Law school median and mean debt loads, 2015-2017

The Department of Education has been releasing more disclosures to the public concerning higher education. Its most recent data disclosures include preliminary student loan debt loads over a two-year period, 2015-2017.

One useful piece of information is the median debt loads of students who incurred debt. USNWR discloses schools’ self-reported mean debt loads, although those figures are sometimes less than helpful due to school disclosure irregularities. But the mean may distort what a typical student’s loans look like, if a large batch of students borrow just a few dollars to cover perhaps the end of law school. That could artificially lower the mean, whereas the median law student may have much higher debt loads. (It could also work the other way.)

The Department of Education tables include both median and mean debt loads. Granted, this data, while better than the self-reported USNWR data, still has its share of flaws. I looked up every “law” program—many reported the degrees differently, usually “Doctoral Degree” or “First Professional Degree,” but I removed every self-described “Master’s Degree” program. I sorts the schools by median debt load. Included are the school types (public, private, and “proprietary” i.e., for-profit). Also included are the “count” of individuals in the two-year cohort (and you can view more about how the “count” and other terms are defined). The count includes those who completed the program in that time period. (Some were listed as “Privacy Suppressed,” which I converted to “n/a.”) Recall, too, that these are only those who incurred debt; a good number of students graduate each year without incurring law schools. (For a sense of those figures, check out the latest USNWR disclosures. Many schools report that at least 20% of their graduates, sometimes more, incur no debt.)

I’ll start with the top 20 schools in median debt.

Four for-profit schools are in the top 20. The remainder are in California (7), New York (3), the DC area (3), and Florida (2), along with Thomas M. Cooley Law School. (It’s also worth noting that Whittier, Charlotte, and Arizona Summit have announced their closures.)

Now for the bottom 20 schools, the ones with the lowest median debt among those who incurred debt:

Unsurprisingly, most are public schools, many in lower cost-of-living locations. But near the bottom of the list are a pair of non-ABA-accredited law schools in California (Taft, and Santa Barbara and Ventura Colleges of Law), with relatively (in one case, quite) low reported debt loads. At the bottom of the list among ABA-accredited schools is the private BYU, at just $51,250 median debt load.

The entire table is below the jump. Additionally, I included the same table with the mean debt, too. Of course, recall that any data like this, particularly “preliminary,” may have inaccuracies, and some of the coding may mean that I’m inadvertently including or excluding certain institutions.

UPDATE: At least one school was incorrectly reported as “private” when it is “public.” I have made that change.