Do you think the costs of professional school (med, law, dental etc) are unsustainable?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unsustainable? Not sure about that because there’s always someone who is willing and able to pay. We paid for two adult kids education (1 med and 1 pharmacy school) and they are EXPENSIVE for sure.

I don’t know if your child has been affected by this but Matt Stoller’s exposés on CVS’s pharmacy monopoly and it’s impact on pharmacist working conditions is crazy.

DP here. Here it is:

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-cvs-became-a-health-care-tyrant?s=r

[Anonymous]

Law school graduates will be fine
Med school graduates are fine
Vet school graduates are fine
Dental school graduates are fine

The key is a good residency post, or a good clerkship post grad. The second key is networking. The third key is maintaining your physical fitness. Society values beauty and people want to work in close proximity to good looking people.

The final key is charity and knowing YAHUAH b/c it is he that elevates people, not we ourselves.
You can go to the best schools and still if it is not your destiny to be elevated by YAHUAH you will not be elevated.
Each of us have a destiny, the thing that your gut and heart longs to do most. Following that path set by your Creator will elevate you, just doing something for money will make your path equivocally harder. Yes you may prosper some, but will you flourish the way you would have, had you followed the path set for you?

OP, allow your daughter to follow her heart. Don't change her destiny because of fear.

[Anonymous]

I think each of these professions deserve their own thread since they differ so greatly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Just as an example, there is a serious shortage of vets. My DD is a junior in college and has been taking a pre-vet curriculum and has done well academically. She worked at a vet’s office in high school and it is all she has ever wanted to do, but after a ton of research and discussions with practicing vets, she is pivoting to considering other paths because the debt to income ratio is terrifying. We saved and were able to put her through college without borrowing any money, and are not low income enough that she could qualify for any kind of need based grants, but we can’t help her further because we have to ensure our retirement savings are secure. I’m sad for her of course, but the societal impacts of this playing out across a lot of professions are profound.

If she really understands what it’s like to be a vet (example: putting animals to sleep, and getting bitten) and is OK with that, she should just borrow the money and be a vet. There will be a lot of inflation, and the inflation means the value of fixed-rate debt will be a lot lower than it looks today.

Kids shouldn’t take on a lot of debt for a graduate degree where the career path is fuzzy (example: art, or law), but it’s obvious that a good vet can get a great job. The only question is what the income-to-loan-payment ratio will be. But your daughter doesn’t have any huge fixed costs, and it sounds as if she won’t have to support you when you’re older. Your daughter should just take a leap of faith and fill her brain with the knowledge she wants to put in her brain, even if that means taking on a lot of debt.

This whole thread is an example of why kids who can gamble on a high-value professional degree should make that bet. Obviously, scarcity is about to increase the lifetime value of many types of professional degrees.

NP and wow this is just horrible, stupid advice!

The OP already explained there is a debt to income ratio issue. I am guessing you failed to understand that it isn’t a temporary situation. It can be lifelong. Vets can only charge what the market in their area can sustain and they will often pay other business expenses plus carry insurance. It means they may be paying off student debt for the rest of their life and that’s not an exaggeration.

To the OP, my DD had the same dream of being a vet, loves animals and is in her freshman year. She has been doing more research and talking to older students and has decided to stay the pre- vet course for now but I have a feeling she will not apply to vet school. She mentioned she found some information that the military might have an option for vets but she has no real interest in joining the military. Rural areas with farms are going to be hit in the coming years as many vets will retire. I hope states begin to consider expanding their vet programs to allow more students to study and also reduce the cost of tuition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In college there’s AP credits, working during school, etc. Few such tricks exist for vet school or med school.

