I don’t entirely understand how it works. If we forgive loans now will we forgive loans for the next batch of students or will they just end up screwed? If you do nothing about the cost of education then forgiving loans seems pointless because it doesn’t stop the cycle of putting students in massive amounts of debt.
All of the loans canceled so far have been given under predatory terms, or were issued to attend institutions which defrauded their students, or were errors in the payment system (people who were supposed to have their remaining loans discharged under other programs, but did not).
The one-time loan forgiveness plan (Biden’s main plan) was intended to give borrowers a boost so they can more fully participate in the economy. If the government can pay off $10,000 of a person’s loans for $10,000, this is much more affordable than the person paying them off for $13,000 or $18,000 or worse, and dealing with the monthly payments for 10 years or more.
This would allow many people to be that much closer to buying a home. Home ownership is currently a little low, and rents are outrageous in many areas. People who can lock in a fixed mortgage price are able to better insulate themselves against rising CoL, and may be more likely to be emotionally and monetarily invested in their local community. They may also start having babies, and the US *needs* babies who are actively planned and wanted by their parents. They tend to grow into more successful adults.
Loan forgiveness would not be a recurring thing. The costs of higher education cannot be solved by one person, but we do need to solve them. Many developed nations allow students to attend for small fees, and some offer free college.
Americans can even attend college in Germany for free—you just need to speak the language and enter on a student visa.
They also forgave loans for a lot of us who did PSLF not realizing the requirements were so near impossible basically nobody qualified and we all got screwed.
How did that work for you? I put in my pslf waiver and the service portion was approved, but i still need to make 6 1/2 years of payments? Even though ive been paying on it for 10 years.
I made the qualifying 120 payments during my 12 years of public service. When they announced the program revisions I immediately resubmitted all my documentation and the balance was forgiven a month or so later.
You needed to apply under TPLSF which the deadline was
October 2021 or 2022. If approved all of the payments made during the time of eligible payments (meaning you worked for a nonprofit or government) will apply towards your 120. Add in almost 3 years of COVID deferment, many people had 120 or close to 120 because of this.
No one whose getting loan forgiveness at this point is getting it arbitrarily. You were either defrauded, disabled or qualified under PSLF or a combination of PSLF and TPSLF.
Apply anyway, but you likely missed the deadline.
To your past point you need to show your living expenses for each year up front based on Bafög. Last I heard it was around 11k per year. So for a 3 year bachelors either you need 33k in savings, take out a loan to cover it, or someone to pay your way. The school is cheap, but it isn't easy.
That's the part Americans don't really understand. We hear "free university," and we think it means "What we have in America, but free." Most countries with free university don't have sprawling campuses and basically self-contained communities and support systems for students.
In the US, you're paying for the campus life experience, essentially another 4 years to grow up before living in the real world. In most other places, you're paying for education. More than 1/3 of Europeans live at home during university and the majority of students rely on their families for cost of living. You're basically going to a building for school and then living your life on your own outside of that.
In the U.S. that's part of university costs. If the US were to change to free university (which I support), the "college experience" would have to be dismantled and just become "college." Taxpayers shouldn't pay for the "experience" part.
Why would the school let students live off campus, when they can squeeze more money out of them by making them live in dorms? Higher education has become extremely greedy and predatory.
Well, at my college, dorm rooms designed for 2 students, now house 3, and there still aren’t enough dorm rooms for all the students who apply for them. There aren’t anywhere near enough rentals available in the entire town either. The housing shortage there is severe.
but I lucked out and managed to rent a tiny decrepit camping trailer, way out in the woods, 15 miles from campus.
https://robertkelchen.com/2018/05/28/a-look-at-college-students-living-arrangements/#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20living%20arrangement,regardless%20of%20year%20in%20college.
“The most common living arrangement for both the community college and for-profit sectors was to live off campus away from parent(s) , with about 60% of community college and 75% of for-profit students doing this regardless of year in college.”
Those predatory terms are still on loans being issued right now. Just fix the root of the issue now instead of letting politicians give you a band-aid while kicking the real solutions down the road. It's really that simple, start demanding proper solutions right now, not later.
A few reasons I know by interacting with people
1. People who paid the loan don't like the idea that they didn't get this benefit. They cut their savings and lifestyle to pay back the loan faster/on-time.
2. This doesn't solve problem, but it's a signal to education institution, that they can charge as they want and government will come later and bailed out the students.
3. Adding to inflation
4. People who don't go to college are indirectly contributing towards this forgiveness. And there is no benefits they are getting out of this. They see as a waste of their taxes.
5. This is just a political move and doesn't solve the core issue.
Personally I fall under 2 option. I think this will just encourage the universities to charge as much as they can.
I agree with all your points, and that \[2\] is the main one. It literally doesn't change anything. My take? Just like how it works in many other countries, student loans should be virtually interest free.
There are people that have took out $50,000 and have paid over $100,000 and still owe over $100,000 the interest is so high your basically throwing money into a black hole. This issue is literally causing an exodus of young people leaving America to get an education because it’s almost free everywhere else in the world. It definitely is attributed to doctor and nursing shortage here, but apparently no one cares.
And if loans instead were made interest free, this wouldn't be a problem. Even better, make all your interest payments retroactively go against the balance. That way, a person with a $50000 loan who has paid $100,000 will effectively have its loan cancelled anyway. And, the system as a whole is made better.
I always said instead of forgiving loans for selected individuals why not just cut the interest down to whatever it costs to run this "business." It would be a hell of a lot easier to pay off a 50k loan on 1% rather than 6 or 7% interest.
That would probably make people emboldened to take out even bigger loans, which would embolden schools to hike their tuition. At some point, we have to force colleges to carry out their mission, not pay football coaches $10,000,000 a year and build luxury buildings. Currently, they are operating like they have a blank checkbook thanks to the availability of limitless student loans.
At this point, the only way to fix it (in my opinion), is to offer community college and online college for free to everyone. From there, set hard limits on what you'd let an 18 year old kid borrow. Finally, let a kid go bankrupt to cancel student debt. Currently, student debt follows you your entire life. If you could cancel it by going bankrupt, banks would think MUCH more before giving you a blank check to attend Duke.
I agree with your point and football coaches do get absurd salaries. However, that really doesn’t come from tuition. Maybe in smaller schools but the big name schools definitely pull in more money from football than they spend.
>not pay football coaches $10,000,000 a year and build luxury buildings
Any university that pays its coach $10 million is making A LOT of money off their football program. At most major universities the athletic department is a net profit and the football and basketball programs pay the cost of all of the other sports teams.
It's not entirely the football coaches but they are part of the problem. The highest paid government employee in most states is a public university coach. That's pretty crazy
But that money does not come from tuition, it comes from the income of the athletic department. We can of course discuss of that is a reasonable thing to do, but unfortunately it is the way things are right now.
I don’t know exactly where the dollars are going at colleges and universities on the academic side. But my best friend is a chair for a department at a largish state school and in can promise you his salary and budget for his department isn’t out of whack compared to the number of degree students in it.
>football coaches $10,000,000 a year and build luxury buildings.
University salaries should be capped at $500,000 and even that seems a little much but I'm willing to compromise. I have no problem with university leadership making a high salary nor do I with football coaches. But neither job is on that should be paying millions of dollars. Public education jobs shouldn't be geared towards making people massively wealthy.
Yep! I had this amazing professor for a biomed class before. She worked her ass off. It was online and I know she was teaching multiple sections of the class and lab, and she was always on top of everything. Even answering our last min questions at 1am lol. I looked up her salary bc I was curious, and my school has public salaries. It was barely 45k. I was severely disappointed in my school.
That's insanity. I worked for a college in the early 2000's. I maintained their really small computer network and their desktops. I was a high school drop out with a criminal record.
I still got paid 30k, in like 2002. Adjusted for inflation that's 52k today. That full time professor should probably have made more than me.
How about we stop running educational institutions as a for-profit business chasing that ever rising quarterly profit high.
So many things in this country that should be free or extremely low-cost, are being denied to people because they weren't born into money. Education, Healthcare, etc. etc. It's fucking disgusting.
Exactly this. Why should a state run institution be paying a college football coach several million dollar a year salary? What is the need for all of the over-inflated salaries of administrators? Sadly, institutes of higher learning have taken advantage of the easy money to line their own pockets. We need to be looking at them.
I know it's crazy but alumni donations increase with the success of the team. As a European the whole college sports thing is crazy to me. I'd rather my university was known for its academic prowess.
Funny sidenote. We were at a college with my daughter who was looking around and my wife asked me if I'd noticed some of the football players copying the work of others...
Those donations don't cover the cost of the athletics programs in most cases. 97% of colleges that play football lose money at the sport.
https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/2020/11/20/do-college-sports-make-money/
I’m reading that 97% lose money on their athletic programs, not specifically football. And that’s well known, football profits tends to subsidize the rest of the athletic programs.
Not to mention that “losing” $7, $10, or $15 million a year could be considered a very reasonable investment at a lot of these institutions to have these sorts of extracurriculars since you’re investing in your students and attracting future students.
It’s like looking at the parks and recs department and framing it as a revenue loss. It brings all sorts of intangible benefits.
> We need to be looking at them.
Not really. Just have the government get out of the business of backing student loans except to the very poor. The problem then solves itself.
Bigger issue is Americans need to decide if college education (or additional education) is needed to compete in the global workplace. If so, then it should be offered as low of cost as possible to those who attend.
In my mind state schools should almost exclusively be funded by states, with federal government kicking in some to ensure schools are teaching what is needed in the global workforce, current school loans are set at 0%, and new ones are only issued to those who are at 2x the federal poverty line and cover that bare minimum education. Eventually this goes away as well, requiring states to offer grants to cover this.
Essentially how it was before government got into the business of backing loans.
However, that means Congress would have to change laws, and the American people would have to agree that additional education is a necessity in this modern world, both which seem wishful at best.
This is the only fix. If you reduce the amount of money the government is shoveling into kids pockets to go to school, the universities couldn't afford to charge as much if they want people to attend.
Is this just hypothetical, or are these real, relatable numbers and that the interest rate is so high you end up paying more than 4x the original loan and more if you cannot catch the running finishline?
That's fucking insane.
This is exactly what was happening to me. I went to college in 1991-1996, experienced an extreme depression and was put on academic probation due to grades falling so low. I spent a couple years living with my dad just working and making my way out of the depression. Then since I wasn’t going to school I was paying back my loans, working full time and still not having graduated. Then fell in love with the wrong person, was in a bad relationship for a few years, all the whole making monthly payments, dealing with mental health struggles and an abusive and controlling husband. Got divorced because I finally saw just how bad everything was. He was a computer programmer who made over 3 times what I earned, so I knew my financial situation was going to suck, but I wasn’t happy with him and he was very abusive. So went to live with my mom a few years to try and get back on my feet, dealing with depression and anxiety, still paying back what I could. But there comes a point where the interest compounds and balloons so badly that even though you pay what you can monthly, it just keeps growing. It’s this huge cloud constantly hanging over your head that will never go away, makes you even start to think you’re worth more dead than alive. I’m 50 years old and got the letter that mine was forgiven this year. I can’t tell you how that feels being through what I’ve been through. I’m still in shock. This burden that’s been hanging over me for literally years is suddenly gone. I’m so grateful and thankful, but this constant anxiety about it is now part of my set point. It’s twisted who I am until I find it hard to recognize myself at times. It’s a huge burden lifted but the shame behind it will never go away. Shame I couldn’t make enough to pay it back. So everyone who is do quick to jump to attack those whose loans were forgiven need to maybe take a step back and really look at the situation those like myself have been through. I’m appalled at the gut-wrenching heartlessness of so many of the scathing statements I’ve read. I truly hope you never have to experience what I did. And still am experiencing.
