For years students have grumbled about the high cost of student loans on their wallets, but a new study finds that large law school debt can also come at a considerable cost to children in Texas’ foster care system.
According to a recent study issued by Home at Last – an education and outreach project supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts – many lawyers in Texas and across the nation cannot afford to enter or remain in the child welfare field due to overwhelming student loan debt. Over two-thirds of lawyers surveyed owe at least $50,000 in student loan debt and nearly a quarter owe $75,000 or more. More than two in three report that their current debt will be a factor in their future decisions to seek other, higher-paid employment, despite the fact that most would prefer to work as foster children’s advocates.
The trend of forsaking child welfare work because of overwhelming student loans very much applies to Texas. For example, at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, the average law school debt over three years is $60,000.
Yet, starting salaries for 2004 SMU grads working in the public interest sector average in the $30,000s. The majority of grads went on to work for a private law firm, earning an average starting salary of $88,000.
This situation is not unique to SMU law school graduates. As a former supervising attorney at the Children’s Right’s Clinic, a hands-on clinic at The University of Texas School of Law, I watched many bright and talented future lawyers accept firm jobs because their high student loans made public interest work unaffordable.
As a result, far too many of the 28,000 kids in Texas’ foster care system, and 500,000 foster kids nationwide, lack stable legal representation and are voiceless in the court proceedings that profoundly affect their lives. All life-altering decisions for foster children, including determining whether they will remain in foster care, return to their family, have legal ties to their birth parents severed or be adopted, are made in court.
That’s why the bipartisan Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care recommends instituting a national loan forgiveness program that would provide financial assistance in repaying student loans to lawyers currently practicing child welfare law and those interested in entering the field, as well as other committed professionals interested in devoting their careers to children.
Some members of Congress have already introduced amendments to support loan forgiveness programs for those working with children in foster care.
Here in Texas, an amendment was proposed during the 2005 regular legislative session that would provide loan forgiveness for social workers. While it wasn’t approved and wouldn’t have affected attorneys, the acknowledgement that we need good people to enter and stay in the child welfare system and that loan forgiveness is an effective way of achieving that goal is encouraging.
On the law school front, SMU should join the schools of law at the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkley, the University of Virginia and other top institutions across the country in offering loan forgiveness programs for attorneys entering the public interest arena. That way, the best of the best can afford to take jobs that improve the well-being of children and make Texas better off.
After all, without loan forgiveness programs, can we ever forgive ourselves if our most vulnerable children suffer because talented and dedicated lawyers can’t afford to represent them?
Tiffany Roper is a policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based nonprofit research organization.
