And also reimburse the people who sacrificed to pay theirs off or avoid them in the first place. I’d donate my reimbursement if they did, but of course they won’t.
Do some people make bad decisions about degree choice? - Yes
Do some people drop out of school because it's too hard or because of other circumstances (unexpected baby, financial hardship, etc) - Yes
Do those people who either have made bad decisions, had less fortunate circumstances than others, or a combination of both deserve to live under a mountain of debt for the rest of their life? - No
One other thing people don't consider is that Most 18 year olds don't have a good grasp on money or what they want to do in general and in my hometown (poor county in WV) there was a TON of pressure to go to college if you didn't know what you want to do. Kids don't know better to not get into debt for a degree because everyone tells them not to worry about it. There is a serious problem with financial education in the US.
You can help out people who made a bad decision or had bad luck without being so uptight about how everything has to be complete "fair". The world isn't fair from the time we're born till the time we die.
I wouldn't agree that having a "worthless" degree is some sisyphian burden, my SO went into college and has two trash degrees, but also had all of the prerequisite credits to trivially segue into a meaningful career and a masters. Her loans are paid.
I, on the other hand, am in the middle of my post-secondary after toiling 5 prime years away to avoid debt. The proposition that I could've foregone that sacrifice and been toting around a degree and work experience without full time work throughout school, free of charge - is infuriating.
And this is discounting a thousandfold other paths. What about the blue collar parents that clawed their way up to the middle class, ultimately paying their kid's way through school at a relatively great expense? Or the single father who took out a second mortgage to put his daughter through school? Or an infinity of other possibilities that can't be written into a survey?
The system needs fixed first.
I was smart and sacrificed a little by going to community college so I wouldn’t have debt. I was also smart enough to get a degree in stem where jobs are actually available and in demand.
Why should I have to foot the bill for someone who just partied and got a useless degree? I did everything in my power to avoid student loans because I knew they where insane, I shouldn’t have to pay for others student loans because they didn’t think about any of this.
> Why should I have to foot the bill for someone who just partied and got a useless degree?
Because you're a human being and recognise that while here you made no mistakes and had no bad luck, perhaps someone could have done that or had that. It's called decency, and you have it not because it benefits you. You have it because it benefits everyone.
Student loan forgiveness is both unfair and regressive.
> One other thing people don't consider is that Most 18 year olds don't have a good grasp on money or what they want to do in general and in my hometown (poor county in WV) there was a TON of pressure to go to college if you didn't know what you want to do. Kids don't know better to not get into debt for a degree because everyone tells them not to worry about it. There is a serious problem with financial education in the US.
Agreed. I grew up working class in the midwest. The working class kids who went to college generally did fine because we worked and didn't live like we were earning 6 figures. The upper- and upper-middle-class kids were the ones who were getting Starbucks every day, living in dorms, paying for meal plans, going out to eat every other night, working fewer than 8 hours/week, skipping class, majoring in fine arts, etc and financing it all on debt (my wife is in the latter group and she has considerable loan debt that we're currently investing).
Student loan forgiveness will surely help some lower-class people, but by and large it's welfare for the middle and upper classes. It's regressive. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-student-loan...
Why does this logic only apply to people who made bad decisions and had less fortunate circumstances or a combination of both only apply to people who did so in the context of taking out student loans? If making bad decisions and having less fortunate circumstances is grounds for student loan forgiveness, why isn't it grounds for credit card debt forgiveness? Or home or auto loan forgiveness?
They tell high school students...people who are legally still children that the most important thing is to go to college. They tell them if they can't afford it, they can just get loans.
And now people are surprised and blame the kids when they do as their teachers told them and rack up 5 or sometimes even 6 figures of student loan debt before they're even old enough to drink.
Fucking stop and pause for a moment and really consider that. Counselors, teachers, and all other high school staff pushing kids to go to college, and then when they do, people come along and tell them it was a bad decision? What?
