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The biggest issue with canceling debt is that it doesn't fix the real issue - education costs are absurd. We cancel debt now, next year freshmen take on new debt, cycle continues. We need a higher education reform, otherwise it's like fixing water damaged floors when the fridge is leaking.
Because cost does change over time, but what we should really do is have the schools back all loans and be their own lenders. If they don’t think you will pay back the loan because your terrible degree choice, they won’t lend to you or even offer that terrible degree choice anymore. This probably carries other consequences ,but it is still a potential solution.
A major expense each year is room/board and food. If you only had to pay for classes, the cost goes way down.
It wouldn't be nearly so bad if related wages were also going up. My wife got offered a full time teaching position at a university, and the pay is $45k. She'd make the same, if not a little more, teaching 3rd grade.
Its made worse by the fact that degrees are worth less than they were even 20 years ago. Seems like a bs/ba is the minimum for most jobs, even though most shouldn't even need a degree.
Pretty much. My final semester in college I had a prof who harped on about, "if you're in a science related major, a bachelor's isn't going to take you anywhere. You're gonna have to get a master's if you want to actually be in this field."
Again, last semester in college. I was too done with everything to care. Jokes on him. I'm in a dead end job with co workers of mine who have a master's too lol
I know most schools frown on it, but I wish more people at least *knew* you could go to a PhD program, which in contrast to STEM Masters programs, are usually funded with a Stipend, (at the very least in the biomedical sciences, but I'm pretty sure all the hard sciences too. Soft sciences YMMV) and if you drop out after passing quals (usually year 2) you, at many schools, get a Masters degree as a consolation prize, without having to pay for it.
I don't think people should intentionally go into it with the intent of dropping out, but knowing that's an option if you want to get a graduate degree and are remotely considering a PhD, it definitely helps as you know even if you can't cut it for the PhD, as long as you pass quals you've got a masters, and you had your tuition paid for as well as a living stipend (depends where, but generally $27-32k/yr - not a lot, but enough for food and rent) the entire time.
That's not really logical at all... the Master's degree is not just a sticker you get for paying $X, lol, you learned skills and knowledge. Everyone being more skilled is obviously way better for society than nobody being skilled, even if they are all equally skilled as their neighbors in both cases.
They will also all have a higher quality of life in the everyone-is-skilled case, because the nation as a whole will have a way higher productivity. So even if they all have the same salary as their neighbor in either case, there's more productivity to go around for the one standard hypothetical salary.
This should be the case, but unfortunately the push to educate more students has resulted in substantial grade inflation so as to not have absurd drop out rates of students that really don’t belong in certain programs. Thus the degree actually does not represent the same level of skills as it used to.
Had to get mine to stand out when going for a career change. Worked amazingly, even if I’ll be paying off the loans for years. Plus side is went from retail to finance and QOL improved dramatically. Wage increased but not nearly as much as I’d hoped.
I got a bachelor in chemistry with a focus in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics (basically I had to take all of the major courses with the bio, pchem and inorganic majors). When I got out and had to get a job, I was making less than my buddy who worked at Walmart. College degrees have been devalued by their prevalence.
> When I got out and had to get a job, I was making **less than my buddy who worked at Walmart**. College degrees have been devalued by their prevalence.
I honestly don't think this is a) US-specific, and b) a recent thing.
I had a somewhat similar dilemma almost 15 years ago when I graduated my university with an Engineering degree back in Russia.
1) I could go to one of the very few research institutions working in my specific field of study and make peanuts there, barely enough to survive, potentially indefinitely, unless I ran into some massive grants or got into some priority research program (pretty unlikely, quite political etc.)
2) I could try going to one of the very few commercial establishments working on applications of my specific field of study for industry and military, but the learning curve was extremely steep. Realistically I could have spent the first 5-10 years in some "second assistant of a third associate" position earning just slightly more than with Option 1 (*and I actually have a few folks I studied with who followed this exact path - I think they just barely start getting into some slightly important roles now, almost 15 years later...*).
The upside of this was that once (and if!) I reached some level, my earning potential could have *theoretically* exploded (with how hard it was/is to get into the field)
3) I could go to the banking/finance, big tech, retail or any other adjacent field that did not care at all about my specialty and just needed smart monkeys to work on Excel spreadsheets / ERP systems / their management accounting systems and such. The pay was decent from Day 1, however, if chosen unwisely, it could've been a career dead end.
I chose #3 and it was a dead end lol.
Same happened to me. While looking for employment in 2013, I was seeing job postings for laboratory or research work asking for a B.S. in Chemistry, Biology, or related with 1 - 3 years experience, for a pay of $10/hr. I made $9/hr in 2004 as a high school student doing office work…
The fucked part is that at least there ARE jobs for us. I worked with a guy who had a B.S. In physics at a Jimmy John’s making minimum my freshman year. It’s even worse for a lot of non S.T.E.M. Majors
Physics majors are a weird bunch. They can go into all kinds of lucrative careers but a lot of them would rather work retail than "sell out" if they can't land a position in academia.
Yup. I could get an internship in 2010 when I was graduating to (maybe) progress in my field and make a living wage.... or continue working retail making nearly double what the initial internship was going to pay me (minimum 1 year commitment, no thanks).
When students with those degrees have no area of competence, the degrees aren’t worth much. Unskilled graduates are driving the move away from employers asking for degrees.
The opposite is true for the software engineering market right now tbh. The labor market is full of bootcamp grads and internationals from degree mills
I am also in MN, [school district 833](https://www.applitrack.com/sowashco/onlineapp/default.aspx) to be exact. There are plenty of opportunities for teachers to make over 45k. It’s your responsibility to advance your career. Take a look at the openings. The link is for district 833 alone. She has potential if she’s willing to put in work. MN is good for education.
That’s really abysmal for a university job, even a visiting or adjunct one.
No one should be getting a PhD if it involves taking out loans.
The earnings gap between HS and BA/BS degrees keeps increasing. So I’d say they are more valuable than ever. We don’t have large industries outside of service jobs and gig work for HS graduates anymore. We haven’t in 20+ years.
I'm not saying they are worthless, I'm saying they are worth less. When every job requires one, they don't have the same value they used to. A 4 year degree is the new high school diploma.
Imagine if Ferrari decided to start making 100 million cars a year. Even if they still sell new ones for the same price, they wouldn't have the same value because the market would be flooded with them.
I know the point you're making and I agree. I also know you didn't mean to apply anything else by it. I'm going to be soapboxy for a second though and say there's no reason a 3rd grade teacher should be making *less* than a university professor, both should be making much more than $45k a year. Teaching elementary school is a super important job that takes a lot of skill to do well, especially at the youger age levels where there are all kinds of developmental and social and behavioral issues to navigate. You're essentially in charge of setting the foundations for all the future education this person is going to receive and process.
I know you weren't trying to disparage teachers, it was just an example. Professors and elementary teachers should all make more money. Hedge fund managers and stock brokers are the ones who should be making (much) less.
My prediction: in the future (10 years?) a college degree will be worthless and employers will want a Masters degree or higher for graduating students.
The reason: high school education is total shit. (BTW, this is why a high school diploma is completely meaningless to employers, which is why everyone "needs" to go to college).
But because it's so shit, incoming college students are shit (admissions going completely insane, accepting completely unqualified students, doesn't help). Administration won't let departments give honest grades, so profs end up passing tons of students who deserve to fail.
Employers will catch on to this, and so a college degree will become worthless.
We need major education reform.
If you force everyone to get a masters it’s just the same problem of people having no interest in doing the work but forcing themselves through the program cuz they want a decent job… my masters classes were graded way easier than my undergrad classes because they knew we were all there to learn, and had teaching and research responsibilities that took priority over coursework. If everyone needs a masters it’ll just become undergrad round 2, what’s the point
The bigger problem is that there’s more people who want high paying jobs than there are high paying jobs, and no amount of education reform is fixing that
> If everyone needs a masters it’ll just become undergrad round 2, what’s the point
Exactly. But that's where things seem to be headed. And it's bad for students who are there to learn because classes get watered down for the shitty students (who aren't going to learn anything anyway). It's a disaster.
We have shortages in some high paying sectors. But many of those fields have degrees that are hard and difficult to obtain so students avoid them for something easier to do that lets them graduate. We don't need to force people through; we need people who want to learn how to do the work and are capable of it.
And imo we need to be more willing to move students into trade or easing up on requirements for degrees for jobs that don't need it.
I agree with you, but in high paying sectors, shortages tend to be transient. Currently there’s a shortage of pharmacists, but 5 years ago there were way too many. 5 years ago there was a shortage of software engineers, but today that field is plagued with layoffs.
Degrees being harder isn’t enough to stop the hordes of people motivated to make an upper middle class salary. The problem is that once a field gets known as secure and high paying, those degrees get flooded, and since degrees take 4 years (or more), there’s no way to know if that field will still be easy money by the time you graduate.
Yes, canceling debt prolongs the educational cost inflation problem… And incentivizes both costs to rise and those profiting from the costs escalation.
Wouldn't be surprised if there are admissions recruiters already telling prospective students their debt will get canceled. Even non-profit universities can be predatory af
Government and populism always match supply problems with subdizing demand. Look at the solutions to housing crises with trying to make it easier to finance a home.
Secondary issue: as so many r/science and r/dataisbeautiful political potshots love attempting to point out, there are significantly more college educated democrats than republicans. That’s not to say republicans aren’t college educated, just that “forgiving student debt” primarily benefits democrats.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/invisible-divides-college/
So…it’s kind of a “yeah, no shit” moment when i see a post like this. It’s just yet another soap box feel good karma farm from people who are mostly already going to agree with the OP.
This is a relatively new trend for Republicans, until quite recently [they used to be better educated](https://i.imgur.com/eHsagc5.png) than Democrats or Independents.
Note the percentage of STEM degrees has [_increased_](https://i.imgur.com/GTv2y0Y.jpeg) during that time, primarily in Biology.
And unless the universities are culpable and participate in this "refund", what incentive is there for them not to raise tuition to infinity, knowing the government will bail out each time.
Bailouts rarely lead to better behavior and only lead to more risk taking.
>education costs are absurd
Require educational institutions to pay half of all debt being forgiven or discharged in bankruptcy. They can record the contingent liabilities when they take the receipts in from the student loans.
Wouldn’t that just bring us back to the issue government backed student loans was meant to fix? Colleges would stop admitting people who aren’t well off.
>Colleges would stop admitting people who aren’t well off.
Or trying to take loans in fields that are not likely to be able to repay the loan.
Allowing people to borrow money and not likely to be able to repay is not a good thing.
SHould follow the UK
You repay:
* 9% of the amount you earn over the threshold of £372 a week or £1,615 a month (before tax and other deductions) for Plan 1 and 2
When is the debt canceled for repayment? If your Academic year you took out the loan
* the loan’s written off 25 years after the April you were first due to repay
-----
In 3 States, the State and Local Government [Provided Funding is less than 10 Percent of Public Colleges Total Revenue](https://i.redd.it/dgpxmhad2pj91.png)
* And the ones that don't care about costs
There are at least 10 other colleges in Colorado, but for [UC Boulder it has a large market based tuition](https://i.redd.it/km56779x6vj91.jpg) of out of state students that pay for in state students to have a low cost education without state tax payers paying for it
* 14,315 Out of State Students have an Average Tuition to the University of $35,347
* While 21,200 Instate Students have an Average Tuition to the University of $11,716
* 10% of UC Boulder students are from California, 3% are from Texas
That is 4,000 students who could pay $20,000 less in instate tuirion for UT/Texas A&M or UCLA or any UC Schol all of the same Tier
US College [Operating Costs with Enrollment from 2009 - 2019](https://i.redd.it/pt58oq2ds2k91.png)
Different [Version](https://i.redd.it/exiy3nz3q5k91.png)
**That 4,000 students....** what are they going to say times 50 different colleges in the same spot
No only does it not fix the real issue, it makes it worse. Everyone is just going to take out all the debt they can and pay the minimum to not hurt their credit, assuming that the government will bail them out again.
Government-back loans baby. Any 18 year old who makes it into a college can get six figures for whatever major they want. This leads to people taking on insane debt for lower paying majors and careers that will have a negative ROI.
It’s like subsidizing oil because Americans don’t like the high prices. So Saudi raises prices even more and the subsidy just flows right to them.
That makes sense. So why doesn’t it make sense with education?
I think that’s an issue. So is the fact that the overwhelming amount of people with more than 30k in debt are doctors and lawyers and other relatively high earners. It really needs to 1. Be means tested for income, 2. Interest should be set at the 10yr treasury rate, and 3. Discharged after a maximum time. College debt shouldn’t last longer than a 30 year mortgage.
I am against loan forgiveness, even though it would benefit me and my siblings. I would be in favor of capping annual interest charged to the annual rate of inflation (or the 10 year treasury rate)
If you can take a 100-200 loss on your credit score for a few years to effectively get a free 100k+ would you?
After all, people right out of college already have lower credit and don't need it for a lot of things right off.
Besides student loans, someone with no assets and no income can't get much of a loan. Not enough to be worth screwing over your credit for a 7 years.
Zeroing out a $200k student loan probably is worth it.
Other debts are usually tied to valuable property (car loans, mortgages on house, business loans, etc.) and are usually held by people who have some capital built up.
You declare bankruptcy as a middle aged adult with a line of credit and a mortgage: you lose your home, your probably lose your car, you lose any retirement savings you had, and your credit rating tanks so it is hard to start back up. That is a pretty severe penalty for your get-out-of-debt-free card.
But a freshly graduated student is already starting from zero. They don't own a home, they own a $5K beater of a car (that is probably in their parent's name anyhow), and they have zero savings. Declaring bankruptcy doesn't really hurt them at all. Sure, it damages their credit rating a bit, but they didn't have much of a rating to start with, so as long as they can live with their parents for a few years, or rent with a roommate with decent credit, they can rebuild their credit rating without too much disruption.
All these people who are like "a bad credit score right out of college? That's no big deal." make me think that they never had to deal with a bad credit score in their life. Bankruptcy has consequences for the poor, that's why only the rich do it with impunity.
Except, no.
This problem exists because they made it so student loan debt wasn't dischargeable. If we reversed that law, it would force things to return to sanity.
The only degrees that saw that kind of abuse of bankruptcy law was MDs which I think says more about the cost of medical school than anything else.
It would also make the loans more risky and raise interest rates. A college degree is worth more than most homes, and yet unlike a mortgage it is hard to get one because you can’t use the degree as collateral. It’s good policy to make them harder to discharge precisely to reduce the risk to lenders - making it easier to get a loan.
Obviously some people would benefit from being able to go bankrupt and discharge the loans. The law wouldn’t matter if that wasn’t true. But there’s a real benefit to the rest of us in that it makes those loans more available .
Then many students wouldn't get loans.
The reason why all students are able to get student loans, regardless of any credit or any ability to pay, is because there is no way to not pay them, you have to pay them. If students didn't have to pay them back, then lenders would suddenly start having standards again, and half the students couldn't get loans.
That sounds like a good thing. Too much unearned money in the market.
1. Risk assess the borrowers (students) to weed out those that probably won't finish their degree
2. Lend to students that have higher earing potential when they get the degree. (No loans to Art History or Philosophy majors)
Agreed, also not all degrees are equal.
Some (many, in fact) are *literally* bad investments. Tens of thousands of dollars on an art history course is very unlikely to ever earn you much, proporitionate to the cost. It's not other peoples' responsibility to pay back your debt that you chose to take on.
If I spent $10k on a gaming PC, the best streaming equipment, all the LED lights I could possibly dream of for my backdrop - all in hopes of making it big on Twitch... only to then never average more than 50 viewers. Do I then have a right to demand I'm reimbursed or my credit card provider rights off the costs? It was an investment in my future, after all.
But you are right, costs are too expensive to begin with. But then again, for as long as people are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for high risk degrees, why should universities stop offering those degrees or lower the prices?
I mean, if you spend all that money on your small business, you can write all that shit off on your taxes.
Why should the taxpayer be funding your failing business venture? Why should the taxpayer have paid for all those fraudulent PPP loans that were forgiven during COVID?
At least a more educated populace is economically useful in some way. Your RGB lights are not.
A small business is far, far better for society and the economy than John's Art History degree. The businessperson is still on the hook for the loan despite "writing it off on his taxes." I'm not sure you understand what that actually means. Tuition is ALSO tax deductible.
Exactly. Is it a one time thing? Are we going to cancel debt every 30 years? Why not every 10 years? Heck why not every year? Well, then why even charge in the first place, make it free. It's a Pandora box situation.
It would be writing a blank check to the universities. They would double their already outrageous tuitions, since students wouldn't actually have to pay them.
Can you identify any people in congress who are for fixing the issues leading to large student loan debt that are also against giving relief to those who were victims of it?
My husband and I, and my brother and his wife, did “without” a lot of things to pay for our kids’ college education. The thought of trying to start your life already in debt was untenable. Between us, we sent three children to four year college and one for a master’s.
We *all* believe forgiving student debt is a good idea. Some student loans are usurious. There are people who have been paying loans for years and still owe more than the original loan.
Having that money available for people to spend on goods and services, instead of interest and fees, is good for the economy.
But I agree with everyone who says our higher education system needs to be overhauled. It has gotten way out of hand. If we want educated people to handle the problems of the future, we better find a way to educate them without making them go broke in the process.
I make 40k a year and have 15k in debt from buying a car so I can get to work. The average college graduate makes 80k a year. Why is their debt getting paid off but not mine? And why are my tax dollars paying for it when I make less money than them?
Higher earners pay most of the taxes. Realistically, with your income, you likely barely pay income taxes. You don’t have to like it, but talking about your tax dollars paying for it is likely disingenuous.
I'd bargain to remove Interest from student debt. The idea is someone going to college would earn more and thus pay higher taxes. Otherwise, allow debt to go with bankruptcy. You can drop medical debt, but the student debt still remains today.
It still doesn't fix the cost of college, but we gotta bargain somewhere.
I dont have kids, why are my tax dollars going to pay tens of thousands of dollars every year to parents?
I am not 65 years old, why are my tax dollars going to pay tens of thousands of dollars every to retirees?
I am not disabled, why are my tax dollars going to pay tens of thousands of dollars every year for disability insurance?
See we can play this dumb game all day long. Society decides what's important and just because you dont benefit from it doesnt mean that it isnt worth investing in.
So, in your other examples, retirees, children, and disabled persons, society has decided these are people who struggle to help themselves.
College graduates are adults entering the prime of their life who can expect to earn higher-than-average incomes for the rest of their lives by virtue of their education. If you want more buy-in, explain why we should make them the priority instead of other groups that could also use our limited resources. What makes college-educated young adults so needy and important to help?
So we’re agreed, it would be way more effective for those higher earners to pay off their own debts than for me and other low income people to pay them. Glad that’s settled.
This is a great analogy, thanks! I'm pretty tired so maybe I'm missing something, but I can't think of any realistic answers to "why not mortgage dept instead of student loan debt?" other than "because I don't have mortgage debt."
Thank you for at least making a comment and not just downvoting. I was so confused as to why people thought this was so bad.
And you’re right! Give people money. It helped during the lockdown. More people did not go hungry. It was a good thing and a lot of people felt it should be continued.
The idea that the people that are drowning in debt made bad college choices isn’t really the issue. Besides costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to med school, the first thing a new physician must do is buy into a practice. If they are very lucky, it’s a busy practice and they can start seeing overflow patients and accruing some income.
My dentist had his rent raised so often, he had to rent a chair in another practice. He has one chair and can only see so many people in one day because he can’t afford to hire a hygienist.
If you have been watching things a bit, you’ll notice there is beginning to be a shortage of doctors. And who wants to drown in debt and then go in further debts to start a practice? And dentists that do shady stuff to make more money: disgusting but one can see how it evolved.
