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First free access to higher education should be a cornerstone of a democracy as it is in many countries. (Private institution can still exist and be popular but a -decent- public option should be available).

This whole issue deft political stunt by Biden.

I believe Biden and his advisers knew there was little chance to no chance of it being implemented.

Thus, they did not have to worry about the real-life consequences.

The republicans and/or the supreme court would knock it down.

Then the Biden administration can then make a big issue out of how the evil opponents stopped the handouts. If it wasn't for SCOTUS and congress/senate, you would all have less student debt.

Vote for me and I will do my best to have it passed.

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Normally I'm not too cynical about politics (or most things), but in this case the policy was so obviously spectacularly bad that I find it hard to disagree.

And to be very clear: an extremely expensive short-term half-arsed fix that doesn't do a single thing to fix any systemic issues (and, in fact, will likely make them worse) is profoundly bad policy, no matter what you think about education policy in general. I was very disappointed at all people in favour of this, as it's just so obviously the wrong approach to fix anything as we'll be in the same (or worse) situation in 10 to 15 years.

Fix college tuition fees first. Then you can start doing something about the existing debt if you want.

We could go back to pre-1998 and allow student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy. The law signed by Clinton was a gift to the banksters and college administrative head count.

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/28362...

> First free access to higher education should be a cornerstone of a democracy as it is in many countries.

I can somewhat agree with this in principle, but unfortunately, the way it's worked so far in these USA is that the federal government jacks up their assistance in terms of grants and loans, and then all the colleges and universities jack up their tuition to be commensurate for everything the government just put in their pockets. So it's a zero-sum game and it's an ouroborous where the populace keeps voting free stuff for ourselves, and the cost of "free" just gets higher, and higher, and higher. The same thing happens for medical costs (even after the "Affordable" Care Act), so surely some sort of price controls could prevent these folks from bleeding Uncle Sam completely dry.

For colleges I personally favor an all or nothing fixed tuition policy for student aid. Either they accept the amount given as payment in full, with no tuition raises or sneaky fees xor they take a hike and go full private. That would prevent double dipping and have a fairly graceful failure mode. If the ammount offered is actually too low you would expect to see growth in rejection of federal tuition and more private market as a share.

I am by no means an expert admittedly.

> Vote for me and I will do my best to have it passed.

That was a 2020 message.

I find this “incompetence is ok if it’s not my fault” thing to be a weird conscious decision. If this was purposely done for political points then that is really dumb.

Everybody thinks it's this big conspiracy without any proof.

Could you ever think that maybe people tried forgiving loans because borrowers were truly screwed over?

The PPP loans and the billionaire tax breaks both past the Republican filters, and were 'warp-speeded'.

Suddenly you want to put the same amount of resources towards struggling students who tried to reach for a better future? Republicans will find Patsys to sue on their behalf.

>Could you ever think that maybe people tried forgiving loans because borrowers were truly screwed over?

It would be easier to believe if effort was put in to pass the policy via the proper legal channels. And if the government didn't keep writing these loans at higher and higher interest rates at the same time. Regardless of whether or not the borrowers are screwed over, this was clearly political maneuvering and a token gesture at "solving" the problem rather than an honest attempt.

> Could you ever think that maybe people tried forgiving loans because borrowers were truly screwed over?

The businesses which where shutdown/severely limited by government weren't screwed over?

Students with loans were appropriately compensated by pausing the loans. The forgiveness was not about anyone who truly were screwed over. There is no pause button for businesses. They can't just stop paying employees, distributors, utilities, etc. and expect to comeback months later and restart like nothing happened. Government did not force students to take out loans. Government forced some businesses to close. Government restricted some businesses' operations. Businesses had no choice in the matter.

> free access to higher education should be a cornerstone of a democracy

How much do the more affordable community colleges in the US cost?

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