If we discharge a loan on a house or car your possession is confiscated no matter how much you had paid off...should the same go for your degree if you want to get out from under your student loan?
The reason government support for tuition exists is because as a matter of policy society benefits from: 1) a more educated public; and 2) taxes from the higher wages educations historically commanded.
The problem is guaranteed government loans allowed schools to begin charging students tuitions that resulted in an inability to payback loans on average market wages over lifetimes.
Now imagine if the government guaranteed car & homeloans for all borrowers starting at 17 years old. That bad policy would result in Homeowners/car dealers charging more than a kid could ever expect to pay off in a lifetime, historic defaults due to inability to service loans and no net benefit to one’s income tax bracket for federal taxes. Is such a system existed I hope everyone would demand reformation, not demand some other unrelated debt be forgiven.
Existing federal student loans should be forgiven & the current guaranteed federal student loan/university system reformed…mortgages and car loans really have no relationship with federal student loans.
Any reason why? Why should education be this expensive to begin with? Why make students work 2 jobs while having college?
Here in Germany we have a student loan model, where as long as your making progress in Uni, you get around 1.3k a month, only have to pay back at most 10k with 0%. Oh and if you pay all at once you can get up to 50% cheaper.
So why should students be forced into 30k dept with crazy interest rates, just because they wanted to study something?
Genuinely curious
Also, does everyone get to go to university in Germany or are there restrictions on who gets to go? In the US you basically just have to have a HS diploma and money to go...
1) Quality of the classes (most classes at all schools are pretty much made to fit the abilities and interests of the average student, which can be a big negative in transferring or even getting hired.)
2) Time to, and odds of, completion can lower for CC > Uni transfers, mostly depending on how well the 4-year schools partner with CCs in enabling transfers.
> Luckily with the internet you can study a lot of things for free...no need to pay some overpriced college anymore.
It's only rarely about what you know. The first step in the door is often gate-kept by a credential requirement.
As more direct comparable, consider the Small Business Administration's loan process. These loans are guaranteed by the federal government in essentially the same way as student loans or FA/VHA home loans.
If Bob gets an SBA loan to start a restaurant (famously a bad risk...about 30% fail their first year) and it goes belly-up, he can file bankruptcy and eliminate the debt. That will ding his credit rating, but that's all. The government might (or might not) get a few thousand bucks from selling the restaurant equipment (commercial stoves, freezers, and such), but all the money spent on employee salaries, decorating (quite expensive), advertising, taxes, insurance... it's just gone, and the government can go whistle for it.
Why is Bob allowed to file bankruptcy, while Steve, who took out a student loan, is not?
The only way to get around this would be for most to not be able to go to college with a loan at all, which isn’t going to happen.
Also, though credit card debt is unsecured, the creditors can garnish your wages, and since your limit and hence debt scale, in effect they can generally take a high percentage back.