you know the sad thing is in the 90s loans were so baked in that a lot of high schools had classes to teach the kids on how to apply for them and what to put down and what not to put down etc just like a scholarship
junior colleges also use the same loans and grants as the big ones …in fact, you probably end up with more debt because you get loans to do 2 or 3 years of JC and more loans once you get into the big schools
Also the whole " well they could of went to a trade school " thing is full of shit too and they’re part of the problem look at the advertised ones they all get you to use various loans also and teach the bare minimum legally required to obtain such loans
There was a scandal when the state of ca sued a set of trade schools ad diploma mills and won one of the most prominent trade schools in Ca “josephs school of nursing” closed down entirely so they didn’t get investigated …
No, that’s the reality of how the system works today, because it’s impossible for anyone who isn’t either a once-in-a-generation level genius or born into the top 1% to finance a college education without taking on untenable amounts of debt. This isn’t 1967 where you can work part-time earning minimum wage at Burger Shack, pay for your tuition at Harvard out-of-pocket, and have enough spare change left over to buy a full two-and-three rambler and a new Camaro.
People here keep bringing up the bankruptcy issue, but there are good and obvious reasons a student loan shouldn’t be discharged via a bankruptcy filing.
Other than it’s now not legally possible, could you please show your reasoning as to why student loan debt is a special category that should be immune to bankruptcy discharge?
Right? I think that casino owners and real estate magnates should never be able to declare bankruptcy, but here we are.
Look, this is just one transfer of wealth among thousands of them. It’s not even that big of a wealth transfer. Higher education is important and we, as a nation, have been saying that it’s critical for personal success, but the costs have gone through the roof.
Would it be better to have free public higher education, like the rest of the world? Maybe, but that’s another wealth transfer. Are German students making a stupid decision by going to university for free? Is it unfair to carpenters and plumbers?
And this relief just pays for, at most, one semester at a four year school. My local community college charges over $4,000 per semester for in-staters.
Just getting back to the actual question posed by this OP (crazy idea, I know), I’m sure it’s undeniably good for the people whose loans are being forgiven. Leaving aside moral hazard and fairness question, it’s just not that big of a deal for the rest of us.
Now, on a societal level, are there any studies that say that the return on investment in education is positive for society? For example, I know there are studies that say that pre-K programs have a positive return in terms of future earnings, and I think childhood health programs are the same. Is there anything about the return for free or reduced price higher education programs?
I’d like to say yes, but I don’t know the statistics.
Hey, that was me. I went to college over the course of more than a decade, working oddball shifts when I couldn’t get Organic Chemistry or P-Chem at night school, taking six or eight credits a semester, only once did I exceed that, the semester I’d been told I was laid off and signed up for 12 credits during the summer session, then they rescinded my layoff and I had to keep working. That semester involved me working eight hours overnight, getting out at 7:00 am, driving 50 miles to my two morning classes, sleeping in the car until my evening classes, and then driving back to work for the start of my shift.
I did graduate without student debt, and than as a parent I helped pay off my kids student debt, so I guess I’ve done it both ways. What should Mr.E say to me about me paying off his wife’s poor decisions? I guess thanks, but I’m not really concerned. This loan cancellation is a good thing, and we should have done it a long time ago. People who got polio in the fifties weren’t mad about the Salk vaccine, right? They weren’t like “I hadda be in an iron lung, you should too”. People who do that are mostly dicks.
The reality of the system is that there is a widening gap between sticker price and actual individual price that makes many colleges more affordable for many, and Harvard is a particularly poor example because it expects a $0 family contribution if income is less than $75k, and they cap family contribution at 10% up to $150k, with a sliding contribution above that.
Now most students aren’t getting into Harvard or the other schools that avoid loans as part of their aid packages. But tuition reduction is still common. @kenobi_65 and @slash2k mentioned high prices at public universities in WI and KS, respectively, but a large majority of students at both schools receive grant aid. That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems to fix, but given that >40% of graduates from public and non-profit schools leave with zero student loan debt, and those with debt have a mean (so skewed) debt of $30k, there’s no need to exaggerate the problem.
I believe Biden’s action helps more people who need help than doing nothing would, but it’s a blunt instrument that also misses a lot of need and sends money where there is no or little need. But there’s also only so much he can do without legislation.
It depends if the “poor decision” was actually bad from a public policy standpoint, doesn’t it?
It’s one thing if a personal decision to get education was sub optimal from a personal financial perspective. It’s a very different thing if that decision was sub optimal from a societal perspective.
Is our society made better if we encourage people to avoid college due to the financial risks, or if people are encouraged to attend college as we will collectively absorb some of the risk?
Conservatives have a bad habit of over-individualizing issues that have broad societal impact.
I know quite a number of business owners, both successful and not so successful. One person I know ended up several hundred thousand dollars in debt before he finally stopped digging himself further in on a business that failed due to his bad decisions.
He declared bankruptcy, and had the vast majority of that debt eliminated. Do you think that he should have been able to do that?
Lol, I remember Hank Paulson just beating his breast about “moral hazard” even as he was readying yet another $700 billion bailout of one failing sector of W’s economy after another.
I remember Reagan saying he would have left Chrysler to die, throwing over a million people out of work in 1979. I also remember Reagan had the authority to review the Chrysler loans, lobby against them, pass laws to prevent more from happening, and yet… like Paulson… the checkbook remained open for the likes of Milken and McDonnell-Douglas while snapping shut on regular Americans… which is why we needed to borrow against rising individual college costs since Reagan’s presidency.
Yeah, moral hazard, la de dah, only for thee and not for me, got it.
If it’s more expensive to go to medical school or law school, we get fewer doctors and lawyers. If we get fewer doctors and lawyers, the law of supply and demand makes their fees go up even more. If your doctor charges more money, medical insurance rates go up. And guess who pays that? You do, or you just don’t get care.
Having expertise in society is a good thing, and costs money. A lack of expertise in society is a bad thing, and also costs money. Why not just have the good thing?
Or you know, couple it with making college affordable.
Maybe don’t tell 17-18 year old high school graduates that their only option to be competitive in life is to take on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and go to college, then blame them for following that advise.
I really don’t get why everyone blames the student, who really is the victim in all this profiteering, rather than those who profited off of them.
Personally, I’ve got a tiny little dog in this fight. Prior to COVID, I had less than $1000 left to pay on my student loans, and was considering just paying it off when the COVID deferment came through. So, yeah, after paying off around $45k of debt over the last 12 years, I might get the last $1000 forgiven, at a time in my life where $1000 is not nearly as much to me as it was ten years ago, when paying my monthly payments often meant I went without food. So, whoopee.
Nobody is paying higher taxes for God’s sakes. Can we at least dispense with that falsehood? This is going to be a balance sheet transfer using various forms of debt.
If it required higher taxes, then it would go through Congress. But it doesn’t, so it didn’t.
University tuition is subsidized by governments for Canadian citizens, which makes it less expensive for them than for international students. According to StatCan, Canadian students enrolled full time in undergraduate programs paid an average of C$6,693 during the 2021-2022 academic year.
That’s about $5,200 in US dollars/year. From here. That’s less than my local community college, which clocks in at about $7,500/year.
I imagine the plumbers and carpenters up in Canada are constantly fuming.
