Tuition break at Harvard for socially conscious
Reduction In Fee For Students Pledging 5-Yr Public Service …Jonathan D Glater
Boston: 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. The programme would save students more than $40,000 in tuition and follows by scant months the announcement of a sharp increase in financial aid to Harvards undergraduates. The law school, which already has a loan forgiveness programme 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 programme, but we started to think that we could do better.
For years, prosecutors, public defenders and lawyers in traditionally low-paying areas of the law have argued that financial pressures were pushing graduates toward corporate law and away from the kind of careers that they would pursue in the absence of tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. The debt loads that people are coming out of law schools with are now in six figures, said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Oregon, and vice president of the National District Attorneys Association. When the debt load is that great, I have had a lot of applicants whove said, Id like to take the job but I really cant afford it.
Perhaps worse, Marquis said, some indebted young lawyers who choose to try to survive on a low salary as a junior prosecutor may decide to leave to earn more just as they gain enough experience to handle more important cases. For that reason, he added, Harvards program mesounded like a great idea.
Harvards third-year-free programme is expected to cost the law school an average of $3 million annually over the next five years, Kagan said, but that number is just an estimate because it is unclear how many students will take advantage of the offer. The law schools share of the universitys endowment of $34.9 billion is more than $1.7 billion.
From 2003 to 2006, as many as 67 and as few as 54 of the 550 students graduating from Harvard Law went to work for a nonprofit organization or the government. A vast majority choose to join law firms, where they can earn well over $100,000 a year immediately after getting their degree. The hope is that loan forgiveness over a longer period of time may encourage more students to go into public service and stay there. NYT NEWS SERVICE