Following up on my previous posts (links below): Derek Muller (Iowa; Google Scholar), Which Law Schools Have the Best and Worst Debt-to-Income Ratios Among Recent Law School Graduates? 2023 Update:
The Department of Education offers data with incredible insights into debt and earnings of university graduates. Recent updates are available, and we can look at the data again. …
A good rule of thumb might be that “manageable” debt loads are those where debt is about equal to expected income at graduation—i.e., a ratio of 1.00 or lower. Only 20 schools meet that definition among median debt and earnings, and a few others are close.
Many ratios, however, are significantly higher than that. 59 have ratios above 2.00; of those, 13 have ratios above 3.00. Only a couple of schools in the USNWR “top 50” rankings cross the 2.00 ratio.
TaxProf Blog coverage:
- Muller: Law Schools With The Best And Worst Debt-To-Income Ratios Among Recent Graduates (Jan. 4, 2021)
- Muller: Law Schools With The Worst Debt-to-Income Ratios Among Recent Graduates (Jan. 11, 2020)
- Debt-To-Income Ratios Among The Top 14, 21 California, And 15 New York Law Schools (Dec. 10, 2019)
- Law Schools With The Best Debt-to-Income Ratios Among Recent Graduates (Nov. 25, 2019)