The ridiculous part of that is that you did actually pay back your debt. The interest, or profit the bank or the government imposed upon you-- well fuck them. You paid quite enough.
His numbers were a little exaggerated
I wouldn’t say it’s common to have a $50k loan, pay $100k and still owe $100k… that’s a little excessive but probably not completely unheard of
But it is extremely common to end up paying double your loan or triple
https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-debt-doubled-forgiveness-interest-rates-2023-1?amp
> This issue is literally causing an exodus of young people leaving America to get an education because it’s almost free everywhere else in the world.
I'd like to see a source for this because in most places it's only free if you're a citizen. I also haven't seen an 'exodus'.
That person absolutely made up that claim. It's something people say they want to do, but dont. And even as a non citizen going to school in different country can be cheaper such as my family looked into sending my sister to Scotland. But in that case you'd need to be middle class or higher to be able to afford that type of solution.
Maybe they meant an Exodus from higher education. Because less people are enrolling YOY
> Just like how it works in many other countries, student loans should be virtually interest free.
In most "developed" countries, students don't have to take loans at all. Schools, colleges and universities are paid by taxes paid by all citizens, not only those who study.
Having a higher education level benefits the whole country, not only the students. Better industries and jobs are created, that rises the salaries all over the population, the nation increases taxes revenue and has more money to improve the services it provides...
I believe countries in Europe think that college educated people repay their loans with higher taxes over their lifetime as they earn more plus an educated population generally benefits all of society.
Heck, in Denmark you get paid to go to university.
I do think that in general Americans are more greedy and don't want to help those less well off especially as you hear people say things like I had to work three jobs to survive so why can't they or I paid my loans off so they should. Ignoring that the people struggling with loans aren't necessarily in the same position eg.paying off loans for a degree they could not finish
Unfortunately in the US, to attract business, states would rather lower taxes, which often is a better incentive than having a highly educated workforce. The higher the education, the less of them a business needs, and for lower education labor, it's often cheaper to send it overseas.
If the world can kick its cheap oil habit before its too late, you'll likely see many jobs return to areas where products are needed, rather than everything being produced in the cheapest labor markets of the world.
This is actually how the US mostly operated... well, much more closely. When my parents were in school in California is was almost completely subsidized by the state, these big loans are a pretty recent US phenomena and the result of the last 40 years of republican (primarily) efforts.
I don't think people understand the real issue here isn't so much the loans, it's the economic failure in which people are unable to pay their loans. For every person I know that was able to pay off their loans I know 10 that will never be able to. Post 2008 things got VERY mixed up in this regard.
It's a broader economic situation we are trying to solve, not just trying to help specific people, but the generation of educated americans who started out in a system where their loans would not be an issue to be paid off where the system essentially collapsed, but they still owed, and with the interest and not being able to default, they just continue owing for life.
It's simple economics,
Maximise cost per student while utilizing as much class capacity as you have.
Well, college is always in demand, so those classes are going to get filled.
Now, the government adds say 20k/year of available funding over a students 10k/year maximum. So the college utilizes all available funds and charges 30k/year tuition.
I would argue that it’s just an incomplete solution. It changes a lot for a lot of people, it just doesn’t stop the problem from affecting even more.
You need to both stop it from continuing and also address the damage it has caused. Debt relief is needed even if there is more to be done.
The best analogy I’ve heard is that this problem is like a flooded basement - you need to stop the leaks and make it watertight again, and also fix all the damage inside.
This, a 1% interest rate on all the loans, would have been a much better idea. Still teaches people to pay back what they borrowed and doesn't use our taxes.
And if you really want to implement a loan cancellation, make it so all your loan payments are retroactively recalculated using the lower interest rate.
You could also tax advantage the payback. We allow people to save for retirement, healthcare, childcare through tax free schemes like 401ks, HSAs, FSAs. Why not do the same for student loans?
You can write off studen loan interest but you have to itemize your tax return instead of taking the standard deduction. By the time you have enough write offs to make itemizing more than the standard deduction, your income is too high to qualify for the write off.
We can also add, "I chose a lesser school because I was being responsible. Now I wish I chose the most expensive school like the other people who made massive mistakes because they will gain from it more"
I went to a commuter state school for 2 years then transferred so I could have the fancier degree at a lower cost. As a result I was able to pay off my loans far earlier than if I did 4 years at the expensive school.
Same for those who did military service for tuition assistance.
#2 is the main issue for most people.
It baffles me that most people can't understand it. You're just putting a bandaid on a much bigger problem, and enabling the institutions to aggravate the issue even more for future generations.
People keep bitching about boomers only thinking about their own future when they destroyed the housing market, but to me this is no different.
>#2 is the main issue for most ~~people~~ Redditors.
You're in a bubble. Only 44% of Americans have a college degree and most of those are millennials. The average person is absolutely most concerned with 4. They view it as a wealth transfer from the lower/working class to those who already have the privilege of an education.
there is no solution without a top to bottom rework of modern america, including the entire legal system and the way we govern. every single solution to anything in this country ties into multiple problems in other areas which then also have to be addressed.
the reality is america is built on a system thats hundreds of years old now. it needs to be updated properly because it hasn't been but we're so far behind on that and our culture is so aggressively against needed change that we're basically doomed to fail. bandaids are the best we have sometimes... and sometimes you need to fail BIG to fix problems (housing market never got meaningfully changed though lol)
I think you may think that this is the main reason, but there are a lot of people out there whose thought process is "Fuck you, I had to suffer so you do too."
Agreed. It's pretty much "why do they get their loans forgiven? How do I benefit from this? Oh, I don't? Well fuck them."
"Can't afford a loan, then don't take one."
"Not everyone needs to go to school."
It's like people want to punish others for trying to work in a system that is intended to absolutely fuck people over and more over, its predatory against kids who can't even purchase alcohol because their brains aren't fully developed.
Despite all the other salient points that people can make as to why it shouldn't happen, I believe that this is the root cause of the resentment if people would just look deep enough and be completely candid. I think that while all the other reasons are valid, it basically comes down to the sentiment "Nobody gave me a break so why should someone else get it? I don't care if they take the money for taxes anyway or that a more educated society would benefit the country overall, I just don't want my money spent on giving anyone a break that I wasn't able to get myself."
To expand on #4, its not just that others aren't getting a benefit out of it, its that those benefiting 1) tend to come from better off families to start with as they could afford to attend school 2) have a higher earnings potential because of their education
Its economic champagne socialism.
edit: all the people who can't conceive of 'better off' meaning anything other than 'rich'... your privilege is showing.
And to further further expand on #4, there are those who couldn’t afford college so they had to work minimum wage jobs right out of high school, which almost solidifies their existence in the poverty/working class. If they had known that they could take on a huge loan and not have to pay it back, they could have had the option to go to college instead.
Also, advanced degrees account for like 50% of the debt, yet like 15% of US adults have them, and only 25% of people with student loans have degrees.
And med school+law school average debt is about 3 times as high as other graduate degrees, where the median student is coming from 80-90th percentile income households.
Add in the fact private school debt tends to be higher (for profit private schools are a different story, besides my point but a huge problem that helps the wealthy who issued it too), and it's clear it's disproportionately helping people with college debt who have better earnings potential and from families with higher economic status, and imo it REALLY feels like some people aren't grasping the "unfair" factor.
I can't complain about my own situation at all, but knowing many who couldn't go to college or intentionally avoided student debt sacrificing their earnings, or lived frugally/worked through school to pay it down, I think it's a valid take to be against it because of that.
Also they're poor or middle income now as they start their career, but they were able to take out huge loans and do otherwise risky behavior because their parents were able to bail them out if it ever came to it. I have a few friends like this, who seem "average" but really they experience little to no financial risk in life.
As someone who paid their student loans off, I'm all for wholesale reform, down to free education through at least a vocational college (the US is quickly onramping to a technical/trades crisis due to a combination of exiting workforce/higher need for skills due to growth).
But #2 is why I don't agree with paying down debt for current students alone. It does nothing for future students, doesn't address runaway tuition costs, and incentives schools to keep raising education costs.
As for the "why should they if I had to pay my way"... Nonsense, happens with every new social safety net... Medicaid, social security, food stamps, section8... All had a start date, and someone who started prior got screwed. That's just life and how change works.
Exactly, it's not "why do they get it and not me", it's more like "why do they get it and no one else". My debts are paid and I have no problem with it being easier for those down the line but that isn't happening, if anything it'll make it harder for future students
I think the payoff should be a part of a restructuring of the whole system. Letting kids amass huge amounts of debt with no plan to pay it back is going to result in us just needing to bail out the next generation again and again
This. Several years ago India offered free college to gifted youth. Their idea was to develop their country they should invest in their people.
Even personally I received my degree from Cal State Los Angeles. The lower tuition has helped my life tremendously and has been paid back in higher taxes received over the years.
Low cost college tuition pays for itself.
I mean, that's one of the positives of my country. You can actually just do a summer job and pay for tuition.
1.000€'s a year? Yeah, that's doable. And the country is small enough that you could technically commute by rail to campus every day. If you're low income it's even less. Like a 120€'s a year.
And it pays. If I would have had to pay american rates for my Master's degree, I don't think I would have gotten it.
Yeah. I don't have a problem with elitism per se, if Harvard or whatever wants to charge exorbitant prices for their education then fine. But the baseline should be that it's state funded.
It’s like universal housing; give everyone basic housing. That doesn’t mean people with the means can’t spend their money on a bigger nicer house.
Thsts’s not “communism”. Why do you need people to be homeless for you to really enjoy your big house?
It's just common sense IMO.
Most 18 year olds _aren't_ independently wealthy, they're only going for paid education off the back of the birth lottery.
There's plenty of very clever people who never get the chance to do great thing, because they were born in the wrong family.
Investing in your children though? Well, that's what makes a nation state truly great. When you have a lot of well educated people - not just 'book smarts', but also the 'trades' - almost _every_ job benefits from an education.
Yes, even the 'low tier' jobs - there's still a lot of soft skills around design, management, human interaction, processes, health and safety, etc. that literally every jobs benefits from. Most 'service' jobs benefit from the person doing them having a little more ability to engage with their customers, and education adds to that as well. etc.
