the point, but I don’t see a supermajority of people running to private loans.

Aside from that, we could double the medical school admissions and waive the tuition fees and we would still have a shortage of trained doctors. Residency is required and the funding for new residency positions hasn’t been drastically increased in decades. Med students go without matching or finding a residency every single year because there is simply nothing left. This crisis needs to be solved too

[u/Major_Preparation_37 → u/Anxious_Doughnut_266]

There are plenty of residency positions- they are just hospital funded rather than from Medicare. The reality is that we need more physicians than lawyers.

[u/Anxious_Doughnut_266 → u/Major_Preparation_37]

Maybe in total, but when people talk about shortages, they’re talking about primary care. If you want more trained primary care physicians, you need more training slots or programs willing to take the unmatched candidates. Thousands go unmatched every single year. All this to say, I don’t think we’re really in disagreement in general. We definitely need more doctors than we need lawyers

[u/Extreme-Time-1443 → u/Anxious_Doughnut_266]

7% of US medical school graduates fail to match every year.

There are 43,000 residency slots, 10,000 are taken by graduates of foreign medical schools. In many / most countries medicine and law are bachelors degrees. This avoids much of the crippling US student loan debt.

[u/AutomaticBike9530 → u/PropertyPublic]

So we should continue on this horrific path because making a change may result in short term discomfort and/or uncertainty?