^ Agreed, OHMomof2 (post #21). It’s not that the poorest students are “more deserving” of being debt-free. It’s that a given level of debt debt represents a greater burden and a greater threat to their financial viability. Middle- and upper-middle-class students may have parents who are more able and willing to help out with loan repayment and/or current living expenses in a pinch, or even as part of a longer-term cost-sharing plan in loan repayment. Young adults from middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds typically get lots of other direct and indirect economic support from parents and sometimes other family members—staying on the parents’ employer-sponsored health insurance until they’re 26, gifts of clothing, money, consumer electronics, sometimes even cars or help with a down payment on a house, or financial help to go on to graduate school—all things that the young adult from a lower-income background will either need to pay for herself, or do without, or borrow more to achieve, making college loan repayment that much more burdensome and that much more challenging. And young adults from middle- and upper-middle-income families are far less likely to be called on to help support other family members in times of need—to help pay grandma’s funeral expenses, or to help Mom buy a car to replace the old beater that died so she can continue to commute to her job, or to help pay for Dad’s hospitalization costs and day-today living expenses while he’s recuperating from that heart attack–again, making college loan repayment a far more difficult burden to work around, given that the successful college graduate from a low-income background may quickly become the most important breadwinner in her extended family.
But it goes well beyond “being debt-free,” and it also goes beyond unequal burdens and financial risks at a given level of debt. Colleges with a high net cost after FA for low-income students effectively compel low-income students to assume a LARGER debt burden than their middle- and upper-middle-income peers. Of course, it’s up to the student to decide whether to attend on those terms. But it’s up to the college to decide whether that’s a fair and equitable and reasonable way to allocate costs among students from various income strata. I say not.