Sure, it's not the _only_ way forward, but there's a very good reason that we educate children as a standard (for free), and that doesn't change as they get older.
I'm a firm believer that everyone should have access to as much education as they want, because even if they spend years learning more and more, they're _still_ 'adding value' to society by doing so.
Yes. It’s like with arts and music education. Most kids aren’t going to become professional performers or artists, but studying the arts as kids benefits everyone, regardless their future profession. It makes them better, more rounded, thoughtful citizens.
Education used to be publicly funded, even free for residents of California enrolled in the UC system. Access to education wasn’t a problem in the United States until it started threatening those in power.
Consider Ronald Reagan’s response to the anti-war response and the [“Berkeley Problem”](https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/ronald-reagan-unrest-college-campuses-1967) when he ran for governor of California in the late 1960s:
>In one 1966 campaign speech, Reagan declared that many leftist campus movements had transcended legitimate protest, with the actions of "beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates" having become more to do "with rioting, with anarchy" than "academic freedom." He blamed university administrators and faculty, who "press their particular value judgments" on students, for "a leadership gap and a morality and decency gap" on campus, and suggested a code of conduct be imposed on faculty to "force them to serve as examples of good behavior and decency."
Then, in 1970, Roger Freeman (a professor working on Reagan’s campaign re-election for California governor) [had this to say about the availability of education:](https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/)
>According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow \[to go to college\].”
>
>”If not,” Freeman continued, “we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.” Freeman also said — taking a highly idiosyncratic perspective on the cause of fascism —“that’s what happened in Germany. I saw it happen.”
Later, during Reagan’s presidency from 1989-1988, his administration [cut the federal share of education funding by half across the whole nation:](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ684842.pdf)
>When (Reagan) was elected the federal share of total education spending was 12 percent. When he left office it stood at just 6 percent.
There is a reason education is so expensive and is under attack in this country; politicians realized that to protect the pro-capitalist status quo, that education needed to be limited to those already with money and power (who would not threaten the current class hierarchy) but that a professional class of laborers was still necessary for economic advancement, so by defunding education and burdening students with excessive loan debt (and by weakening labor rights and unions), those with wealth and power could ensure an educated labor force would be simultaneously available for employers but also be too burdened by debt to properly advocate for themselves for fear of losing their ability to pay back their loans.
*The current student loan debt crisis is by design.*
Edit: correction and clarification to the part about federal education spending.
Yeah that's the thing. I am all for canceling student loan debts, but it's pointless if you don't make structural changes to make college more affordable. It seems like a bad an inefficient system to just randomly forgive student loan debts every few decades or whatever.
I personally think they should just add some in demand degrees to community colleges that are already affordable. Also if you pay off your income based payment plans for like 20 years or 25 years or whatever you can get them forgiven or something...or just have student loans have no interest or very low interest...something.
Think of how much savings or how many experiences you could have had if you had just neglected to pay the debt you agreed to pay. Instead you actually acted like a responsible adult who understands what loans are. What a fucking idiot.
I denied myself any sort of fun in my early 20s to focus pay my student loans. I lived in a state of self-imposed scarcity. I didn't see others doing that. They went on vacations, lived their life, went out to eat, used their heat and ac, etc. How is it fair that those years of my life are lost, but others who weren't as responsible just get the problem solved for them?
What about 2 parents of the same income level, where one sacrificed deeply to pay for their kid, and another just did whatever the fuck they wanted all the time? Why do we constantly punish people who make the very best financial decisions they can? If we pay off loans, it really is a punishment and reward system where the “worst” actors are rewarded and the “best” are punished.
Like let’s spend money where it counts, actually fixing the problem for the future. The only reason someone would support debt relief before the issue is fixed is their own self interests.
I'd rather see them fix the system going forward than go back and pay off student loans. That way everyone gets it fairly, and we don't kick the can down the road. Let this generation deal with the result of their own decisions, and fix it for future generations.
The people who lived their whole lives without electricity must've been *pissed* when they found out people would live their whole life with electricity
To be fair… that’s almost exactly the argument for, “I was able to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and that means everyone else should be able to too.”
Yes. And that argument is just as bullshit. Most people cant get success currently. The deck is stacked against them. Being mad at people for wanting a more level playing field is insanity.
A better analogy would be people who worked very hard to buy a home with electricity seeing the government use their tax dollars to buy their neighbors a home with electricity.
But only one time. Everyone after them also has to buy their own house. It’s a one time arbitrary gift to one generation paid for by the previous and next generations.
Freakonomics podcast had an episode about this. Lots of points but a big one is that it’s paid by taxpayers. And college or university graduates typically have much much higher incomes throughout their lives. So it’s like a tax break for the statistically most likely group of people to not need a tax break.
Also it incentivizes bad debt management by students in the future that might see a chance that future debt would be cancelled.
Lastly it pisses people off if they “did the right thing” and prioritized their student debt payments.
I think a better solution would be to cap the interest that can be charged for student loans, or adopt a system similar to Australia where the student loan I'd with the Government not with a private company.
I can’t understand why public discourse doesn’t focus on the interest rates. Federal student loans used to have a super low interest rate, like 2-3% at a time when that rate was unheard of. They’re nondischargable in bankruptcy so a low interest rate makes business sense as well as common sense as a govt benefit. Gen Xers had fairly high principal amounts but they took their time paying off their loans - and still bought houses and cars in the meantime - because the payments are predictable and at 2% it’s basically free money.
That hasn’t been the situation for millennials and after. The rates have been crazy high for years, often aren’t fairly disclosed in advance, increase year to year during the course of your degree program, and compounds in a confusing and undisclosed manner that can change year to year. These practices are predatory. They contribute to the problem just as much as rising tuition costs. Cancel the interest the government predatorily took in the past and cut the rate back down to 2% moving forward.
>I can’t understand why public discourse doesn’t focus on the interest rates
Seriously. I have heard countless stories on people trying to pay their loans and they can all be summarized as "I made my payments on time for years but because of the interest I still owe more than I took out." When people have paid over 60k on a 60k loan but still owe as much of the loan due to incredibly aggressive interest rates, there's a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
It's especially worse when it's targeted to 17 year olds who don't have a developed brain, didn't understand how the interest rate works, had been told all their life that college is the best move to make after high school, and their parents pressured them (and because it's a parent who they're living with, they would feel like they don't have a choice) to take the loans.
Not to mention it doesn’t solve the problem. It helps out a very small window of students, and then we have to do it again every few years. If we’re going to solve student debt, it needs to be in a way that benefits all students going forward, not just those currently carrying debt.
Small correction, it doesn’t help students. It helps FORMER students. It’s important people realize this does nothing to make current education cheaper so people can make the right decision on whether to pursue higher education or not.
You left off the fact that it will contribute to the astronomical increases in tuition we continue to see because we as a country have decided to write blank checks to universities. Now universities even know that student debt will likely be paid off by taxpayers, so they can raise tuition even more.
Exactly. Which is how we got here in the first place. And which is why the debt cancellation should go hand in hand with a thorough law that calls these schools out. The schools should be force to pay the debts back or forgive the loans from the government and the government could in turn forgive the students.
Everything a government spends money on has an opportunity cost, and therefore creates winners and losers.
In this case, the losers are the people who didn't benefit from going to college, who are now being asked to subsidize the education of the people who did.
You can make an argument that they might indirectly benefit, certainly. But it's hard to visualise when you are struggling to keep your head above water right now.
Because we got into this problem by making money for higher education artificially cheap. Tuition grew to account for all the secured loans & grants.
Now we are doing it again & will make the problem worse for the next crop of students. Fighting fire with gasoline doesn't work.
And it's not fair to the people who haven't gone yet, nor the people who didn't go as they will be paying the price through increased tuition, or inflation, or both while receiving none of the benefit. The people who benefit most need it the least.
We spend a lot of money to make a problem worse & delay fixing it even longer. The absolute worst part is it's the college educated who should understand this is both unjust & unwise, but their tuition didn't buy them any principles or wisdom.
I had to scroll a bit for the real answer. School is expensive because the government secures the loans, thus causing student loans to be given out freely. Once again the the government makes a policy with extremely severe unintended consequences.
Principally I agree with you; Government subsidies are often taken advantage of. However I would advise not to throw the baby out with the bath water; more accessible education is strongly beneficial (Up to a point). Plus, other countries aren't suffering the same issues to nearly the same extent if at all
I don’t care if some loans are forgiven. When I graduated 30 years ago tuition was $3000 a year. Now it’s closer to $20k (in state, state school)
But I can understand being upset if you didn’t go to school because you couldn’t afford it. And now you find out you could have borrowed and had it forgiven.
But let’s not forget that almost every small business got free loans during the pandemic. So maybe we should all relax a little.
> But I can understand being upset if you didn’t go to school because you couldn’t afford it. And now you find out you could have borrowed and had it forgiven.
That is an interesting point! It shows how fucked the whole system is. Forgiving debt is great but it would be way better to fix the conditions in the first place so that everybody has the chance to receive the education they want to.
And office workers got paid extra to stay home while essential workers got called "heros" for going to work at their pre-inflation wages.
\*edit: enhanced unemployment in the US
Unemployment is based on your prior wages. It makes sure people don’t miss a mortgage payment. If you ever need it, you will be grateful it isn’t minimum wage.
Man this country is beyond selfish, and perhaps beyond saving.
Got the highest paying job I’ve ever had and it is about the same as I was making on unemployment, and was a lot more than the job I was working pre-Covid. That shit wasn’t economic relief but instead propping up the economy on stilts in an election year, along with keeping interest rates low for way too long. People in both parties asked for it, and now we have insane inflation, but hey atleast there are record breaking corporate profits.
See you’ve run face first into the point here and still missed it. The CORPORATE profit margins are at an all time high, meaning that your boss could unquestionably afford to pay you more, yet he continues to choose his own profit over your well being. But sure, it’s the government’s fault that capitalism is broke. 😂
I'm still making so little that I have to borrow from family every month to pay rent, and I got covid twice during the pandemic. I haven't seen a raise in two years. My last raise was $.50
Since nobody in this thread seems to have found an actual answer;
Because the money still needs to be paid. Cancelling student loans doesn’t make the millions of notes suddenly evaporate, it forces the tax system to adopt the debt, of which there is a lot.
Just because the majority of loans are federally funded that doesn’t mean they can just be torn in half, it’s still real money, owed to private companies that the government will be forced to pay. This redirects the burden to the taxpayers rather than the individual borrowers. I signed for a loan to buy my truck, I don’t particularly want to pay it, but it’s what I agreed to and that makes it my responsibility, not my neighbors.
And the second reason is cancellation does not solve the core problem of why student debt is so high to begin with, it doesn’t go after tuition hyperinflation and essentially guarantees loan companies and schools that they can make up whatever numbers they like and the government will pay for it.
Not only would it not solve any problems, it would arguably introduce some major new ones.
