How do you feel about student loan forgiveness?
The debate is coming back up because of new talks around student loan forgiveness in the US. I was on the fence about it until I did some extra research for a comment I posted last week.
I am including the comment I posted last week that was from a discussion about whether general education classes should be required for a college degree, but the part about the societal value of a college graduate to the US is relevant.
Higher education is an interesting thing to put a price on because while some classes can provide economic benefits to people who get a higher education, many classes provide more of a societal benefit.
A history class doesn't help an engineer make a jet turbine, but it can help them be an informed voter. College campuses mix people of different races, genders, origins, and socioeconomic classes with each other. The general education courses expose students to different concepts that can help them in their civic lives.
College graduates also have many economic benefits to society. On average, college graduates pay much more in taxes than they take in government benefits over their lifetimes. High school graduates also contribute, but only a modest gain where college graduates contribute 4-5x what they take. Governments invest $28,000 per college student on average but gain $335,000 in net monetary benefit over their lifetime.
I get that many people are opposed to courses that don't directly apply to a career because they have to pay a lot of money out of pocket when the course may only provide a benefit to society. Why can't the government provide loan forgiveness to anyone who graduates? It would take pressure off students and still provide a net benefit to society over having them not graduate.
It's ignoring the real issue and a political band aid akin to buying votes.
College should not cost what it costs and should not take as long as it takes. College should not gate as many professions as it gates. At this point it's become a tax on success for many, and a pointless one at that. It's probably one of the largest gates for a lower class individual attempting to succeed, and it's certainly the most defended as if it's somehow a good thing.
There are advantages to higher education and people being better rounded, but not when you hold it hostage behind crippling debt. Forgiving this generations debt for votes, and doing literally nothing to actually solve the root problem, is just kicking the can down the road. I have no problem forgiving those student loans, but I do think it's absurd to think it's remotely good to do only that. It's literally acknowledging that there's something severely predatory and fucked up about the system, but only allowing the current generation to benefit, while leaving all the practices in place to screw the upcoming generations.
Finally a lot of the supposed benefits of college are mostly overstated and can be gotten elsewhere. The "well it shows someone can put up with hard work" or whatever line is a very lazy way to judge people and could be assessed at a fraction of the cost and time. Further most other countries have a MUCH better public education system, and until we do shoving more and more responsibility on the colleges solves nothing.
You're right but it is still better than doing nothing and it's something Biden can do. Unless America can get its shit together, which I see no signs of hope, then I would rather have a president do something then kick the can down the road. It's Congress that is a broken shitshow.
I'm honestly not even sure I agree with this.
It's in theory nice thing to do, but it's:
I don't have any animosity towards those benefiting, but I understand why people will. I think it's very fair to say the government shouldn't be in the habit of, essentially, holding your well being hostage for votes, and only for 1 relevant group at a time.
I find it significantly better than something like "I will lower your taxes by slashing public department funding"
And I suppose I have trouble seeing how your "wellbeing is being held hostage for votes" when the stakes are to vote for a party that will do what it can to accomplish a positive goal whereas the opposing party will either ignore or reject that positive goal. Like, Biden isn't going to actively fight against student loan relief if he doesn't win, that's not his party's MO, though it sounds familiar across the aisle.
I guess, what's the difference between getting elected for a popular economic policy and buying votes to you? As for people struggling financially after "paying their fair share" for their loans i.e. getting railed by the student loan industry, it seems obtuse to be upset when others are given a way out of your situation.
Some funding needs to be slashed, other funding doesn't. This is not an inherently bad position, although yes it is obviously a position that has been used to do bad things.
You are co-mingling the parties intentions and other factors with the merit of this one policy. The stakes do not automatically give this merit. They do mean i'll still vote for biden, but not that this is a good idea, or doing anything less than telling a bunch of people with loans "So who do you want to vote for? The person giving you thousands of dollars or the other guy" Yes a lot of policies do boil down to that, but not this directly and literally. This isn't some possible pork public works project. It is literally targeting a specific slice of people.
I pretty heavily disagree and think you might want to read up on the issue more. One of the major reasons any of this is a problem is because bankruptcy CANNOT invalidate student loans, something biden and the democrats, helped bring into reality. They are literally solving the problem they helped create.
I don't believe this was their intention (lets screw over an entire generation of students so we can hold it above their heads for votes later), but at the same time, that is very much what is happening.
Well for starters one is an economic policy and isn't just giving a specific subset of people money? "This will help my industry" is a far cry from "This will literally get rid of the thousands of dollars hanging above my head". I wasn't a huge fan of bank bailouts for a similar reason, and this shares far more in common with that than economic policy. The difference being that the students being "bailed out" here are very much victims, but again it's of system the democrats helped create and have profited from.
Seems pretty damn normal to me. Yes it's nice to see other people be saved from your fate, but it doesn't make you thrilled that you got the short end of that stick, or that apparently they now recognize this is bullshit but will only be bailing out those who are still there. We know how much money students have paid off, why not pay back every student who's declared bankruptcy but couldn't get their student loans cleared since 2005?
