I mean I worked full-time through school, raised a family and still managed to finish my BS in 18 months and MS in 12 more a few years later, mostly because I didn't want to end up in debt.
It seems pretty messed up that I've been strenuously paying back student loans to avoid debt, and then the people that partied hearty during school get their loans forgiven because they make piss poor decisions.
I graduated almost 15 years ago, and I am starting to think that anyone who graduated more than a few years ago simply cannot comprehend how bad it is to have to pay for school now. Average annual tuition at all 4-year institutions is just under $29k.[0] Real median HHI for the same year was $65k.[1] As a student you simply cannot work enough to pay for school anymore; it's not physically possible. So loans, grants, scholarships etc are a requirement.
Completely unrelated to the math, the idea that everyone with a high loan balance is there because of "piss poor decisions" is not only insulting, but also idiotic. You need to have a pretty impressive lack of understanding about a half dozen or so topics to truly believe that.
[0] https://www.ontocollege.com/average-college-tuition/ [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
Maybe I do have an impressive lack of understanding of a dozen or so topics, but I grew up as the oldest of over 5 children to a single mother who was a school teacher, I spent most of my school time on free or reduced lunch, and was categorized statistically speaking as likely to end up low achieving. So sure there might be mitigating circumstances for some people, but I don't think that we can completely abscond with the idea of personal responsibility.
Further the reason school costs have continued to rise is because the schools know everyone will get a loan for it because the government pumps a bunch of money into just this one sector through the loans, by forgiving loans you are incentivizing a continuation of school's increasing price because they face no consequences for it and will still receive the money they want.
Finally if you aren't convinced by my account, I have a friend currently finishing his degree, he has spent his entire summer laying concrete in the hot sun for hours a day, busting his but to provide for his family and have enough money to finish his degree, so that is currently happening. To pretend that college can't be afforded without ridiculous loan is hokum.
> So the most important follow-up question to all of this is when did you do it? College costs have risen exponentially faster than just about everything other than healthcare, especially over the last 10-20 years.
The only kind of student debt forgiveness that I'd maybe support is the kind that allowed the debt to be discharged in a bankruptcy, then claw back the money from the school. That would create consequences that would incentivize positive changes. A money giveaway would just be a socialize-the-risk/privatize-the-gains perversion.
Do you have an example? Like buying too much house and getting then getting fired from your job?
I suppose the bankruptcy judge could make a determination of the student debt was a major cause of the bankruptcy, and only clawing back the money in those cases.
> Especially if nothing else about the current climate changes, all that will do is cause costs to rise even faster as the school just increases tuition to compensate.
But wouldn't that quickly spiral out of control for the school? If they just increase tuition, then they'd get more money clawed back down the road (assuming it's an ongoing policy, not a one-time program). I'm thinking they'd mainly have to cut costs, dip into endowments, or do some fundraising to fill the gap.
Insult to injury, ITT didn't actually teach students much. At least with the scammy mortgages, you sort of got a house.
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It seems to me the Biden Admin is doing triage, reviewing the student loans very deliberately, cancelling categories on a case-by-case basis.
I have no dog in this fight and only a shallow understanding of the issue. I expect that Biden Admin continue to cancel and reduce the most egregious loans. And then provide some kind of relief to the remaining borrowers who are most pear shaped.
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Our society and government forgives debts all the time. Bankruptcy and bailouts. Crucial to keeping our economy healthy.
I don't see why individual's debts, like student loans, should be treated any differently.
That's a fairly flawed assumption.
Funny how going to the best school that you're talented enough to get admitted to is considered a bad decision. That's fine though, just don't try to tell me that society is a "meritocracy", as opposed to an aristocracy.
The worst decision I ever made was being born to parents who couldn't afford to pay for an expensive education. I'll always regret that.
When I was 18, I had to pass up the opportunity to go to an Ivy League school. I went to a state school instead. Some people might claim that was the "responsible" choice, but it wasn't even my choice, it was my parents' choice. I don't think I was directly eligible for loans at the time; if I was, I might have taken them.
This is a straw man.
The problem with blanket forgiveness is "moral hazard". Meaning if you do a blanket forgiveness now people will continue/increase taking out student loans in the hopes they might be forgiven. Also, just because someone has a lot of student loan debt doesn't mean they're in need. Early career doctors, as an example, will have a ton of debt but are going to be a top earner for the next 20-30 years.
More surprising to me: > As of March 2021, 23% of the $1.59 trillion outstanding federal loan balance was held by borrowers who were 50 or older, up from 18% in 2017. (Figure SA-12A
Off the cuff, this group seems like the least important to pay off
A lot of them are graduate students.
> Off the cuff, this group seems like the least important to pay off
Why do you say that?
We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! Do you want to see people with a lifetime of student loan debt?
Also law school.
I can tell you from personal experience that you're very wrong about this.
You can find a person for every situation. How many people on this earth have a nickle up their ass this very instant? Also, incentives matter.
shrug. If you're old and not working anymore and have debts you can sell your shit to pay off the debts. If you don't have shit to sell then you're poor. I do agree that debts shouldn't be able to take your income below a certain livable level, but there's some level between liveable and full social security payments, then sure, let people who lived a life of debt drop to the lower bound. There is basically no upside to subsidizing these folks.
There's quite a lot of benefit to freeing young people from debt at the beginning so that they can build up wealth.
*I'm aware a 50 year old person is often not "old and not working anymore"
Democrats refuse to see the problem (if the residents can't afford it, can the rest of us?) and Republicans just hope that if they don't build "affordable housing" the residents will go to some other town.
One angle is that adding more money makes things more expensive. If the money isn't there then people will do with less or do without. People have long been concerned that student loans contribute to increasing tuition and the evidence is accumulating for that
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...