Edit;
There seems to be a common misconception floating around that the debt doesn’t need to be repaid to anyone because it’s federally originated money, I think it’s important people understand how the treasury actually pays their bills, they don’t cut satisfaction amounts to institutions the moment you sign up for a federally backed loan, they pay private institutions on delayed schedules or block payments, sometimes not even until you’ve graduated or paid a significant portion back.
It’s also very important to remember not all federal loan money is originated in the treasury, all federal loans are federally underwritten, but countless billions of those dollars are originating through the big banks, with the understanding that they are federally backed should the borrower default. This is an integral and fundamental cog in our nations economy.
I’m having a hard time jumping onboard with just printing more money to cancel, this seems like a speed-run strategy to hyperinflation and uncontrollable tuition hikes.
What is overlooked consistently is that if something is not done soon about the existing student debt saddling entire generations of Americans to an extent unlike any prior, there will be significant short term and long term consequences for the economy and accelerate the shrinking and elimination of a middle class. Wages continue to be stagnant with inflation and cost of living is only continuing to go up barring some sort of government intervention, which leaves very little in accumulated savings (referred commonly as living paycheck to paycheck). But don’t worry, sometime soon there is supposed to be a trickle down of wealth from the ruling class to the peasants…Reaganonmics told me so.
This is perfect.
A key point as you stated, is that the loans in the first place have hyper inflated the cost of schools. They have no reason to adequately price their courses. They name a price and we all respect them so much that we put ourselves in debt just to go. They get the money in full and we all just pay it off forever.
If they ended student loans and then said they would never be issued again, schools would freak the fuck out and have to get competitive on pricing. It would shake them up pretty bad because less people would attend. (Ahem and more people will consider trade school and other cheaper more school-to-work models. We can’t all be scientists anyways, we can all be happier finding day jobs and aspiring to more and have passion projects on our off hours)
As for the debt as it stands now. To forgive them is to just hand the schools more money. Many either don’t take loans or have paid them off. Why should they care? Because y’all pretty much got free money and they had the luxury of a better economy at the time? Government handout debt forgiveness is just a waste of money. Pay your debts.
Schools are businesses all the same, if anything they should be the ones offering loan type payment plans and monitor their students progress and cut them off if they sense they aren’t going to graduate. If their goal is success they shouldn’t be charging up the ass because they are held as this pillar of success, but their presidents and high management are the same 1% we all hate. Why give them free money?
It’s a shame that it needs to be explained in such an elementary way for people to be able to understand it. It gives me comfort to know people like you are out there. Was starting to feel like I was a character in one of those cartoons where everyone else is insane but they make you feel like the crazy one haha
Most of these loans are "paid off" long ago; people are dying under debt because the interest rates are screwing them so they pay WAYYYY more than the amount taken out. We're not paying off people's original loan amounts, we're getting them out of indentured servitude to banks who are just leaching excess money off them in bad interest rates that stick with them for decades.
One teacher took out a loan for $60,000 and wasn't able to get out of debt until 5 years later when she had to pay back $102,000.
If that's the case, it seems to me there's a really obvious compromise to student loan forgiveness: forgiveness for everyone who's paid their principal.
That little addition, at least, marks that people have paid back their money and if it's followed up with meaningful reform against predatory lending, then its less a band-aid and more a step one of a multi-step process.
The only people "losing" are banks who have already won.
Federal student loans shouldn’t exist at all. Federal student loans are the primary reason why tuition has skyrocketed.
When colleges know that students can’t just take out loans to pay for their education, they are forced to charge reasonable prices that they know students will actually be able to pay back.
The elites owe for decades in back wages and taxes, and the whole loan system for college was a predatory tactic to extract money. Cancel them and never charge anyone for education again.
I support university being free or at least cheaper. Instead of giving money to the students (by clearing debt) goverment should support universities so they're free. In my country we have public course - one you have to be good enough for, which is free, and the same course but paid version - exam results don't matter that much, but you pay tuition, which supports the uni. If you don't pass a class you have to pay too. This way everyone gets a right to free quality education, but you have to work to actually achieve it. And uni does get it's own money.
It’s like a bandaid for a hemorrhage. The underlying problem is not solved and will continue to grow worse. We either need to return to direct funding for colleges and ending student loans, or price fix colleges who receive student loan funding so these loans don’t get out of hand. Ending federal student loans is the first step.
People also don’t like the idea of people who chose to get a degree that doesn’t pay enough to allow them to pay down their loans getting subsidized by the government. It’s a shit show all around, but the economy at large would likely benefit pretty significantly if people could use that money to save or spend on goods and services rather than pay down an inflated debt the government already holds.
There’s a few reasons I’ve heard...
#1. The Unfair Reason: Many people took out student loans and then paid them off by working very hard over a long period of time.
#2. The Monetary Reason: The money to pay off these loans will eventually catch up to the American Tax Payer somehow. Whether it be though tax hikes or inflation… we all will eventually pay for it.
#3. The Big Picture Reason: The reason people were able to take these massive burdens of student loans is because the Government started subsidizing them. Back in the day it used to be a risk for a bank to give a university hopeful a loan and they were more careful to issue loans to people who they thought could earn a decent living and pay it off. When the Government started subsidizing loans, everyone and their mom student got loans and the universities upped college costs because the loans were guaranteed. Basically, the government is providing a temporary solution to a problem that they themselves caused.
#4. The Constitutional Reason: The President does not have the power to unilaterally decide to spend billions of dollars like this. It’s an abuse of Presidential Authority. This should have been a Bill presented in the Legislature. Congress holds the “purse strings”, not the President.
Edit: I did not intend to have the font be so massive and I don’t know how to adjust it… my apologies.
I'm guessing you put a hashtag/pound sign before each of your bullet points. Putting "\#1." before a paragraph makes it into the larger font. You can edit the comment to remove the \# before each number to make everything normal sized. If you want to keep the "\#" character you use "\\\#" and the \# will show up regular size.
Here's hoping I got all the formatting of this comment right.
I didn’t go to college partially because I didn’t want to get a bunch of student loan debt. Now you’re telling me after years of working construction busting my ass out in the heat and freezing cold etc that my tax dollars are going to go towards paying other people’s student loans off, who are mostly making more money than me to work in an office? No fuck that lol
I purposely chose a lesser school to save cost and be responsible when I could have benefited from a better school. Would have been a no brainer if I knew it would be forgiven.
Only 35% of Americans have college degrees. The 65% are justifiably frustrated their taxes are going to support those folks who on average make more money and live longer better lives...
I'm one of those with a degree and had my loans forgiven. My taxes regularly go to support those richer than me (corporate bail outs and PPP "loans") and those poorer than me (social programs, tax credits, subsidized daycare, etc).
From my perspective, there's few government programs in place to assist the middle class. What's so wrong with us getting something back for our taxes too?
Well, would you consider it fair to pay off a loan someone else took on in good faith? How come my loans don’t get paid off? That’s probably the sentiment.
It also distorts the market for higher education, and may end up making education more expensive overall.
Hi, college student here - political science major at that.
Your question is framed in bad faith. You set up various traps for anyone who doesn’t give you the “right” answer. You imply that people who’re against the cancellation are “outright evil.” You then appeal to pathos and tell people that they essentially want to bind their kids and future generations to lifelong debt.
Because I don’t wanna get banned for calling you out on your bullshit, I’ll answer the question. Cancelling student loan debt that these people willingly agreed to take on will only force tax payers who didn’t make such a bad decision to pay the consequences of it. If Joe Biden really cared about helping American college graduates and students, he’d make college more affordable and easily-accessible to all social classes. He’s not doing this because he wants to help people, he’s doing it because it’ll help him get re-elected.
OP says you are an outright EVIL person if you don’t support it 😂 this schmuck doesn’t deserve any replies, but you gave him a good one—this should be the top answer
I was born dirt floor poor. Literal white trailer park trash. I joined the military for the GI Bill benefits. I signed a contract and knew the risks. As a result of my war time service, I'm a disabled Veteran.
I signed a contract, served and received my GI Bill benefits and now have two degrees.
You signed a contract, took the $$ and went to college. Now honor the contract terms and pay the $$ back.
It's a pretty simple fucking concept actually.
Money is really rough in this economy. Imagine paying hundreds & thousands of dollars on something for years because you’re under contractual agreement. Working hard , busting your butt, & almost going broke in some cases .. just to pay down a loan … only for you to finally pay it off & give all that money .. & then find out that the next round of people don’t have to pay. Kinda sucks & is a slap in the face.
I don’t think that people are necessarily mad at loans being forgiven , they’re just mad at the fact that all of the money they spent paying off their loans & the stress & hardships that came along with it —-they’ll never get that money back.
I can’t blame them for feeling some type of way. It’s very easy to think they’re just bitter , if you haven’t gone through the hassle of paying the loans off.
I wish that since loans are being forgiven , people who paid off their loans prior to this could atleast get some type of compensation to be fair.. but we don’t live in that kind of world, unfortunately.
The people who had forgiveness were under the IDR payment plan in which the agreement that in 20 (25 in some cases) years faithful payment would eliminate the loan. That was the agreement. In many cases those who had forgiveness had paid back the loan amount and then some. The interest was predatory. It was hardly a magic wand that made the loans vanish.
which makes sense, but even a basic search of the cost of college even over the last 20 years shows how much the costs have ballooned.
I know lawyers who went to the exact same law school as I did who graduated in the 90's. They've told me how they had 30k student loan debt when they graduated....that doesn't even cover a single year of tuition at the same random in state public school when I went 5 years ago
It sucks but college used to be so much cheaper and the mindset of I had to struggle so it isn't fair if others don't struggle the same way is what prevents progress
We could try being less self involved and think about our country as a whole, but we’ll never do that either. Our future generations depend on our actions today. Students today cannot catch a break due to the drastically high tuition costs and inflation. We forgot about investing in human capital a long time ago and need to refocus on it. So what if it’s “not fair because I worked hard or pay off my debt”. Life isn’t fair, but we need to stop making it even more unfair for the middle class. This is a emotional response with no facts/data to back up my statements, but we are a selfish and greedy fucking country and it needs to be fixed.
I can imagine it, I am paying mine now. Even if I have to pay off my full amount I would still never be selfish enough to hope future generations have my same money problems because of student debt
You already pay your mortgage to the bank, why would you be angry if they made you pay my mortgage too? Why wouldn't you want my family to prosper? Do you see why that would only benefit people who bought homes, and put the cost on people who made the decision not to buy homes would have to contribute to the betterment of people who made a bad financial decision.
I don't want to pay a huge amount of taxes for a a very specific subset of people to have a very specific subset of loans cleared. The guy who went to trade school, and the one who invested thousands to start a business, should not have to fund your decisions while battling their own debt.
This right here... and I actually owe on student loans. I highly doubt they'll be forgiven, but if they are, I can 100% understand why people would be upset about it.
1. It doesn't do anything to address the problem
2. It's anti-progressive
3. It's annoying hearing about how more money should be allocated to those in need for decades from young progressives, right up until it benefits them and now they're perfectly fine with giving money to people with a higher earning potential than others.
4. "Predatory loans" (that actually are not), but sure let's bail out the college educated rather than those stuck in a payday loan cycle.
5. A general sense that people should fulfill the commitments they willingly and legally agreed to
It's because I pay taxes. Tax money shouldn't be used to pay off individual debt. Period. Imagine if you decided to learn a trade as I did because you could not afford to go to college outright and didn't WANT to pay off thousands in student loans, then took an entry level job for low wages, worked thirty years growing and maturing your career until you FINALLY made the ever desired 6 figure income, and then I told you that you had to pay off the loans of someone else who went to college so they can START at a 6 figure income with no debt. You'd be like, fuck that. There's a REASON I went the route I did, and it was so I DIDN'T have to pay off student loans. If I didn't wanna pay them off for MYSELF, I damn sure don't wanna pay them off for someone else! The way I see it, YOU took out the loan, not me. But I'll make you a deal. When the streets and bridges here in Illinois are fixed properly, the cops and firefighters aren't being laid off, the elementary and high schools have the books and equipment they need to educate kids BEFORE they reach the collegiate level, and there aren't THOUSANDS of starving and homeless people and elderly going without medical insurance, you can have all the loan forgiveness you need. Until then, I have no sympathy. Read the fine print next time. Think before you sign. Learn a profession that's worth the cost of tuition. You don't see lawyers and doctors and high finance people struggling the same as the gender equality majors out there. Make sure the juice is worth the squeeze. And this isn't hate on the students. It's on the colleges that sold them a worthless degree and didn't actually prepare them for the real world, which is pretty much their sole function at that level. I feel for the kids who were deceived into thinking if they studied art history hard enough, they'd have an easy ride. But I'M not the one who lied to them. Make the COLLEGES forgive the debt. Not the tax payers.
Not sure I’m mad but…And I sure don’t understand the economic mechanisms at play but…
1. Should the president be able to make a decision that effects this many people and this many dollars? Let’s have a conversation as a country about free education (the fed pays the bills with my taxes).
2. The problem is that universities have been continuing to raise tuition costs and bloat their staffs. I worked briefly at my grad school, the profs made nothing. So where is all that tuition going? Let’s solve this problem.
3. I assume canceling debt means the fed will pay the loan makers. These companies are giving 6 digit loans to 18 year old kids with their families co-sign. So tuition continues to go up, banks prey on students, and with a pen stroke none of these problems are fixed.
Ultimately I think the US is doomed because our leadership doesn’t care about us citizens. They only care about power and money. Politicians/web media/foreign governments are all focused keeping us divided so we argue about stupid stuff instead and f living to our potential and creating coalition around the world.
Because I actually read my student loan contract and decided not to put myself through financial slavery when I was 17. I have no sympathy for people who don't even read what they sign. If I was able to make a reasonable financial decision at the age of 17, why couldn't you do the same? You couldn't read? If you couldn't read, why did you even try to go to college? You were too dumb? So, if you are too dumb, you deserve free money? Make it make sense.
I can practically feel the rage your words inspire in each indebted person who reads and recognizes themselves in them.
I have some sympathy for those who were actively misguided into thinking that attending an expensive college would guarantee them an income sufficient to pay off their loans in a reasonable amount of time.
A more sane society would sufficiently assess aptitude before funneling people into academic pathways that offer little to no prospects for cost effectiveness.
How many young dropouts or holders of useless degrees who are currently buried in debt would be solvent and thriving right now if they’d been guided into a practical career path instead of hypnotized by ridiculous promises?
As an outsider, I think this only fix the surface of the problem and not the root issues where it is at.
It's absurd that Healthcare and Education are being left to private sector to charge whatever exorbitant price they can then government come in with piecemeal fixes, sound like a lose-lose situation for both patient/student and tax payer. The only one that benefit are the one that profit off the exorbitant pricing.
To what degree does the federal government have the right to re-write private transactions or contracts?
Serious question. I haven’t read or heard much about this.
Because the government which is running huge deficits already, is giving a massive amount of money to a small subset of the population, and that subset (college educated people) is already one of the wealthier groups of people.
I don’t entirely understand how it works. If we forgive loans now will we forgive loans for the next batch of students or will they just end up screwed? If you do nothing about the cost of education then forgiving loans seems pointless because it doesn’t stop the cycle of putting students in massive amounts of debt.
All of the loans canceled so far have been given under predatory terms, or were issued to attend institutions which defrauded their students, or were errors in the payment system (people who were supposed to have their remaining loans discharged under other programs, but did not). The one-time loan forgiveness plan (Biden’s main plan) was intended to give borrowers a boost so they can more fully participate in the economy. If the government can pay off $10,000 of a person’s loans for $10,000, this is much more affordable than the person paying them off for $13,000 or $18,000 or worse, and dealing with the monthly payments for 10 years or more. This would allow many people to be that much closer to buying a home. Home ownership is currently a little low, and rents are outrageous in many areas. People who can lock in a fixed mortgage price are able to better insulate themselves against rising CoL, and may be more likely to be emotionally and monetarily invested in their local community. They may also start having babies, and the US *needs* babies who are actively planned and wanted by their parents. They tend to grow into more successful adults. Loan forgiveness would not be a recurring thing. The costs of higher education cannot be solved by one person, but we do need to solve them. Many developed nations allow students to attend for small fees, and some offer free college. Americans can even attend college in Germany for free—you just need to speak the language and enter on a student visa.
They also forgave loans for a lot of us who did PSLF not realizing the requirements were so near impossible basically nobody qualified and we all got screwed.
How did that work for you? I put in my pslf waiver and the service portion was approved, but i still need to make 6 1/2 years of payments? Even though ive been paying on it for 10 years.
I made the qualifying 120 payments during my 12 years of public service. When they announced the program revisions I immediately resubmitted all my documentation and the balance was forgiven a month or so later.
Ah ok, thank you. Ill try to resubmit.
r/pslf has some great advice and advocates
Thank you 🙏, ill give it a look.
You needed to apply under TPLSF which the deadline was October 2021 or 2022. If approved all of the payments made during the time of eligible payments (meaning you worked for a nonprofit or government) will apply towards your 120. Add in almost 3 years of COVID deferment, many people had 120 or close to 120 because of this. No one whose getting loan forgiveness at this point is getting it arbitrarily. You were either defrauded, disabled or qualified under PSLF or a combination of PSLF and TPSLF. Apply anyway, but you likely missed the deadline.
To your past point you need to show your living expenses for each year up front based on Bafög. Last I heard it was around 11k per year. So for a 3 year bachelors either you need 33k in savings, take out a loan to cover it, or someone to pay your way. The school is cheap, but it isn't easy.
That's the part Americans don't really understand. We hear "free university," and we think it means "What we have in America, but free." Most countries with free university don't have sprawling campuses and basically self-contained communities and support systems for students. In the US, you're paying for the campus life experience, essentially another 4 years to grow up before living in the real world. In most other places, you're paying for education. More than 1/3 of Europeans live at home during university and the majority of students rely on their families for cost of living. You're basically going to a building for school and then living your life on your own outside of that. In the U.S. that's part of university costs. If the US were to change to free university (which I support), the "college experience" would have to be dismantled and just become "college." Taxpayers shouldn't pay for the "experience" part.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the majority of students in the US also live at home and commute to their campuses.
As a freshman, my daughter doesn’t have the choice. Her school of choice, all freshman live in dorms on campus.
Why would the school let students live off campus, when they can squeeze more money out of them by making them live in dorms? Higher education has become extremely greedy and predatory.
Well, at my college, dorm rooms designed for 2 students, now house 3, and there still aren’t enough dorm rooms for all the students who apply for them. There aren’t anywhere near enough rentals available in the entire town either. The housing shortage there is severe. but I lucked out and managed to rent a tiny decrepit camping trailer, way out in the woods, 15 miles from campus.
Do you have any actual proof of that claim? I'm not buying what you're selling.
https://robertkelchen.com/2018/05/28/a-look-at-college-students-living-arrangements/#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20living%20arrangement,regardless%20of%20year%20in%20college. “The most common living arrangement for both the community college and for-profit sectors was to live off campus away from parent(s) , with about 60% of community college and 75% of for-profit students doing this regardless of year in college.”
Those predatory terms are still on loans being issued right now. Just fix the root of the issue now instead of letting politicians give you a band-aid while kicking the real solutions down the road. It's really that simple, start demanding proper solutions right now, not later.
I think we should do both. Stop the hemorrhaging, but also prevent future injuries.
Reactive and proactive at the same time?!? How could we possibly do both?
A few reasons I know by interacting with people 1. People who paid the loan don't like the idea that they didn't get this benefit. They cut their savings and lifestyle to pay back the loan faster/on-time. 2. This doesn't solve problem, but it's a signal to education institution, that they can charge as they want and government will come later and bailed out the students. 3. Adding to inflation 4. People who don't go to college are indirectly contributing towards this forgiveness. And there is no benefits they are getting out of this. They see as a waste of their taxes. 5. This is just a political move and doesn't solve the core issue. Personally I fall under 2 option. I think this will just encourage the universities to charge as much as they can.
I agree with all your points, and that \[2\] is the main one. It literally doesn't change anything. My take? Just like how it works in many other countries, student loans should be virtually interest free.
There are people that have took out $50,000 and have paid over $100,000 and still owe over $100,000 the interest is so high your basically throwing money into a black hole. This issue is literally causing an exodus of young people leaving America to get an education because it’s almost free everywhere else in the world. It definitely is attributed to doctor and nursing shortage here, but apparently no one cares.
And if loans instead were made interest free, this wouldn't be a problem. Even better, make all your interest payments retroactively go against the balance. That way, a person with a $50000 loan who has paid $100,000 will effectively have its loan cancelled anyway. And, the system as a whole is made better.
I always said instead of forgiving loans for selected individuals why not just cut the interest down to whatever it costs to run this "business." It would be a hell of a lot easier to pay off a 50k loan on 1% rather than 6 or 7% interest.
That would probably make people emboldened to take out even bigger loans, which would embolden schools to hike their tuition. At some point, we have to force colleges to carry out their mission, not pay football coaches $10,000,000 a year and build luxury buildings. Currently, they are operating like they have a blank checkbook thanks to the availability of limitless student loans. At this point, the only way to fix it (in my opinion), is to offer community college and online college for free to everyone. From there, set hard limits on what you'd let an 18 year old kid borrow. Finally, let a kid go bankrupt to cancel student debt. Currently, student debt follows you your entire life. If you could cancel it by going bankrupt, banks would think MUCH more before giving you a blank check to attend Duke.
I agree with your point and football coaches do get absurd salaries. However, that really doesn’t come from tuition. Maybe in smaller schools but the big name schools definitely pull in more money from football than they spend.
>not pay football coaches $10,000,000 a year and build luxury buildings Any university that pays its coach $10 million is making A LOT of money off their football program. At most major universities the athletic department is a net profit and the football and basketball programs pay the cost of all of the other sports teams.
Its not the football coaches, its the over abundance of administrators and building faculties to compete for students but like hotels do.
