Yale Law School Makes its Loan Forgiveness Program a Little Less Forgiving

Yale Law School is known for its loan forgiveness generosity. Now it will be a little less generous. Faced with rising costs, Yale has amended their Career Options Assistance Program. Previously, alumni who earned less than $60,000 a year could have their loans subsidized. Now the baseline is $50,000, and it also expects of its other alumni a varying percentage of income based on a sliding scale of income brackets.

Said Brent Dickman, the laws school’s associate dean for finance and administration, “We’re really just trying to protect the program long-term.” And it’s still comparatively generous: Harvard Law’s similar program requires no contribution from a baseline of $45,000 or less, and Columbia Law School has a baseline of $50,000. The program at Yale is meant to encourage students to seek public service careers, even if the career is off track (it need not be in law).

According to the Yale Daily News, students admitted to the class of 2015 that the change would not alter their decision on Yale. Yet with the tuition of law school continually increasing, it does make life a bit more tense for Law grads.

The changes will not affect students currently enrolled nor alter the loan programs of current alumni’s.