More On The Impact Of The New Federal Student Loan Limits On Law Schools

Following up on Monday's post, The Impact Of The One Big Beautiful Bill Act's Federal Student Loan Limits On Law Schools:

Business Insider, A Big Change to Student Loans in Trump's Spending Bill Could Make It Harder to Become a Doctor or Lawyer:

One specific student-loan change in the bill places new caps on the amount of loans students can borrow for graduate school, including medical and law school. Specifically, the bill eliminates the Grad PLUS loan program, which allowed graduate and professional students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance for their programs.

It also caps borrowing for graduate students at $20,500 a year and $100,000 over a lifetime and for professional students, like those in medical or law school, at $50,000 a year and $200,000 over a lifetime. …

The average total cost of law school in the latest school year, according to the Education Data Initiative, was just over $217,000. … Private student loans often require a cosigner, so some students may not qualify, and they may have no options to fully finance and attend graduate school. So there is a possibility that for some students, this will be a barrier to accessing graduate school.

Law.com, Big Beautiful Bill May Not Be Pretty for Prospective Law Students:

A career in the legal profession may soon be out of reach for many prospective law students since the signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last week, which included student loan caps and the elimination of federal graduate and professional Direct PLUS loans. …

“I’m hearing a lot of students talk about the possible effects of the bill, and the fear is that the borrowing limits will lead to having to use second-party borrowers to finance bridge loans to make up for tuition costs,” Dave Killoran, CEO of PowerScore, told Law.com in an email Monday. “Those could end up being predatory, and affect the poorest and most vulnerable groups of borrowers.” …

In an email to Law.com on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Law School Admissions Council said, "Our initial impression is that those students who rely most heavily on federal financial aid will be particularly impacted in their choice of schools and perhaps whether to attend law school at all."

Derek Muller (Notre Dame), Will the New Student Loan Law Hobble Some Law Schools' Reliance on Non-JD Forms of Revenue?:

Over at Bluesky, Professor Milan Markovic notes one additional wrinkle: how this affects non-JD legal education.

While “professional” school students will be limited to $50,000 per year in federally-backed student loans, “graduate” school students will be capped at $20,500 per year. That’s a significant difference. …

As I’ve chronicled, law schools have increasingly relied on non-JD enrollment as a source of revenue. About 1 in 6 enrollees in law school is enrolled in a non-JD program. …

A handful of schools disproportionately rely on non-JD revenue. Here are the 11 schools that had at least 40% of their enrollment in non-JD programs:

As I’ve already suggested, I doubt schools will reduce tuition in response to the federal loan cap. They are more inclined to pass the cost along to students. The only question is whether they will be able to do so for privately-backed loans. For the JD program, that seems feasible at many institutions. For the non-JD, it’s something to watch closely in the years ahead.

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage: