Said choices should be constrained though. She wouldn't be allowed to buy a 300k car with no possibility of bankruptcy.
The lender is made of adults as well. They also made poor choices. Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?
Because rich people lending money to poor people needs to be a risk-free endeavor backed up by the state. This way, it's easier for the banks to make money.
And at the same time, it's easy to spin predatory lending as "helping out" when it shouldn't exist to begin with, and victim-blame people who are taken advantage of (which, in the case of student loans, is children: college applications are sent out well before a typical freshman turns 18).
In other words, the purpose is not to help the banks, but to help people get the loans in the first place.
However, the unintended consequences are that the banks are incentivized to make way to many loans. Obviously, there need to be better limits placed on lending for education.
Far better for the government to decide how many of each profession it’s willing to subsidize than the current free for all. It would give people a rough idea of the value of their debt.
This is an absurd proposition, since the legislation that makes student loans indismissable with bankruptcy is unique to student loans (and quite recent). Yet lending still happens.
Surely you don't mean to say that an educational loan is always a loss, do you? But let's play along for a second, and imagine that lenders back out of the very lucrative business.
And that would be bad... why again?
Because then the education would be priced affordably if the universities wanted to have any students?
Because the government would not have much headroom in defunding higher education (look at state college funding percentage in the 70s vs now?
Because the universities would be incentivized to provide education, and wouldn't have an obscene admin-to-professor ratio that they have attained since then?
Because the universities would not have the cash to burn on ever-expanding construction projects, like stadiums, luxury residence halls, hotels, etc, and would catch some flak for building them at students' expense?
Because the people would be incentivized to demand free, or near-free higher education the way Europe does it, and "just take out a loan like everyone does" won't be an excuse to not provide it anymore?
Because fewer university degrees would mean a higher status and acceptance for trade schools, and would lead to trade schools being acceptable for white-collar higher-pay jobs (...without having to rebrand them as "Boot Camps" like we do in software)?
Because the universities would then be able to focus on teaching critical thinking and research skills that advance our civilization, and emphasize growth instead of having the students see it as an investment into a salaried position?
>However, the unintended consequences
Oh, you mean it is just an unfortunate accident that making student loans non-dischargeable in 1976 by the Nixon administration (renowned for integrity)[1] simply coincided with inflation-adjusted education cost starting to grow after a long period of not growing[2]?
And, by pure chance, after that 1976 legislation, inflation-adjusted federal education funding remained stagnant and decreased over the subsequent decades[3] in spite of number of students nearly doubling[4]?
And that all of that simply coincided with education becoming accessible to Black people (in 1976, the first generation that didn't go to segregated schools would be going to colleges)?
And that nobody would have guessed that non-dismissal of loans in case of bankruptcy, and simultaneous effective decrease in higher ed funding as the number of students steadily grows would result in costs and loans ballooning?
And that all of that was unintentional, somehow, though the profit and political motives are not only known, documented, and openly admitted, but have been a part of the platform of the party that enacted that legislation?
In that case, I might disagree.
[1]https://www.tateesq.com/learn/student-loan-bankruptcy-law-hi...
[2]https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year
[3] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002129.pdf
[4]https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll...
The reason she isn't able to get a crazy car loan is because there's no government program giving anyone unlimited loans, no questions asked. Private lenders understand not all degrees are made equal, so if you go to LendingClub or similar and ask for a student loan for a top tier law school, they'll gladly give you a loan and charge you less than the government. Bonus is that you can dismiss the debt in bankruptcy.
The simplest answer would just be to severely restrict or eliminate federal loans for school and let private lenders fill in the gaps.
The piece of paper is the law, which does not allow for defaults on these loans. These laws were created to allow students to take massive loans, and transfer their future earnings to a school. I would agree that something should change, but the schools will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
Either allow the government to turn down most of these loans and charge higher interest rates based on credit-worthiness or make bankruptcy very difficult. What you want is the bankrupcty rights of a non-government guaranteed loan in which credit worthiness is taken into account, but interest rates and credit availability of a loan in which the bankruptcy rights are substantially reduced.
That's not possible. I agree we should abolish these lending guarantees entirely and let the private sector provide loans and charge whatever interest rate they want if people can just walk away from the loan. But that's not the interest rate people are paying now, so that's not an option for existing borrowers.
I absolutely believe in bankruptcy. I also believe the government can fund state schools and community colleges in such a way as to improve access without building more palaces.
Just by improving the rigor of community colleges students can save massive amounts of money by paying $2k/y instead of $30k and live at home instead of $15k for housing.
This cuts the cost basically in half.
There are two ways to interpret what you said:
1. Allowing bankruptcy would basically eliminate student loans as a thing, for the typical "moral hazard" reasons. So it's not a realistic proposition.
2. Limiting the amount to something more reasonable, that's something I would actually support. Say, 15-20K/yr, inflation adjusted? Education cost for those financing themselves would also drop considerably.
I took on $65k of loans for my BS but make six figures myself, so it was worth it for me. I can't image 5x the cost for 1/3rd the reward. That's just stupid.
I admit that the person who took this path is to blame for some of it, but a college tying $300,000 to a degree that earns $5/hr more than a fry cook is also at some level to blame along with the path society took to enable this scenario to exist in the first place.
The only losers here would be the colleges that no longer get to charge the same $300k for every degree they stamp.
Where is my logic wrong?
If you artificially change the price of degrees to match the expected lifetime ROI of that degree, you are decreasing the barrier to jobs that we already have too many people attempting to do and increasing the barrier to jobs we need more people to do.
Of course this analysis overlooks that some jobs are "good for society" on some metric, but no one wants to pay for them. But then the approach should be to directly incentivize those jobs eg through grants or government-funded work programs.
Of course, that's assuming that the cost of lost tuition on cheapo degrees is made up by bumping up the cost of good job degrees. If you merely cut the tuition of some without raising the rest, then you will need to deal with all the school's who have wildly outsized budgets that were being subsidized by the cheapo degrees.
Or, the government will end up paying for it, and there'll be a glut of social worker degrees flipping burgers because social work and library sciences have a relatively fixed number of positions available.
Not everyone is cut out for a STEM career. You can't turn cavemen into electrical engineers if the aptitude isn't there, right?
It's not a big leap to say that some people will prioritize greed over compatibility and end up risking being able to cheat their way through or flunking out / being expelled if they fail with nothing but either a degree they aren't qualified to possess or a debt they aren't able to repay.
A lot of people in IT would be happier as truck drivers, a lot of engineers would be happier as welders. It always boils down to balancing the money with the passion, and the current system is balanced to the college's coffers.
I did preface my original statement by saying that I don't know if there is a good solution. I proffered a solution knowing that it wasn't a good solution because there are things I with my single brain simply am not capable of calculating for, but I believe we can all agree that the current system has some significant flaws that should be addressed, right?
Free tuition.
Germany has had zero tuition university for quite some time. And though they allowed charging tuition again a while ago, it was capped at something like 600EUR (?) per semester. Many universities apparently also went back to not charging tuition again.
It works well enough if you ask me. I got a great education with zero student debt. Was it Harvard? No. Was it a great education? Absolutely. Masters degree. I have a good job and of the people in my study group more than one is working at Tesla, Facebook and Google. More than one of them also have a PhD.
The very concept of student loans is mind-boggling for them.
I only know how it works in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but students loans are super common there. Even though tuition is free you still have food, rent, books and other living expenses that all have to be paid for. How do most German students pay those costs?
"Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz" which is just the name of the law but shortened to "BAföG" to refer to the loan itself. You "apply for BAföG".
However this is a loan directly from the government and its meant to pay for housing and food and such. If you get it you also get priority in student housing for example. Of course there is still not enough student housing in most universities and that means if you don't get BAföG you have to sort out paying for housing yourself and getting it on the open market and even if you do get BAföG you might still need to. So in most university cities there's also a lot of cheaper housing geared towards students and living together ("Wohngemeinschaft").
There's an eternal debate over how much BAföG is enough and who should get how much. It's tied to your parents' income basically (unless you worked before, which basically would mostly apply to people that did an "Ausbildung" i.e. were in the vocational system before and have had their own income but now want to go to university.
You have a certain period after leaving university to pay it back and if you pay it back in one shot (or maybe a few larger payments IIRC) then you have to pay back less.
In 2012, 24% of all students in Germany received financial support via BAföG
It's a lot easier to stomach covering a grand a month (shared housing, student works for spending money) by comparison.
Maybe a social work degree has positive externalities that far exceed the earnings. But there's also a lot of crap that doesn't, and incentivizing the landslide of crap and disincentivizing the skills that are in shortage will do a lot of damage.
Stuff that pays well tends to be stuff that's actually valued by society. Structural engineers and surgeons get paid lots of money because they actually value add and their skills are in short supply.
The happy path might be the same or better, but the sad path gets grimmer. All that said, the completion rate fiasco is it's whole own can of worms.
But, student loans dont behave like standard loans, the payoff of expected utility is a long way down the track, and Universities cultivate/market these intangibles like prestige and networking as a justification for the higher prices.
This is a predatory scam that targets low-income individuals who want an education and a career and pretty much guarantees an outcome of long-term financial instability.
Of course the victims have some of the responsibility, but
>Adults have a right to make poor choices.
Puts these supposedly prestigious schools at about the same ethical level as a casino, a tobacco company or a pay day loan operation. What USC is doing is arguably worse than a casino because it's using the reputation of a prestigious university to take advantage of people who want an education, while simultaneously siphoning money from taxpayers.
>The social-work school was contractually required to share about 60% of revenue with 2U and ran into financial trouble.
My impression was that most of what 2u did was marketing, I might be wrong about that though. It seems like a combination of marketing and their online platform.
agree however the vast majority of high school kids are marketed to and forced to make decisions about college, while having little to no comprehension of the magnitude and permanence of their decision, when they are 17 years old (minors).
graduate school of course being a different story.
We should make students sign a single page summary (or warning in many cases) just like when getting a mortgage.
Our company makes __ profit, future graduate income average/mean, % of graduates who get a coding job within 1, 5 years. Etc
And I think restrictions on marketing bs for-profit 'trade schools' and 'coding bootcamps' to ensure a minimum curriculum and education. Make bait and switching more difficult.
Especially with for profit schools. Plus it seems many Universities will contract out a 'bootcamp' using the schools built up brand and it's not even connected to he actual school.
This pays directly for what the gov't wants (increase in the student's productive utility in the economy), it correlates increasing expenditures with increasing long term tax income, and I think in the long term it would create structural incentives guiding students towards more practical degrees.
I think you have a valid point, which probably got missed in the rest of your comment.
Why are student loans not tied to the value of the program, which determines their ability to pay? I cannot get a $100K loan for a Corolla nor can I get $5 million loan for a $500K home. So, why are students provided loans that are not tied to the income potential of their choice of program?
I believe once we do that, education cost will undergo a rebalancing.
They used to be because they could be discharged through bankruptcy.
Once you prevent people from being able to discharge the loan through bankruptcy, this is what you get.
How can a school charge the same amount of tuition, per unit, for different fields that pay substantially, sometimes orders of magnitude, different over the lifetime.
For example: MBAs, JDs, Medical fields' tuition is much higher. Why is that not the case across the board?
Note, many/most people in software engineering have other interests. But they have not made a career out if it. So, if humanities interests someone, it can be a perfectly good hobby for many, till demand and supply evens up that leads to rise in salaries.
If student preferences were different we could easily be bemoaning low value engineering majors, doctors or lawyers.
If student preferences are disconnected from long term utility then it's unlikely for University costs to normalize on utility. Increasing the costs for high utility majors would result in yet higher prices for those with the majors skills - decreasing prices for low utility majors will simply lower income potential in those majors.
Eh, I feel like this isn't true. Most of top schools in the US offer full, need-blind financial aid. This means no scholarship that can be taken away nor student loans. Many fellow classmates were there completely free of charge. The best schools have money, and they're interested in making sure their talent attends.
The full rides you're referring to are often reserved to students from very low income backgrounds. Let's say your mom and your dad make 150 combined, that doesn't mean they have a spare $60,000 for you to go to school. Meaning you might have to take out some student loans.
I still think student loans are an amazing program, and no they don't need to be forgiven. As long as you take out loans the right way, for example in my case I went to the cheapest possible School, and I finished college at my own pace. It worked out very well for me. With student loans I was able to get away from my horrible family. When I see these stories of insanely irresponsible people who take out a quarter million in loans I the good student loans do is lost.
Regardless in this case the students only took on so much debt because they wanted that sweet sweet USC degree.
When you're 25 you can do a bunch of stupid things. That doesn't mean we need to pass a law to stop everyone from doing anything silly.
This is true only by an extremely expansive definition of top school. It's not even a top 20 school.
That's very true. People often don't realize that blanket loan forgiveness is a very regressive policy. The higher you go up in the income bracket, the higher share of the student loan debt. Some kind of income-based or extreme situational (life-changing events, health, etc) forgiveness would be much better.
>Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?
True especially for a masters program you should be well into early adulthood and it's even more difficult to argue that you were too young to understand the consequences. Schools publish their students past and expected incomes. Unless you have a good reason to believe you are exceptional, those numbers should definitely be used for planning your academic path.
Why would that be a problem?
First, your "typically" needs a citation. The average student loan is about $40K.
Second, it's not a problem to help struggling people if a percentage of people who are not struggling benefits too. Nothing is 100% efficient, and the inefficiency of not checking tax forms at a soup kitchen to make sure only the Actually Poor™ get the soup is made up tenfold by the outcome of nobody needing to be hungry.
>Adults have a right to make poor choices.
Yeah, unless it's buying alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana.
Somehow that doesn't apply to enlisting in armed forces or taking on a lifetime debt that, unlike anything else, won't be erased in a bankruptcy, and thus is nearly risk-free for the lender.
Those with college degrees make more. So if you forgive student loan debt, you're giving a ton of money to people who are largely doing very well.
One can make a large variety of very stupid life-altering choices at 25, these people should have known better. I would say, again unless you're trying to be a doctor or a lawyer your student loans should be capped at 100k. That would eliminate most of the most outrageous behavior. I know for myself I took a modest 20,000 or so in loans and that changed my life forever. That allowed me to go to college, and escape my horrible family who like not paying bills and getting evicted.
If you forgive the student loans, the counter argument becomes get rid of the student loans and then people who are responsible with them. Like myself, no longer have a ladder out of poverty. Honest to God, I have no sympathy for someone who with a college education decides it would be a good idea to take out another $200,000 in loans in order to get into a low paying field. Likewise if someone went and took their inheritance and bet it all on bitcoin, I wouldn't want a law passed reimbursing them.
Make more =/= "doing real well".
Some are doing well, some aren't, many are struggling. And the ones who are just getting by aren't having kids, which is really going to bite this nation in the long run.
>One can make a large variety of very stupid life-altering choices at 25
Where's that 25 coming from, eh? People apply to colleges when they're 17. That determines how big of a loan they'll end up with.
>these people should have known better
> I know for myself I took a modest 20,000
When? Did you bother to check tuition costs today?
Better than what? Than not go to a university that aligns with
> I would say, again unless you're trying to be a doctor or a lawyer your student loans should be capped at 100k.
"Should" is a nice word. My double-major undergrad took me five years, and I ended up with over $20K in loans while my tuition was free, because neither dorms (or off-campus housing) nor food were free, and that $25K didn't even cover those expenses.
And no, commute was not an option; and it was, indeed, a good choice of school (not to mention, free tuition).
$100K over 5 years barely covers living expenses[1], but let's be conservative and say the living expenses are paid with $50K over 4 years (by sharing an off-campus room with someone and subsisting on ramen).
Now, the fun part, tuition. Out-of-state tuition can be anywhere from $15K to $40K; it's about $38K in Texas A&M, for example, which is not what people would think is a prestigious school. $27K/year is just about average[2]
So out-of-state school puts us over the $100K for a 4-year degree right away. Tough luck if your state doesn't have great schools for your major!
Fine, let's settle for in-state tuition. Nationwide it's $10K/year on the average, but say, you were unfortunate enough to grow up in Pennsylvania or Illinois, where it's $15K/year[2][3].
Then again, having spent $60K on tuition and $50K on life over 4 years, we are $110K in the red. Bummer.
On the average, living expenses + tuition for a 4 year degree (in-state) is $80K; throw in books, supplies, transportation, and it's $100K[4].
That's average, meaning quite a few people attending public schools in-state end up paying more.
Any private college? Any college out of state? Any of the more expensive states?
Or simply not getting into one of the cheaper public schools in your state?
Or actually choosing a good program?