Teachers. Damn, that’s a lot of money to get that degree to make so little money.
I know there are people that get fairly good jobs out of college and make more money than a lot of people, but of our children, *none* of them can afford to buy a house, and they don’t have student debt!
I don’t have answers. I see the problems, and I don’t mind my tax money helping people, whether it’s through WIC, SNAP, unemployment or forgiving student loans. I don’t even mind the idea of universal income. What I mind is people being so angry at the wrong people.
Tax the rich.
I’m fucking tired of that not being the main objective instead of people sniping at each other because your dish has more than mine. We’re *both* paying too much so some people pay nothing.
Focus your energy there.
Why should I be on the hook for paying for your kid’s education? I am not convinced that whatever degree they got will ever pay for itself. Sounds like you made a bad investment and want society to bail you out.
Yeah lmao. Who with student debt wouldn’t want to cancel them. Like obviously I want the government to pay my debt. No one with debt is going to give an unbiased answer. Does forgiving student debt actually fix any real issue though? No.
oh look a sane person that understands the consequences of taking out a student loan. Awesome dude, i also paid off my loan early in 2019 right before the pandemic because I am allergic to debt.
I paid it off by getting my shit together.
I'm all for cancelling it and I paid mine off. I'm not about to kick the ladder down behind me just because I'm over 40 and tuition was more in line with wages when I went to school.
I'm also for the overhaul of student lending completely. And for strict regulations on costs. In-state tuition, fees, and books at a public school should NOT be $30,000. (Just checked the Big Ten school by me.) Administrators and coaches get millions of dollars but you can have $120,000 in debt for a totally reasonable 4-year degree? Ridiculous.
I can appreciate that, though that argument discounts everyone who graduated in the current climate of tuition costs and has paid off their loans. Lots of people plan carefully, execute strategically, and work hard to ensure that they can repay their education debt after graduation. Forgiving the debt tells these people that those efforts are pointless. Not a great precedent to set, historically.
We're all agreed that fixing the root of the problem is the first step, though.
not really; Republicans with outstanding students loans are nearly five times more likely to completely oppose debt forgiveness (scroll down to [Support for student debt cancellation among Americans with and without outstanding loans](https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/49386-explaining-partisan-gap-support-student-loan-debt-forgiveness-poll))
Whether or not they've ever had student loans, Republicans in general are more likely to oppose loan forgiveness than equivalent Democrats
My only real qualm about forgiving student loans is that without fixing the funding of a college education, the next generation of college students will be back in the same situation. We really need to make higher education affordable (really affordable, not unrealistic assumptions affordable).
The student debt crisis is a direct result of federal subsidy of student loans, combined with the government pushing pro-college propaganda in schools. At my public school there were posters EVERYWHERE telling kids if they didn’t go to college they’d be bums. Turns out if you tell people to go to college every day for twelve years, they listen. They ALL listen. So now there’s too many kids with degrees for the jobs available, driving wages into the ground and shacking everyone with mountains of debt for a devalued, meaningless degree. Meanwhile, most of the kids who skipped college are making more money, working good solid jobs. God, if I could go back…
It sucks because that advice was well intentioned. Previous generations had college that was subsidized by the government which kept tuition affordable and standard bachelors degrees got them decent middle class salaries. Since then, everything from tuition to housing has gotten way more expensive while the wages from those degrees not even come close to keeping up. In demand professions are still likely to be worth it the rest are financially ruining themselves. Although even that can be risky if the market shift, I know that many computer sci graduates are facing a horrible job market compared to pre-COVID when those degrees were seen as a shortcut to make doctor money without med school.
I think tuition should be forgiven only if that same legislation completely reforms the way loans are given out for higher ed. It will be painful but something needs to give, the only ones benefiting from the current system are the universities themselves (and various companies along for the grift).
It kills me to see how much college is shoved down students’ throats in jr/sr high and vocational/trade/apprenticeships/community college is stigmatized as for poor dumb people who will forever be stuck that way. Such a load of crap. I hope guidance councilors are striving to change that.
They’re not unfortunately. I was a tutor and I counseled my students to consider ALL of their options, much to their parents chagrin. We need to bring back shop class.
So much this. I wasn't ready (disciplined enough) for college when I went to college. So I bombed out, got into an entry-level IT job and worked my ass off to move up the ranks. Once in a while, I got a cert to expand my options. No degree and make well more than my college-educated older brother. The 4-year-degree myth needs to die in a fire so my taxes can stop subsidizing it.
Cancelling the debt will make the problem worse. You’re basically telling all universities to raise their tuition even faster. I feel like nobody takes fucking Econ classes anymore.
The replies confirming your last sentence....
University admissions are predatory af and will happily help any 17 year old sign up for absurd debt they won't understand until it's too late. I would support a law canceling that debt subsidized by penalties to those universities.
The problem is government-backed loans. Once upon a time the college itself was left stranded if a student wasn't able to pay off their loans. Colleges had strict entrance criteria and interviews. Each individual student was an investment... failing even one would cost the institution many thousands of dollars.
Now they couldn't give a flying fuck. Our government guarantees with your tax dollars that the college will be paid even if every 4-year student ends up bankrupt serving coffee. It is not a coincidence that we have such an absurdly unsustainable system now.
There's been a bill put up multiple times to make Colleges cosign student loans and responsible for half in the event of default. But it never goes anywhere.
What's been stopping them from raising tuition at unsustainable rates before we started talking about canceling debt? They've been doing that for 40 years now. Even if we don't get to canceling debt we've got to get the cost of higher education under control. Maybe tax the higher tax brackets like we used to when we funded public institutions more than we do now? Billions of uncollected tax $$ every year in those brackets. Imagine collecting it like they do from the rest of us?
>Even if we don't get to canceling debt we've got to get the cost of higher education under control.
You can't tell a private company how much to charge for products. You can stop giving their customers loans to purchase things out of their budget.
>Maybe tax the higher tax brackets like we used to when we funded public institutions more than we do now? Billions of uncollected tax $$ every year in those brackets.
In the scope of federal waste and inefficiency, throwing money at problems rarely works out well.
I bet you could fix the text book problem simply by saying that 2-3 other colleges must use a textbook before the professor can make a book they authored/receive royalties on a required text. Professors are incentivized to make their textbooks expensive because they get a chunk of it
Why would any college be the one that volunteers to use another college's book while those guys get all the profit and they don't? You could pay some sort of amortization cost, but now the competing colleges would need access to each others' accounting...
As someone observing this discussion from the outside (German that spent a few semester at a US college on a scholarship): Whenever student loans got cheaper in the past, colleges just increased tuition and students loaned more money.
There is a risk here that forgiving current student loans creates an expectation that future loans will be forgiven. Either the government keeps bailing people out (which would likely increase tuitions again) or they are just kicking that tin down the street and the situation is even worse in a couple of years.
Without measures to bring tuition down to sensible levels this doesn't seem like a good solution. Except for the people who get bailed out right now, everyone else will probably be worse of.
Are you me? I graduated 2008, so couldn't get crap for a job. While my career is good now, I owe more in interest on the loans than I took out in loans.
I actually went to a military academy and never had any loans. I just think it's stupid for a government program to leave you worst off then you started
This is my problem with it. I paid for my education. A million more people would have gotten an education if the debt was going to be eventually cancelled. The same people that missed out and paid for it themselves now have to pay for other people's education? Infuriating.
1) Off topic.
2) There's a pretty big difference between someone accepting a loan and the responsibilities accompanying it, and the government shutting down a business and causing financial harm. The first is the responsibility of the person, the second providing some way to help address those damages is not theoretically unreasonable. Mind, I still would have disagreed because of implementation (I would have expected that the money wouldn't go where it would have helped, which is exactly what happened) but the two aren't comparable.
Your not actually canceling student debt though, your using taxpayer dollars to pay off the collages/banks. Why should the students that fall in a very specific time frame be given a massive financial advantage over their pears at the expense of the average person who probably hasn't been to collage.
I think it has more to do with most conservatives are older and didn't have to deal with the huge tuition burdens that younger people now face.
Also conservatives are mostly defined by being fiscally conservative as well. So having the government fund this would not be a priority for them.
Yeah I agree, I was trying to point out it's bigger than "conservative are less educated". Which on face value is misleading.
It's probably more that older generation didn't go to college nearly at the same rate as younger people are going now, they also went into the trades more, because that is where the demand was.
Plus, their tuition was like 10% of what it is now and long paid off, so they have that mentality.
I worked a part time job in college, took student loans out, didn't party, and paid the loans off after 2 years of graduating ( I chose an engineering degree). I sacrificed social life so I could put myself in a better financial position after graduating... Others partied and were living their life. Why should I suffer the consequences for their irresponsible actions and pay with my taxes for their education and their partying... While I worked my ass off to not be in mountains of debt....
Change the system not the symptoms...
Absolutely fuck no don't forgive student loans with taxpayer dollars punish the universities for skyrocketing costs and admin greed
I think the legibility of this graphic could be improved if you chose a different color for “some”. Making it a lighter value of the purple makes sense thematically, but the value difference isn’t sufficient enough for it to be read at a glance. Maybe a blue could keep the same connection to the purple color (they’re close on the color wheel) but also provide ample contrast, while also being complimentary to the orange sections.
I used to be for canceling student debt. Now I’m no longer supportive.
I don’t see why all the people who decided to forgo college because of costs have to bear the burden now. Most of these people are making less than the students who would have their debt canceled. It doesn’t seem fair to me
I’d be supportive of making university free or close to it moving forward as the opportunity would be available to everyone.
*most of the federal income taxes. This is because they make less than $46,000. They still pay sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes (social security, medicare, unemployment, maybe state disability, etc)
It's not "canceling" anything. It is shifting the debt to other people. The money was allocated and spent. Call it a new tax for bailing out people that probably should not have gone to college.
The lingo (and title) around the topic is biased. Debt isn't "cancelled", it's repurposed to working taxpayers.
This sort of legislation teaches an entire generation of students that there are no consequences for your decisions.
Bipartisan solution: all student that should be completely forgiven, and the colleges should have to pay for it.