The short answer is mostly that it's not economically feasible, but I'd understand if someone was pissed about it. Much like anyone who's had years of their life ruined by stupid drug policies in a state that's finally legalized weed, is probably going to ask "so what about my life?".
I think you're conflating two unrelated things. The alternative of student debt forgiveness isn't "slashing public department funding". The alternative of student debt forgiveness is...well not forgiving the debt. I think you're conflating that being against student debt forgiveness as a solution (which it's not) = supporting the other party and their policies of what they will do. Thats just not the case. You can be against student debt forgiveness as a solution while still agreeing Biden as a whole.
And maybe saying it's just "buying votes" isn't the right term, but it's not really addressing the actual issues, it's just a surface level feel-good policy that will absolutely help a very specific demographic, but then do nothing to solve the actual problems.
Is it better than nothing? Maybe. It certainly would be a major lift to those who desperately need it. But I'd rather have our policy be something that fixes the systemic issues rather than just put a bandaid on an open wound. If we are going to forgive the debt, I think it's great we are directly benefiting and helping those in need. But I want to see us take it a step further. I don't want this to be the "solution" and then calling it a day.
Ah I suppose I should clarify that I don't see debt forgiveness as a solution to deep rooted institutional issues. I think it's just an endeavor worth supporting, since it will help people who are hurt by those issues. I would like to see fixes as well, but I don't think that means being against debt forgiveness as a policy. Both should happen eventually, and we have a chance for one to happen in the immediate future. I suppose it rubs me the wrong way to see people saying they can't support debt forgiveness unless it's a whole package that addresses everything.
Every good thing does not have to be the perfect thing. A small imperfect good can still mean a lot to the people it helps. It's not zero sum, right now it's very much "get whatever good you can accomplished" IMO
Regarding 2, I disagree. I’m one of those people who paid off my loans (took me nearly 10 years) but just because I had to suffer with the financial burden of student loan debt doesn’t mean I want others to. I’ll be happy for those who get their loans forgiven and get a better chance at financially succeeding than I did.
And that’s fine. I’d still understand that there will be people who resent it
I don't see how it's brazenly buying votes when it's like the fourth time he's tried to do it in the past few years. Is any policy the economically benefits people buying votes?
Feel like I already answered this here: https://tildes.net/~life/1fhf/how_do_you_feel_about_student_loan_forgiveness#comment-chb5
I paid my student loans off and have zero problem with other people getting help. College should be free, and I’m fine with this as a first step.
Same here, I remain skeptical but wouldn't oppose the debt forgiveness. Maybe normalization is what we're missing to take US society from the current model of higher education to free or low cost systems. I've spent literal years voting for candidates running for public office to make it happen. But their bills get shut down or silenced somehow, so apparently the rest of the country still needs to be convinced.
I'm 43, have a wife and 2 kids, and a great job, and I'm still playing my student loans. I was lucky to have refinanced when rates were low, so the payments aren't outrageous, but I agree that this is a bandaid over a broken system. Higher education shouldn't be so expensive, and honestly in America we should have universal healthcare and free higher education.
If we can bail out already rich people with businesses that make millions and millions, we should instead be able to afford to bail out the future of America who was preyed on at a young age to stay in debt forever.
As for the other part of your post. As someone who went to college and 60% of my classes had nothing to do with my major, I do believe we can trim down what we are forcing students to do for degrees. I feel like these extra classes are just bloat to take more money.
It's also part of gaining a well-rounded education and not just vocational training. There's definitely a balance to be struck, but a good college isn't just a vocational school.
STEM majors probably don't need philosophy, but they should probably take it anyway.
I'd say a huge amount of STEM degrees really, really need philosophy if they are to use their skills in ways that don't advertently cause a lot of harm to society.
Sure, there's some bloat in degrees (there's a reason a lot of bachelor degrees in Europe are 3 and not 4 years), but we want people who take higher education to become slightly well-rounded.
In democracies, it's extra important that people have the knowledge that lets them realize their potential as productive members of society. More well-rounded vocational training or other ways so these types of courses aren't restricted to academics is also a big deal.
I agree that four-year degrees should not constrain themselves to focus on market forces. Gen eds are an invaluable part of a university education. With quality professors, it is because they make the subjects inherently interesting.
With that said, I am deeply skeptical of whether adding more philosophy—or even a history of STEM with a focus on specific incidents—classes would meaningfully empower future workers to stop unethical projects. For most worker bees, even ignoring the financial incentives not to rock the boat, they are often kept in the dark of the overall project goals for this exact reason. They don't need to know why. If they do, they probably have sunshine fed to them.
Not to mention the students will optimize their way to earn As without absorbing the material, like it is an art history of literature gen ed.
On the other hand, many college programs aren't even a vocational education.
Yeah, I think people underestimate the damage to society's soul the abandonment of philosophy and the social sciences is doing.
Of course Americans have dumb racial politics; Americans never actually learn how the concept of race developed and evolved. How are we expecting enlightenment out of a population not actually being enlightened by anyone?
