truth in educating

For awhile now, I've been comparing the student loan crisis to mortgage crisis and calling for some form of "truth in lending" practices when it comes to student loans.  I feel like I'm a pretty good snapshot of the American public - they just announced that student loan debt now exceed credit card debt in the U.S.  This has been true for me for years.  I can't decide if that should make me feel good about my credit card debt or feel terrible about my loans.  But considering no one should ever feel good about credit card debt, I should probably go with the latter.  Besides, I blame the latter for the former.  That's probably not good either.

Anyway, the newest news (is that redundant?) is that student loan debt now exceeds $1 Trillion in the United States.  One. Trillion. Dollars.  And no one is paying it back.  That's the stick.  I think we need to start focusing on the stick.  No one is actually paying these loans back.  And while some people are living for free in brownstones, most of us are just doing the best we can with what we've got.  And the best we can doesn't include an extra $1000 to throw at student loans.  I mean, the chocolate lab needs to eat, people (NOT to be confused with "the chocolate lab needs to eat people."  That would be terrible).

I digress.  The reason I sat down to write was because USA Today published a good article yesterday:  Lairs, Liars Pants on Fires (or whatever the plural would be).  My coworker pointed out the real title as some guy was reading the article on the plane yesterday, and I knew I had to write about it.

The reality is - people need to know the truth about law school - the lack of post-education jobs, the low salaries, the DEBT.  If, after all that, people are still going to law school and are somehow thinking they'll be "different" (translation: they'll actually come out of law with a job they like that can pay the ginormous bill of law debt), then they have no one to blame but themselves.