That's $200K over 4 years very easily.
> I have no sympathy for someone who with a college education decides it would be a good idea to take out another $200,000 in loans in order to get into a low paying field.
Yeah, it's totally reasonable to expect 17-year-olds to estimate correctly how well paid they will be in 4 years in the field of their choice.
We don't trust them with making any adult choices, except this one.
>If you forgive the student loans, the counter argument becomes get rid of the student loans and then people who are responsible with them
That's quite a leap of logic you have there, friend.
The first thing is to make student loans dismissible in bankruptcy. That makes the student loan just like any other loan. Bankruptcy exists for a reason.
Then, canceling the student debt just resets the game that was rigged in 1976 by making student loans different from the others. Education loans are lucrative, especially when given to responsible people like you. The banks won't pass on this opportunity (why would they?).
Finally, see my other comment[5] about how the most likely outcome is that the tuition costs will go drastically down. Availability of these loans is the reason the education is not affordable! You wouldn't need the loans if we didn't allow them.
Before the 1976 legislation, you could pay off your tuition working a part-time job on the weekends.
In 1975, six weeks of work at minimum wage paid your tuition at a public school.
Today, it's 33 weeks. Five times as much. If you're lucky.
We can and must go back to where we were 50 years ago. And the banks have to pay for milking us for those 50 years.
People like us won't be hurt when the banks pay up.
[1]https://www.collegecovered.com/paying-for-college/real-colle...
[2]https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college
[3]https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-col...
[4]https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...
For 3rd year and above >$12,500-No more than $5,500 of this amount may be in subsidized loans
For sake of this example, let's say they let you take out this much for all 4 years. That leaves you at 50k. This assumes your parents can't take out a Plus loan.
Your very unlikely to be able to get 200k in undergrad loans without a co-signer. If you don't have a co signer your effectively capped at 50k.
This is a story about grad student debt. This is a story about, at a minimum 22 year olds ( normally a bit older) deciding to make a choice. You can make a ton of life altering choices at 22.
If we just got rid of loans for grad school, we're taking away an entire life path. For many taking grad school loans leads to a much higher paying career. You don't hear stories about someone who takes out 100k in grad school loans, but then lands a job paying 145k.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/payin...
>The median earnings for full-time, year-round workers holding bachelor's degrees was $66,536 in 2019, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. With a master's degree, median earnings for full-time employees jumped to $81,636. With a doctoral degree, median earnings were $113,578, and the amount for individuals holding a professional degree was $127,487.
None of these people in this article were forced into blowing $200,000 on a degree which isn't going to help them make much more money. The best thing about America is people generally do have a lot of leeway in how they live their lives. And the dark side of the European system is many people just can't get into any type of college, I've met these kids attending community college in America since the European schools wouldn't take them.
By far my biggest disappointment with the current administration is not pushing more for free community college, that would nudge people in the right direction. I went to community college and I worked and that's how I paid my living expenses.
I was working full time, already making 100k a year ,when I finished my BA at a CSU.
Let me ride this tangent for a bit, in California you have two state school systems. You have the UC system, which treats college like a vacation with a hint of learning. These schools are actively hostile to anyone with a job.
Then you have my alma mata, the CSU system. There you'll actually have flexible schedules where you can work a full-time job and still attend school. Of course UCs are viewed as more prestigious. Adults have a right to make choices. Everyone who attended this USC program wanted to plaster USC on their resume. They all had the option of attending cheaper schools.
It's not nearly as simple as looking at a few extreme cases and deciding to forgive a trillion dollars in student loan debt. I'd agree more regulation is needed here, but in general people need to take more personal responsibility.
Sure, but plenty of parents do take out PLUS loans - which are capped at whatever the tuition is. Aside from that, many lenders are handing out loans without cosigners[1]. And as the 2008 crisis has shown us, that's not an error: they are gambling.
>This is a story about grad student debt
OK, but the discussion is about student debt, not grad student debt. I think it's reasonable to assume that most people would be talking about undergraduate debt cancelation.
As for those absurdly expensive Masters degrees - the one in the article is borderline a scam.
>If we just got rid of loans for grad school, we're taking away an entire life path.
Again, it's quite a leap from debt cancelation to loans not being available to anyone ever, particularly for grad school. As you said, graduate school students are older, and graduate degrees often do pay off. Why would the banks pass on a money-making opportunity?
