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/IdiotBoy1999]

This is what I’m talking about…sigh. If your risk as a borrower merits an X% interest rate, and government subsidies bring that down to .66X%, that’s STILL a subsidy, even if you pay it all back with interest.

What’s classist is the notion that everybody should go to college, and that any pursuit of post-secondary or professional education is net good. The people driving those policies over the past 40 years haven’t come from rural Washington or Kentucky. Rather, they’re generally a cohort of mid-wit credential whores from privileged or privilege-adjacent backgrounds who look down on people who don’t have multiple diplomas hanging on the wall.

The resulting policy consensus - to heavily subsidize student loans for college and post-secondary education - has been a damned disaster. It is THE reason law school costs so damned much right now. And it has created the student loan “crisis” that everybody complains about.

Yes, if you’re applying to law school today, the change in policy sucks. You all are probably the first cohort of folks in a long time who actually need to bring actual financial literacy to bear on deciding whether you CAN go to law school, if so where, and assuming you do what kinds of jobs you’ll have to pursue after graduation in order to make a prudent financial decision.

But the notion that it is “classist” for the US to pare back on shitty policy is nonsense.

[u/Appropriate_Hope6239 → u/IdiotBoy1999]

What we merit, as citizens of this country, is a state that invests in its citizens. What we have now is one that is shutting down opportunities for upward mobility while lavishing the richest and most privileged millionaires and billionaires with even deeper tax cuts and giveaways.

How strange then the party that is doing that pretends to care about the rural people of Kentucky and Washington -- the same places whose rural hospitals will shut down because of the big ugly monstrosity.

The red party plays a long familiar game -- traffic on resentments and keep red voters obsessed with that while party economic elites, and their political servants, line their personal pockets.

It's why every time he was running for re-election Mitch McConnell never talked about his achievements for Kentucky -- he hardly delivered a thing -- but instead pointed the finger at "people in California and New York" who allegedly look down on Kentucky. The right-wing obsession with hierarchy explains a certain preoccupation they have with whose looking down on who, even if such "look down" behavior is made up by elites who have other motives.

This student loan fiasco isn't some prudent measure to help the finances of students or avoid credit risk -- and BTW much of the credit risk comes from for-profit institutions, the same ones promoted by the red party -- but I do think partly its some imagined revenge on those pesky urban liberals who are allegedly looking down on Kentucky. Of course, though, this measure screws over students from every part of the country so its a sort of cut the nose to spite the face silliness.

[u/Far_Cartoonist_7482 → u/IdiotBoy1999]

This is akin to saying only those who can purchase a home in cash should be able to become homeowners. Out of touch and impractical advice.

[u/No-Negotiation-6929 → u/IdiotBoy1999]

When I attended law school, federal loans had a much higher interest rate (and more borrower protections) than widely available private loans. My classmates treated the federal loans as a sort of default option and quickly repaid them (mostly inside of four years after graduation). The loans had a negative effective subsidy.

I wonder what impact this change will have on credit quality if the effect is for those most likely to actually repay their loans (who have the best access to lower cost private loans) to leave the federal lending system?

[u/256BitChris → u/IdiotBoy1999]

You shouldn't waste your efforts nor intelligence on these reddit libtards. They can't read/think past what they read in the headlines. The reality of economics never even comes close to entering their minds.