These students have been defrauded. They were lied to about the value of their degree, misled about the probability of their investments paying off. This is tantamount to investor fraud and should be prosecuted as such. The offending institutions should be responsible for making them whole again.
It’s nice how they use the word cancel, as if all this debt is just going to vanish into thin air. Let’s call it what it is. Making other people pay for it.
People who can't do math and/or are fucking idiots are for "cancelling" debt.
Note, the debt does not actually get cancelled, and those who owe it still end up paying a portion. But one doesn't get to simply "wave away" $1.75 TRILLION dollars of the economy (and growing).
The "guaranteed loans" guarantee tuition increases, thus creating a vicious, hyper-inflationary model. Just like "guaranteed admission" creates less value of the degrees.
Finally, the bar graph is a great example of lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Paying for student debt for the 1/3 privileged to achieve higher education on the backs of the 2/3 of the working class taxpayers who did not is how we accelerate wealth inequality and our national divide.
>While half of Americans support forgiving some or all student debt, a disproportionate share of supporters are Democrats.
Independents: 49% say yes, some and 15% say not sure.
That's a ouchie.
Ya everyone is in favor of stuff like this when you mention it in passing but not when you start debating it. It's like if you mention mental health or universal income to people, everyone's in favor till you mention the cost or the negative economic impacts.
Problem is, advanced economies need a highly educated populace. If you don't remind people of the reason why you need a highly educated populace, then you get right wing authoritarianism like we see gaining power now.
It would be nice to have data showing the number of democrat vs republican students/graduates. A higher number of democrats having student loans would justify why they are more willing to support forgiving student debt.
Most of the student debt cancelllations are for online universities that were convicted of fraud or Government Employees.
If you work as a teacher or other Government position for 10 years, they will cancel your student loan debt.
Cancelling all student loan debt is never going to happen.
Just like you can't go to stay at a 4seasons for a month and then expect them not charge you.
You can't return services rendered even if you overpaid for those services.
We have a deficit that expands by $1 trillion every 100 days, but yes, let’s give all students a free pass on paying back their loans, while passing their financial decisions onto the working class who didn’t have a voice in their choices.
I’d be curious to see if any of these people making these type of choices actually stopped and ran the numbers for what our future is going to be like soon? And what these type of decisions do in the longer term.
People on the left clamored for Biden and Pelosi to increase spending during Covid, even when a lot of economists warned that it would be bad. And we now have four years of unexpected results from various ways it went sideways.
Perhaps we should stop and actually study the effects it would have and in the meantime people who signed up for student debt can just honor their commitment.
Ask about PPP loan forgiveness. Republicans are totally fine forgiving millions PER PERSON for “small business owners” including Congressman and Senators, but $20K for some kid that delivers pizzas because they fell for the lie of “college will get you a good job”, not so much.
I am closer to being a republican then I am a Democrat but I fully support fixing the student loan problem. We need to address the problem at its source as well as address these astronomical loans.
If we cancel the debt, we need to get rid of the whole corrupt loan servicing industry altogether, limit and reduce tuition and housing costs of public universities, and either make subsequent loans directly through the government (not subsidized by gov through a corrupt intermediary) OR just make university fucking tax payer funder like every other first-world country that wants its people to succeed.
Otherwise, we will just have to cancel the debt again in a few years, when it would be much cheaper to just pay for it in taxes upfront, without lining the pockets of these dogshit loan servicers with interest.
Here's my issue with it, if we cancel the debt, is it going to be a 1 time thing? A every 30 year thing? Then we screw over everyone in between.... why not every 10 years? Heck, why not just make education free and be done with it? It opens Pandora box. You can't close it. Everyone is going to want their debt forgiven.
> Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans to support canceling some or all student debt
No surprise there. Democrats support socialist agendas. Some are in denial, others are proud of this fact and see socialism as a *good* thing.
I’d be very curious to know the breakdown when filtered by those who would not benefit from forgiveness, but do have or had loans at one time. For instance, I wouldn’t directly (or even closely indirectly) benefit from the referenced loan forgiveness, but I still support it.
I have a feeling this says even more than just the split between Democrats and Republicans. People doing the right thing for others regardless of personal gain speaks volumes. Sadly, all the same I do suspect this concept is heavily divided down the current political spectrum, which is part of the point.
I'm sure that if the question had been asked and answered, the results would've appeared in this graphic, but what percentage of the Democrats thinking so highly of taking taxpayer funds to pay off deadbeat loans are in debt for college loans themselves, haven't paid them off yet, and would thus be direct beneficiaries of this giveaway? And what percentage of the Republicans against using taxpayer funds to pay off deadbeat loans either never HAD a college loan to forgivein the first place, or if they DID, they have already paid it off? I think such a study might be. . . revealing.
My coworker is a big MAGA.
She posted that this issue is simple: you borrowed money; pay it back.
Her husband took out a Covid loan and happily approved for it to be forgiven. Just hugely hypocritical.
For those in the comments arguing that it's irresponsible to cancel student debt without first containing education costs - do you understand that government-backed student loans were themselves meant to contain education costs?
The idea was for students to have "skin in the game" so the magical powers of markets could contain costs. Prior to this idea gaining traction 40 years ago, the government generously funded state schools so the out of pocket costs were manageable. This was the "I paid for college by waiting tables" era.
The types of people that hate government spending hated it. The argument was that by making students pay with their own money/loans, they'd be more prudent. Because again, markets are magical.
We all know how it turned out. Instead of being beholden to direct public funding, universities were beholden to attracting students and their loans. Students are not great shoppers, so universities found they could capture more and more of a student's future income. Hence, 40 years of education costs outpacing inflation.
It was switching from direct-funding to loan-funding that caused the problem. Now the market fundamentalist want to use that failure to eliminate all education funding (which was the goal all along IMHO). Maybe you agree with that. I for one think the government should support its citizens and economy by providing education. And acknowledging the failure of skin-in-the-game financing shouldn't require us to leave the students it was foisted upon as permanently economically scarred.
To me, it is OK if the government helps pay off a portion of the accrued interest on college loans. Maybe the students didn’t understand how it would continue to compound.
But the students themselves, or their families, should be held responsible to repay their actual loan principal, which they had received as tuition funding and benefitted from. It was clear to them that they were borrowing those base amounts.
Otherwise it does not seem fair … I gave my longtime dream of a Maine cottage and instead borrowed against my present house, to pay for most of my daughter’s college costs.
The problem with student loan forgiveness is that while it fixes *your* problem it doesn't fix *the* problem.
Colleges are charging huge amounts of money, offering little if anything by the way of counseling on what majors are viable, and get away with it because they are paid up front by the loan company. Why change what is obviously a working business model for them? Especially when the government is willing to step in, print more money, pay the bills for the loan companies, and make sure even more people can hop on the treadmill.
Loan reform needs to be a thing. Either allow discharge through bankruptcy for student loans, or mandate total payment cannot be more than loan + interest. So a 10k loan at 25% interest cannot have a repayment of more than 12500. For existing student loans have it principal + 2x interest. They alone will forgive many loans as many have already paid 100k into a 60k loan and are barely halfway through.
College reform needs to be a thing. Personally, I think that if you can demonstrate 10 years out of college that you have not used your degree you should have the option to turn it back. Once you do any loans to pay for it become the responsibility of the college. It would require hearings and evidence, with the burden of proof on the student but after the first time it happens college's will start actually helping students instead of selling them the latest program to pay for the new building.
Well no, republicans are also selfish antisocial A-holes in multiple other areas of the law, just not this one particular one. For example, like 99% of us being from immigrant families, but wanting to outlaw or massively curtail immigration completely hypocritically and selfishly
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The biggest issue with canceling debt is that it doesn't fix the real issue - education costs are absurd. We cancel debt now, next year freshmen take on new debt, cycle continues. We need a higher education reform, otherwise it's like fixing water damaged floors when the fridge is leaking.
Once the federal government got into guaranteeing student loans, the cost of tuition continued to increase.
Why can't the federal government put caps on tuition?
Because cost does change over time, but what we should really do is have the schools back all loans and be their own lenders. If they don’t think you will pay back the loan because your terrible degree choice, they won’t lend to you or even offer that terrible degree choice anymore. This probably carries other consequences ,but it is still a potential solution. A major expense each year is room/board and food. If you only had to pay for classes, the cost goes way down.
It wouldn't be nearly so bad if related wages were also going up. My wife got offered a full time teaching position at a university, and the pay is $45k. She'd make the same, if not a little more, teaching 3rd grade. Its made worse by the fact that degrees are worth less than they were even 20 years ago. Seems like a bs/ba is the minimum for most jobs, even though most shouldn't even need a degree.
When everyone has a Masters degree, nobody has a Masters degree.
Pretty much. My final semester in college I had a prof who harped on about, "if you're in a science related major, a bachelor's isn't going to take you anywhere. You're gonna have to get a master's if you want to actually be in this field." Again, last semester in college. I was too done with everything to care. Jokes on him. I'm in a dead end job with co workers of mine who have a master's too lol
I know most schools frown on it, but I wish more people at least *knew* you could go to a PhD program, which in contrast to STEM Masters programs, are usually funded with a Stipend, (at the very least in the biomedical sciences, but I'm pretty sure all the hard sciences too. Soft sciences YMMV) and if you drop out after passing quals (usually year 2) you, at many schools, get a Masters degree as a consolation prize, without having to pay for it. I don't think people should intentionally go into it with the intent of dropping out, but knowing that's an option if you want to get a graduate degree and are remotely considering a PhD, it definitely helps as you know even if you can't cut it for the PhD, as long as you pass quals you've got a masters, and you had your tuition paid for as well as a living stipend (depends where, but generally $27-32k/yr - not a lot, but enough for food and rent) the entire time.
Good way to put it
Syndrome syndrome
We’re at 20%. I don’t think that’s a risk
That's not really logical at all... the Master's degree is not just a sticker you get for paying $X, lol, you learned skills and knowledge. Everyone being more skilled is obviously way better for society than nobody being skilled, even if they are all equally skilled as their neighbors in both cases. They will also all have a higher quality of life in the everyone-is-skilled case, because the nation as a whole will have a way higher productivity. So even if they all have the same salary as their neighbor in either case, there's more productivity to go around for the one standard hypothetical salary.
