> Similarly, I didn't attend some schools I was accepted to because the debt would have crushed me.

Same here. However, I don't think other people should have to suffer through what I suffered just because I had to go through it myself. I want society to improve and for others to receive the benefits of those improvements, even if I myself will never get to enjoy them.

It's like getting upset at the development of a cheap cure for cancer, because it would seem like a slap in the face to all of the people who suffered and beat cancer themselves, were bankrupted by it or died because of it. I never smoked cigarettes, for example, am religious about sunscreen, and I take care of my body and health to avoid threats like cancer, and I've lost loved ones to the disease. Just because I "did everything right" and still suffered through the loss of loved ones to cancer, doesn't mean that I'd be upset if there were suddenly a cheap cure for it, and I wouldn't be upset if it benefited everyone who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for the last 3 decades, either.

> However, I don't think other people should have to suffer through what I suffered just because I had to go through it myself. I want society to improve and for others to receive the benefits of those improvements, even if I myself will never get to enjoy them.

The right way to do this is giving everyone the same amount of cash and increasing marginal income tax rates.

It would be politically stupid to reward a small amount of people who have low voter participation rates and instead earn the ire of many who have high voter participation rates.

Simply stopping government funded higher education loans would be a better move that actually addressed the root problem with higher education costs.

If the goal is to help poor people, then help all poor people. Not just a subsection of the poor that happened to borrow money for overpriced signaling mechanisms.

> The right way to do this is giving everyone the same amount of cash and increasing marginal income tax rates.

And in your system, this counterbalances the natural advantage that children born to wealthy parents have how?

It increases taxes on the rich and then uses those tax funds to redistribute wealth.

Canceling student debt on the other hand would be a massive handout for the rich as the majority of student debt is held by rich and upper middle class Americans. Students from from the poorest quartile of households have just 5% of the student debt [1].

1. https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-income-level

That would have to be addressed with estate taxes and lowering the gift exclusion amounts, and/or property tax, but implementing that on all assets seems difficult.

Or scrapping all income/property taxes, and just having marginal sales taxes (the more you spend, the more tax you pay), but then that would require tracking every single transaction.

I'm not some sadist who likes watching anyone suffer, but there's no easy way out.

My earnings and earnings potential will likely forever be below someone who graduated from ivy league. My network is also much smaller and less affluent.

Now telling me I have to pay the tuition of folks that went to said schools, via taxes, is a giant slap in the face.

I've not seen this debate contextualized that way. Is it predominately ivy league grads calling to have their debt canceled? If so, I think that really ought to be highlighted.

I mentioned it because Yale specifically is one I passed on due to the loans I'd need to take.

That said, a quick Google says that 12% of student debt per year is taken by students at elite schools, despite it representing a tiny portion of borrowers. Link below.

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/biden-is-right-a-lot-of-s...

When I click that link, I get redirected to https://www.brookings.edu/articles/no-aid-to-religion-charit.... The article is titled "No Aid to Religion?: Charitable Choice and the First Amendment". I read it, but it was written in 1999 and not relevant. I'm not sure what's going on there.

I did manage to find the article though. Thanks for sharing. Based on my own experience attending a private university, I had thought students at ivy league schools mostly used private loans. Unfortunately, the article doesn't break out which debt is government-backed and which isn't. This much debt in general is problematic for young professionals, but my understanding is that "cancel student loans" is about the government-backed debt. I'll have to see if I can find a breakdown somewhere.

If it applied to new people making new decisions, it's an improvement. But if it applies retroactively to bad decisions, that's different.

Any "free" money going forward would presumably come with some strings that at least attempt to keep things reasonable. But it just feels wrong to pay off someone's irresponsible private school loan from a few years ago.

Is it more irresponsible for an 18 year-old to take on six figures of debt or for the lending institution to so easily give it out?

From the standpoint of the lender, it's a little complicated. Financially, I'm sure it works out for them under the current rules or they wouldn't do it.

Socially, you could make an argument that they should be more careful. But to the borrower, any denial could be interpreted as taking away an opportunity, and could really backfire if not done very transparently and rigorously following an acceptable process. What if the process unintentionally has a disproportionate impact on one race, for instance?

For something seen as a ticket to the middle class, it's politically better to leave the decision up to the individual.

> It's like getting upset at the development of a cheap cure for cancer

No, it's like taking my taxes and giving them to someone else instead of services which benefit many people.

I'd also like to eliminate "charitable" tax deductions (handouts to the wealthy) and tax-sheltered retirement accounts with millions in them (like Mitt Romney's Roth IRA), and would support UBI and basic free healthcare (if it came with eliminating a lot of bureaucracy), in case you just think I "hate the little guy".

This analogy doesn't hold up. A cheap new cure doesn't help those who struggled in the past but they can still cut me a fat check for the money I paid back and I will benefit from it all the same.

Getting cancer isn't a decision though, and curing cancer isn't zero-sum. You can argue the schools were predatory, but someone who made the responsible decision to take a scholarship at a state school is footing the bill for someone who made the irresponsible decision to take loans to attend an expensive private school.

Canceling student loans is purely a political play. I agree wholeheartedly with your opinion. I worked my way through school, granted it was 50k all told over 4 years instead of whatever the hell it costs now.

Maybe my ignorance is showing, but putting a cap on loan amounts for undergrad would probably protect the student quite a bit.

I'd rather just make student debt "regular" debt, i.e. dischargeable through bankruptcy. Maybe secured by the actual diploma, so you can't claim to be a graduate if you default on the debt, but you'd obviously have the education.

This changed in 2005, under GWB, and was not the worst thing he did (screwing up Afghanistan, invading Iraq, PATRIOT, TSA, ...) but was still a bad thing he did.

Australia has an interesting system, the government owns the student debt and once you earn above a certain amount it raises your tax rate slightly until the debt is paid off.

Those who can earn enough money eventually pay it off, but they're not worried about debt collectors if they're not earning any money.

People who don't ever earn enough simply don't pay it off and it's not a problem.

To prevent abuse from the universities raising costs too much, if they want to participate they have to adhere to set rates for degrees. There are a couple of universities that don't participate in the system but they're no-ones first choice

The point of a secured loan is that if you don't pay, the creditor can sell whatever is securing it and recover some or all of what is owed to them.

Taking away someone's diploma because they defaulted on their loan would just be destroying value. It's the equivalent of a bank foreclosing on your house and then burning it to the ground.

I really like the diploma idea. Its mostly reasonable to me but not sure its enough. Lots of people leave before getting degree. After first job the degree doesnt really matter that much.

I agree with capping loan amounts on future undergrad loans, but there's a whole generation of people who were encouraged into predatory tuition & loan combos under the promise the degree would get them a job which would make it easy to pay off the loan. This was (and still is, though Gen Z seems to be catching on to the scam) a systemic issue with predatory lending, and since the federal government has control over many of these predatory loans I think the political push to cancel them is entirely understandable. It may be a largely political play, but then again nearly everything the government does seems to be due to largely political reasons.

I understand the idea that these loans are predatory might be controversial, but this idea comes from the fact that going to expensive universities and paying for it with loans is pushed by high schools, parents, universities, and society alike as the sure-fire path to success. To an 18-year-old with no way to really comprehend the amount of money they're spending on education or what life looks like after university, they likely will take much of this at face value.

I distinctly remember back in school one of my friends got a loan check and said “oh wow this is 2.5k more than I need, I’m gonna buy a new (second and unneeded) laptop!”

I was so stunned I couldn’t come up with the words to say. Maybe the real issue is teaching kids the value of money.

Giving an 18 year old a bunch of money who has never lived a day of their life outside of their parent's supervision will always have its issues. Personally, I liked when my friends would get their student loan checks. It meant they were about to buy a bunch of beer and weed for all.

I find this "whole generation of people who were encouraged into predatory tuition & loan combos" thing to be incredibly unconvincing. College tuition rates started skyrocketing largely AFTER Google became a thing. There's no excuse for refusing to put in the research into wages and how long it would take to pay off these loans.

There were decades of people before internet searches were available who decided to prioritize a lack of debt over going to the absolute best school they could. The most expensive school any of my classmates went to was Tulane, and the kids who went there almost all went on GI bills. Now, across the river, where the people were more affluent... those folks definitely spent more money on their college educations. Can't say I've seen their investments reflected on their Linkedin profiles, though.

When everyone in your life is telling you to take out loans and go to the best school, I think it's understandable to not question it. There are plenty of things we take for granted and don't question, this is one of those for some people.

Not cancelling student loans is also a political play, because of the securities that depend on this unpayable debt (SLABs).

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/rmbs-to-slabs-history-r...

So right now we are prioritizing SLAB investors' profits over giving consumers more spending power. If college graduates suddenly could spend their loan payment money on other goods and services, it would be great for the economy. Loan repayments have been frozen for years now and nothing bad economically has happened.

But instead we're just protecting the rent seeking of the wealthy, which isn't really worthwhile economic activity.

Personally I think SLABs are extremely unethical, but even if you disagree with that, SLABs are unsustainable and look a lot like the subprime mortgage bubble.

I agree that there needs to be something to drive the cost of education down, but I don't know if a tuition price ceiling is the way to go. I think a good start would be punishing schools that spend elaborately on buildings, athletics and excess/overpaid administrators while also paying their grad students doing a lot of the teaching work starvation wages (or if you're UCLA, don't even pay them at all!) and neglect spending directly on education and tuition. I think an endowment cap is a great idea in this area, to force schools to lower tuition by having to spend a certain part of their endowment, rather than letting them hoard money.

Some other things that are extremely good ideas is letting the interest rate be renegotiable/refinancible. For example, why did I have to continue paying 6.5% on my loan when rates everywhere else were near zero? And also letting people discharge loans in bankruptcy like pretty much every other debt.

The bubble will burst any day now, since enrollments have been declining for years at this point. Until then, the only people benefiting are student loan servicers, useless and overpaid administrators, plutocratic athletics departments, and investment bankers, NOT students or people doing the actual educating.

You need something SLAB-like because otherwise everyone declares bankruptcy between finishing their degree and getting a first job. Congratulations you just cancelled all new student loans.

Something like dischargeable in bankruptcy after 15 years could work though.

It's the easily available financing (secured against bankruptcy) which has enabled the cost spiral; eliminating this would start to put pressure on university prices.

This would cause them to be somewhat cost conscious in certain areas; explosion of administrators, and use of capital contributions for excessive facilities.

I think it's fair to be against student loans. My point is that by being against preventing the declaring of bankruptcy of student loans you're in effect arguing for either a system where the providers are forced to give out loans that won't be repaid or a system of no student loans. You should make it clear which of the two alternatives you're actually advocating for rather than advocating for a vague policy without exploring its obvious consequences.

I agree with capping costs. However, not cancelling loans for a small sum of, say, 5-10k per person wouldn't be so bad. Just as you or I had to work through school and scrimp and save doesn't mean we should make others suffer that same way. The logic seems reminiscent of hazing to me.

I know someone who attended the public university in Mass for English. They graduated in 2010 with 100k in loans as the first college graduate in their family. Owing to the job market for the last decade, they primarily worked in the service sector and never made a dent in the student loan principal.

How many decades should we punish people for?

It's a really tricky problem to solve, granted.

I feel like student loans should be treated more like FHA loans, who generally do more to make sure the loan is worth it.

If loan givers had a vested interest in the success of the grantee, they'd do far more due diligence than they do today. They'd not give someone 100k for an English degree, for example.

That said, some of the diligence is expected from the borrower as well, IMO.

Why would you take out 100k in loans for a degree that can’t pay for itself?

The real crime here is charging 100k for an English degree. People should be allowed to pursue whatever interests they want, no question. Why would someone spend 100k on an English degree they can’t possibly hope to have bear financial fruit? The scene from good will hunting comes to mind…

Someone who's only exposure to education included 4 years of English, 3 years of math, and 2 years of science could rationally conclude that English is a valuable skill. Particularly when they don't have familial connections with degrees.

Why would you assume a 17 year old, first generation college student would know that degree wouldn't pay for itself?

Because it's easy to search for salary information on the internet?

Put yourself in the shoes of a naive 17 year old for a second. You're gonna do that when every person in your life is telling you "just go to college and don't worry about the loans because you'll make enough money to pay them off?" That was literally a true statement not too long ago. It's entirely possible every single adult in our hypothetical student's life is telling them this, because it was true when those people went to college.

I did that when I attended college and I didn't have the internet to tell me what a stupid idea it was to blow tens of thousands of dollars I didn't have because I didn't have access at the time. I won't for a single second lament the decisions of people who refuse to do the bare minimum. They aren't victims of the system with regards to being able to simply look at the market and do basic math. They're too lazy to be adults.

When I graduated with a CS degree and an EE minor in 2004 it wasn't clear my degree would pay for itself. When the dot com bubble burst, a ton of people got laid off and software engineering jobs became very competitive. A significant percentage of the people in the CS program at my school changed majors. When I graduated in 2004 near the top of my class from a respectable university and had prior work experience, the best offer I got in the Greater Boston area was for $45K. That seemed to be the ceiling for those in my peer group, too. Those with Master's degrees were getting $55K ($10K premium for a Master's seemed standard).

I was pretty deflated. I ended up applying for a research assistant position and fortunately got it, so I went back to grad school. Along the way I opted to start a company since I at least had guaranteed health insurance as a student. I graduated and ran the company for 4.5 years. The job market recovered some during that time.

Software engineering salaries now are monumentally different than what they 18 years ago. For a long time I questioned whether I had made the correct career choice. Of course, nowadays we can't get enough engineers and new grads are being offered salaries that I still have trouble believing (and that took me years to work up to). I don't have a problem with that, either. It's just the last time I saw something like that, the industry collapsed.

I feel reasonably comfortable with job security now. But, that's a semi-recent thing. I worked my ass off trying to stand out in case another dot com situation was forthcoming. And for maybe the first decade of my career I operated under the assumption my salary could be cut in half if the other shoe dropped.