I broadly agree that education should challenge preconceptions and broaden horizons, but I also think many academics are wildly detached from the real world and need to touch grass.
In particular, I have some bones to pick with academic Queer Theorists that constantly rant about Homonormativity, Homonationalism, etc. My favourite example is an essay from Greta LaFleur, a professor at Yale, titled Heterosexuality without Women. I'd summarize the article as "Pete Buttigieg isn't subversive enough to be gay."
I can't speak to the stats, but that is an extreme example. The vast, vast majority of students are taking basic 101 shit like the Apology of Socrates.
Yeah, if you want to write a thesis on the history of gender studies or whatever, you're going to end up studying more esoteric stuff. That's true of every field. But what's a bigger problem; heterosexuality without women, or your average American believing that race is an actual biological category? Which of these two beliefs does the average person on the street hold?
I agree with you. Most professors are totally fine and don't hold such extreme positions.
I just feel it's important to question even the professors since the actual quality of the education is important too. It can be difficult to find really good teachers since most universities hire off research potential. I want professors to create lesson plans that encourage students to critically engage with difficult sources!
do you ever think about how Einstein was only able to figure out relativity because he had the skills to analyze the world philosophically and realize we were all failing to consider something very important? have you ever thought about how science itself literally is a type of philosophy, and it’s foundations lie in philosophical thinking? to take science for granted, without an understanding of philosophy, is just as good as faith in God
Yes, that was the intent of my point.
I guess I would’ve just made a much stronger statement than the one that you did
I've done that before. But I've found when teaching kids, it's best to set them up with the information and let them draw their own conclusions.
While I may or may not have done that well here...based on the values espoused from my young gradeschooler I think they could probably run for governer and do a better job than half of them.
I think there is presently value in geneds for college students due to the wild variations in how complete high school curricula can be, but I think there's a future in which we have higher standards for high school education that replace our need for them.
I did have a relatively focused degree plan though, with most of my geneds exempted through AP/dual credit before I actually started at university.
Like a European bachelor's degree? They only take 3 years and are far more focused on the subject matter.
Yep, my degree could have likely been done in 2-3yrs, or still 4yrs with more breathing room for internships, jobs or college extra curricular activities.
I am not against those extra classes, per say, but they can at least be made to fit the majors better.
My major was Advertising. During that time I had to take English, and instead of creating an English class about Copywriting (which is a big part of my field with writing scripts, voice overs, creating narratives, translating, localizing, finding the right voice, tone, flow, etc) they made us take a class, where we read a book and just wrote a review about it. Rinse and repeat.
Same for science. I loved my color theory class, there wasn’t enough of it. I would have taken a course that was just dedicated to the color Red if given the chance.
What about a class on the ethics of advertising?
Most of my electives were rehashing the same things they already taught us prior to college. My initial thought it’s that it’s pure laziness, but it’s likely just a symptom of not having enough educators. It’s much easier to make 100 different majors take the same standard English class, than it would be to create a unique English curriculum for 100 different majors.
I think student loan forgiveness is important! I feel like it's better to live in a society where people are generally smarter anyways. I unfortunately won't get any benefits from it directly, but I think the indirect benefits outweigh it.
Personal background for context
I graduated from a (top 50 in the nation, iirc) State University with a E/CE degree, so I had minimal debt (relative to a lot of other people) that added up to around 90K for 4.5 years. I had help from my parents for around half, and ended up paying for the rest of it within 3 years of working. I work in software now,Your experience is actually very relevant to me. I'm going back to school for Computer Engineering in the fall and most likely taking out loans depending on what kind of living situation I can manage. I just figure that if I could afford to buy a luxury car once I'm out of school, I can afford to drive a cheap car and pay loans.
I think we talked about it before! I hope that you enjoy it a lot, E/CE wasn't the best experience for me but I got through it. I wish you luck, good luck on MultiVar and DiffEq :)
I think it needs to happen and the arguments against it don't really hold up. A government should support its citizens and it's crazy to me that this is seen as so controversial. Usually the people who are against it say things that boil down to "what about me though" and are completely unable to see how something that doesn't benefit them on a personal level can still be worth doing.
I also think it's going to continue to be a problem indefinitely until we do something to lower the cost of education. It just should not be that expensive. Our taxes should be providing us with education and health care, but I am afraid our elected officials will never stop funding weapons manufacturers and oil companies :/ Loan forgiveness is a really needed relief, but it is a band aid that doesn't address the root cause.
Exactly. A one-time loan-forgiveness program isn't good enough.
It needs to be paired with additional funding to colleges to severely reduce or eliminate the cost to students. A lot of colleges are suffering from a lack of state funding and rely on tuition for something like 80% or more of operational (read: Not infrastructure provided by donations) costs.
College costs are high in part due to demands for modern luxury. If students were content with some lecture halls, professors, and books, college would be a lot cheaper. But the education would be much more limited than most students would expect.
It's not easy or cheap to build and maintain a giant campus-wide wifi network for 10,000+ students, let alone all the other computing needs.