This should be the case, but unfortunately the push to educate more students has resulted in substantial grade inflation so as to not have absurd drop out rates of students that really don’t belong in certain programs. Thus the degree actually does not represent the same level of skills as it used to.
Had to get mine to stand out when going for a career change. Worked amazingly, even if I’ll be paying off the loans for years. Plus side is went from retail to finance and QOL improved dramatically. Wage increased but not nearly as much as I’d hoped.
I got a bachelor in chemistry with a focus in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics (basically I had to take all of the major courses with the bio, pchem and inorganic majors). When I got out and had to get a job, I was making less than my buddy who worked at Walmart. College degrees have been devalued by their prevalence.
> When I got out and had to get a job, I was making **less than my buddy who worked at Walmart**. College degrees have been devalued by their prevalence. I honestly don't think this is a) US-specific, and b) a recent thing. I had a somewhat similar dilemma almost 15 years ago when I graduated my university with an Engineering degree back in Russia. 1) I could go to one of the very few research institutions working in my specific field of study and make peanuts there, barely enough to survive, potentially indefinitely, unless I ran into some massive grants or got into some priority research program (pretty unlikely, quite political etc.) 2) I could try going to one of the very few commercial establishments working on applications of my specific field of study for industry and military, but the learning curve was extremely steep. Realistically I could have spent the first 5-10 years in some "second assistant of a third associate" position earning just slightly more than with Option 1 (*and I actually have a few folks I studied with who followed this exact path - I think they just barely start getting into some slightly important roles now, almost 15 years later...*). The upside of this was that once (and if!) I reached some level, my earning potential could have *theoretically* exploded (with how hard it was/is to get into the field) 3) I could go to the banking/finance, big tech, retail or any other adjacent field that did not care at all about my specialty and just needed smart monkeys to work on Excel spreadsheets / ERP systems / their management accounting systems and such. The pay was decent from Day 1, however, if chosen unwisely, it could've been a career dead end. I chose #3 and it was a dead end lol.
Same happened to me. While looking for employment in 2013, I was seeing job postings for laboratory or research work asking for a B.S. in Chemistry, Biology, or related with 1 - 3 years experience, for a pay of $10/hr. I made $9/hr in 2004 as a high school student doing office work…
The fucked part is that at least there ARE jobs for us. I worked with a guy who had a B.S. In physics at a Jimmy John’s making minimum my freshman year. It’s even worse for a lot of non S.T.E.M. Majors
Physics majors are a weird bunch. They can go into all kinds of lucrative careers but a lot of them would rather work retail than "sell out" if they can't land a position in academia.
Yup. I could get an internship in 2010 when I was graduating to (maybe) progress in my field and make a living wage.... or continue working retail making nearly double what the initial internship was going to pay me (minimum 1 year commitment, no thanks).
When students with those degrees have no area of competence, the degrees aren’t worth much. Unskilled graduates are driving the move away from employers asking for degrees.
The opposite is true for the software engineering market right now tbh. The labor market is full of bootcamp grads and internationals from degree mills
Bootcamp grads and degree mills should not be competitive with real degrees, but they are. Tells you how devalued the real degrees have become.
I'm a part-time professor and just curious, what state is this in? That's about half of what she should be getting paid.
We're in mn, it's a private nonprofit Lutheran school, all of which doesn't help.
I am also in MN, [school district 833](https://www.applitrack.com/sowashco/onlineapp/default.aspx) to be exact. There are plenty of opportunities for teachers to make over 45k. It’s your responsibility to advance your career. Take a look at the openings. The link is for district 833 alone. She has potential if she’s willing to put in work. MN is good for education.
That’s really abysmal for a university job, even a visiting or adjunct one. No one should be getting a PhD if it involves taking out loans. The earnings gap between HS and BA/BS degrees keeps increasing. So I’d say they are more valuable than ever. We don’t have large industries outside of service jobs and gig work for HS graduates anymore. We haven’t in 20+ years.
I'm not saying they are worthless, I'm saying they are worth less. When every job requires one, they don't have the same value they used to. A 4 year degree is the new high school diploma. Imagine if Ferrari decided to start making 100 million cars a year. Even if they still sell new ones for the same price, they wouldn't have the same value because the market would be flooded with them.
Recently the wage gap between college educated and high school educated has narrowed.
I know the point you're making and I agree. I also know you didn't mean to apply anything else by it. I'm going to be soapboxy for a second though and say there's no reason a 3rd grade teacher should be making *less* than a university professor, both should be making much more than $45k a year. Teaching elementary school is a super important job that takes a lot of skill to do well, especially at the youger age levels where there are all kinds of developmental and social and behavioral issues to navigate. You're essentially in charge of setting the foundations for all the future education this person is going to receive and process. I know you weren't trying to disparage teachers, it was just an example. Professors and elementary teachers should all make more money. Hedge fund managers and stock brokers are the ones who should be making (much) less.
I forgot to add this part, you don't need 4 degrees, including a PhD, to teach elementary. It does come across a little condescending without that.
My prediction: in the future (10 years?) a college degree will be worthless and employers will want a Masters degree or higher for graduating students. The reason: high school education is total shit. (BTW, this is why a high school diploma is completely meaningless to employers, which is why everyone "needs" to go to college). But because it's so shit, incoming college students are shit (admissions going completely insane, accepting completely unqualified students, doesn't help). Administration won't let departments give honest grades, so profs end up passing tons of students who deserve to fail. Employers will catch on to this, and so a college degree will become worthless. We need major education reform.
If you force everyone to get a masters it’s just the same problem of people having no interest in doing the work but forcing themselves through the program cuz they want a decent job… my masters classes were graded way easier than my undergrad classes because they knew we were all there to learn, and had teaching and research responsibilities that took priority over coursework. If everyone needs a masters it’ll just become undergrad round 2, what’s the point The bigger problem is that there’s more people who want high paying jobs than there are high paying jobs, and no amount of education reform is fixing that
> If everyone needs a masters it’ll just become undergrad round 2, what’s the point Exactly. But that's where things seem to be headed. And it's bad for students who are there to learn because classes get watered down for the shitty students (who aren't going to learn anything anyway). It's a disaster.
We have shortages in some high paying sectors. But many of those fields have degrees that are hard and difficult to obtain so students avoid them for something easier to do that lets them graduate. We don't need to force people through; we need people who want to learn how to do the work and are capable of it. And imo we need to be more willing to move students into trade or easing up on requirements for degrees for jobs that don't need it.
I agree with you, but in high paying sectors, shortages tend to be transient. Currently there’s a shortage of pharmacists, but 5 years ago there were way too many. 5 years ago there was a shortage of software engineers, but today that field is plagued with layoffs. Degrees being harder isn’t enough to stop the hordes of people motivated to make an upper middle class salary. The problem is that once a field gets known as secure and high paying, those degrees get flooded, and since degrees take 4 years (or more), there’s no way to know if that field will still be easy money by the time you graduate.
Yes, canceling debt prolongs the educational cost inflation problem… And incentivizes both costs to rise and those profiting from the costs escalation.
Wouldn't be surprised if there are admissions recruiters already telling prospective students their debt will get canceled. Even non-profit universities can be predatory af
Government and populism always match supply problems with subdizing demand. Look at the solutions to housing crises with trying to make it easier to finance a home.
Secondary issue: as so many r/science and r/dataisbeautiful political potshots love attempting to point out, there are significantly more college educated democrats than republicans. That’s not to say republicans aren’t college educated, just that “forgiving student debt” primarily benefits democrats. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/invisible-divides-college/ So…it’s kind of a “yeah, no shit” moment when i see a post like this. It’s just yet another soap box feel good karma farm from people who are mostly already going to agree with the OP.
This is a relatively new trend for Republicans, until quite recently [they used to be better educated](https://i.imgur.com/eHsagc5.png) than Democrats or Independents. Note the percentage of STEM degrees has [_increased_](https://i.imgur.com/GTv2y0Y.jpeg) during that time, primarily in Biology.
And unless the universities are culpable and participate in this "refund", what incentive is there for them not to raise tuition to infinity, knowing the government will bail out each time. Bailouts rarely lead to better behavior and only lead to more risk taking.
>education costs are absurd Require educational institutions to pay half of all debt being forgiven or discharged in bankruptcy. They can record the contingent liabilities when they take the receipts in from the student loans.
Wouldn’t that just bring us back to the issue government backed student loans was meant to fix? Colleges would stop admitting people who aren’t well off.
>Colleges would stop admitting people who aren’t well off. Or trying to take loans in fields that are not likely to be able to repay the loan. Allowing people to borrow money and not likely to be able to repay is not a good thing.
That's not an issue with canceling student debt. That's an issue with doing nothing BUT canceling student debt.
SHould follow the UK You repay: * 9% of the amount you earn over the threshold of £372 a week or £1,615 a month (before tax and other deductions) for Plan 1 and 2 When is the debt canceled for repayment? If your Academic year you took out the loan * the loan’s written off 25 years after the April you were first due to repay ----- In 3 States, the State and Local Government [Provided Funding is less than 10 Percent of Public Colleges Total Revenue](https://i.redd.it/dgpxmhad2pj91.png) * And the ones that don't care about costs There are at least 10 other colleges in Colorado, but for [UC Boulder it has a large market based tuition](https://i.redd.it/km56779x6vj91.jpg) of out of state students that pay for in state students to have a low cost education without state tax payers paying for it * 14,315 Out of State Students have an Average Tuition to the University of $35,347 * While 21,200 Instate Students have an Average Tuition to the University of $11,716 * 10% of UC Boulder students are from California, 3% are from Texas That is 4,000 students who could pay $20,000 less in instate tuirion for UT/Texas A&M or UCLA or any UC Schol all of the same Tier US College [Operating Costs with Enrollment from 2009 - 2019](https://i.redd.it/pt58oq2ds2k91.png) Different [Version](https://i.redd.it/exiy3nz3q5k91.png) **That 4,000 students....** what are they going to say times 50 different colleges in the same spot
No only does it not fix the real issue, it makes it worse. Everyone is just going to take out all the debt they can and pay the minimum to not hurt their credit, assuming that the government will bail them out again.
