lack of student aid

[kelley]

At 05:02 PM 6/27/02 -0400, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>At 08:13 PM 6/27/2002 +0000, justin wrote:
>
>
>>I also made my way through grad school as a TA, no loans. Figured that it 
>>was insane to borrow money to get a PhD in philosophy. I knew people who 
>>ran up $30,000-$80,000 in debt--this was 10, 15 years ago, when that was 
>>more than it is now. Thought they were nuts.
>
>
>I memory serves, a few years ago the National Lawyers Guild estimated that 
>average law student debt was $60k - which forced most graduates to seek 
>high paying jobs in the corporate sector to stay afloat.  That pissed the 
>NLG off because it steered lawyers away from work in less lucrative 
>fields, such as immigration or labor law.
>
>I ended up with the meager $23k in student loans - which I am still paying 
>back, and over three times as much in credit card debt shared with my ex - 
>which I unloaded via Chapter 7.  Most of it went to housing and living 
>expenses.  I would imagine that this is the norm - since tuition in public 
>schools is not that high to begin with, and is often reduced via grants 
>and other forms of aid.
>
>wojtek

how can that much debt be racked up when the limits, ten-fifteen yrs ago, 
were $2500/yr for undergrads and $8k/yr. for grads? if so, the max for an 
undergrad would be 10k -- maybe 12.5k if you took five years to finish. As 
for grad school, yes, i realize the avg length at grad school is something 
like 7.9 years, but even so, this doesn't explain how an undergrad has $40k 
of student loan debt or how grad studs rack up debt in the six figures? it 
certainly doesn't explain law school debt--since law school is usually, 
what?, 3-4 years? i don't feel like wading thru salliemae's site, so does 
anyone know?