The degrees that are a solid investment would not disappear (and neither would loans for them), but the scammy ones (like in the article) would.
>By far my biggest disappointment with the current administration is not pushing more for free community college
Amen to that.
>Then you have my alma mater, the CSU system
OK, off-topic, but I'm going to live right next to CSU East Bay campus, and would appreciate any info about that system. One of my 2022 goals is getting involved in community outreach (math education / talks / etc); trying to remedy the damage done by our education systems when it comes to mathematics, particularly hoping to reach working adults.
Would love to hear your thoughts about that.
[1] https://loans.usnews.com/student-loans-without-co-signer
i personally think we should make federal loans highly progressive, both in amount and interest rate, and make them dischargeable via ordinary bankruptcy proceedings (also, revert the bankruptcy-tightening laws that were passed in the mid-oughts). that would be something like loans for 100% of tuition, room & board for those from families under median income (~$68K in recent years) smoothly varying (but not linear) down to 0% for those above 3× median household income (~$200K). same for interest rates: risk-free rate (~2.5%) for under median to market rate for unsecured personal loans (in the 10-20% range) at 3× median income. anyone above 3× median will likely have an established banking relationship somewhere to be able to get private loans.
this would put downward pressure on tuition, while still meeting the objective of providing opportunity for the less privileged majority. same goes for loan forgiveness--make them highly progressive based on recent earnings/wealth (including unrealized gains).
The idea for total loan forgiveness is that for a reasonable progressive scheme, the difference between that and total forgiveness may be marginal.
We have plenty examples of how drug-testing for government benefits ends up costing more than simply giving those benefits to all who qualify even if they are drug users. Same applies here. It'd be interesting to see the actual numbers.
But sure, I'd take a progressive scheme like the one you proposed. Hell, just your first sentence (re: bankruptcy) warms my heart and fills my soul with glee :)
The proportion stayed low for about 20 years.
The "original sin" in 1976 was just one of many acts of legislation that were "compensating" for the Civil Rights reforms by cutting down the funding available to Black students.
It's amazing how little one has to peel in all things that suck in the US to find racism behind it. And now all of us are screwed.
[1]https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/muj/article/download/20...
With an online degree? Why would anyone brag about that?
Snobbery is fractal. People who went to elite schools look down on places that are very good, like USC.
It's bragging to have graduated from what looks like an obvious cash cow program that I'm skeptical of. All online, no cap on enrollment and full price. Should raise red flags.
>> In increasing enrollment in its social-work program, USC benefited from federal loan dollars: Graduates from 2015 through 2018 collectively borrowed more than half a billion dollars in federal student loans, more than those at any other graduate program in the country, the Journal found. USC had an endowment of $5.9 billion last year, making it one of the 20 wealthiest private schools in the country.
Want to pursue a pre-medical degree at USC? Great! The government will loan you up to some large amount. Want to pursue a humanitarian degree at XYZ tech online? Great! The government will loan you a small amount. Remove the externality on society.
Thus you'll likely create a two tier system of colleges. One will be low cost enough that declaring bankruptcy after college is not worth it. These will likely be crappy because they cannot afford good facilities or the best professors. Then you will have the super expensive ones with nice facilities and the best professors that only kids with rich parents who can pay for it can go.
Perhaps, but I do think we should defend the stupid from predators and predatory behaviors.
> Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?
Takes money to make money. What's the break-even point? That 300k is a one time cost; that 50k is recurring yearly.
I went to a CSU for like 6k a year.
If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it.
> Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
This translates into paying 300k to feel prestigious. At dinner parties she gets to tell everyone about how she's a USC grad.
Adults have a right to make poor choices.
That said, having a hard cap of 100k unless enrolling in a high paid field ( Dr , Lawyer, anything that requires a state sanctioned license) would be a good idea.
The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money.
Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?
I see the same problem with boot camps, instead of accepting that building a six-figure career just takes a while, people want a shortcut. I got to six-figure figures without even having a BA, but it took a long time in a lot of very hard work.
Actually it only took me about 3 years from dropping out of college to my first six-figure job, but I was programming at least 40 hours a week back then. This was after work of course. Even now I'm off and happiest when I'm building my side projects.