It's true that the percentage of black and Latino students entering US law schools is at a record high, up from 15 per cent in 2010 to 21 per cent last year. However, St Louis University law professor Aaron Taylor has warned that the portrait of progress painted by such a statistic might not be nearly as rosy as it seems. Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Taylor argues that while admissions stats may be on the up, black and Latino law students bearing the burden of significantly steeper debt than their historically more privileged peers.
Professor Taylor cites data from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement to outline what he describes as a 'reverse Robin Hood scheme' at work in US law schools, whereby lesser privileged students are subsidising the tuition of others. According to the data, around 60 per cent of black and Latino students said that they expected to graduate law school with debt in excess of $100,000, compared with just 40 per cent of students who identify as white or Asian. According to Professor Taylor, the disparity may come down to the fact that fewer black and Latino students are being awarded tuition scholarships to help curb their debt—awards that are generally determined on the basis of LSAT scores, rather than other criteria.
'Today, with higher law school tuition rates and lower expectations of benefits for graduates, financial aid policies that foist the highest costs onto the poorest students are untenable—and unethical,' he argues.
Source: ABA Journal
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