# Warren Student Loan Forgiveness Plan **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 23, 2019, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931 "2019-04-23T12:44:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/121 "2019-04-23T21:03:24Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Private student loans still exist. > [Private Student Loans for College | Discover](https://www.discover.com/student-loans/private.html) You’re right, but I don’t think _those_ private student loans are “guaranteed by the government” and actually are dischargeable in bankruptcy, which is why they are credit-based and oftentimes require a co-signer. The [FFEL Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Family_Education_Loan_Program) that bump was talking about ended in 2010: > [@](#): > > The Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program was a system of private student loans which were subsidized and guaranteed by the United States federal government. The program issued loans from 1965 until it was ended in 2010. Similar loans are now provided under the Federal Direct Student Loan Program, which are federal loans issued directly by the United States Department of Education. > > The FFEL was initiated by the Higher Education Act of 1965 and was funded through a public/private partnership administered at the state and local level. In 2007-08, FFEL served 6.5 million students and parents, lending a total of $54.7 billion in new loans (or 80% of all new federal student loans). Since 1965, 60 million Americans have used FFEL loans to pay for education expenses. Following the passage of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 on January 5, 2010 the program was terminated, and no subsequent loans were permitted to be made under the program after June 30, 2010. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/122 "2019-04-23T21:04:59Z")
> [@UCBearcats](#): > > How about helping the job market and increased pay for those who graduate? The average middle class person has virtually stagnant pay over the last several decades. The 1% is getting all of the wealth created during that time. If wages increased, then repayment would not be an issue. The root cause is guaranteed money. It’s a lot like the housing bubble. Uncreditworthy people getting too much money for a particular asset class leads to inflation in that asset class. This cheap and easy money is a bad economic idea but it was made reality because of the politics of pandering. ---
**Author:** ![UCBearcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/77aa72/32.png) [@UCBearcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UCBearcats)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/123 "2019-04-23T21:14:37Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > The root cause is guaranteed money. It’s a lot like the housing bubble. Uncreditworthy people getting too much money for a particular asset class leads to inflation in that asset class. This cheap and easy money is a bad economic idea but it was made reality because of the politics of pandering. So it is ok for billionaires to become multimillionaires without increasing the wages of those who do the work? ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/124 "2019-04-23T21:21:18Z")
> [@UCBearcats](#): > > So it is ok for billionaires to become multimillionaires without increasing the wages of those who do the work? Do we live in a world where labor is global? Yes we do. Do we live in a world where there is a black market for domestic labor be it migrant or otherwise? Yes we do. Do we live in a world where capital can go to China in a blink of an eye? Yes we do. Good luck with living wage by fiat. And billionaire to multi millionaire is a downgrade. ---
**Author:** ![slalexan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@slalexan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slalexan)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/125 "2019-04-23T21:22:43Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > You’re right, but I don’t think _those_ private student loans are “guaranteed by the government” and actually are dischargeable in bankruptcy, which is why they are credit-based and oftentimes require a co-signer. Private student loans are just as difficult to discharge via bankruptcy as federal student loans. Federal student loans tend to have protections like a fixed interest rate and repayment options for when repayment is really difficult. Private student loans do not have those protections but are still covered by the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. I find my federal loans have been really easy to keep up with. I will pay them all off soon and on schedule. Private loans are where a lot of the bad stuff people associate with student loans came from. That said, I don’t think I can entirely support a proposal to forgive student loan debt. I carry a lot of it and it really has made of a lot of challenges. However, I don’t think it is a high enough priority at the government level. I think our attention should be directed toward leveling the playing field for students in underfunded primary and secondary schools. Or like, fixing our carbon emissions. Things like that. (I have dreamt many a time of a catastrophic fire at Sallie Mae’s headquarters ruining all of their files so that they forget I owe them money. But, alas, 'tis but a dream.) ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/126 "2019-04-23T21:24:46Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > College costs have been steadily increasing since long before 2010. The _number_ of high school students has been flat since 2006 and is expected (by ED’s NCES) to remain so. The _rate_ of enrollment is also expected to stay flat, although I don’t know how NCES predicts this. This is despite rising tuition. > > While I’m sure people forgo college due to cost, 65% of the county not getting a 4 year degree is also consistent with 65% of the country not being “college ready”. We already have some large percentage of students requiring remedial classes. > > You mentioned Ohio State. Ohio has about the same number of students graduating from high school per year now as it did a decade ago. And that number is expected to decrease. Yet, per OSU’s Enrollment Services office (oesar.osu.edu), they had 36k undergrads enrolled at the Columbus campus in 2000. Now it’s 47k. These data do not support your conclusions about their tuition practices. [Per this cite](http://enrollmentservices.osu.edu/report.pdf), undergraduate admissions have risen from 5,861 in 1997 (close to when I started there) to a whopping 7,851 in 2018. During that same period, the number of international students has nearly doubled – they don’t have a breakout for that by year but based on an anecdotal look around campus and how the population differs from when I was there, it wouldn’t surprise me if half of that 2000 student increase was padding their coffers with wealthy international students who are required to pay full price. According to [this](https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/tuition-and-fees#), tuition in that same period has more than doubled. With 125,000 high schoolers graduating in the state every year, the largest university in the country could only find an additional 1% of them who were college ready? It occurs to me after typing all of that out that we don’t disagree – you said enrollments have remained flat since 2010, and I accept that. Presumably we both agree that tuitions have increased dramatically. We both agree that colleges have students over a barrel and can apparently charge what they want. I think that’s because there are lots of people who they’re turning away, to send to for-profit degree mills, or community colleges. The remainder are willing to pay their exorbitant fees. I think if the supply of “big state school” quality 4 year colleges were increased, there would be a lot of empty seats unless they dropped prices. I’m not sure how we find data to prove this either way, though. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/127 "2019-04-23T21:26:02Z")
> [@UCBearcats](#): > > The average middle class person has virtually stagnant pay over the last several decades. This isn’t true. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/128 "2019-04-23T21:26:51Z")
> [@UCBearcats](#): > > So it is ok for billionaires to become multimillionaires without increasing the wages of those who do the work? Depends. What is causing the increase in productivity and profitability? Is it the workers themselves or is it the investment and technology? In the modern world, straight manufacturing type low skilled labor is fairly cheap and with automation it’s becoming less relevant. Knowledge and specialized skills are the things that are valued. So, you’d have to look at who’s wages are flat verse who’s are increasing, and why that is…and it’s generally more complicated than a mustache twirling billionaire going muhahahahhaha!!! while lighting his fine Cuban cigars on the backs of the peasantry. But the short answer is, depending on what labor we are talking about, having a static wage might be the best case…the alternative being having that job done by a robot or expert system, or be outsources or offshored to a labor market that’s a lot cheaper. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/129 "2019-04-23T21:30:07Z")
In any case there’s not a lot the government can do about the rich getting richer short of taxation (or seizing control of the means of production, I suppose), and taxation at least is off the table because if we taxed the rich more our country would maybe fail to implode. ---
**Author:** ![UCBearcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/77aa72/32.png) [@UCBearcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UCBearcats)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/130 "2019-04-23T21:32:32Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Do we live in a world where labor is global? Yes we do. Do we live in a world where there is a black market for domestic labor be it migrant or otherwise? Yes we do. Do we live in a world where capital can go to China in a blink of an eye? Yes we do. Good luck with living wage by fiat. > > And billionaire to multi millionaire is a downgrade. My mistake, I meant multi billionaires. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/131 "2019-04-23T22:05:44Z")
> [@Airbeck](#): > > The problem is not everybody has aptitude in engineering, science and the tech related stuff. What about people that are good at stuff in different areas? We pay for the tech kids, but fuck the arts kids? Where do you think Art Teachers come from? Ideally people would be able to pursue the knowledge that they are interested in and have a talent for and then society would benefit from those talents. Society does not have an equal need for all talents. The government spends more money on building bridges and airplanes than it does on filmmaking or murals, so it’s not unreasonable that it would also promote the education of engineers over artists. We are not so far up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that the government should be funding people’s self-fulfillment. Does that mean that the government should not fund art at all? No, probably not. But there’s a reason that the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts is dwarfed by more practical concerns, and it’s not because we don’t like the arts kids. Also, the idea that we need to fund art students so that we’ll have someone to teach art is pretty circular. Like, I get what you’re saying, but there are better arguments out there. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/132 "2019-04-23T23:22:17Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > This isn’t true. I think **UCBearcats** is getting support from what Pew research found recently: > **[For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/)** > > Adjusted for inflation, today's average hourly wage has about as much purchasing power as it did in 1978. Most wage increases have gone to the highest earners. > [@](#): > > For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades > [@](#): > > After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today. > > A similar measure – the “usual weekly earnings” of employed, full-time wage and salary workers – tells much the same story, albeit over a shorter time period. In seasonally adjusted current dollars, median usual weekly earnings rose from $232 in the first quarter of 1979 (when the data series began) to $879 in the second quarter of this year, which might sound like a lot. But in real, inflation-adjusted terms, the median has barely budged over that period: That $232 in 1979 had the same purchasing power as $840 in today’s dollars. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2019, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/133 "2019-04-23T23:51:00Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Again, if you want to take basket weaving or acupuncture or whatever, you can do that…no one is stopping you. But why should society pay for it? It’s when you are putting society on the hook to pay for it that it’s really an issue. Do you want to pay for someone to get a theology degree? How about a degree in climate science skepticism or anti-vax studies? Yeah, those aren’t real things, but if we pay for anything for anyone then people are going to take things that many will find objectionable. > > I agree that chasing degrees that are useful today might not be useful tomorrow, but that brings up another can of worms when you are asking society to be on the hook for this stuff or paying off the loans on people who have gone after degrees that aren’t really applicable. What, exactly, are you proposing we pay for? Everything? Anything? No limits? If not, then I’m unsure why you are arguing as you are. If you are good with anything and everything, well…that is going to be a tough sell I think, if we are talking about ‘free’ education (which might not even be constrained to just degrees…why not certifications and other studies? Where do you draw the line?). If we set up a system where the federal government will pay for degrees in X, Y, and Z, but not P or Q, then isn’t that basically the federal government picking winners and losers? The students with aptitude in X/Y/Z benefit, and so do the programs that teach X/Y/Z, the professors who work in those programs, and the whole economy around X/Y/Z, to the detriment of the economy surrounding P/Q. How is that any different than the feds creating policies to favor coal over natural gas, or electric cars over gas-powered, or any number of other economic decisions favoring one side versus another? Is the government’s track record really that good that we trust them to pick the winners accurately? In modern America, most people will change careers several times; the days of going to work at one company at age 18 or 22 and working there continuously at the same job until retirement are long gone. Taking college courses solely as “job training” ignores this fact. A GOOD college education (not that they are all good) teaches you how to think, how to weigh evidence, how to summarize an argument, and how to write your conclusions. For example, mass media and communications regularly make the list of low-pay, high-unemployment majors, but the ability to write well and to communicate messages are sought-after skills, and the right set of internships and leads can result in a very good job. You can learn those skills in any number of different majors, and the reading/writing/summarizing/distilling skills you learned getting a philosophy degree will be valuable long after the computer science world has moved on from whatever language you learned in those classes. (In fact, comp sci is an excellent example of a changing world: the routine coding is increasingly done in India and China, so the skills most sought in the American job market are things such as business analysis and project management, which involve a lot more “soft skills.”) ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/134 "2019-04-24T00:06:06Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > [Per this cite](http://enrollmentservices.osu.edu/report.pdf), undergraduate admissions have risen from 5,861 in 1997 (close to when I started there) to a whopping 7,851 in 2018. Yes, whopping. That’s a 34% increase. > [@steronz](#): > > During that same period, the number of international students has nearly doubled – they don’t have a breakout for that by year But they do for the years I mentioned above. Of the 11k new Columbus undergrad seats created, only about 2500 went to international students. > [@steronz](#): > > but based on an anecdotal look around campus and how the population differs from when I was there Oh please do tell us more. How do people look? Less “American”? More . . . brown, perhaps? Something about their eyes? > [@steronz](#): > > it wouldn’t surprise me if half of that 2000 student increase was padding their coffers with wealthy international students who are required to pay full price. Looks like it might be a quarter. > [@steronz](#): > > According to [this](https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/tuition-and-fees#), tuition in that same period has more than doubled. With 125,000 high schoolers graduating in the state every year, the largest university in the country could only find an additional 1% of them who were college ready? This question is nonsensical. We had a poster a few years back who thought we could solve… something, by cloning famous schools like Harvard and closing the others? Was that you? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/135 "2019-04-24T00:19:33Z")
I’m a fan of the idea. I know a lot of Boomers are poo-pooing the idea, but Boomers need to step back and remember that they will one day be financially dependent on Millennials. Over the the next decade, millions of Boomers will be retiring and downsizing. The few that are lucky have liquid assets, but a shitload do not. All their savings are tied up in brick and mortar. Are Millennials going to be buying up big-ass suburban homes if they are juggling student loan debt AND outrageous rental costs? So I think forgiving at least some portion of student loan debt will benefit everyone. How many Boomers and Gen Xers are subsidizing their kids’ living expenses because of student debt? Lots of 20-somethings are living at home so they can throw their whole paycheck at their debt. Maybe that’s not the worse thing in the world, but I gotta wonder about the opportunity costs on both sides. That said, I don’t think a blanket forgiveness program would be fair or wise (note: I have no idea if this is what Warren is proposing). I think someone who took out $300K to pay for two Ivy League degrees should not have their slate wiped just as clean as the person who who took out a $50K loan for undergrad at a state school. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/136 "2019-04-24T00:27:04Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I think **UCBearcats** is getting support from what Pew research found recently: > > [For most Americans, real wages have barely budged for decades | Pew Research Center](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/) There and elsewhere. I am familiar with the topic. But my pay package comprises more than my wage, as that article explains. And the pay of the “average person”, over time, is not same as the as the average pay over time. The average person, i.e., an individual, sees year-over-year increases. And that’s before we get to demographic changes. Skilled boomers retiring and being replaced by new, less experienced workers. Immigration. Etc. And then there’s the matter of whether CPI accurately reflects changes in purchasing power. A simple sniff test is thinking about living in 19\_\_ on $X vs the CPI-adjusted amount today. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/137 "2019-04-24T00:52:32Z")
A lot of thinking… for very little counter arguments or cites. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/138 "2019-04-24T01:19:40Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Oh please do tell us more. How do people look? Less “American”? More . . . brown, perhaps? Something about their eyes? Yeah, most of them are Asian. Shocker. My wife and I participated in an outreach program through some Christian ministry to host international students attending OSU. We spent a lot of time with them, got to know several pretty well, are still friends with some. All from China, which may say more about the Christian ministry’s connections overseas than the actual demographics. But crucially, they were all wealthy. The university caters to them in terms of amenities because they pay full sticker, effectively subsidizing several Ohio residents each. But some of the cost of those amenities does get passed on to students who aren’t wealthy. When I was there it was all dive bars and convenience stores, now I don’t know how anyone can go there unless they’re loaded. Rent has gone through the roof. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/139 "2019-04-24T03:25:03Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > When I was there it was all dive bars and convenience stores, now I don’t know how anyone can go there unless they’re loaded. Rent has gone through the roof. As it is in many if not most college towns. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931/140 "2019-04-24T03:30:06Z")
> [@Airbeck](#): > > Why don’t you ask the countries that actually offer these things where they get the money to do it. > > Or just continue to wonder. Up to you. Other countries dont have the assortment of private and public colleges spread all over the states like we do. Also colleges in other countries are not funded the same way as different ones here. For example some states subsidize colleges more heavily, some colleges have massive endowments, some like our local community college, have local taxpayer money. Also in Europe money doesnt go to college football teams. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warren-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/832931.md?page=8)