Many of these loans are handed out predatorily to people classified as children, 6-8 years before their higher level thinking pre-frontal cortex fully develops, with no life experience, little work experience, a wide range in quality of parenting and childhood, with a society that has said "this is how you achieve the American dream of doing better than your parents."
The loans themselves shield the lender from consequences and put risk squarely on the the loan taker.
The seeming goal of these loans being the same for most of the structure of American society, to ensure desperate workers that have no freedom and no ability to say no to businesses.
When society offered these loans to people who in no way would have been able to get them on fundamentals, which was already a failure of society to invest in the future, there was an implicit promise that they would lead to a better life and they didn't.
You can't blame societies young for believing what their elders and even society at large tells them.
Universities failed their students, society failed students and universities, our own culture decayed in terms of earning vs receiving credentials, and the people you want to pay the cost of that are the people that the system victimized the most?
Seems like most reasonable first step to take.
We don't make people take out loans for K-12. Education is an investment. It should be funded, just not in a way that is so rife with conflicts of interest. Everyone benefits from an educated society except priests and other kinds of authoritarians.
There's no easy solution to this, it's structural, it's systemic, the model the USA uses for higher-ed funding is structurally unsound and unsustainable. Replacement the model can only be done through a measured policy change but I don't see much of that coming from the US in the past 10-15 years, it's mostly flailing around with no clear vision for what it wants to be in the future, just an everlasting chase for GDP growth no matter how, at some point this narrow objective comes crashing down.
This is a myth. The prefrontal cortex doesn't appear to ever stop developing.
Early brain development studies involving MRIs simply only looked at people up to the age of 25 and the findings that they "develop until at least 25" turned into this myth that they stop developing and are "fully mature" at 25.
The age of majority was a conservative choice based on society's view of when the vast majority of people were capable of the level of self-sufficiency required to do things like enter into contracts. If most are incapable of self-sufficiency without a parental guardian, then the age of majority should be increased.
That said, we also ignored our own rationale and started allowing minors to apply for student loans. This is a travesty.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/brain-myth-25-developme...
I was lucky enough to grow up and go to university in another country. The magnitude of the financial decisions I was making at the time were < 1k and I remembered how much money that felt like.
IMHO blaming people for 100k bad financial decisions made under duress just as they entered adulthood is victim blaming.
Especially when the implied social contract broke down--i.e low wages, horrific increases in the cost of living, limited opportunities.
It's pretty common to find people that regret taking the loans to go to school and got little value from their education.
> “Involuntary collections will not occur before 2025," a White House spokesperson said in a statement. "Defaulted borrowers won’t see collections until 2025.”
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/10/biden-adm...
[1]: https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/average-student-loan-d...
In other states, for example Texas, it’s a little over $3000 a year on average for in state:
https://www.communitycollegereview.com/tuition-stats/texas#:...
That’s much cheaper than the tens of thousands for a public 4 year university.
And we should point out that for trades, you are getting paid in an apprenticeship. That’s better than cheap or free.
If we’re going to keep speed running the decline of the US, it’s a fine strategy. The people making these choices will be long dead by the time the consequences arrive.
How come?
Debt is not written in stone. It is always negotiable, and only sometimes enforceable. There is no morality around debt, so I’m unsure why the strong feels around why this debt can’t be forgiven or renegotiated.
What does this mean? It seems like the vast majority of people see it as a moral issue, both for discharging or collecting it.
Talk to people who feel trapped by their debt, and people who worked hard to pay off their debt, and they will often be clear on this.
This is just hacking another system imho. Your opinion may differ.
With respect to student debt, it isn't just an individual choice to default. That isn't a contractual option available.
Instead, some people are seeking positive action from others to void the contract, and this is action is politically contested by those with the power to do so.
[argument withdrawn]
> I’m sure you’d have no problem burning millions of dollars of VC funding on a low value business idea, as if that would be of superior economic value.
You know absolutely nothing about me.