Breaking News: First Six Figure Law School Tuition!

The July issue of Harper’s has an essay about “the celebrity scandal of the year” – the lengths and expense to which some B List show business personalities went to get their children into good universities. There clearly was fraud involved, but all the outrage, the author suggests, is misdirected. The real scandal is how thoroughly the higher education system – everything from SAT tutoring to legacy admissions to skyrocketing matriculation fees – is skewed toward the affluent. Columbia’s law school just set a record in that respect. The estimated cost of attendance for a nine-month academic year will be in six figures ($101,345). This is surely an underestimate since it assumes, for example, a fantasy figure of $1,582 per month for nine months of rent within commuting distance of the Columbia campus. Tuition and mandatory fees make up $75,898 of the total. According to the blog on the lawyersgunsmoney site that announces Columbia Law’s “fiscal milestone,” about half of Columbia law students are paying the full sticker price of attendance. An entering CLS student will end up with about $370,000 of debt when the first loan payment comes due six months after graduation, a figure that doesn’t include the 12 months of living expenses between matriculation and taking the bar exam.