Anyway, my point I suppose is that society sometimes changes rather quickly and it can be hard to predict what's going to work. As the first person in my family to attend college, I had to navigate uncertain waters. But, when the price of entry to most jobs is having a degree, you go and get a degree and hope you can work the rest out later. Of course, nowadays we understand that the US doesn't put any value in the humanities so getting a degree in it is probably a bad deal. It just wasn't always that way and the current trend hopefully won't last either.

-- It's far easier to get an engineering job without a degree now, at least in the US. Even if you could get one in 2004, you almost certainly were going to get paid less and be relegated to back office scripting.

Would be better to make the debt dischargeable - it's a form of debt forgiveness that has skin in the game for college graduates, particularly those that didnt do well at all.

And it has the side effect of forcing universities to consider the risks of loaning out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree that pays $50k on average.

When students can no longer afford infinite loans, the price of these degrees will magically drop like a rock.

It must be understood that making them dischargeable would make student loans unfeasible - the lending rate to adjust for the risk would be so high that unless it were subsidized it would be impossible to pay.

It would give the people a way out today - a few years of bad credit sure, but worth it if you are really underwater with them.

Maybe after a certain time period but what’s to stop people from declaring bankruptcy immediately after finishing a degree and before working. It’s hard to have a loan backed by no asset that’s dischargeable in bankruptcy and given to people with more debts than assets.

There has to be no federal student debt forward. If there is an admission that they dont work, stop doing them!

100k in loans for an English degree

Demand a refund not a handout

For as long as it takes them to pay their debt? What part of the "you can't discharge this via bankruptcy, and you're actually going to be an ENGLISH major" do you think tripped them up?

A college graduate can get a better job than service sector: HR, teaching, etc. That person isn't trying.

In a good economy, sure! 2010 was close to the bottom of the last recession, competition was heavy and "Recent College Grad" doesn't sound so recent after 2-4 years.

> It feels like rewarding people for irresponsible behavior, and ultimately punishing those who acted responsibly.

Keep in mind that most (nearly all) of the people you're talking about were minors less than a year prior to getting these loans pushed on them by people with a lot of experience convincing very young people to take loans. It's disingenuous to act like they aren't easily preyed on due to their inexperience.

The most likely reason that these tuition costs go so high is because the government is basically willing to give as much money as is needed to get them there. Over the past 50 years, for every dollar given by the government in funding average tuition increased next year by $0.60 [1].

The trouble is, if you take away the student loans the cost of tuition will drop but a lot fewer people will be able to go.

1. https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year

Same boat. I got into CalTech, and instead went to CalPoly SLO because I was afraid of the debt. Things worked out fine tbh.

What year? I went 05-09 and it wasn’t bad but it was getting steep towards the end.

I won’t share my class year, but the tuition definitely spiked towards the end.

Cancelling student debt would only be rewarding irresponsible behavior of the US government by relieving the pressure to change how loans are issued in the first place. The news/ press would mostly stop reporting about it once the initial loans are forgiven since there'd be no pressure anymore to fix the root of the problem which is issuing non-dischargeable unsecured loans in the 10s of to 100s of thousands of dollars. The US allowed those non-dischargeable loans to be issued in the first place with little to no way of knowing if the value provided by the student's desired educational program justified the price it was billing. Students may bare some responsibility here but expecting all 18 year olds who have gone through the traditional US education system to have any resemblance of financial literacy is asking a lot given there seems to be no focus on requiring income management, retirement savings, and debt awareness classes in any US High School tract.

What I'm trying to say ultimately is in my opinion most High School graduates are to naive to actually realize how bad of deal they may be getting themselves into and the US government is actively encouraging that reckless behavior by allowing these federal loans to be issued.

At the very least we need to limit interest rates on loans. Folks shouldn't be debt slaves for the rest of their lives.

Interest rates should depend on the market. Why you want to artificially meddle in everything? Solutions for student loans is simple. Stop government guarantees, and get rid of the government law that makes it not dischargeable. Government caused the problem and you ask for another government “solution”

Hah, everything is the government and government is bad when people want it to be. The government is the thing that makes bankruptcy possible in the first place, and if it didn't exist you'd just have someone hunt you down for repayment and torture you until you comply.

You make the weird assumption that any law requires a big monopoly that meddles in everything. Not true. Anti-slavery law covers the ability to discharge with bankruptcy.

This is pretty extreme take on me suggesting limiting predatory rates on loans.

I'm fine with the federal government servicing 100% of student debt and for that debt to be completely interest free.

But that's as far as I'm willing to go on the issue. If it were up to me, I'd have the feds regulate university expenditures the same way that they regulate insurance companies. You get X% of tuition and fees to go towards construction, overhead, and administration. Everything else is for educator salaries.

Buy the worst house in the best neighborhood and your initial apprehension eventually becomes a valuable asset. I wonder if the same holds true for college. This was certainly my experience.