The med school process is unnecessarily classist in my opinion with requiring applicants to apply an entire year before they’d matriculate and requiring them to fly to interviews. But neither practice has deterred demand for spots.

my daughter spent $3500 on med school applications (and the associated costs- MCAT, traveling to interviews, etc.) alone. It's a racket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The one path that still makes sense is committing to public interest law and receiving debt forgiveness. But my understanding is that this has actually been quite hard until recently, and even now it's challenging even for those who have spent their entire careers in public interest roles. This should be more straightforward. There is also some weirdness here. All government jobs are considered public interest, but some of these jobs pay close to 200k a year and the relationship to public interest is loose (SEC lawyers technically work for the government but really only technically). It's weird to see debt forgiveness for those jobs but not for someone who has simply struggled to find decent-paying legal work in the private sector.

Public interest law arguably makes no financial sense even with debt forgiveness programs (which mean taxpayers are paying for those students' educations; there's no free lunch). That is because of the opportunity costs involved in spending three years in law school instead of earning, saving, and investing money. A relatively low-paid post-law school job coupled with three years of no earnings while in law school will leave those lawyers financially worse off than if they had acquired other professional or vocational qualifications and gone into the workforce and began earning after high school, community college, or undergraduate school

I mean, it makes sense if you go work for the SEC or DOJ until you get debt forgiveness, and then parlay those jobs into private sector positions that pay much better.

Otherwise, it's only worth it if you really love the work. And even then, I would advise anyone considering to look hard at secondary markets (Philly, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Minneapolis, to name a few) where COL is much lower than in DC-NYC-LA-SF-Seattle. At least in those markets, you stand a chance at, say, owning a home or being able to comfortably afford having children, on a public interest salary. Doing public interest law in DC puts those things out of reach for many after the cost of law school, unless you marry someone making much more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Just as an example, there is a serious shortage of vets. My DD is a junior in college and has been taking a pre-vet curriculum and has done well academically. She worked at a vet’s office in high school and it is all she has ever wanted to do, but after a ton of research and discussions with practicing vets, she is pivoting to considering other paths because the debt to income ratio is terrifying. We saved and were able to put her through college without borrowing any money, and are not low income enough that she could qualify for any kind of need based grants, but we can’t help her further because we have to ensure our retirement savings are secure. I’m sad for her of course, but the societal impacts of this playing out across a lot of professions are profound.

If she really understands what it’s like to be a vet (example: putting animals to sleep, and getting bitten) and is OK with that, she should just borrow the money and be a vet. There will be a lot of inflation, and the inflation means the value of fixed-rate debt will be a lot lower than it looks today.

Kids shouldn’t take on a lot of debt for a graduate degree where the career path is fuzzy (example: art, or law), but it’s obvious that a good vet can get a great job. The only question is what the income-to-loan-payment ratio will be. But your daughter doesn’t have any huge fixed costs, and it sounds as if she won’t have to support you when you’re older. Your daughter should just take a leap of faith and fill her brain with the knowledge she wants to put in her brain, even if that means taking on a lot of debt.

This whole thread is an example of why kids who can gamble on a high-value professional degree should make that bet. Obviously, scarcity is about to increase the lifetime value of many types of professional degrees.

NP and wow this is just horrible, stupid advice!

The OP already explained there is a debt to income ratio issue. I am guessing you failed to understand that it isn’t a temporary situation. It can be lifelong. Vets can only charge what the market in their area can sustain and they will often pay other business expenses plus carry insurance. It means they may be paying off student debt for the rest of their life and that’s not an exaggeration.

To the OP, my DD had the same dream of being a vet, loves animals and is in her freshman year. She has been doing more research and talking to older students and has decided to stay the pre- vet course for now but I have a feeling she will not apply to vet school. She mentioned she found some information that the military might have an option for vets but she has no real interest in joining the military. Rural areas with farms are going to be hit in the coming years as many vets will retire. I hope states begin to consider expanding their vet programs to allow more students to study and also reduce the cost of tuition.

Is there PA or NP kind of education for vet school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Law school graduates will be fine
Med school graduates are fine
Vet school graduates are fine
Dental school graduates are fine

The key is a good residency post, or a good clerkship post grad. The second key is networking. The third key is maintaining your physical fitness. Society values beauty and people want to work in close proximity to good looking people.