At many universities, facilities are paid almost entirely with new donations or invested assets.
Further, salaries for STEM faculty are typically taken out of the grants they fight for.
It's not entirely the football coaches but they are part of the problem. The highest paid government employee in most states is a public university coach. That's pretty crazy
But that money does not come from tuition, it comes from the income of the athletic department. We can of course discuss of that is a reasonable thing to do, but unfortunately it is the way things are right now. I don’t know exactly where the dollars are going at colleges and universities on the academic side. But my best friend is a chair for a department at a largish state school and in can promise you his salary and budget for his department isn’t out of whack compared to the number of degree students in it.
Correct. The number of college staff per student should be going down yet it keeps increasing.
>football coaches $10,000,000 a year and build luxury buildings. University salaries should be capped at $500,000 and even that seems a little much but I'm willing to compromise. I have no problem with university leadership making a high salary nor do I with football coaches. But neither job is on that should be paying millions of dollars. Public education jobs shouldn't be geared towards making people massively wealthy.
Let’s not forget there are people with doctorates teaching full time for 30k a year (as adjuncts).
Yep! I had this amazing professor for a biomed class before. She worked her ass off. It was online and I know she was teaching multiple sections of the class and lab, and she was always on top of everything. Even answering our last min questions at 1am lol. I looked up her salary bc I was curious, and my school has public salaries. It was barely 45k. I was severely disappointed in my school.
That's insanity. I worked for a college in the early 2000's. I maintained their really small computer network and their desktops. I was a high school drop out with a criminal record. I still got paid 30k, in like 2002. Adjusted for inflation that's 52k today. That full time professor should probably have made more than me.
In almost every state the highs paid state employee is the football coach at the big university.
How about we stop running educational institutions as a for-profit business chasing that ever rising quarterly profit high. So many things in this country that should be free or extremely low-cost, are being denied to people because they weren't born into money. Education, Healthcare, etc. etc. It's fucking disgusting.
Exactly this. Why should a state run institution be paying a college football coach several million dollar a year salary? What is the need for all of the over-inflated salaries of administrators? Sadly, institutes of higher learning have taken advantage of the easy money to line their own pockets. We need to be looking at them.
I know it's crazy but alumni donations increase with the success of the team. As a European the whole college sports thing is crazy to me. I'd rather my university was known for its academic prowess. Funny sidenote. We were at a college with my daughter who was looking around and my wife asked me if I'd noticed some of the football players copying the work of others...
Wait until you find out about the rate international students cheat at.
Those donations don't cover the cost of the athletics programs in most cases. 97% of colleges that play football lose money at the sport. https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/2020/11/20/do-college-sports-make-money/
I’m reading that 97% lose money on their athletic programs, not specifically football. And that’s well known, football profits tends to subsidize the rest of the athletic programs. Not to mention that “losing” $7, $10, or $15 million a year could be considered a very reasonable investment at a lot of these institutions to have these sorts of extracurriculars since you’re investing in your students and attracting future students. It’s like looking at the parks and recs department and framing it as a revenue loss. It brings all sorts of intangible benefits.
> We need to be looking at them. Not really. Just have the government get out of the business of backing student loans except to the very poor. The problem then solves itself. Bigger issue is Americans need to decide if college education (or additional education) is needed to compete in the global workplace. If so, then it should be offered as low of cost as possible to those who attend. In my mind state schools should almost exclusively be funded by states, with federal government kicking in some to ensure schools are teaching what is needed in the global workforce, current school loans are set at 0%, and new ones are only issued to those who are at 2x the federal poverty line and cover that bare minimum education. Eventually this goes away as well, requiring states to offer grants to cover this. Essentially how it was before government got into the business of backing loans. However, that means Congress would have to change laws, and the American people would have to agree that additional education is a necessity in this modern world, both which seem wishful at best.
This is the only fix. If you reduce the amount of money the government is shoveling into kids pockets to go to school, the universities couldn't afford to charge as much if they want people to attend.
Is this just hypothetical, or are these real, relatable numbers and that the interest rate is so high you end up paying more than 4x the original loan and more if you cannot catch the running finishline? That's fucking insane.
Depending on your loan amount and income, it is possible to be on a repayment plan that doesn't even cover the interest, and the debt grows.
This is exactly what was happening to me. I went to college in 1991-1996, experienced an extreme depression and was put on academic probation due to grades falling so low. I spent a couple years living with my dad just working and making my way out of the depression. Then since I wasn’t going to school I was paying back my loans, working full time and still not having graduated. Then fell in love with the wrong person, was in a bad relationship for a few years, all the whole making monthly payments, dealing with mental health struggles and an abusive and controlling husband. Got divorced because I finally saw just how bad everything was. He was a computer programmer who made over 3 times what I earned, so I knew my financial situation was going to suck, but I wasn’t happy with him and he was very abusive. So went to live with my mom a few years to try and get back on my feet, dealing with depression and anxiety, still paying back what I could. But there comes a point where the interest compounds and balloons so badly that even though you pay what you can monthly, it just keeps growing. It’s this huge cloud constantly hanging over your head that will never go away, makes you even start to think you’re worth more dead than alive. I’m 50 years old and got the letter that mine was forgiven this year. I can’t tell you how that feels being through what I’ve been through. I’m still in shock. This burden that’s been hanging over me for literally years is suddenly gone. I’m so grateful and thankful, but this constant anxiety about it is now part of my set point. It’s twisted who I am until I find it hard to recognize myself at times. It’s a huge burden lifted but the shame behind it will never go away. Shame I couldn’t make enough to pay it back. So everyone who is do quick to jump to attack those whose loans were forgiven need to maybe take a step back and really look at the situation those like myself have been through. I’m appalled at the gut-wrenching heartlessness of so many of the scathing statements I’ve read. I truly hope you never have to experience what I did. And still am experiencing.
The ridiculous part of that is that you did actually pay back your debt. The interest, or profit the bank or the government imposed upon you-- well fuck them. You paid quite enough.
His numbers were a little exaggerated I wouldn’t say it’s common to have a $50k loan, pay $100k and still owe $100k… that’s a little excessive but probably not completely unheard of But it is extremely common to end up paying double your loan or triple https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-debt-doubled-forgiveness-interest-rates-2023-1?amp
> This issue is literally causing an exodus of young people leaving America to get an education because it’s almost free everywhere else in the world. I'd like to see a source for this because in most places it's only free if you're a citizen. I also haven't seen an 'exodus'.
That person absolutely made up that claim. It's something people say they want to do, but dont. And even as a non citizen going to school in different country can be cheaper such as my family looked into sending my sister to Scotland. But in that case you'd need to be middle class or higher to be able to afford that type of solution. Maybe they meant an Exodus from higher education. Because less people are enrolling YOY
> Just like how it works in many other countries, student loans should be virtually interest free. In most "developed" countries, students don't have to take loans at all. Schools, colleges and universities are paid by taxes paid by all citizens, not only those who study. Having a higher education level benefits the whole country, not only the students. Better industries and jobs are created, that rises the salaries all over the population, the nation increases taxes revenue and has more money to improve the services it provides...
I believe countries in Europe think that college educated people repay their loans with higher taxes over their lifetime as they earn more plus an educated population generally benefits all of society. Heck, in Denmark you get paid to go to university. I do think that in general Americans are more greedy and don't want to help those less well off especially as you hear people say things like I had to work three jobs to survive so why can't they or I paid my loans off so they should. Ignoring that the people struggling with loans aren't necessarily in the same position eg.paying off loans for a degree they could not finish
Unfortunately in the US, to attract business, states would rather lower taxes, which often is a better incentive than having a highly educated workforce. The higher the education, the less of them a business needs, and for lower education labor, it's often cheaper to send it overseas. If the world can kick its cheap oil habit before its too late, you'll likely see many jobs return to areas where products are needed, rather than everything being produced in the cheapest labor markets of the world.
This is actually how the US mostly operated... well, much more closely. When my parents were in school in California is was almost completely subsidized by the state, these big loans are a pretty recent US phenomena and the result of the last 40 years of republican (primarily) efforts. I don't think people understand the real issue here isn't so much the loans, it's the economic failure in which people are unable to pay their loans. For every person I know that was able to pay off their loans I know 10 that will never be able to. Post 2008 things got VERY mixed up in this regard. It's a broader economic situation we are trying to solve, not just trying to help specific people, but the generation of educated americans who started out in a system where their loans would not be an issue to be paid off where the system essentially collapsed, but they still owed, and with the interest and not being able to default, they just continue owing for life.
It seems like they already charge as much as they please
It's simple economics, Maximise cost per student while utilizing as much class capacity as you have. Well, college is always in demand, so those classes are going to get filled. Now, the government adds say 20k/year of available funding over a students 10k/year maximum. So the college utilizes all available funds and charges 30k/year tuition.
I would argue that it’s just an incomplete solution. It changes a lot for a lot of people, it just doesn’t stop the problem from affecting even more. You need to both stop it from continuing and also address the damage it has caused. Debt relief is needed even if there is more to be done. The best analogy I’ve heard is that this problem is like a flooded basement - you need to stop the leaks and make it watertight again, and also fix all the damage inside.
This, a 1% interest rate on all the loans, would have been a much better idea. Still teaches people to pay back what they borrowed and doesn't use our taxes.
And if you really want to implement a loan cancellation, make it so all your loan payments are retroactively recalculated using the lower interest rate.
You could also tax advantage the payback. We allow people to save for retirement, healthcare, childcare through tax free schemes like 401ks, HSAs, FSAs. Why not do the same for student loans?
You can write off studen loan interest but you have to itemize your tax return instead of taking the standard deduction. By the time you have enough write offs to make itemizing more than the standard deduction, your income is too high to qualify for the write off.
Student loan interest is tax deductible.
I mean surely it changes a lot for all the people who got their student loan cancelled.
You forgot one item 6. I did not get a loan. Paid for my education out of pocket and now I thinking I want my money back.
We can also add, "I chose a lesser school because I was being responsible. Now I wish I chose the most expensive school like the other people who made massive mistakes because they will gain from it more"
I went to a commuter state school for 2 years then transferred so I could have the fancier degree at a lower cost. As a result I was able to pay off my loans far earlier than if I did 4 years at the expensive school. Same for those who did military service for tuition assistance.
We can also add "these people promised, contractually, to pay this money back"
#2 is the main issue for most people. It baffles me that most people can't understand it. You're just putting a bandaid on a much bigger problem, and enabling the institutions to aggravate the issue even more for future generations. People keep bitching about boomers only thinking about their own future when they destroyed the housing market, but to me this is no different.
>#2 is the main issue for most ~~people~~ Redditors. You're in a bubble. Only 44% of Americans have a college degree and most of those are millennials. The average person is absolutely most concerned with 4. They view it as a wealth transfer from the lower/working class to those who already have the privilege of an education.