The "what about me" comments are a cry for help. The average student loan debt is something like $26k if we're talking undergraduate student loan debt. But a person with an undergraduate degree will make much, much more than a person without throughout their lifetime. $26k is not a back-breaking amount; that's how much my car cost and a car payment a month is not an egregious amount. Forgiving that debt when career prospects are already so much higher gives a double whammy against the people without degrees.
I see the typical response is that helping one doesn't hurt the other, but that's not so. If I have an extra $X in my pocket every month, that's an extra $X I can spend on a mortgage. The prices of homes will rise due to the influx of available cash, but that influx targets the same group that also has increased career earnings. There are always exceptions, such as those with higher debts and lower career earnings. I support relief in those cases, but that's not where the conversation is at today.
Not everyone with student debt has an undergraduate degree. The burden of student debt is particularly acute for those who were unable to attain a degree for some reason or another.
Absolutely, and that's my point. Everyone can easily point to situations where it's obvious people need help, but then why are the debt cancellation attempts always so broad? Debt cancellation for everyone, debt cancellation for all making less than $150k, etc.
One reason is that means testing requires staffing. The simpler you make it, the easier implementation is.
Every full-time staffer that gets hired to implement this is basically 1 less person that can get their student loans wiped.
Having the means tested against say income is already a sunk cost for taxation....but filtering it more granular than that is gonna require sinking a lot more resources.
I'd rather see something more akin to an expansion of affordable housing programs which will help people with and without student loans. And only doing loan debt forgiveness after we've solved the unaffordable post-secondary education problem.
Much like wiping drug offenses off of records after the drug has been legalized...rather than before the drug was legalized.
I also think things have gotten particularly bad with the animosity that has been stirred up around education. I've seen people getting defensive about high school graduates on other websites whenever some benefit of college education is brought up. Nothing negative about high school graduates will be said, but someone will come in and get offended anyways.
I can sort of follow your logic here but I don't think it's backed up by anything real. Student loan forgiveness driving up housing costs seems like a stretch. I also can't speak for others, but in my little cohort, undergraduate loans were closer to 70k. Since graduating into a recession, in a state with a 7.25 minimum wage, finding a job that earned more than my high school educated peers was not happening. I have since paid about 72k, and still owe 24k, due to interest. My case is not an exceptional one. I also think that if more people could afford to get a mortgage, that is a net positive for our country. Not a bad thing. So while I kind of follow you, on paper, it just doesn't match anything I have seen in my actual life.
The numbers are not some secret; I just checked again and found a CNN source stating $29k for just a couple years ago, so it's the right ballpark. Of course there will be people above and people below that number.
I read the article, it doesn't say anything about helping borrowers having a negative impact on any sector. It does say that debt being this high has resulted in lower consumer spending, fewer new businesses being started, and increases in other types of debt. There is also an entire section about my cohort, those graduating into the recession, being worse off than others. I'm not sure what looking at a national average from 2022 proves other than some people are less fucked than some other people who are more fucked. Your argument that helping people would hurt other people remains flimsy. Having fewer people be fucked would be a net positive, regardless of which category they are in. Loan forgiveness would stimulate the economy.
I don't think I ever made any indication that the link was meant to do anything other than to address your anecdote of 70k loans amongst your cohort. It was meant to illustrate that the majority of outstanding student loan debt is far less than that. Your 70k is unfortunate, but it is not representative.
If you don't believe that increased consumer spending leads to increases in prices, then you should read more news from the last two years. You can certainly argue that the benefits of helping people out are worth the increase in prices, but that's a different thing than house prices not increasing.
I'm all for free or affordable education, but I think that blindly forgiving student debt is an expensive bandaid that will only make the root problem worse, and at the expense of the working class. While it does help those who took out loans to obtain degrees, it also has the effect of writing a blank check from the government / taxpayers right into the pockets of institutions that are offering a grossly overpriced product/service. If students don't have to care about the cost of their education, then nothing stops these institutions from continually increasing the costs.
So when it comes to "let's just forgive everyone's student debt and not change anything else", I'm against that approach as a whole. It needs to be paired with sensible reform in the cost of education, and that does not appear to be happening. So at the end of the day, we're just increasing our national debt. Someday, that debt will need to be paid with interest and we'll all be left holding the bag.
I would be willing to address the debt aspect of this topic if we were addressing all other aspects of federal spending waste. If not, it becomes irrelevant in my opinion because this is a priority well over and above defense, farm subsidies, wealthy tax evasion and loopholes, etc, etc...
I think if the cost benefits of having an educated populace were actually clearly understood, it would become hilariously obvious how important it is and how much profiteering and warping of systems is going on. To bring up debt forgiveness otherwise is kind of just revealing more than you think.
To put it another way, I dug out an old long remembered and loved tweet:
I don't disagree. Federal spending and federal income (in the form of taxation) both need to be addressed, and this is part of the spending aspect that I'm against. I was against PPP loans as well. But I'm not onboard with the viewpoint of "we blow money that we don't have on other things, so let's blow more money on this too".