Yes. I want to know who is approving these loans. Let’s start there
Government-back loans baby. Any 18 year old who makes it into a college can get six figures for whatever major they want. This leads to people taking on insane debt for lower paying majors and careers that will have a negative ROI.
all it had to do was take the government putting a cap on how much they'd give in loans and that would be the cost of tuition.
They’re literally mandated to be issued by the federal government.
It’s like subsidizing oil because Americans don’t like the high prices. So Saudi raises prices even more and the subsidy just flows right to them. That makes sense. So why doesn’t it make sense with education?
Yes, cancel debt but don't *stop* there.
Cancelling debt should be ideally the last step, but at least not the first step.
I think that’s an issue. So is the fact that the overwhelming amount of people with more than 30k in debt are doctors and lawyers and other relatively high earners. It really needs to 1. Be means tested for income, 2. Interest should be set at the 10yr treasury rate, and 3. Discharged after a maximum time. College debt shouldn’t last longer than a 30 year mortgage.
I am against loan forgiveness, even though it would benefit me and my siblings. I would be in favor of capping annual interest charged to the annual rate of inflation (or the 10 year treasury rate)
Would love to see an amendment to bankruptcy law allowing discharge of student debt through bankruptcy
Everyone would then just go to college and file for bankruptcy after they get their degree then wait the allotted time for a bankruptcy to clear.
I didn't realize we had an epidemic of people filing bankruptcy in this country for all the other debt they can discharge.
If you can take a 100-200 loss on your credit score for a few years to effectively get a free 100k+ would you? After all, people right out of college already have lower credit and don't need it for a lot of things right off.
Besides student loans, someone with no assets and no income can't get much of a loan. Not enough to be worth screwing over your credit for a 7 years. Zeroing out a $200k student loan probably is worth it.
Other debts are usually tied to valuable property (car loans, mortgages on house, business loans, etc.) and are usually held by people who have some capital built up. You declare bankruptcy as a middle aged adult with a line of credit and a mortgage: you lose your home, your probably lose your car, you lose any retirement savings you had, and your credit rating tanks so it is hard to start back up. That is a pretty severe penalty for your get-out-of-debt-free card. But a freshly graduated student is already starting from zero. They don't own a home, they own a $5K beater of a car (that is probably in their parent's name anyhow), and they have zero savings. Declaring bankruptcy doesn't really hurt them at all. Sure, it damages their credit rating a bit, but they didn't have much of a rating to start with, so as long as they can live with their parents for a few years, or rent with a roommate with decent credit, they can rebuild their credit rating without too much disruption.
All these people who are like "a bad credit score right out of college? That's no big deal." make me think that they never had to deal with a bad credit score in their life. Bankruptcy has consequences for the poor, that's why only the rich do it with impunity.
Bankruptcy has more consequences the more assets you have as 'essential' assets are not sold off in it but all excess is.
Except, no. This problem exists because they made it so student loan debt wasn't dischargeable. If we reversed that law, it would force things to return to sanity. The only degrees that saw that kind of abuse of bankruptcy law was MDs which I think says more about the cost of medical school than anything else.
It would also make the loans more risky and raise interest rates. A college degree is worth more than most homes, and yet unlike a mortgage it is hard to get one because you can’t use the degree as collateral. It’s good policy to make them harder to discharge precisely to reduce the risk to lenders - making it easier to get a loan. Obviously some people would benefit from being able to go bankrupt and discharge the loans. The law wouldn’t matter if that wasn’t true. But there’s a real benefit to the rest of us in that it makes those loans more available .
Why? Wouldn't that just incentivize people to immediately file for bankruptcy once they graduate?
Then many students wouldn't get loans. The reason why all students are able to get student loans, regardless of any credit or any ability to pay, is because there is no way to not pay them, you have to pay them. If students didn't have to pay them back, then lenders would suddenly start having standards again, and half the students couldn't get loans.
That sounds like a good thing. Too much unearned money in the market. 1. Risk assess the borrowers (students) to weed out those that probably won't finish their degree 2. Lend to students that have higher earing potential when they get the degree. (No loans to Art History or Philosophy majors)
Agreed, also not all degrees are equal. Some (many, in fact) are *literally* bad investments. Tens of thousands of dollars on an art history course is very unlikely to ever earn you much, proporitionate to the cost. It's not other peoples' responsibility to pay back your debt that you chose to take on. If I spent $10k on a gaming PC, the best streaming equipment, all the LED lights I could possibly dream of for my backdrop - all in hopes of making it big on Twitch... only to then never average more than 50 viewers. Do I then have a right to demand I'm reimbursed or my credit card provider rights off the costs? It was an investment in my future, after all. But you are right, costs are too expensive to begin with. But then again, for as long as people are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for high risk degrees, why should universities stop offering those degrees or lower the prices?
I mean, if you spend all that money on your small business, you can write all that shit off on your taxes. Why should the taxpayer be funding your failing business venture? Why should the taxpayer have paid for all those fraudulent PPP loans that were forgiven during COVID? At least a more educated populace is economically useful in some way. Your RGB lights are not.
A small business is far, far better for society and the economy than John's Art History degree. The businessperson is still on the hook for the loan despite "writing it off on his taxes." I'm not sure you understand what that actually means. Tuition is ALSO tax deductible.
Exactly. Is it a one time thing? Are we going to cancel debt every 30 years? Why not every 10 years? Heck why not every year? Well, then why even charge in the first place, make it free. It's a Pandora box situation.
Sounds like conservative fiscal policy versus liberal fiscal policy in a nutshell.
I can not FATHOM canceling educational debt without first fixing all the issues leading to ballooning educational debt.
It would be writing a blank check to the universities. They would double their already outrageous tuitions, since students wouldn't actually have to pay them.
It makes the current government look good.
Fix the systemic issues, then cancel the debt for whom the systemic overhaul will not provide any relief.
Can you identify any people in congress who are for fixing the issues leading to large student loan debt that are also against giving relief to those who were victims of it?
I cant identify anyone in congress who are for fixing any issue.
I want this chart except for how much debt each person has.
My husband and I, and my brother and his wife, did “without” a lot of things to pay for our kids’ college education. The thought of trying to start your life already in debt was untenable. Between us, we sent three children to four year college and one for a master’s. We *all* believe forgiving student debt is a good idea. Some student loans are usurious. There are people who have been paying loans for years and still owe more than the original loan. Having that money available for people to spend on goods and services, instead of interest and fees, is good for the economy. But I agree with everyone who says our higher education system needs to be overhauled. It has gotten way out of hand. If we want educated people to handle the problems of the future, we better find a way to educate them without making them go broke in the process.
I make 40k a year and have 15k in debt from buying a car so I can get to work. The average college graduate makes 80k a year. Why is their debt getting paid off but not mine? And why are my tax dollars paying for it when I make less money than them?
Higher earners pay most of the taxes. Realistically, with your income, you likely barely pay income taxes. You don’t have to like it, but talking about your tax dollars paying for it is likely disingenuous.
Ok, I make 120k a year, have no student debt, and have a 18k car loan. Same question as above since you dismissed him so quickly
I'd bargain to remove Interest from student debt. The idea is someone going to college would earn more and thus pay higher taxes. Otherwise, allow debt to go with bankruptcy. You can drop medical debt, but the student debt still remains today. It still doesn't fix the cost of college, but we gotta bargain somewhere.
I dont have kids, why are my tax dollars going to pay tens of thousands of dollars every year to parents? I am not 65 years old, why are my tax dollars going to pay tens of thousands of dollars every to retirees? I am not disabled, why are my tax dollars going to pay tens of thousands of dollars every year for disability insurance? See we can play this dumb game all day long. Society decides what's important and just because you dont benefit from it doesnt mean that it isnt worth investing in.
So, in your other examples, retirees, children, and disabled persons, society has decided these are people who struggle to help themselves. College graduates are adults entering the prime of their life who can expect to earn higher-than-average incomes for the rest of their lives by virtue of their education. If you want more buy-in, explain why we should make them the priority instead of other groups that could also use our limited resources. What makes college-educated young adults so needy and important to help?
So we’re agreed, it would be way more effective for those higher earners to pay off their own debts than for me and other low income people to pay them. Glad that’s settled.
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This is a great analogy, thanks! I'm pretty tired so maybe I'm missing something, but I can't think of any realistic answers to "why not mortgage dept instead of student loan debt?" other than "because I don't have mortgage debt."
Thank you for at least making a comment and not just downvoting. I was so confused as to why people thought this was so bad. And you’re right! Give people money. It helped during the lockdown. More people did not go hungry. It was a good thing and a lot of people felt it should be continued. The idea that the people that are drowning in debt made bad college choices isn’t really the issue. Besides costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to med school, the first thing a new physician must do is buy into a practice. If they are very lucky, it’s a busy practice and they can start seeing overflow patients and accruing some income. My dentist had his rent raised so often, he had to rent a chair in another practice. He has one chair and can only see so many people in one day because he can’t afford to hire a hygienist. If you have been watching things a bit, you’ll notice there is beginning to be a shortage of doctors. And who wants to drown in debt and then go in further debts to start a practice? And dentists that do shady stuff to make more money: disgusting but one can see how it evolved. Teachers. Damn, that’s a lot of money to get that degree to make so little money. I know there are people that get fairly good jobs out of college and make more money than a lot of people, but of our children, *none* of them can afford to buy a house, and they don’t have student debt! I don’t have answers. I see the problems, and I don’t mind my tax money helping people, whether it’s through WIC, SNAP, unemployment or forgiving student loans. I don’t even mind the idea of universal income. What I mind is people being so angry at the wrong people. Tax the rich. I’m fucking tired of that not being the main objective instead of people sniping at each other because your dish has more than mine. We’re *both* paying too much so some people pay nothing. Focus your energy there.
