> No one is asking for "handouts". People are asking for a society in which exposure to good ideas, and guidance on how to determine which ideas are good at all, isn't reserved for people with stuffed bank accounts or rich parents. And that's just common sense for anyone with any empathy or hope for the future of the species.

The greatest scam perpetrated on Americans is the idea that "college education" is necessary to succeed. This scam has been so successful that several generations of people are now required, by companies, to go into debt for a piece of paper in order to pass HR filters. Moreover, people ARE asking for handouts. College students have been begging for loan forgiveness for a decade. It is quite literally a handout. Admittedly I am quite upset because I sacrificed years of my life and potential income to do the responsible thing and pay off my loans. This is the ultimate slight at me, and everyone like me, because with this $10k-$20k there is no punishment. There is no reduced credit score to rubble for 10 years, there is no "you cant return to school for 10 years if you take this". It is quite literally, by definition, another example of helicopter money to people who made a choice and now don't even have to live with it. People who decided to never pay off their loans, the approximately 50% of students with debt less than $20k, are now going to be relieved of this debt with _zero punishment_ for being so foolish. There is no debt relief system in any country on this planet as crazy as this.

This is not the approach we need, and it doesn't solve the fundamental problem. I have done almost 12 years in the university system. There is not a single skill I have learned applicable to any job I've held in the last decade. It's simply credentialing on par with what a professional certification would've been 20 years ago. We aren't subsidizing journeymen, etc for their education. We shouldn't subsidize university students either. Further, you can argue this simply benefits the rich. Now the companies that underwrote toxic debt get a payday on money that may not have come otherwise. Arguably, this could be considered on-par with the great financial collapse and the bailouts of banks.

We should not punish the people who chose not to go to college in order to "help" the people who chose to go into absurd levels of debt for a credential. Fix the system that is convincing people that this is the only way. Make bankruptcy possible and punish the companies for underwriting bad debt. 300B dollars is a lot of money to look to stylish.