Harvard to Waive 3L Tuition For Students in Public Interest Law for Five Years:
The New York Times reports:
Concerned by the low numbers of law students choosing careers in public service, Harvard Law School plans to waive tuition for third-year students who pledge to spend five years working either for nonprofit organizations or the government.This is a wonderful idea, I think. I'm very glad Harvard both is willing to do this and can afford it.
The program, to be announced Tuesday, would save students more than $40,000 in tuition and follows by scant months the announcement of a sharp increase in financial aid to Harvard’s undergraduates. The law school, which already has a loan forgiveness program for students choosing public service, said it knew of no other law school offering such a tuition incentive.
"We know that debt is a big issue," said Elena Kagan, dean of the law school. "We have tried to address that over the years with a very generous loan forgiveness program, but we started to think that we could do better."
Related Posts (on one page):
- Could 3L Tuition Waiver Have Unintended Consequences?
- Harvard to Waive 3L Tuition For Students in Public Interest Law for Five Years:
...on the first blush, anyway.
Harvard is a private actor, and it is effectively putting its product on "sale" for a particular audience. Isn't that pretty far from establishing a big government program?
And if it's OK to toot alma mater's horn, Columbia also has upgraded its financial aid package for the 2008 and after grads: Benefits don't start to phase out until you're making more than $50; loans will be forgiven more quickly -- beginning five years after graduation; in calculating household income, there's an adjustment for the spouse's educational debt; parental leave benefits for up to six months; and benefits will be available to graduates working part-time to care for children.
And Glenn seems to be saying that he doesn't like the idea of people's being encouraged into government service, whether the encouragement be private-sector or public in origin. I mean, if Harvard's program actually works, we might have more and better public defenders, and then we'd have more criminals on the streets, and it would be all Harvard's fault.
you are correct- as I said, "first blush"; I do have a problem with the incentive angle, any kind from the public sector, really: mortgages for teachers, art grants, etc, as they are not available to all- in this case, it's nobody's business, as Harvard is a private entity, as you point out.
I'm here to learn:)
Its endowment is only $34 Billion.
Given its ultra liberal agenda, why is it charging *anything* for people it is incentivizing?
there's some truth in this:)
are the forgiven funds taken from the endowment?
As someone who worked for public interest law firms for more than a decade, I can tell you that most "public interest" law firms are harmful to the public interest, stirring up useless and costly litigation that often does little for its purported "beneficiaries," and that working for them should be discouraged.
I wrote about this subject and legal aid societies at OpenMarket.org, in a post linked to by Overlawyered or PointofLaw.
(Top law firms pay about $195K for first years. Take taxes out of that and you're still siting on $110K or so, which is probably $70K more than you would make after-tax at a public interest law firm. Tuition for one year is around $40K at Harvard, and if you spend the rest of the $30K on room, board, etc., then you have problems.)
That depends on whether HLS students are receiving taxpayer funded loans and grants to attend school there. If they are and this selective “forgiveness” is passed on to other students in the form of higher tuition which is ultimately subsidized by the taxpayer through federal financial aid programs, then yes it is a bad thing. If you’re smart enough to get into law school (not just Harvard), then you ought to be smart enough to figure out how to pay for it without going to the federal government to take the hard earned money of the rest of us.
Erics: All governmental units, including the DOJ, are.
Government jobs (including military), jobs with 501(c)(3) organizations, and political campaigns are the qualifying employment options.
Program guidelines
Because everyone who is going to law school (even the ones at Harvard) is going to get hired at a big law firm. Especially those who aren't interested in being a lawyer for the money. I have several friends who would love to go to law school and go directly into working for a non-profit. Why should they be forced into working for some corporate/big name law firm when it is something they have no interest in?
Those of us who graduated from ordinary law schools shouldn't be so thrilled to see this. I went to law school hoping to work for the federal government (o.k., I was young and idealistic), and managed to get selected for a couple highly-competitive summer clerkships while in law school. The economy turned bad fast toward the end of my 2L year, forcing a much higher percentage of the Top 10 school types into the federal government market ... and pushing my job prospects downward. By the way, I kept checking on what happened to some of the people who got the jobs I was after; they were all out of government service when the economy rebounded a few years later.
Did this make the federal government better during that 2-4 year period? I know I'm biased, but I can't really see any argument that it did ...
I hate when liberals up the ante.
Government jobs aren't that bad paying, have decent working conditions, and thus don't require a subsidy.
(Assuming that any buy-out is necessary -- the comment by Ms. Kagen about repayment ("If a student tried to switch to a high-paying job on the sly, then we’re going to ask for the money back.") gives the impression that this pledge may be nearly as binding as the one you make to PBS...)
As a side note, I've always thought "public interest" law is a rather euphemistic way of putting it. You're still helping specific class of people, just not the class that you would be helping at a corporate firm. How about "countermajoritarian law"? Would that fit on a resume?
You'd also have better prosecutors, so it would balance out, except that the results would be less dependent on chance and more dependent on how the law applies to the facts of each case.
It is crime they charge anyone tuition.
By the way, this is not going to create any new jobs since it does not provide a subsidy to the government or 501(c)(3). It is merely going to have Harvard grads displace other young lawyers from "lesser" schools.