Best Value Law Schools - Does Such a Thing Exist?

Something called preLaw magazine (no, really, that's how they capitalize it) has come with a list of 60 of the "best value" law schools in the United States. I think it's odd that there's 60 of them in a pool of only 200 or so, but for purposes of this blog I want to look only at the top of the list:

If I'm reading this correctly, the average student leaves the University of North Dakota Law School with $67k in debt and the median salary of employed private sector people is only 48k. Furthermore, only 81% of the graduates actually find work. As the median numbers for public and private are very similar, let's set the median salary at $47.5k.

These numbers mean that out of 100 graduates from the UND Law, at the nine-month period 41 will be making 47.5k or more. 41 will be making less than 47.5k, and 18 will be up a creek without a paddle. For the 41 making more, a debt load of $67k is probably manageable, but for the 59 who are making what is likely considerably less, the 67k in average debt doesn't seem to be justified. At best, it's a very risky proposition given such low reported salaries (imagine how low the actual long-term salaries are?).

10-year payback on a 67k loan @ 7% requires a monthly payment of about $800.00. That's $9,600 a year, which is a really high debt-to-income ratio for someone making under $45k (the government calculator I just checked claims that debt is only sustainable at 60k+). I suppose it's manageable for someone who's single in the low-rent areas of North Dakota, but try doing that with a family or dependents or other burdens (want a decent car?) and good luck.

And that's the 19th "best value" in the country. To be fair to UND, its tuition is very reasonable. The problem is that at such a low tuition, it seems as though the average student borrows the entire cost of attendance to have that much debt. You would think people living at home or working prior to school or getting scholarships would offset this, but somehow their average student has borrowed the entire cost. That's not entirely the school's fault.

And I have to give credit to a school like BYU, which keeps tuition low despite a fairly good reputation and being a private school.

But when you have a list like this, and four of your top nineteen "values" provide no return on investment information, you know there's a problem. How is that even responsible journalism? Northern Illinois is a "value" but you have no idea what graduates are actually making? Could you imagine other investments working this way? Of course not.

And if the median University of Georgia grad is really making $130k a year, I'll eat Burger King every day for a month and suffer the consequences.

The grand point in this exercise is that if the "A"-graded "values" are this flawed, how much of a non-"value" must the other 180 schools in the country be? If a place like UND is a "bargain" when odds are that over half its students graduate looking uphill at difficult debt repayments, what does that say about places like Cooley or New England or Golden Gate?

Perusing this list should remind one that in some situations there is no such thing as a "value." Home mortgages in rich suburbs in 2005 come to mind. When fairly-priced schools like Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississsippi, etc. are considered "values," I think a rational economist would have to move law schools into the same category good, where almost nothing nothing is a genuine "value."