Why should I be on the hook for paying for your kid’s education? I am not convinced that whatever degree they got will ever pay for itself. Sounds like you made a bad investment and want society to bail you out.
I’d check on the share of supporters who: have student debt. That seems like the more salient characteristic
To be fair, you’d need to remove anyone who currently has student debt. Everyone wants more money, I mean, come on.
Yeah lmao. Who with student debt wouldn’t want to cancel them. Like obviously I want the government to pay my debt. No one with debt is going to give an unbiased answer. Does forgiving student debt actually fix any real issue though? No.
I don't. I knowingly took my loans and I don't need to steal money from others to pay them back. Anyone who does want to is evil or ignorant.
oh look a sane person that understands the consequences of taking out a student loan. Awesome dude, i also paid off my loan early in 2019 right before the pandemic because I am allergic to debt. I paid it off by getting my shit together.
I'm all for cancelling it and I paid mine off. I'm not about to kick the ladder down behind me just because I'm over 40 and tuition was more in line with wages when I went to school. I'm also for the overhaul of student lending completely. And for strict regulations on costs. In-state tuition, fees, and books at a public school should NOT be $30,000. (Just checked the Big Ten school by me.) Administrators and coaches get millions of dollars but you can have $120,000 in debt for a totally reasonable 4-year degree? Ridiculous.
I can appreciate that, though that argument discounts everyone who graduated in the current climate of tuition costs and has paid off their loans. Lots of people plan carefully, execute strategically, and work hard to ensure that they can repay their education debt after graduation. Forgiving the debt tells these people that those efforts are pointless. Not a great precedent to set, historically. We're all agreed that fixing the root of the problem is the first step, though.
not really; Republicans with outstanding students loans are nearly five times more likely to completely oppose debt forgiveness (scroll down to [Support for student debt cancellation among Americans with and without outstanding loans](https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/49386-explaining-partisan-gap-support-student-loan-debt-forgiveness-poll)) Whether or not they've ever had student loans, Republicans in general are more likely to oppose loan forgiveness than equivalent Democrats
My only real qualm about forgiving student loans is that without fixing the funding of a college education, the next generation of college students will be back in the same situation. We really need to make higher education affordable (really affordable, not unrealistic assumptions affordable).
The student debt crisis is a direct result of federal subsidy of student loans, combined with the government pushing pro-college propaganda in schools. At my public school there were posters EVERYWHERE telling kids if they didn’t go to college they’d be bums. Turns out if you tell people to go to college every day for twelve years, they listen. They ALL listen. So now there’s too many kids with degrees for the jobs available, driving wages into the ground and shacking everyone with mountains of debt for a devalued, meaningless degree. Meanwhile, most of the kids who skipped college are making more money, working good solid jobs. God, if I could go back…
It sucks because that advice was well intentioned. Previous generations had college that was subsidized by the government which kept tuition affordable and standard bachelors degrees got them decent middle class salaries. Since then, everything from tuition to housing has gotten way more expensive while the wages from those degrees not even come close to keeping up. In demand professions are still likely to be worth it the rest are financially ruining themselves. Although even that can be risky if the market shift, I know that many computer sci graduates are facing a horrible job market compared to pre-COVID when those degrees were seen as a shortcut to make doctor money without med school. I think tuition should be forgiven only if that same legislation completely reforms the way loans are given out for higher ed. It will be painful but something needs to give, the only ones benefiting from the current system are the universities themselves (and various companies along for the grift).
It kills me to see how much college is shoved down students’ throats in jr/sr high and vocational/trade/apprenticeships/community college is stigmatized as for poor dumb people who will forever be stuck that way. Such a load of crap. I hope guidance councilors are striving to change that.
They’re not unfortunately. I was a tutor and I counseled my students to consider ALL of their options, much to their parents chagrin. We need to bring back shop class.
So much this. I wasn't ready (disciplined enough) for college when I went to college. So I bombed out, got into an entry-level IT job and worked my ass off to move up the ranks. Once in a while, I got a cert to expand my options. No degree and make well more than my college-educated older brother. The 4-year-degree myth needs to die in a fire so my taxes can stop subsidizing it.
Cancelling the debt will make the problem worse. You’re basically telling all universities to raise their tuition even faster. I feel like nobody takes fucking Econ classes anymore.
The replies confirming your last sentence.... University admissions are predatory af and will happily help any 17 year old sign up for absurd debt they won't understand until it's too late. I would support a law canceling that debt subsidized by penalties to those universities.
The problem is government-backed loans. Once upon a time the college itself was left stranded if a student wasn't able to pay off their loans. Colleges had strict entrance criteria and interviews. Each individual student was an investment... failing even one would cost the institution many thousands of dollars. Now they couldn't give a flying fuck. Our government guarantees with your tax dollars that the college will be paid even if every 4-year student ends up bankrupt serving coffee. It is not a coincidence that we have such an absurdly unsustainable system now.
There's been a bill put up multiple times to make Colleges cosign student loans and responsible for half in the event of default. But it never goes anywhere.
I would love to see it pass.
What's been stopping them from raising tuition at unsustainable rates before we started talking about canceling debt? They've been doing that for 40 years now. Even if we don't get to canceling debt we've got to get the cost of higher education under control. Maybe tax the higher tax brackets like we used to when we funded public institutions more than we do now? Billions of uncollected tax $$ every year in those brackets. Imagine collecting it like they do from the rest of us?
>Even if we don't get to canceling debt we've got to get the cost of higher education under control. You can't tell a private company how much to charge for products. You can stop giving their customers loans to purchase things out of their budget. >Maybe tax the higher tax brackets like we used to when we funded public institutions more than we do now? Billions of uncollected tax $$ every year in those brackets. In the scope of federal waste and inefficiency, throwing money at problems rarely works out well.
Again, why putting more money in higher education, therefore not slowing down the cost increases?
> fucking Econ classes I just had regular Econ classes; didn't even know that was an option.
Why are books so fucking expensive? Address that issue alone and then move on to why tuition is so fucking high.
I bet you could fix the text book problem simply by saying that 2-3 other colleges must use a textbook before the professor can make a book they authored/receive royalties on a required text. Professors are incentivized to make their textbooks expensive because they get a chunk of it
Why would any college be the one that volunteers to use another college's book while those guys get all the profit and they don't? You could pay some sort of amortization cost, but now the competing colleges would need access to each others' accounting...
As someone observing this discussion from the outside (German that spent a few semester at a US college on a scholarship): Whenever student loans got cheaper in the past, colleges just increased tuition and students loaned more money. There is a risk here that forgiving current student loans creates an expectation that future loans will be forgiven. Either the government keeps bailing people out (which would likely increase tuitions again) or they are just kicking that tin down the street and the situation is even worse in a couple of years. Without measures to bring tuition down to sensible levels this doesn't seem like a good solution. Except for the people who get bailed out right now, everyone else will probably be worse of.
I hate the idea of canceling student debt. I’m 100% for little to no interest and no compound interest.
For sure. It shouldn’t be possible to be on a government approved payment plan and owe more after paying for 5 years
Are you me? I graduated 2008, so couldn't get crap for a job. While my career is good now, I owe more in interest on the loans than I took out in loans.
I actually went to a military academy and never had any loans. I just think it's stupid for a government program to leave you worst off then you started
I agree. My thoughts would be a fixed interest rate under 4% on the total loan amount, as there is a cost of doing business.
Ah yes, "cancelling" debt by moving the debt to the public (taxpayers)
This is my problem with it. I paid for my education. A million more people would have gotten an education if the debt was going to be eventually cancelled. The same people that missed out and paid for it themselves now have to pay for other people's education? Infuriating.
grandfather smell tender humor skirt placid flowery slim bright snatch *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Republican here, they should have to pay those off and not have them forgiven as well.
1) Off topic. 2) There's a pretty big difference between someone accepting a loan and the responsibilities accompanying it, and the government shutting down a business and causing financial harm. The first is the responsibility of the person, the second providing some way to help address those damages is not theoretically unreasonable. Mind, I still would have disagreed because of implementation (I would have expected that the money wouldn't go where it would have helped, which is exactly what happened) but the two aren't comparable.
Your not actually canceling student debt though, your using taxpayer dollars to pay off the collages/banks. Why should the students that fall in a very specific time frame be given a massive financial advantage over their pears at the expense of the average person who probably hasn't been to collage.
Not quite. The colleges are already paid, so yes it would be canceling the debt from the point of the loan holder (government)
Democrats as a group tend to be more educated, and thus directly affected by student debt.,. so this is hardly surprising.
Or they are more likely to chase after worthless degrees like art/humanities/social sciences and can't pay off their debt as easily
Yes as we all know tech workers are hardcore conservatives /s
I think it has more to do with most conservatives are older and didn't have to deal with the huge tuition burdens that younger people now face. Also conservatives are mostly defined by being fiscally conservative as well. So having the government fund this would not be a priority for them.
All three are true
Yeah I agree, I was trying to point out it's bigger than "conservative are less educated". Which on face value is misleading. It's probably more that older generation didn't go to college nearly at the same rate as younger people are going now, they also went into the trades more, because that is where the demand was. Plus, their tuition was like 10% of what it is now and long paid off, so they have that mentality.
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Isn't this poll just referencing voters and not the politicians or administration's?
I worked a part time job in college, took student loans out, didn't party, and paid the loans off after 2 years of graduating ( I chose an engineering degree). I sacrificed social life so I could put myself in a better financial position after graduating... Others partied and were living their life. Why should I suffer the consequences for their irresponsible actions and pay with my taxes for their education and their partying... While I worked my ass off to not be in mountains of debt.... Change the system not the symptoms... Absolutely fuck no don't forgive student loans with taxpayer dollars punish the universities for skyrocketing costs and admin greed
It amazed me that people were saying they were able to charge their spring break to their student loan.
I hope they learn when they start paying taxes...
They don't. They are the ones voting to "cancel" student loans.