Bad credit card debt won’t be an anchor around your neck financially until you die. Neither will a bad home loan. Neither will a bad auto loan.
But bad student will likely be with you until death.
There should be a situation where a lender refuses to give a prospective student $125k towards an education that would never result in repayment due to the available jobs from that type of education.
Sure some student loans are going to get discharged and the lender will take a loss (just like with mortgages). But lenders with good enough actuaries are going to price their loans so that they make more than they lose and ideally the worse lenders will go out of business.
They only give it to you if you have a downpayment, proof of income, and they can reclaim the asset if you default on payments.
None of those aspects apply to student loans. What's going to happen is loans will require cosigners and poorer students will be cut off from access to higher education unless they can get scholarships.
Proof of income would require them to have a job which I think a lot of students do (albeit work-study pays less than tuition costs). But is it really too much to ask a loan issuer to do the math on if a student can reliable pay the loan back?
Reclaiming an asset is harder though but its an unsecured loan so by definition there isn't any asset to reclaim.
-- > What's going to happen is loans will require cosigners and poorer students will be cut off from access to higher education unless they can get scholarships.
If the goal is for everybody (or more people) to get an education then it should just be subsidized in a normal fashion. No need to trap people in decades+ of debt. That said, I would suspect you'd see more people getting bachelor degrees subsidized by their jobs instead of just the masters. Which is what the article is really about, a bunch of government employees are having their DOE loans forgiven as the former students have met their end of the agreement.
(trying to understand) How is it any different right now? Students likely to default right now are poor, and may not even be in a position to pay the debt. But the debt still stays active.
One thing I can think of is that the schools should be the lenders themselves. The interest rate should be capped off and the debt should be dischargeable in bankruptcies. This will lead them to deny loans for unemployable degrees.
Student loans are unsecured.
i'm not suggesting terminating the federal loan program either. just make it possible to default to get out of these situations to ensure they are not predatory.
What other loans should the government be forgiving for people's poor decisions? Should the government have paid off all mortgages in 2008? I'd say people that bought in the years or months leading up to the housing crash didn't make particularly bad decisions either, yet I personally know a few different families that never recovered.
Some people drop out, and I agree that those people should have a way to lessen the burden of student debt, but I don't know that people who choose degrees with low financial value should get a free pass more so than people that take on any other particular debt.
...Except for College loans, which are expressly excluded.
Tremendously bad change in circumstances is also enough to push someone into bankruptcy.
Yes. Make loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. I support that. Or make repayment based on income, which is already is, so the burden is bearable. But just forgiving bad decisions? That's not a precedent I think we need to set, especially not until we do something to fix the underlying problem. Otherwise the next bailout will be 10x as big.
Most of the loans in this specific program were forgiven in exchange for at least 10 years of specific public sector jobs. Those jobs usually come with a reduced compensation in exchange for the loan forgiveness.
I have a few friends who went this route as lawyers because they prefer helping out in the public sector instead of doing corporate lawyering stuff or the other options.
They definitely did not come out financially ahead by going this route, even with the massive loan forgiveness.
If next year all new college students get free tuition I'm not going to be upset that I had to pay.
I'm going to be happy that they don't have my burden.
We as a society need to push the next generation up, not complain that they don't have it as hard as we do.
*Free Tuition = Tuition paid for by our taxes.
I oppose student loan forgiveness because it punishes people who were responsible and rewards people who were irresponsible. Moreover, it disproportionately rewards the upper classes who are more likely to have more debt--it's regressive. If we decide we want to help people who are burdened, let's mail checks based on need (whether their need is a result of student loan debt or not) and those of us who are doing fine can pay those checks with our taxes. Student loan forgiveness is just welfare for the upper classes (me included!).
Fixing the current shit show that is college tuition/loan is a completely different problem from the forgiving of existing loans. AFAIK the 1st one has quasi-unanimous support, while the 2nd one is clearly very debatable.
Conflating the two is unproductive.