Law Students
Tight Credit Market Likely Won’t Affect Law School Loans
Posted Oct 2, 2008, 11:04 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The tight credit market won’t affect the kind of government backed loans used by most law students, but it could but a damper on private loans that tide over recent grads as they study for the bar.
New York Law School Dean Richard Matasar told the National Law Journal that most law students rely on Graduate PLUS loans that have government backing. As a result, lenders are likely to continue to offer the loans. That’s not the case for private loans, which are harder to come by, said Matasar, who is chairman of the board of directors of education lender Access Group.
Private loans are used to fund college more often than law school, Matasar told the legal newspaper. Students who enter law school in the coming years who relied on the private loans for their undergraduate education are more likely to be saddled with high interest rates nudged upward by the credit crisis.
The economic downturn may have a positive effect on law schools, Matasar added. That’s because people turn to higher education as they wait out tough employment markets.
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