Making education affordable and loan forgiveness do not go hand-in-hand. We should be able to make education affordable without writing blank checks to institutions with multi-billion-dollar endowment funds.
Everything else aside for a moment, that tweet strikes me as very disingenuous in a way that I think only Twitter punditry can be. Money is not cancer and cancer is not money (perhaps there's a philosophical parallel to be drawn, but that's a separate line of discussion). Money is fungible and can be repaid, neither of those are true of time and energy spent on pain, suffering, or illness. Getting angry at the development of a cancer cure after having beaten cancer is unreasonable because the time spent is fundamentally lost, there's no chance of getting those months or years back, time isn't fungible in that sense. To keep with the cancer motif, if one had spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on cancer treatment, only for the government to start paying for peoples' treatments after they'd already been ridden of their cancer, would it still be unreasonable for them to want to receive the benefit as well? After all, they pay taxes too and their only "crime" in this sense is beating cancer too early to get in on the gravy train.
It isn't an issue and should be applauded. Education and furthering your education shouldn't be a financial burden and should be something we strive for with our society regardless of country. A smarter population is never a detriment and can only help us in future generations or human growth.
Edited to fix issue in below comment.
Typo? ;)
LOL, good catch. Thanks!
I'm biased as someone who will benefit from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness ( PSLF ) program.
I think we've created an industry on trying to claw back money from the people that can afford it the least - those who took loans but didn't graduate, those who took loans but live in very high CoL areas, those who took loans but work in fields that are traditionally low paying. And I just don't see the point. Meanwhile states fund less and less of our public institutions while parents and students want more services. All leading to ever greater tuition and fee increases. I don't see who it serves not to forgive the loans at this point.
My role didn't exist at my university 20 years ago, but now? We need a social worker role (multiple of them) for our students. Without it we'd have more melt, more drop outs and more students owing money because when you fail out you can get your grant money rescinded retroactively and that's even worse. But I don't get paid enough to cover my loans. I never have. I wasn't first gen in undergrad but I'm the first to do grad school and I didn't know not to take as much in loans as I did.
If we want people to be therapists, social workers, teachers, DCFS employees etc. and not just for private practice or elite academics, we gotta make the education worthwhile one way or another. If the pay isn't there (and it should be) then loan forgiveness is another way to do that.
I think this is the crux of it. The people whom aren't in those categories? They either didn't have loans, or already paid theirs off. They might grumble about handouts, but then...they didn't need a handout.
I don’t think there’s all that much point. Lump sums aren’t going to change systems, and the governments could only ever forgive federal loans.
At this point, it’d just be a weird stimulus program skewed towards the wealthy when we’re still scared of inflation.
Not only is that limited in how much a person could take out, but with new IDR plans are not as big a deal anymore. People who are “buried” almost certainly have private loans.
I think the most useful thing student debt forgiveness does honestly is to be a sacrificial lamb. The SAVE plan part of Biden’s student loan reform was by far the biggest - both in terms of how much relief it brought, and how much it’s going to cost the government. It’ll cost more than 4x the student loan forgiveness just for the current set of borrowers, AND it applies to future students.
Yet no one talked about it. No one sued the government. Which is good. Student debt forgiveness took all the heat and let the real reform go through.
So I hope it keeps getting sacrificed so that more useful programs go under the radar.
I'm not sure what sort of forgiveness policies we're talking about, but it occurs to me that if it were means-tested, the the people getting the benefit from it wouldn't be wealthy?
You can become wealthy after getting a college education, but not everyone does. Some kind of social insurance for varying outcomes might be useful here. I'm not very familiar with it, but it seems that's what the SAVE plan might do?
The Obama administration and US News also started collecting and publishing data on colleges' job placement rates and general post-graduation outcomes awhile back. I think it's probably better for students to avoid education that leaves them worse off rather than just writing off the debt after wasting four years at a for-profit uni.
Other than the debt and the time spent on it, they might not even be worse off. It's just that it didn't have much effect as far as increasing income. A failed experiment.
So the question is, who should pay for a bad bet? Are high school graduates ready to evaluate whether it's worthwhile to take out risky loans? Do we want them to be more cautious? Do we want someone else to be more cautious about accepting them? Or should the cost be socialized somehow?
One way to socialize the risk would be to make it free for everyone, but having higher income people pay for their educations seems more progressive, if you're concerned about inequality.
Separately, maybe some colleges are so expensive and ineffective that their enrollment should be restricted, based on how much they're costing the state.
Your title mentions one thing, then your post pivots to another.
On the "another", yes college was originally designed to create a whole educated person. That is, someone who is rounded, who has depth, who's been exposed to how to think and how to organize their thoughts. Someone who's been given a grounding in life context. That's why "those 'off-topic useless' courses" get included; just because you're going to be an engineer doesn't make English or History valueless. It would round you, ground you, expose you to concepts and viewpoints.
