Objection! Law schools can be hazardous to students’ financial health – Texas Public Policy Foundation Research
Key Points
- Education can be an investment in a student’s future, but not all educational investments are worthwhile.
- This analysis aims to help students avoid making malinvestments by documenting which college programs leave students with unaffordable student loan debt using a debt-to-earnings test called Gainful Employment Equivalent.
- Among academic fields with the most graduates, the field of law performed the worst on Gainful Employment Equivalent.
- Of the 168 law school programs with data, 122 (73%) fail Gainful Employment Equivalent.
- Failing programs accounted for 68% of all law school graduates
Introduction
As college costs have exploded in recent decades, students (and parents) have taken on more and more debt to fund the costs of going to college. For many students, this debt is a sound investment in their future, enabling them to obtain an education that launches a successful career and fulfilling life. But for too many students, this debt is not a sound investment, either because the student drops out of college, the college fails to adequately educate the student, or because the student’s debt is simply too high relative to the typical earnings from their chosen college and major. For these students, excessive student loan debt can be an unaffordable burden for the rest of their life.
To inform policymakers and help students and their parents make more informed choices about which college programs are worth the debt, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has created a debt-to-earnings test called Gainful Employment Equivalent (GEE). GEE compares the earnings of recent graduates with the typical borrower’s student loan debt to determine if students can afford their student loan payments.
In a series of web tools and publications, we have explored how this debt-toearnings test can be used to evaluate American higher education.