Practice Management

There are any number of concerning stories of late abouta college education and debt. It makes you wonder about our priorities. I know Fox News believe that a college education make you liberal and dumbs you down, but still does this justify the attack on our children posed by rising debt and tuition?

The Huffington Post has started a series entitled "Majoring In Debt" in which students hold up signs of how much debt they owe, and report their personal stories.  So far the study reports on one law student, Todd Sussman, who is about to graduate from law school with $180,000.00 in debt and no prospect of a job after graduation.

The great Republican revolution in New Jersey has led to Governor Christe taking the state's budget problems out on its college and graduate students.  People who bemoaned federal assistance with our economic crises, are now slashing $18.5 million from Rutgers University's budget.  And, they are doing this at a time when private giving is down substantially.

And, hitting my family closer to home, the University of Houston Law Center will see a 16.5% increase in tuition and it will be even more for new student's entering.  Dean Ray Nimmer and the board must be out of their ever loving minds. Their model, according to the Houston Chronicle, is the tuition at private law schools that do not get state funding. Erin Ferris, a third-year law student, states that she believes the tuition increase is necessary to "preserve rankings and get better", as if there is anything wrong with UH Law.  Maybe Fox News is right. If the state law schools seek to match the tuition of the private law schools in the state, then they realistically have no additional benefit to their students and probably should not receive any state funding at all.

Of course, nobody is matching the blood bath instituted against state law school students in California.

Whether federal or state, rich or poor, we need to reaffirm what is important to us in this country. We either cherish education and the engine of our future economic growth or we do not. We cannot keep doing this to our youth. It is nothing but indentured servitude or a future of poverty and bankruptcy. No one party is to solely blame, but the fact that it is the GOP in New Jersey, Florida, Texas and California that believes the most expedient way to deal with their problems is to soak those who seek a higher education is not encouraging.