A person who went through the college experience would come back someone much more prepared to think critically, logically, rationally, flexibly. Would be ready to apply learned intelligence in a variety of ways, would be ready to fit into a more rounded and capable niche within life thanks to this grounding.
Modern education isn't viewed that way, not by the masses anyway. In The Sopranos at one point, Tony's son is having an existential crisis due to having gotten exposed to Nietzsche. His parents are upset at his questions and life view, all of which they find odd. Meadow then walks in and is blithely amused by the whole situation. Especially her parents.
Meadow's right, of course, but few people agree with her. They feel education is, in fact, just a ticket to a better paycheck. Which, especially in certain industries (finance, law, business), really isn't the case since who you know is much more important than what your diploma says you know.
Which is to say, sure you may have a degree, even a masters or doctorate, but the guy who met the "right" people at school, who got in good with the classmates whose parents and parents' friends have influence and big companies who can hire, that's the guy who'll benefit from "school." Not from his diploma, but from having had the opportunity to become "rich connected kid's classmate" so he has an in to a job that'll pay well and offer power and opportunity. The diploma and the actual education it may or may not represent is entirely incidental in many cases.
So a lot of people over the past three or four decades have been eager to spend whatever it takes to get that diploma, because the prevailing wisdom was that piece of paper guaranteed a career that would pay well and get you through life. Which, many of us know, hasn't quite been the case. Sure diploma gives some advantages over no diploma, but not always, and it's definitely not a magic ticket that just instantly makes any job or career difficult vanish. Even though the prevailing wisdom was that's exactly what it is; a golden ticket.
But that's a whole separate discussion, all of that. Cost is what you put in your title. Cost and the concept of the government just repaying it.
First off, a lot of things should be free to a citizen in good standing. Healthcare is the primary one, but anyone who's willing to have a go should be able to attend college and see if they can complete the courses to pick up a four year degree. So I'm not anti-education or anti-college.
I am anti-private sector education riding the gravy train, that I'm definitely against. Which is exactly what they've been doing the past half century or so. They realized everyone was drinking the Kool-aid that tasted like "life golden ticket" when it came to college, and all the rates started going up.
Tuition, fees, new fees, even more new fees, books, on and on, until a college education starts to easily cost enough to require a graduate more than a decade to manage to pay off. And that's if they not only immediately get and keep a job in their career, but live frugally through their 20s and 30s diverting what would be spending money over to repayment.
Few people are willing to live like monks. Especially through their young years.
But the colleges kept raising the rates, and students kept showing up because they needed what they thought was a ticket. Their unwashed masses parents thought it was a ticket. Everyone pushed it as the ticket, and made sure to funnel kids in.
Bankers and finance types, meanwhile, had the assurance that student loans were not dischargeable. The Holy Grail of finance; a debt that can't be written off by bankruptcy or anything similar. A debt that never drops off the report, only keeps building interest and fees. Money the borrower must pay back, eventually, sooner or later, period.
So the source of the problem is Wall Street (as usual), and to a slightly lesser extent colleges themselves. Even community colleges are enjoying charging students super high costs for everything. Just setting foot on the shittiest campus for a quarter can cost thousands of dollars for a handful of classes by the time everything, including textbooks (their own ridiculous racket) get tabulated.
Government stepping in to repay the loans is just one more Big Bailout. They're not bailing out students, though by accident and incident that does happen. They're bailing out Big Education and the Bank Loan Industry, since that's who receives (or received) all those billions. And what does that do?
Encourages them to keep on doing exactly what they have been; jacking up rates, finding new fees, pushing young people too inexperienced to understand they're signing up for decades of payments to sign sign sign now!
I get that there are a lot of younger people saddled with student loans. That's not my argument. What is focuses on the industry that's evolved to lock down generations of Americans into that debt. That's what needs to be fixed, even though clearly it won't.
So if you push for a yes or no answer on the Federal Student Loan Forgiveness issue, ultimately I come down to no. We keep finding ways to kick cans further and further down the road. This is just one more kick and one more can, tumbling away without anything being done.
Right now, with students and recent students and students-tenish-years-ago defaulting in higher numbers, the industry that locked them into those debts began whining about wanting some of their money. Sure they knew they could keep racking up interest and penalties, but that's only fun if the debtor eventually does come up with cash they give you. If that debtor just financially sulks and refuse to repay, that's when the finance types stop having quite as much fun as they otherwise would.
That's when they start hitting up their college connections. That guy they were friendly with in the frat, he knows a guy who roomed Senator so-and-so, right? Or a Representative, a political staffer, the President, and so on. The idea of "government should pay what the students won't" starts to swell, and banks are in favor of that. Why wouldn't they be? They want the cash. Sure it'd be nice if they could milk all those students for a few decades, but a lump sum of billions right now sure is attractive.
Wall Street bonuses get calculated on a quarterly or annual basis, after all.
When the government repays all that, it's just a bailout. A handout. A gift to industry. They dress it up like they're helping students, like they care.
They don't care. It's just one more example of that mysterious college network most students don't get dialed into.
