Ahhh, there’s that strawman. Yes, everyone with student debt got there because they wasted 12 years getting a PHD in “grievance studies”.
It’s good that we have people like you around to decide what things are worth learning about.
I don’t decide. The market decides.
I think you’re close here. I think the more apt analogy would be: the only vaccine we’ve been able to develop only works on people who’ve been going to bars and yelling at Costco employees. - at least some people will get vaccinated and it will get us closer to herd immunity, let’s do it.
There are a lot of people who took out 6 figure loans for desirable degrees that are contributing greatly to the economy or at least being compensated like they are. Which is why people are complaining about this program primarily hurting the upper middle class. While there are people who spent 150k for a degree in underwater basket weaving to be a cashier at Wal-Mart I’d guess most of them are doctors, lawyers, MBA, and PhD.
I think the question is two fold are having 10-15 with $35k is loans slowing the economy and is solving this problem better than nothing?
Well, as one of those people with 100k in loans and married to another person with 100+k in loans, it sure seems to me our economic activity is hampered due to the loans we have to pay a higher interest rate on our home loans because we had large outstanding debt and our bank has told us we have to get the student loans paid off before we can get decent rates for a new car. We also are not saving for retirement or our kid’s college like we’d prefer so I would say that our current economic activity is slowed and our future activity will be as well for the next 15 years until we hit forgiveness.
Is its better than nothing? Well, I’m against forgiveness because it seems like there are people that need that help more than we do. We’re in the top 5% in income and after kids and debt service are able to save 15% of our income, that’s not bad. Having our student loans paid off will increase that to saving another 5%. But moving 14% of the population from debt service to buying/saving will certainly inject cash into the economy which could pull us out of this recession faster.
I guess if there are no other stimulus options I’d be ok with Biden doing this but it’ll be a shame there aren’t better ways.
It’s a bit like this rent moratorium that is nonsensical. People forget about the people on the other side of the equation. And by just printing money to forgive people’s debts or obligations, sure, some folks have a bit more liquidity today but the message is sent that one doesn’t really have to worry about their obligations or their contracts if enough other folks complain.
That certainly clears up your post for me thanks. I thought the terrible example was relating to worthless degrees.
I’m pretty sure that it is generally true in society that you don’t have to worry about obligations or contracts if enough people complain. If nothing else we see people doing illegal things and having their fines and legal fees crowd sourced rather than hitting them personally so I don’t think that is an effective argument.
I think the better one is that paying off debt, though stimulating the economy, doesn’t fix the underlying problem so it is at best a temporary stimulus that will leave both people who came before (already paid off their debt) and those that come after upset . That seem to be bad politics at best.
Of course, fixing the structural problems with the higher education system seems less likely than fixing the healthcare system since at least there are some concrete proposals to fix healthcare. Neither is going to be accomplished by divided government so Biden probably won’t have a shot in the next 4 years.
If things were different, hypothetically, from the way you think they are in this regard, and more like the way they actually are, which is to say that only about 5% of borrowers were to owe a hundred thousand dollars in debt or more, while the vast majority owed less than 40k, would you feel differently about the kind of example it sets for other, younger governments?
Or would there regrettably be a different, equally important objection that you forgot to mention?
Why should college loans be forgiven but not auto loans and mortgages?
Where does this idea come from?
“Suffering” for having to pay for college should be the norm and should not be discouraged. Some of the student debt issue is because there is a lack of the things necessary to control costs, like financial planning, saving, and living frugally. Having to think about paying back the loans provides the feedback necessary to control costs. If debt forgiveness is the norm with college, then financial planning for college isn’t really needed. Students might as well rack up unlimited debt by going to the most expensive college, live as lavishly as they like, going on spring break vacations, and treating the loans like free money if it’s going to be forgiven at a later date.
If it were not a requirement for getting a decent job, then sure.
It really shouldn’t be needed, any more than financial planning for kindergarten through 12 isn’t needed.
Is that how it works in high school?
And you do know that you can’t use government student loans for all that stuff, right? It’s pretty much just good for tuition. It usually won’t even pay for books.
Now, you can also get private loans through what used to be SallieMae, but I think they are called something else now.
The loans that could be discharged in this way would only be the Stafford Loans, the ones from the government. If someone did as you said, and racked up unlimited debt in wasteful spending, then it would only be a small fraction of their debt that was forgiven.
Because almost anyone can have a car loan or a mortgage but the kind of post-graduate and prestigious education that leads to student debt is heavily borne by the kinds of people who vote for the center-left of the Democratic Party. It’s a reward-the-base issue.