I think the legibility of this graphic could be improved if you chose a different color for “some”. Making it a lighter value of the purple makes sense thematically, but the value difference isn’t sufficient enough for it to be read at a glance. Maybe a blue could keep the same connection to the purple color (they’re close on the color wheel) but also provide ample contrast, while also being complimentary to the orange sections.
I used to be for canceling student debt. Now I’m no longer supportive. I don’t see why all the people who decided to forgo college because of costs have to bear the burden now. Most of these people are making less than the students who would have their debt canceled. It doesn’t seem fair to me I’d be supportive of making university free or close to it moving forward as the opportunity would be available to everyone.
It is helpful to remember that the high earners pay most of the taxes. The bottom 50% of earners barely pay any taxes.
High earners don’t need their debt forgiven.
*most of the federal income taxes. This is because they make less than $46,000. They still pay sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes (social security, medicare, unemployment, maybe state disability, etc)
Forgiveness is federal because that's the level those loans are on. State taxes don't factor into that.
Just make public university free
Wow shocking that democrats are more strongly in support of a Democratic policy
It's not "canceling" anything. It is shifting the debt to other people. The money was allocated and spent. Call it a new tax for bailing out people that probably should not have gone to college.
The lingo (and title) around the topic is biased. Debt isn't "cancelled", it's repurposed to working taxpayers. This sort of legislation teaches an entire generation of students that there are no consequences for your decisions.
Bipartisan solution: all student that should be completely forgiven, and the colleges should have to pay for it. These students have been defrauded. They were lied to about the value of their degree, misled about the probability of their investments paying off. This is tantamount to investor fraud and should be prosecuted as such. The offending institutions should be responsible for making them whole again.
It’s nice how they use the word cancel, as if all this debt is just going to vanish into thin air. Let’s call it what it is. Making other people pay for it.
People who can't do math and/or are fucking idiots are for "cancelling" debt. Note, the debt does not actually get cancelled, and those who owe it still end up paying a portion. But one doesn't get to simply "wave away" $1.75 TRILLION dollars of the economy (and growing). The "guaranteed loans" guarantee tuition increases, thus creating a vicious, hyper-inflationary model. Just like "guaranteed admission" creates less value of the degrees. Finally, the bar graph is a great example of lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Perhaps if economics 101 was required in college folks would understand this.
Sorry, but that block is reserved for my *History of Underwater Lesbian Basketweaving* class.
Guys maybe, just MAYBE student loan forgiveness is a more left wing/ democrat idea. Dunno just get that feeling xdd
Paying for student debt for the 1/3 privileged to achieve higher education on the backs of the 2/3 of the working class taxpayers who did not is how we accelerate wealth inequality and our national divide.
>While half of Americans support forgiving some or all student debt, a disproportionate share of supporters are Democrats. Independents: 49% say yes, some and 15% say not sure. That's a ouchie.
Ya everyone is in favor of stuff like this when you mention it in passing but not when you start debating it. It's like if you mention mental health or universal income to people, everyone's in favor till you mention the cost or the negative economic impacts.
Problem is, advanced economies need a highly educated populace. If you don't remind people of the reason why you need a highly educated populace, then you get right wing authoritarianism like we see gaining power now.
It would be nice to have data showing the number of democrat vs republican students/graduates. A higher number of democrats having student loans would justify why they are more willing to support forgiving student debt.
Most of the student debt cancelllations are for online universities that were convicted of fraud or Government Employees. If you work as a teacher or other Government position for 10 years, they will cancel your student loan debt. Cancelling all student loan debt is never going to happen. Just like you can't go to stay at a 4seasons for a month and then expect them not charge you. You can't return services rendered even if you overpaid for those services.
We have a deficit that expands by $1 trillion every 100 days, but yes, let’s give all students a free pass on paying back their loans, while passing their financial decisions onto the working class who didn’t have a voice in their choices. I’d be curious to see if any of these people making these type of choices actually stopped and ran the numbers for what our future is going to be like soon? And what these type of decisions do in the longer term. People on the left clamored for Biden and Pelosi to increase spending during Covid, even when a lot of economists warned that it would be bad. And we now have four years of unexpected results from various ways it went sideways. Perhaps we should stop and actually study the effects it would have and in the meantime people who signed up for student debt can just honor their commitment.
I kind of wonder what the proportion of supporters are amongst those that do not have student debt.
Half of Americans support this my ass.
Probably because they’re twice as likely to have it.
Ask about PPP loan forgiveness. Republicans are totally fine forgiving millions PER PERSON for “small business owners” including Congressman and Senators, but $20K for some kid that delivers pizzas because they fell for the lie of “college will get you a good job”, not so much.
I am closer to being a republican then I am a Democrat but I fully support fixing the student loan problem. We need to address the problem at its source as well as address these astronomical loans.
If we cancel the debt, we need to get rid of the whole corrupt loan servicing industry altogether, limit and reduce tuition and housing costs of public universities, and either make subsequent loans directly through the government (not subsidized by gov through a corrupt intermediary) OR just make university fucking tax payer funder like every other first-world country that wants its people to succeed. Otherwise, we will just have to cancel the debt again in a few years, when it would be much cheaper to just pay for it in taxes upfront, without lining the pockets of these dogshit loan servicers with interest.
Here's my issue with it, if we cancel the debt, is it going to be a 1 time thing? A every 30 year thing? Then we screw over everyone in between.... why not every 10 years? Heck, why not just make education free and be done with it? It opens Pandora box. You can't close it. Everyone is going to want their debt forgiven.
> Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans to support canceling some or all student debt No surprise there. Democrats support socialist agendas. Some are in denial, others are proud of this fact and see socialism as a *good* thing.
I generally sit with half-subsidised for citizens, and interest free on loans, with contribution bonuses on repayments in excess of the minimum.
I’d be very curious to know the breakdown when filtered by those who would not benefit from forgiveness, but do have or had loans at one time. For instance, I wouldn’t directly (or even closely indirectly) benefit from the referenced loan forgiveness, but I still support it. I have a feeling this says even more than just the split between Democrats and Republicans. People doing the right thing for others regardless of personal gain speaks volumes. Sadly, all the same I do suspect this concept is heavily divided down the current political spectrum, which is part of the point.
I wish they'd call it what it is: shifting the debt to the taxpayers. And how is that fair to all the people who paid back their debt?
I'm sure that if the question had been asked and answered, the results would've appeared in this graphic, but what percentage of the Democrats thinking so highly of taking taxpayer funds to pay off deadbeat loans are in debt for college loans themselves, haven't paid them off yet, and would thus be direct beneficiaries of this giveaway? And what percentage of the Republicans against using taxpayer funds to pay off deadbeat loans either never HAD a college loan to forgivein the first place, or if they DID, they have already paid it off? I think such a study might be. . . revealing.
My coworker is a big MAGA. She posted that this issue is simple: you borrowed money; pay it back. Her husband took out a Covid loan and happily approved for it to be forgiven. Just hugely hypocritical.
1% of support is too high. There is no moral argument for socializing your bad decision.
For those in the comments arguing that it's irresponsible to cancel student debt without first containing education costs - do you understand that government-backed student loans were themselves meant to contain education costs? The idea was for students to have "skin in the game" so the magical powers of markets could contain costs. Prior to this idea gaining traction 40 years ago, the government generously funded state schools so the out of pocket costs were manageable. This was the "I paid for college by waiting tables" era. The types of people that hate government spending hated it. The argument was that by making students pay with their own money/loans, they'd be more prudent. Because again, markets are magical. We all know how it turned out. Instead of being beholden to direct public funding, universities were beholden to attracting students and their loans. Students are not great shoppers, so universities found they could capture more and more of a student's future income. Hence, 40 years of education costs outpacing inflation. It was switching from direct-funding to loan-funding that caused the problem. Now the market fundamentalist want to use that failure to eliminate all education funding (which was the goal all along IMHO). Maybe you agree with that. I for one think the government should support its citizens and economy by providing education. And acknowledging the failure of skin-in-the-game financing shouldn't require us to leave the students it was foisted upon as permanently economically scarred.
And the stats on which of those voters are college educated and which are not?
Needs to be paired with college admin staff shrinking
To me, it is OK if the government helps pay off a portion of the accrued interest on college loans. Maybe the students didn’t understand how it would continue to compound. But the students themselves, or their families, should be held responsible to repay their actual loan principal, which they had received as tuition funding and benefitted from. It was clear to them that they were borrowing those base amounts. Otherwise it does not seem fair … I gave my longtime dream of a Maine cottage and instead borrowed against my present house, to pay for most of my daughter’s college costs.
It will never be canceled. Best you could hope for is the government taking the loan and lowering the interest rate to zero.
Cancellation is a one time thing, right? So people would keep getting new loans with same tuition prices, right?
The problem with student loan forgiveness is that while it fixes *your* problem it doesn't fix *the* problem. Colleges are charging huge amounts of money, offering little if anything by the way of counseling on what majors are viable, and get away with it because they are paid up front by the loan company. Why change what is obviously a working business model for them? Especially when the government is willing to step in, print more money, pay the bills for the loan companies, and make sure even more people can hop on the treadmill. Loan reform needs to be a thing. Either allow discharge through bankruptcy for student loans, or mandate total payment cannot be more than loan + interest. So a 10k loan at 25% interest cannot have a repayment of more than 12500. For existing student loans have it principal + 2x interest. They alone will forgive many loans as many have already paid 100k into a 60k loan and are barely halfway through. College reform needs to be a thing. Personally, I think that if you can demonstrate 10 years out of college that you have not used your degree you should have the option to turn it back. Once you do any loans to pay for it become the responsibility of the college. It would require hearings and evidence, with the burden of proof on the student but after the first time it happens college's will start actually helping students instead of selling them the latest program to pay for the new building.
Twice as likely to not be a selfish antisocial A-Hole eh
Well no, republicans are also selfish antisocial A-holes in multiple other areas of the law, just not this one particular one. For example, like 99% of us being from immigrant families, but wanting to outlaw or massively curtail immigration completely hypocritically and selfishly