Student Loan Borrowing Limits and Nonprofits
Shaun Ossei-Owusu (Penn) has an interesting, timely, and thought-provoking op-ed in Bloomberg this week. From the op-ed:
“For a long time, the US had an unspoken deal with people who wanted to do public interest work. Go work as a legal aid lawyer; be a public defender; take a job at a nonprofit organization.
You’d probably have to borrow a lot of money, but the federal government would help make that debt manageable in exchange for engaging in socially beneficial work. If you stayed in public service long enough, it might even forgive what remained.
This bargain is now being rewritten. This month Congress imposed limits on how much students could borrow. These changes could affect the size and composition of the public interest bar over time. . . .”
I’ll forecast that the supply of the labor force in the nonprofit sector, not just the public interest bar, will register the effects of the new student loan borrowing limits as well.