Because, you know, most unwashed masses who make it to college are busy going to class thinking that's the important part. What they should be doing is going to the parties, and making nice with the kids who are gonna coast through college and head back to the real world where their rich and influential parents will set them up the way the peons think college is supposed to.
Repaying the loans just lets the people who caused the problem profit. Removes any possibility (however remote) they might learn from their greed and how they've pushed too far, gone too far. Instead, it teaches them they did a great job. After all, they got the money. Who wants a loan?
This was a well considered writeup, but when it comes to student loan forgiveness, assuming the system is still royally fucked whether or not it happens, what's the arguement to allow people to suffer in debt due to an indifferent system of greed vs alleviating that suffering, even partially?
The relationships between people, the economy, and education aside, choosing to support helping those people isn't an endorsement of a flawed system. People complain that this is a bandaid fix, when an open wound is obviously worse. The options aren't "forgive student loans" or "fix our flawed and corrupt education institution", it's "forgive student loans" or "do nothing". People who act like it's the mutually exclusive former are either confused about the circumstances or financially benefit from ripping off students.
Honestly, I think it's a band-aid for a MUCH more complex issue with the higher educational industrial complex, that I think is (at least partly) being applied for political gain.
That being said, I have no idea where an actual solution could come from, nor do I see anyone in government trying to solve the actual issue. It's absurd how expensive it's become to further your education, so I'm totally in support for people having their loans forgiven, at least until someone can figure out how to make it not expensive in the first place.
Even as someone who paid off loans for schooling that will never yield career benefits (had to drop out halfway) without so much as a dime being forgiven, I’m staunchly in favor of forgiveness.
For decades, teenagers were (and to some degree still are) told that college/uni are worth their steep costs because they’re the key to good jobs at a time when they’re not prepared to consider if that’s actually true for themselves or not. It’s a major life decision but often wasn’t treated as such, instead being positioned as something that should be done as a matter of course.
As such, I don’t think it’s really being honest to pin the responsibility on the kids. It’s tempting to pin it on parents instead, and there may be some validity to that (particularly if said parents never bothered to better equip their kids to make informed decisions), but ultimately it all falls on schools and the government: the former for jacking up costs so high, and the latter for allowing and even enabling those price increases.
So no, I don’t think it’s wrong for these loans to be forgiven, and am happy to see my tax dollars go towards that. All that said, the schools should also be reigned in too, however; they’ve emptied out more than their fair share of wallets and must be brought back down to earth, not just for the sake of students but for society as a whole.
I would say that I'm in favour of targeted free education, and targeted loan forgiveness. Not everything that one could possibly choose to major in is worth spending tax dollars on.
I have... very mixed feelings about loan forgiveness.
Like many, I was raised under "You pay back what you borrowed" mentality. But at the same time, I was given this analogy that I think is better one than another comment has.
Let's say you have to undergo some VERY expensive surgery. So you go through it and now your life is going to be fine and you can continue on. You even pay it back, even though paying it back means you have to live a very conservative lifestyle and be very restricted in what you can do. Let's say no vacations, buying everything used, can't really get anything nice because you had to spend so much money for the surgery.
So a short amount of time goes by- say, a month or so for the purposes of this scenario- and you hear about others who need to get this same surgery... EXCEPT now it's free. So this procedure that you had to pay and give up so much for... anyone else now gets it without having to pay anything. Or to phrase it another way: everything you had to give up, they can experience. I feel like THIS is the core issue of it all: the classic "haves" vs "have-nots"
And then you have the other major issue. While I am grateful for the time I went to college and my experiences there... I fell into the "major completely unrelated to my career" statistic. Or to put it another way: if getting a degree is supposed to be an ROI, for all that I spent to go to college and take classes (more specifically, keep going to pass the classes)... most of that knowledge has gone unused. In fact, getting a degree feels like gambling sometimes: you get the degree to work in a field you're interested in... only to, for any number of various reasons, never use what you paid for. THAT feels like a scam. To get a bit personal, having a degree did allow me to meet a requirement for my current job, but the amount of effort I had to put in (I was a STEM major) feels like it was a waste of time and money due to the current path I'm on, because I'm not using any of what I learned in college.
I feel like on the first part, it still boils down to "I didn't get to have this advantage for myself, so therefore no one else can because it's not fair for me". I don't think it's a good argument. Yes it sucks that you wouldn't qualify for the assistance, but that doesn't mean we should automatically make other suffer the same fate. And I say that as someone who isn't sold on the idea of debt forgiveness, because I think we need to go further and fix the institutional problems with higher education rather than just sticking a bandaid on things.
As for college itself, I also kinda fall into the "degree doesn't match current job" description, but I don't feel like my college time was a waste. There were a lot of valuable social and intellectual experiences that made it 100% worth it. A lot of times college can provide someone with the skills to be successful even if it's not for what they studied. It's more of a mindset that gets taught. The real problem is how much college costs these days which is what I was mentioning in the first half, that we need to fix the institutions problems. As a whole, while college may not be for everyone, it's generally a net benefit when we are able to provide the opportunity of higher education for more people. We need to work on reducing that cost though so these students are in debt for decades after.