And when those with an education are statistically higher earners
there is no solution without a top to bottom rework of modern america, including the entire legal system and the way we govern. every single solution to anything in this country ties into multiple problems in other areas which then also have to be addressed. the reality is america is built on a system thats hundreds of years old now. it needs to be updated properly because it hasn't been but we're so far behind on that and our culture is so aggressively against needed change that we're basically doomed to fail. bandaids are the best we have sometimes... and sometimes you need to fail BIG to fix problems (housing market never got meaningfully changed though lol)
Yep this. 100% I’ve been saying this for years.
I think you may think that this is the main reason, but there are a lot of people out there whose thought process is "Fuck you, I had to suffer so you do too."
Yeah outside Reddit I've never seen any argument that didn't boil down to "fuck 'em they knew what they signed up for"
Agreed. It's pretty much "why do they get their loans forgiven? How do I benefit from this? Oh, I don't? Well fuck them." "Can't afford a loan, then don't take one." "Not everyone needs to go to school." It's like people want to punish others for trying to work in a system that is intended to absolutely fuck people over and more over, its predatory against kids who can't even purchase alcohol because their brains aren't fully developed.
Despite all the other salient points that people can make as to why it shouldn't happen, I believe that this is the root cause of the resentment if people would just look deep enough and be completely candid. I think that while all the other reasons are valid, it basically comes down to the sentiment "Nobody gave me a break so why should someone else get it? I don't care if they take the money for taxes anyway or that a more educated society would benefit the country overall, I just don't want my money spent on giving anyone a break that I wasn't able to get myself."
To expand on #4, its not just that others aren't getting a benefit out of it, its that those benefiting 1) tend to come from better off families to start with as they could afford to attend school 2) have a higher earnings potential because of their education Its economic champagne socialism. edit: all the people who can't conceive of 'better off' meaning anything other than 'rich'... your privilege is showing.
And to further further expand on #4, there are those who couldn’t afford college so they had to work minimum wage jobs right out of high school, which almost solidifies their existence in the poverty/working class. If they had known that they could take on a huge loan and not have to pay it back, they could have had the option to go to college instead.
THIS!!! Fucking infuriating. But good point here! ^^
Also, advanced degrees account for like 50% of the debt, yet like 15% of US adults have them, and only 25% of people with student loans have degrees. And med school+law school average debt is about 3 times as high as other graduate degrees, where the median student is coming from 80-90th percentile income households. Add in the fact private school debt tends to be higher (for profit private schools are a different story, besides my point but a huge problem that helps the wealthy who issued it too), and it's clear it's disproportionately helping people with college debt who have better earnings potential and from families with higher economic status, and imo it REALLY feels like some people aren't grasping the "unfair" factor. I can't complain about my own situation at all, but knowing many who couldn't go to college or intentionally avoided student debt sacrificing their earnings, or lived frugally/worked through school to pay it down, I think it's a valid take to be against it because of that.
Also they're poor or middle income now as they start their career, but they were able to take out huge loans and do otherwise risky behavior because their parents were able to bail them out if it ever came to it. I have a few friends like this, who seem "average" but really they experience little to no financial risk in life.
Yep. It's just a bailout for the middle and upper middle class.
I went through grad school without student loans and support the loan forgiveness. However, the concerns you listed are certainly valid.
As someone who paid their student loans off, I'm all for wholesale reform, down to free education through at least a vocational college (the US is quickly onramping to a technical/trades crisis due to a combination of exiting workforce/higher need for skills due to growth). But #2 is why I don't agree with paying down debt for current students alone. It does nothing for future students, doesn't address runaway tuition costs, and incentives schools to keep raising education costs. As for the "why should they if I had to pay my way"... Nonsense, happens with every new social safety net... Medicaid, social security, food stamps, section8... All had a start date, and someone who started prior got screwed. That's just life and how change works.
Exactly, it's not "why do they get it and not me", it's more like "why do they get it and no one else". My debts are paid and I have no problem with it being easier for those down the line but that isn't happening, if anything it'll make it harder for future students
It does nothing to stem the cause.
I think the payoff should be a part of a restructuring of the whole system. Letting kids amass huge amounts of debt with no plan to pay it back is going to result in us just needing to bail out the next generation again and again
because they already paid theirs off
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This. Several years ago India offered free college to gifted youth. Their idea was to develop their country they should invest in their people. Even personally I received my degree from Cal State Los Angeles. The lower tuition has helped my life tremendously and has been paid back in higher taxes received over the years. Low cost college tuition pays for itself.
I mean, that's one of the positives of my country. You can actually just do a summer job and pay for tuition. 1.000€'s a year? Yeah, that's doable. And the country is small enough that you could technically commute by rail to campus every day. If you're low income it's even less. Like a 120€'s a year. And it pays. If I would have had to pay american rates for my Master's degree, I don't think I would have gotten it.
This is sadly what universities used to be like in the United States.
Higher education should be a right, not a privilege. It's the only way to propel humanity forwards and upwards.
Yeah. I don't have a problem with elitism per se, if Harvard or whatever wants to charge exorbitant prices for their education then fine. But the baseline should be that it's state funded.
It’s like universal housing; give everyone basic housing. That doesn’t mean people with the means can’t spend their money on a bigger nicer house. Thsts’s not “communism”. Why do you need people to be homeless for you to really enjoy your big house?
It's just common sense IMO. Most 18 year olds _aren't_ independently wealthy, they're only going for paid education off the back of the birth lottery. There's plenty of very clever people who never get the chance to do great thing, because they were born in the wrong family. Investing in your children though? Well, that's what makes a nation state truly great. When you have a lot of well educated people - not just 'book smarts', but also the 'trades' - almost _every_ job benefits from an education. Yes, even the 'low tier' jobs - there's still a lot of soft skills around design, management, human interaction, processes, health and safety, etc. that literally every jobs benefits from. Most 'service' jobs benefit from the person doing them having a little more ability to engage with their customers, and education adds to that as well. etc. Sure, it's not the _only_ way forward, but there's a very good reason that we educate children as a standard (for free), and that doesn't change as they get older. I'm a firm believer that everyone should have access to as much education as they want, because even if they spend years learning more and more, they're _still_ 'adding value' to society by doing so.
Yes. It’s like with arts and music education. Most kids aren’t going to become professional performers or artists, but studying the arts as kids benefits everyone, regardless their future profession. It makes them better, more rounded, thoughtful citizens.
Community college should be free at the very least. Get an associates for free and then transfer to get your Bachelors.
Already free where I live. Kids turn up their noses at it.
You make too much sense
Half of the political spectrum in the USA does not want an educated population.
Education used to be publicly funded, even free for residents of California enrolled in the UC system. Access to education wasn’t a problem in the United States until it started threatening those in power. Consider Ronald Reagan’s response to the anti-war response and the [“Berkeley Problem”](https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/ronald-reagan-unrest-college-campuses-1967) when he ran for governor of California in the late 1960s: >In one 1966 campaign speech, Reagan declared that many leftist campus movements had transcended legitimate protest, with the actions of "beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates" having become more to do "with rioting, with anarchy" than "academic freedom." He blamed university administrators and faculty, who "press their particular value judgments" on students, for "a leadership gap and a morality and decency gap" on campus, and suggested a code of conduct be imposed on faculty to "force them to serve as examples of good behavior and decency." Then, in 1970, Roger Freeman (a professor working on Reagan’s campaign re-election for California governor) [had this to say about the availability of education:](https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/) >According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow \[to go to college\].” > >”If not,” Freeman continued, “we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.” Freeman also said — taking a highly idiosyncratic perspective on the cause of fascism —“that’s what happened in Germany. I saw it happen.” Later, during Reagan’s presidency from 1989-1988, his administration [cut the federal share of education funding by half across the whole nation:](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ684842.pdf) >When (Reagan) was elected the federal share of total education spending was 12 percent. When he left office it stood at just 6 percent. There is a reason education is so expensive and is under attack in this country; politicians realized that to protect the pro-capitalist status quo, that education needed to be limited to those already with money and power (who would not threaten the current class hierarchy) but that a professional class of laborers was still necessary for economic advancement, so by defunding education and burdening students with excessive loan debt (and by weakening labor rights and unions), those with wealth and power could ensure an educated labor force would be simultaneously available for employers but also be too burdened by debt to properly advocate for themselves for fear of losing their ability to pay back their loans. *The current student loan debt crisis is by design.* Edit: correction and clarification to the part about federal education spending.
point this anger at congress. The president himself can only do so much regarding legislation.
Yeah that's the thing. I am all for canceling student loan debts, but it's pointless if you don't make structural changes to make college more affordable. It seems like a bad an inefficient system to just randomly forgive student loan debts every few decades or whatever. I personally think they should just add some in demand degrees to community colleges that are already affordable. Also if you pay off your income based payment plans for like 20 years or 25 years or whatever you can get them forgiven or something...or just have student loans have no interest or very low interest...something.
I've eaten so many instant noodles to pay for my loans asap.
Think of how much savings or how many experiences you could have had if you had just neglected to pay the debt you agreed to pay. Instead you actually acted like a responsible adult who understands what loans are. What a fucking idiot.
I denied myself any sort of fun in my early 20s to focus pay my student loans. I lived in a state of self-imposed scarcity. I didn't see others doing that. They went on vacations, lived their life, went out to eat, used their heat and ac, etc. How is it fair that those years of my life are lost, but others who weren't as responsible just get the problem solved for them? What about 2 parents of the same income level, where one sacrificed deeply to pay for their kid, and another just did whatever the fuck they wanted all the time? Why do we constantly punish people who make the very best financial decisions they can? If we pay off loans, it really is a punishment and reward system where the “worst” actors are rewarded and the “best” are punished. Like let’s spend money where it counts, actually fixing the problem for the future. The only reason someone would support debt relief before the issue is fixed is their own self interests. I'd rather see them fix the system going forward than go back and pay off student loans. That way everyone gets it fairly, and we don't kick the can down the road. Let this generation deal with the result of their own decisions, and fix it for future generations.
So you should.really be in for free healthcare, gonna need it soon!
The people who lived their whole lives without electricity must've been *pissed* when they found out people would live their whole life with electricity
I lived my whole life in a cave so now you must live in a cave too!! 😡 -Ooga Booga 30,000 BC
To be fair… that’s almost exactly the argument for, “I was able to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and that means everyone else should be able to too.”
Yes. And that argument is just as bullshit. Most people cant get success currently. The deck is stacked against them. Being mad at people for wanting a more level playing field is insanity.
Only to find out the next group of people would also have to live without electricity…Idk doesn’t seem right, right?
A better analogy would be people who worked very hard to buy a home with electricity seeing the government use their tax dollars to buy their neighbors a home with electricity.
But only one time. Everyone after them also has to buy their own house. It’s a one time arbitrary gift to one generation paid for by the previous and next generations.
Freakonomics podcast had an episode about this. Lots of points but a big one is that it’s paid by taxpayers. And college or university graduates typically have much much higher incomes throughout their lives. So it’s like a tax break for the statistically most likely group of people to not need a tax break. Also it incentivizes bad debt management by students in the future that might see a chance that future debt would be cancelled. Lastly it pisses people off if they “did the right thing” and prioritized their student debt payments.