We have a structure in place for free HS. I think it would be great if we had a similar structure setup for college as well, but it wouldn’t be free college of your choice. Just like private HS isn’t part of the free HS experience, not all college paths should be part of the free path.
The max government loans are around $50-60k, which is going to be a manageable amount of debt. That’s a monthly payment of $500-600. It might be painful, but it would be manageable. If those payments are too overwhelming, they could be disposable in bankruptcy. It’s totally feasible to get a 4 year degree for under that amount. It might take choices like community college for the first 2 years, state school at a less-popular campus, living at home, living frugally, no car, no vacations, thrift store clothes, used textbooks, and so on. It’s not going to be a country-club, summer-camp college experience, but it’s a perfectly adequate way to get a solid college education with a reasonable amount of debt.
The student loan crisis is from people getting massively in debt, not from people with $50k in loans. The student who finds themselves with $150k+ of debt after going to a small private school is feeling the effects of their poor financial decisions. Blanket disposing of this kind of debt is going to mean less reason for future students to make the tough choices necessary to graduate with a reasonable amount of debt they can handle themselves.
What about the people who are actually making those 6 figure loans for degrees that aren’t worth that much? They must bear some responsibility for making such bad financial decisions, right?
I agree, that’s more or less what I said.
Most people starting out, with a college degree, aren’t making tons and tons of money. Manageable, sure, but able to move on with their lives, to buy a house, a car, and start a family? Not so much.
Currently, they are not.
Some of those are reasonable.
Others are a bit problematic. It there is not community college nearby, or state school, then living at home is not really an option. If you are not living on campus, then not having a car is also not really an option. I don’t know if you’ve been to college personally, but used textbooks are not always an option, I’ve had professors insist that you have the most recent one, and will make sure that there is material on the test that only exists in that edition.
You are, for the most part, describing how most people went to college and ended up with the debt that they did.
Yeah, but as you said, the max govt loan is only 50k, the rest is private loans that would not be discharged through this executive order.
We have two problems. The first is the ridiculous cost of higher education, and the second is that there are people who are struggling with the costs incurred in getting that education.
We need to fix both. But, if we can only fix one, for now, we shouldn’t let the perfect be enemy be the good.
And they do, by being in a higher tax bracket. 
In most European countries, university is free, but only the very elite are admitted. It can be very roughly analogized to the fact that the topmost colleges in the U.S. promise 100% need-based financial aid. For various reasons, we have this notion in the U.S. that anyone who doesn’t have to make a Herculean effort to graduate high school needs to go to college. It isn’t a good thing and it would be good to move away from it.
As far as postgraduate education, the markets are all completely swamped. There isn’t any realistic prospect of employment that makes use of a postgrad degree right now outside of physicians, a few engineering fields, and the top 5% of law schools. We can get rid of “MAs in education” as a prerequisite for teacher licensing which have always been a scam and follow the lead of the University of Pennsylvania and just stop offering graduate programs outside of the medical and engineering schools for a few years, until there actually is a need for their graduates. Anyone who asks “should I go to grad school in the humanities/social sciences/core theoretical sciences with no employability in applied fields” is told, repeatedly, absolutely not, you have essentially no chance of getting a job that uses your credentials, go apply with your BA and start making money now instead of taking on another 5+ years of debt for no reason. This message is shouted at people over and over again and yet they insist that they are the golden one who will get the 1 tenure track position or 10 private-sector jobs that actually pay back the cost of the degree when they graduate along with 400 other new PhDs in their field six years down the line. Why on Earth should this behavior be rewarded on the part of either the students or the universities?
Cite? I think many of your comments in this thread have bordered on personal insult given the experiences of those posting here, but I’ll humor you. Where are you getting this information?
This is a misleading. The article says Penn stopped offering PhDs within the School of Arts and Sciences, not all graduate programs. They also say the reason they quit is because of financial difficulties related to COVID, not because they think these degrees are worthless, as you imply. Full disclosure: I got my graduate degree from Penn and I have a job.
They can’t afford to subsidize the degrees, therefore it’s basically unethical to offer them to students who would have to self-finance, because going into debt for a PhD is just throwing money away in 2020 regardless of your personal experience in the past. What other interpretation is possible here besides Penn being much more forthright and moral about this than other schools?
This is the only justification I’ve heard so far.
Your avatar is apt, with its hands over its ears.
You can discharge an auto loan or a mortgage through bankruptcy. You cannot do that with student loans.
You can choose that you no longer want the car or house, and sell them towards paying off your loans on them, you cannot do this with a student loan.
I’ve seen @ZosterSandstorm repeat over and over claims that this is a reward the base issue, even though he has provided absolutely no evidence that this is the case. The fact that this is actually a fairly bipartisan issue proves that his purported justification is false.