The final key is charity and knowing YAHUAH b/c it is he that elevates people, not we ourselves.
You can go to the best schools and still if it is not your destiny to be elevated by YAHUAH you will not be elevated.
Each of us have a destiny, the thing that your gut and heart longs to do most. Following that path set by your Creator will elevate you, just doing something for money will make your path equivocally harder. Yes you may prosper some, but will you flourish the way you would have, had you followed the path set for you?

OP, allow your daughter to follow her heart. Don't change her destiny because of fear.

But your post shows why these costs are unsustainable. If, in order for these degrees to be worth the cost, you need to get a good residency post, a good clerkship, successfully network, and also be attractive, then the vast majority of graduates will not get the ROI needed to justify it. There isn't enough of all that to go around.

My advice to people is to understand that if you are going to spend or borrow large sums of money to get an education, it must be for something you can't imagine NOT doing. That's the only reason to pursue something this time consuming and costly -- because being a doctor or a lawyer is the only thing you can seriously see yourself doing. Otherwise, it will be a waste of your time and money and you'll wonder why you didn't just pursue a career straight out of undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Just as an example, there is a serious shortage of vets. My DD is a junior in college and has been taking a pre-vet curriculum and has done well academically. She worked at a vet’s office in high school and it is all she has ever wanted to do, but after a ton of research and discussions with practicing vets, she is pivoting to considering other paths because the debt to income ratio is terrifying. We saved and were able to put her through college without borrowing any money, and are not low income enough that she could qualify for any kind of need based grants, but we can’t help her further because we have to ensure our retirement savings are secure. I’m sad for her of course, but the societal impacts of this playing out across a lot of professions are profound.

My son did vet school in the UK. I think it cost considerably less than a US uni. Maybe your daughter could look into seeing how many credits from her US uni will transfer to a vet programme in the UK. My son’s programme was five years, but if your daughter can transfer in some credits, maybe she can shave off a few years and end up qualifying for less money than she would in the US.

We did buy him a car because for a time he was expected to visit farms in various places in the countryside, but even with that it was less expensive than US uni, I think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The key to graduate schools is going to in-state or public state schools where the costs are paid largely by the state which reduces the costs for tuition. Once the degree is completed, then go to private universities for internships, fellowships, or graduate teaching assistants reduces your costs and increases your teaching experiences.

professional schools don't really work that way. my daughter is in medical school and fortunately she got into VCU med (we are VA residents) which certainly is less expensive than private medical schools...but she's still going to come out with $200k of debt...

[Anonymous]

It’s a shame that all of these smart college graduates were forced against their will to go to these professional schools and take on this massive debt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a shame that all of these smart college graduates were forced against their will to go to these professional schools and take on this massive debt.

Try to keep on task. We kinda need doctors and veterinarians.

This is about discussing so they wouldn’t need to take on such debt in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Young folks going to these programs entirely on credit. It’s a mess IMO. The schools know it’s entirely on credit and run $100k/tear.

I would rather my kid go to investment banking, consulting firms or private equity and get paid in six figures without more schooling or debt. By the time they’ll finish med school and training, he’ll be far ahead. Unfortunately, you have to be good at math for these professions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Young folks going to these programs entirely on credit. It’s a mess IMO. The schools know it’s entirely on credit and run $100k/tear.

I would rather my kid go to investment banking, consulting firms or private equity and get paid in six figures without more schooling or debt. By the time they’ll finish med school and training, he’ll be far ahead. Unfortunately, you have to be good at math for these professions.

Lol no. More like you have to go to a top school to get into these professions. I’d bet thousands of Applied or Pure Mathematics majors are overlooked in hiring for those professions. Instead, they hire a Yale History major who was an athlete.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I think the costs are unsustainable. I’d like to see some sort of free educational system for medical/dental/vision/vets. I don’t know how to structure it, but not everyone has the ability to qualify for these skills or will survive the educational requirements when in school so the applicant pool will be somewhat self selected.