The idea of hanging people out to dry because they paid their surgical debts off before the subsidy kicked in is, to me, extremely socially corrosive; they're effectively being punished for getting well too soon, doubly so as their tax dollars will be going to pay for the surgeries of people who won't be later saddled by debt. Simply saying "well that sucks, too bad" isn't going to cut the mustard, even if they would otherwise support the subsidy. Time may not be fungible, but money is, and their losses can, to a certain extent, be recouped. To tell them they could be part of the subsidy but won't be is to saddle them with paying for the cost of the treatment (via tax dollars), but telling them they can't have a slice of the pie. They don't want other people to suffer, they want to be made somewhat whole, now that the opportunity is available.
And that's just considering the situation with respect to something involuntary. That animus would be exacerbated by the fact that they're being asked to subsidize a voluntarily taken-on loan, while being told they can't be made whole after having paid off their own.
This is an argument against ever expanding any social services or benefit- Medicare for all, Medicaid, tax breaks, loan forgiveness, or giving away a free ham at Christmas.
There will always be people that don't benefit or would have if change had come sooner. But if a new law passes saying that sterilization surgery must be covered 100% by insurance, and I just paid to have my tubes tied last week, even if I'm grumpy at not getting the benefit because it came too late, I don't understand being so upset I'd object to this new law passing. It's a bit like being mad that pre-school is required now that I'm 40.
Not everything will benefit me. That doesn't make it not a good in the world. And it doesn't mean the government is spitting in my face and saying I don't matter. It seems like a miserable state of mind to exist in, if everything is always "what about mine."
It is valid to be concerned about your own well-being but I feel like this is also what makes (majoritized groups of) people so mad about DEI work. Everything just isn't always about any individual person or every group of people.
I've never had any student loan debt, so I really have no dog in this fight. It literally will not affect me outside of my having to live in the same society as those it does.
Student loans are a significant portion of the financial calculus of millions of people and we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars in debt on average per loanholder. That's a down payment or more on a house - a potentially lifechanging sum of money. Surely you can understand why people would be more than a little frustrated by being denied that on a legislative technicality. The message that sends is "if you'd just defaulted on your loan, we'd have bailed you out!" I'm not sure that's the message you really want to be sending to millions of people.
I wouldn't be averse to subsidizing the forgiveness of debt that's weighing down 40-some-odd million Americans, but there are similarly millions of people whose lives are still affected by the opportunity cost of paying off their past debt, especially for those who've recently paid theirs off. I don't understand the aversion to throwing them a bone, as well.
Surgeries are also incredibly expensive. Bankruptcy can 'forgive' a number of credit card debts... do you begrudge individuals from taking advantage of that? John Oliver forgave $15 million dollars of medical debt... would you think that shouldn't happen because he didn't forgive everyone's? I'd vote for student loan forgiveness even if mine wasn't covered - and it probably wouldn't be by Biden's plan unless it's drastically different than his last one. I owe too much to be forgiven under the last one.
I get being bummed when you dont' qualify for a benefit. But no, I really and truly don't understand being so frustrated that you wish to deny the positive thing to others. Student loan debt is somewhat unique in that some of it is owned by the federal government so in theory this is one of the 'easiest' things to address. I'm not saying no one else should ever get a benefit certainly. But paying people who already paid their loans off is probably more difficult policy-wise and may not actually be possible by the executive branch alone. I wouldn't object to it if it's possible.
Be mad at the system. Be frustrated at not getting the benefit. Advocate for greater changes in the future. But "I didn't get help so you shouldn't" seems to me to be a miserable place to live emotionally.
(I'm using "you" here in a general sense")
I've been having a hard time crafting a reply to this because I feel like you arguing with me about a point I wasn't really making. My point wasn't "too bad for those this doesn't help", and it wasn't that we should just disregard the group that it doesn't help. My point was "this doesn't help group A therefore we shouldn't help group B" is not a good argument.
I think this is where my point kinda comes in. It's fine to want to be made somewhat whole now that the opportunity is available. It's fine to be annoyed or angry that you aren't being made whole while others are just because you missed a time window. What's not fine is saying "I'm against making others whole because I'm left out". I don't buy that as a valid argument against the policy.
For what it's worth, I don't think student loan forgiveness is a good solution to the actual problem at hand, I think they need to go after the more institutional problems with higher education. But I think if my options are between student loan forgiveness for some, or no student loan forgiveness for anyone, I'd rather pick the option that actually helps some. I say this as someone who will not benefit in the slightest from this and had to pay out of pocket for some of my education.
Not American and I don't have student loans, but I do believe it's a good idea. I'd definitely recommend watching the recent Last Week Tonight episode (March 17, S11E05) about this exact topic.
Canadian here who remembers how a conservative government wrote off 1/4 of my total loan amount for finishing the degree. They axed the program in 2010 or so, but I always thought that a reward for completion was a good policy idea.