Some want ten. Some want $50. The right # is $0.
But we are not politicians.
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Not if Iām voting. 
The scenarios you presented arenāt at all what weāre talking about regarding forgiving some debt either now or helping kids get no debt for the future, and definitely arenāt what happens in my average school. Theyāre the type the newspaper folks seek to find so they can have a story. That doesnāt make the story the norm.
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How about an alternative: work for a few years and save money to pay for college, and then rely less on debt. Yes, youāll be a few years older, but youāll have more money and probably be a far more interesting applicant. Thereās no such thing as a free lunch here.
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100%
100%. My kid would benefit from this but Iām still very much against it. He made a choice to go to X vs. Y knowing it would cost him the 27k. We could have paid it but wanted him to have skin in the game and learn that there are options / price points. Could have gone somewhere for free. His decision, which we supported, cost us a bunch so we decided it should cost him something. Wouldnāt change any of that but his decision was his decision. He should have to pay his debt.
D is attending a much less expensive school and will have no debt. That was her decision and we counseled her that way as her career (performing arts) will not be as predictable or lucrative (at least early on) as her brotherās (finance). Didnāt want debt to control future decisions.
Think weāre sending society the wrong message by forgiving the debt. We can talk all day long that college is way too expensive (it is) and all the surrounding issues but at the end of the day, they signed a paper that said āI will pay Xā. In my world, you keep your promise!
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I donāt think Creekland is asking for a āfree lunch.ā I think they are suggesting that providing a debt free education nowā¦can pave the way to financially independent, tax paying individuals down the road. This can eliminate the need for a lifetime of āfree lunch.ā
My upper middle class/ pockets of strong wealth community has low income housing. I was talking to a boy who graduated with my daughter. This boy lived in the low income housing and told me he could not afford college and planned to continue with his restaurant job after HS (this was pre Covid and he was our waiter). He happens to be very, very smart, and with the proper guidance he may have gotten into a school that meets full need. I ran into him a few months later and he told me he received a full tuition financial aid award at one of our state schools, with some money offered to help with room and board. This is a huge win for this family.
Most people donāt have huge pots of money sitting around to help pay for medical school, PA programs, PT school etc. I really have no problem helping these people out a little bit by giving them a break on their loans- we desperately need them. That being said, they will eventually earn enough money to pay it back themselves.
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My kids wouldnāt have been able to afford their schools without merit, which is given to seniors. The only students I know with debt are at public schools, working, certainly not going to dream schools even though they couldāve been admitted. It seems those who are fine with the current situation of high interest rates and high public university costs have been able to fully fund their kids education so they graduate debt free. My daughterās DPT program will be paid for her with loans, she was accepted into some great ones, NYU, GWU, BU, waiting on NEU, but she will most likely live at home and go to Rutgers. Itās still going to cost $100,000.
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Sure, as long as all students have to do it paying their own way (no parent money involved) and the wealthy donāt get a ābyeā while the poorer students have to earn their way to the starting gate.
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Until society makes a standā¦ie college is free like high schoolā¦.we live in a consumer oriented society.
Some get their folks to pay. Some take loans. Some get work study. Some find a way on their own.
Some go to Tufts where over half are full pay and they are need aware and can pick and choose. Some go to a CC or underfunded state school.
Some vacation at the Ritz Carlton. Some at the Comfort Inn or at the local neighborhood park.
Right or wrong itās how a consumer driven, capitalistic society operates.
I know not everyone is starting from the same place. I know many people shouldnāt go to college but do because weāve made it an expectation.
In the end we wonāt solve this here. Itās a social problem. I have no issue personally with limited, time restricted social safety nets.
But back to the original premiseā¦.donāt sign a contract if you will not do everything in your power to pay off.
If I was short of cash, I could within 24 hours, find an extra 20 hrs of work at fast food and have another $300 a week.
It is unfortunate and unfair not everyone has the same opportunities or has access to similar privilege for lack of a better word.
But generations prior achieved this and hopefully these kids will have that same grit and determination to do better for their next generation.
But I begrudge no one. If the feds introduce community college for allā¦.then great.
Back to the point thoā¦if you sign, make good. Not really looking to a social aspect in this case. Just a meeting of a commitment, just like everyone is expected to at work and in other aspects of life.
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The wealthy do not get a ābuyāāthey are full pay by definition. They donāt get need-based financial aid. Life is about making choices and itās not entirely fair. People just need to understand that and act accordinglyā¦
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Thereās a rather pithy quote from an amazingly successful investor: āWin or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market." I think this could be adapted to lots of situations, particularly the choices people make for higher educationā¦ Some folks like to be financially free, so they go to places where they can get merit, some folks go into debt for prestigious degrees because they like to talk about it at cocktail parties. So, in essence, everybody gets what they wantā¦
Generations prior did not achieve this too (some did, most didnāt). Itās a way of keeping an underclass to some extent. (I also acknowledge that not all students are academically capable or are even interested in college, so itās not for everyone rich or poor or in between.)
For the many who could have achieved better, Iād prefer to see them as taxpayers (a win financially for us all) than working low wage jobs for life and needing various subsidies to make ends meet.