> No one is looking at this problem objectively...
I know it appears that way. But there are 100s of orgs working every single issue from all sides.
It's very, very challenging for these elites (experts) to get any attention. Death of journalism. Everyone's already overwhelmed. There's a zillion issues to care about.
Consequently, most issue central orgs now focus on direct lobbying.
FWIW, I was a serious activist (2004-2012). Media was a huge time sink. In retrospect, I wish we'd just focused on lobbying.
Paul Houle wrote:
> Democrats refuse to see the [housing] problem...
I have friends working on housing issues. Policy people absolutely understand the shape and scope. And the developers I've spoken with (casually, not policy work) do too and have been clear eyed about the situation.
My local party org does dozens of endorsement interviews every year. Housing has long been a hot issue.
The sad truth is that NIMBY has been the norm.
It's a mistake to think "Democrats" are left-wing, or are as "progressive" as we'd hope. Being "progressive" is usually on just 1 or 2 issues. Like a candidate who has been awesome on LBGTQ issues being utterly opposed to upzoning.
(Further, my town now only elects "Democrats". So all the competitive candidates label themselves "Democrat", which has very low predictive power what their actual positions are.)
I'm not struggling at all, but I have zero incentive to make any payments as long as inflation stays where it is and there are no penalties. But then you look at stories like the person mentioned in the article - six figures of student debt, probably at 2-3x my interest rate, with a master's degree working as a secretary probably making $40k/yr.
I'm so conflicted because on the one hand I'm not going to intentionally make a decision that puts me or my family worse off financially; it'd be silly to expect anyone to do that. But at the same time as someone who had a job in school, did work study, didn't go to grad school, all to keep my loan balance as low as possible at graduation, I struggle not to roll my eyes a bit when I read articles like this about someone getting a master's degree from a private liberal arts college that charges $2k/credit then getting a job as a secretary and complaining they can't make student loan payments. I mean.. that seems obvious.
I don't have a problem with liberal arts education - I went to a small private liberal arts college - and I don't think there's necessarily a problem with getting a degree in something that doesn't have a direct track to industry and a six figure job. But it's hard to square all that with even the slightest bit of "maybe think about what jobs you can get after school with whatever you want to study, and change your plans for what school you go to, whether you do work study, etc. accordingly."
What if the answer is "college professor"?
We can't have college at all without college professors, and it's a very long, treacherous road from undergrad to grad school to tenure track to tenure. Many people, perhaps most, get lost along the way. Yet society needs kids to keep trying, or we have nobody at the end.
And we have too many people going to college anyway. Many of them would be happier and better off in the long run if they attended trade school or joined an apprentice program or enlisted in the military. College is an excellent choice for some people, but it shouldn't be the default option.
The other side of the question is, what's the case for having the arts or academia in our society? Would you rather just abolish any human activity that isn't financially lucrative?
Most college kids going into school have no idea what they're going to be doing in the future. There aren't really standard systems in place to help guide them. Even a basic lifetime ROI analysis by major isn't something you encounter organically through the school system, and whether you're lucky enough to have done that sort of evaluation before choosing a path just totally depends on the circumstances of your upbringing or internet browsing.
Our higher-ed system was inherited from Old World elites, and there's probably a case to be made that it's not as relevant to the modern workforce or society anymore, but that's not a very fair thing to pin on any individual degree or student.
Morally, if we've decided that the humanities have any intrinsic worth at all, it stands to reason that we should be feeding the people who practice the humanities. And unless we want them all to be slave-artists, maybe even pay them a livable wage. Maybe the moral failing here is our lack of funding for the arts, or our lack of appropriate valuation at least. Especially in a create-one, share-unlimited-times digital economy of production.
Economically, what societal value is there in an indentured class of artists not making art? Does society really get more value out of painters flipping burgers while their loan sharks muck around in spreadsheets making more money?
Personally... as a tax-paying dev, I would be happy to pay a little more tax if it means people who chose a different path in life got to eat, sleep under a solid roof, and create beautiful things. I don't want to live in a ruthless, hypercapitalist society where human worth is reduced to dollars and bankers determine our destinies.
By the way, most of the greatest artists throughout history never attended college at all.
However, if you're arguing that art degrees don't produce good artists, that's a separate argument altogether. It's a valid consideration, I think. But that's less of a question of "who should pay for education" and more "what is the value of education". I don't know enough about MFAs to comment on that, but I do know that there are many, many majors that don't produce high-income careers. I don't think that should be their goal or metric, personally. Maybe that's valid for trade schools, but society shouldn't only have tradespeople learning industry skills and nothing else.
That's the underlying concern... it's not a strawman, it's the whole point: that morally or economically, we shouldn't be evaluating human productivity on dollars alone.
We should also be talking about the federal government's pullback in funding higher education. Public universities used to be the primary route for people to get a higher education.
We need to be talking about WHY college is so expensive.
The problem is universities are for-profit factories motivated by monetary extraction to squeeze their customers for every dime they don't have in the future.
Until students stop paying insane amounts of money they don't have like a credit card and HR departments don't absolutely "require" a college degree for decent jobs, universities will keep finding ways of spending money on lavish buildings ever year or two and keep raising the prices.
Forgiving $10K across the board is dumb and mistargeted. $50K would be better but is still mistargeted. What we really need to do is get the unmanageable >$80K balances down to a manageable <$20K amount. It's the 10% minority of borrowers who are really hurting.
In my opinion we should be talking more about years of debt held rather than amount of debt held. In theory, college is supposed to "pay for itself", but if some people are continuing to hold student loan debt 10 years, 20 years, 30 years after college, then college obviously did not pay for itself in those cases.