Yes, the target for student loan forgiveness is irresponsible people. I think that's the point.
I would bet it's a small minority of students who actually did seriously consult their parents and whose parents did wisely caution against it (even refusing to sign a parent PLUS loan, a factor not talked about much) but who found a private lender themselves anyway and after graduating can't pay it back. You could protect this minority from itself by raising the age of adulthood, but if we actually agree it's a minority, this won't solve the problem.
My point is it's not good enough to blame stupid non-adult teens when you could blame their adult parents just as easily, and trying to solve the problem at either of those levels (less stupid teens through 'education', or less stupid adults with longer reaching power, or forbidding teens in general from making bad choices) won't work.
Loan forgiveness should not be restricted to teens. I know many adults that could be similarly mislead.
And absolutely it is a minority, which is why student loan forgiveness is workable. Trust me, the banks will still make money, just not as much.
Some loan forgiveness is workable and I think inevitable but it does nothing to stop the problem, it just relieves some people at the expense of others (generalizing to the whole economy) who can take the hit. In that it's kind of a herring. When you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging as the first thing you do. Loan forgiveness lifts some people out of the hole but incentivizes digging faster.
The party in the best position to know who will and won't be able to repay a particular loan is the lender, who has all the historical data and statistics about previous loans.
Being that student loans in the US are _no longer forgivable_ via bankruptcy or any other means, these student loans are essentially a permanent debt the student will never be free of otherwise, and bear more than a passing resemblance to a class of indentured servitude. Such things are not what any reasonable person had in mind for America.
If you want to fix the problem, stop subsidizing the loans and allow these colleges to die, shrink or reduce costs.
The loan provider is in a much better position to know who will and will not be able to pay back a particular loan.
> If you want to fix the problem, stop subsidizing the loans and allow these colleges to die, shrink or reduce costs.
Perhaps this is better, but seems unrealistic.
They have no reason to care since the government backs the loans.
They are just being subsidized at the expense of folks who are (over a lifetime) much poorer than they are.
You seem very close minded. Everyone can't and shouldn't do a CS degree to "get a job".
Not everyone is as well informed as you were at 18.
This problem doesn't really exist in other first world countries.