There was one gal probably a decade or so ago who I saw working in a diner. I knew sheād been accepted to college. What happened? She couldnāt afford it, so āwas taking a year or two off to work first.ā I thought it was sad that she had to. It was even sadder later when I saw her name in the police blotter having gotten into enough despair to opt for other methods to āescapeā life. Iāve always wondered what could have been if sheād been able to go straight from high school. Weāll never know.
There are a few who opt to go for college after working, but many of those are some who didnāt want to go to college straight from high school in the first place. When they see what jobs are available and test those out they change their mind. Many (most?) who decide to work first end up never going.
Where I am most need loans just for state schools. Theyāre not heading to fancy places when they had cheaper options. It works, but it also sets them back a bit from where they could be. I built enough rapport with so many kids over the years that if I won some sort of huge lottery one thing I would do is fund a ton of scholarships for more ābetter than averageā kids so they can change economic status without the ball and chain student loans start them with.
So yeah, Iām likely biased when I would love to see 10K of student loans forgiven. Give those kids a chance! The wealthier kids already have a ton more going for them since birth. (I include mine with the wealthier kids even though they had to kick in some for themselves too.)
Lifeās not fair. We all know it. But we could make it more fair if we (collective) wanted to.
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And some students work as hard as they can, work their butts off, donāt qualify for financial aid, still have significant debt at public colleges after chasing merit because itās not even close to what was offered even a decade ago, and many are in this situation. I think the minority have debt due to bragging rights (probably basing this on what I read on public college Facebook parent pages and people I know).
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The wages these students receive after earning a degree will more than compensate for the interest payments on the loan differential vs. working for a few years and using (5k?) to defray the cost of a degree. Forgiving the portfolio of federal student loans will direct those payments toward the broader economy and will likely speed up family formation, both of which should support economic growth. On the merits, forgiving all the student loans is probably a good idea.
Iām sympathetic to the idea that forgiving all loans is regressive and a handout to the underserving children of privilege who can pay their own way. However, Iām sure that @tsbna44 and others are familiar with other regressive economic handouts from federal and state governments. For example, cuts to the estate tax, differential tax treatment for certain small businesses, and economic incentive payments to corporations are all as or more regressive than forgiving every penny of student loans. Iām not going to pretend that refusing to collect student loans is going to reverse any of those other policies. Nobody has forgiven student loans yet, and I havenāt seen politicians critical of forgiveness speak out in favor of a toughened estate tax or a national ban on taxpayer handouts to corporations.
I think that student loans should be forgiven. I took a full tuition scholarship and donāt have any (maybe this builds a bit of credibility with ādonut hole familiesā). I think itās instructive that the best schools in America, the Ivies, donāt charge anything out-of-pocket. We are talking about making life immeasurably better for millions of poor students, and letting a bunch of other students who got tricked by NYU et al. off the hook. In the words of āDiamond Joeā: Come on man!
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If you do this I will pay you two dollars for every dollar you earn that week. Would be a good opportunity to see how these students hustle!
The whole purpose of loans/interest is that there are consequences in the event of default. If students simply have their loans forgiven, that creates substantial moral hazard and breeds excessive risk taking (e.g. paying 6 figures for a masters degree for a career that only pays $35K). They should understand risk and evaluate it carefully before signing on the dotted line. I do think that the student loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy, however, as this will enable the students to start over in the event of failure.
Also, do the students really want a āhandoutā. How does that make them feel? The previous generations would have considered this completely distasteful.
Life has choices and consequences. College is not for everyone.
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True, but one can only take out $7500 in loans freshman year (assuming parents donāt qualify for Parent Plus and many donāt). Itās $5500 if they do. The pell grant adds somewhere around 6K. That doesnāt pay for many schools.
Some schools offer terrific need based aid, but one has to have great stats and be the best of a bit of competition to get slots. At many schools, students are gapped. If they canāt come up with the full amount they need to pay, tough luck.
No person I know chose the family they were born into or pretty much any part of their youth experiences in the early, foundational, days.
Kids do make choices when in school. For those who are capable of college in spite of poor socio-economic parents/guardians, by all means, help them succeed. These tend to be the type of worker that really helps our country.
Knowing they have future options will likely inspire more in high school too. Kids can and do get bummed when they know they donāt have the choices others do, and Iām not talking about NYU vs State.
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Really? My 93 year old FIL talks about how church folks got together to pay for his college at Ferrum in VA. He talks about it with gratitude, not distaste. What generations are you talking about?
Iām talking about the self-made billionaires who never took a dime from anyone, and who would rather have dug ditches than take a handoutā¦
Except those stories arenāt true. They claim they are self-made, but if one digs into their stories, thereās always someone who helped them out along the way and often more than one person.
Even so, weāre not talking about the far ends of the bell curve. Weāre talking about the majority under the bell curve. Far, far more who start out in the dumps donāt make it to billionaire status and work ethic has nothing to do with it. I know plenty of people who work quite hard day in and day out in order to pay the bills. Then too, I know some students who have very cwappy parents, but the student actually tries to get a different life. Why should they not get a decent chance just because they arenāt at the far end of the bell curve and able to come up with that āget richā idea along with folks to help them make something of it?
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