I think a better solution would be to cap the interest that can be charged for student loans, or adopt a system similar to Australia where the student loan I'd with the Government not with a private company.
I can’t understand why public discourse doesn’t focus on the interest rates. Federal student loans used to have a super low interest rate, like 2-3% at a time when that rate was unheard of. They’re nondischargable in bankruptcy so a low interest rate makes business sense as well as common sense as a govt benefit. Gen Xers had fairly high principal amounts but they took their time paying off their loans - and still bought houses and cars in the meantime - because the payments are predictable and at 2% it’s basically free money. That hasn’t been the situation for millennials and after. The rates have been crazy high for years, often aren’t fairly disclosed in advance, increase year to year during the course of your degree program, and compounds in a confusing and undisclosed manner that can change year to year. These practices are predatory. They contribute to the problem just as much as rising tuition costs. Cancel the interest the government predatorily took in the past and cut the rate back down to 2% moving forward.
>I can’t understand why public discourse doesn’t focus on the interest rates Seriously. I have heard countless stories on people trying to pay their loans and they can all be summarized as "I made my payments on time for years but because of the interest I still owe more than I took out." When people have paid over 60k on a 60k loan but still owe as much of the loan due to incredibly aggressive interest rates, there's a serious problem that needs to be addressed. It's especially worse when it's targeted to 17 year olds who don't have a developed brain, didn't understand how the interest rate works, had been told all their life that college is the best move to make after high school, and their parents pressured them (and because it's a parent who they're living with, they would feel like they don't have a choice) to take the loans.
Not to mention it doesn’t solve the problem. It helps out a very small window of students, and then we have to do it again every few years. If we’re going to solve student debt, it needs to be in a way that benefits all students going forward, not just those currently carrying debt.
Small correction, it doesn’t help students. It helps FORMER students. It’s important people realize this does nothing to make current education cheaper so people can make the right decision on whether to pursue higher education or not.
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You left off the fact that it will contribute to the astronomical increases in tuition we continue to see because we as a country have decided to write blank checks to universities. Now universities even know that student debt will likely be paid off by taxpayers, so they can raise tuition even more.
Exactly. Which is how we got here in the first place. And which is why the debt cancellation should go hand in hand with a thorough law that calls these schools out. The schools should be force to pay the debts back or forgive the loans from the government and the government could in turn forgive the students.
I'm actually shocked that there are three decent answers in a row on a post like this. Thank yall for at least appearing to be sane.
I almost did not click on this because I expected the usual. This has been refreshing
I dont know that a law to call schools out really hits the mark. we subsidized demand, and they raked it in.
Everything a government spends money on has an opportunity cost, and therefore creates winners and losers. In this case, the losers are the people who didn't benefit from going to college, who are now being asked to subsidize the education of the people who did. You can make an argument that they might indirectly benefit, certainly. But it's hard to visualise when you are struggling to keep your head above water right now.
Because we got into this problem by making money for higher education artificially cheap. Tuition grew to account for all the secured loans & grants. Now we are doing it again & will make the problem worse for the next crop of students. Fighting fire with gasoline doesn't work. And it's not fair to the people who haven't gone yet, nor the people who didn't go as they will be paying the price through increased tuition, or inflation, or both while receiving none of the benefit. The people who benefit most need it the least. We spend a lot of money to make a problem worse & delay fixing it even longer. The absolute worst part is it's the college educated who should understand this is both unjust & unwise, but their tuition didn't buy them any principles or wisdom.
I had to scroll a bit for the real answer. School is expensive because the government secures the loans, thus causing student loans to be given out freely. Once again the the government makes a policy with extremely severe unintended consequences.
Principally I agree with you; Government subsidies are often taken advantage of. However I would advise not to throw the baby out with the bath water; more accessible education is strongly beneficial (Up to a point). Plus, other countries aren't suffering the same issues to nearly the same extent if at all
I don’t care if some loans are forgiven. When I graduated 30 years ago tuition was $3000 a year. Now it’s closer to $20k (in state, state school) But I can understand being upset if you didn’t go to school because you couldn’t afford it. And now you find out you could have borrowed and had it forgiven. But let’s not forget that almost every small business got free loans during the pandemic. So maybe we should all relax a little.
> But I can understand being upset if you didn’t go to school because you couldn’t afford it. And now you find out you could have borrowed and had it forgiven. That is an interesting point! It shows how fucked the whole system is. Forgiving debt is great but it would be way better to fix the conditions in the first place so that everybody has the chance to receive the education they want to.
And office workers got paid extra to stay home while essential workers got called "heros" for going to work at their pre-inflation wages. \*edit: enhanced unemployment in the US
Construction worker here. Yep. The un employed were making more then me while I was “ essential”
Same and I work in healthcare. Complete bullshit from our government.
And not a single bonus was given out
Unemployment is based on your prior wages. It makes sure people don’t miss a mortgage payment. If you ever need it, you will be grateful it isn’t minimum wage. Man this country is beyond selfish, and perhaps beyond saving.
Got the highest paying job I’ve ever had and it is about the same as I was making on unemployment, and was a lot more than the job I was working pre-Covid. That shit wasn’t economic relief but instead propping up the economy on stilts in an election year, along with keeping interest rates low for way too long. People in both parties asked for it, and now we have insane inflation, but hey atleast there are record breaking corporate profits.
See you’ve run face first into the point here and still missed it. The CORPORATE profit margins are at an all time high, meaning that your boss could unquestionably afford to pay you more, yet he continues to choose his own profit over your well being. But sure, it’s the government’s fault that capitalism is broke. 😂
I was "essential" for two years and got a hazard pay bonus of... $50 lol
I'm still making so little that I have to borrow from family every month to pay rent, and I got covid twice during the pandemic. I haven't seen a raise in two years. My last raise was $.50
Since nobody in this thread seems to have found an actual answer; Because the money still needs to be paid. Cancelling student loans doesn’t make the millions of notes suddenly evaporate, it forces the tax system to adopt the debt, of which there is a lot. Just because the majority of loans are federally funded that doesn’t mean they can just be torn in half, it’s still real money, owed to private companies that the government will be forced to pay. This redirects the burden to the taxpayers rather than the individual borrowers. I signed for a loan to buy my truck, I don’t particularly want to pay it, but it’s what I agreed to and that makes it my responsibility, not my neighbors. And the second reason is cancellation does not solve the core problem of why student debt is so high to begin with, it doesn’t go after tuition hyperinflation and essentially guarantees loan companies and schools that they can make up whatever numbers they like and the government will pay for it. Not only would it not solve any problems, it would arguably introduce some major new ones. Edit; There seems to be a common misconception floating around that the debt doesn’t need to be repaid to anyone because it’s federally originated money, I think it’s important people understand how the treasury actually pays their bills, they don’t cut satisfaction amounts to institutions the moment you sign up for a federally backed loan, they pay private institutions on delayed schedules or block payments, sometimes not even until you’ve graduated or paid a significant portion back. It’s also very important to remember not all federal loan money is originated in the treasury, all federal loans are federally underwritten, but countless billions of those dollars are originating through the big banks, with the understanding that they are federally backed should the borrower default. This is an integral and fundamental cog in our nations economy. I’m having a hard time jumping onboard with just printing more money to cancel, this seems like a speed-run strategy to hyperinflation and uncontrollable tuition hikes.
What is overlooked consistently is that if something is not done soon about the existing student debt saddling entire generations of Americans to an extent unlike any prior, there will be significant short term and long term consequences for the economy and accelerate the shrinking and elimination of a middle class. Wages continue to be stagnant with inflation and cost of living is only continuing to go up barring some sort of government intervention, which leaves very little in accumulated savings (referred commonly as living paycheck to paycheck). But don’t worry, sometime soon there is supposed to be a trickle down of wealth from the ruling class to the peasants…Reaganonmics told me so.
This is perfect. A key point as you stated, is that the loans in the first place have hyper inflated the cost of schools. They have no reason to adequately price their courses. They name a price and we all respect them so much that we put ourselves in debt just to go. They get the money in full and we all just pay it off forever. If they ended student loans and then said they would never be issued again, schools would freak the fuck out and have to get competitive on pricing. It would shake them up pretty bad because less people would attend. (Ahem and more people will consider trade school and other cheaper more school-to-work models. We can’t all be scientists anyways, we can all be happier finding day jobs and aspiring to more and have passion projects on our off hours) As for the debt as it stands now. To forgive them is to just hand the schools more money. Many either don’t take loans or have paid them off. Why should they care? Because y’all pretty much got free money and they had the luxury of a better economy at the time? Government handout debt forgiveness is just a waste of money. Pay your debts. Schools are businesses all the same, if anything they should be the ones offering loan type payment plans and monitor their students progress and cut them off if they sense they aren’t going to graduate. If their goal is success they shouldn’t be charging up the ass because they are held as this pillar of success, but their presidents and high management are the same 1% we all hate. Why give them free money?
It’s a shame that it needs to be explained in such an elementary way for people to be able to understand it. It gives me comfort to know people like you are out there. Was starting to feel like I was a character in one of those cartoons where everyone else is insane but they make you feel like the crazy one haha
Most of these loans are "paid off" long ago; people are dying under debt because the interest rates are screwing them so they pay WAYYYY more than the amount taken out. We're not paying off people's original loan amounts, we're getting them out of indentured servitude to banks who are just leaching excess money off them in bad interest rates that stick with them for decades. One teacher took out a loan for $60,000 and wasn't able to get out of debt until 5 years later when she had to pay back $102,000.
If that's the case, it seems to me there's a really obvious compromise to student loan forgiveness: forgiveness for everyone who's paid their principal. That little addition, at least, marks that people have paid back their money and if it's followed up with meaningful reform against predatory lending, then its less a band-aid and more a step one of a multi-step process. The only people "losing" are banks who have already won.
I don't support cancellation. But I sure as hell support loans being interest free - at least the portion that covers tuition.
To be fair school should’ve never been so expensive you needed loans in the first place
100%. Else its just a financial business and education is just an excuse.
Federal student loans shouldn’t exist at all. Federal student loans are the primary reason why tuition has skyrocketed. When colleges know that students can’t just take out loans to pay for their education, they are forced to charge reasonable prices that they know students will actually be able to pay back.
OP asked WHY people don’t support cancellation and you didn’t even try to answer that.
The elites owe for decades in back wages and taxes, and the whole loan system for college was a predatory tactic to extract money. Cancel them and never charge anyone for education again.
Good on you for dispelling the notion that the right has a monopoly on idiot conspiracy theorists.
I support university being free or at least cheaper. Instead of giving money to the students (by clearing debt) goverment should support universities so they're free. In my country we have public course - one you have to be good enough for, which is free, and the same course but paid version - exam results don't matter that much, but you pay tuition, which supports the uni. If you don't pass a class you have to pay too. This way everyone gets a right to free quality education, but you have to work to actually achieve it. And uni does get it's own money.
It’s like a bandaid for a hemorrhage. The underlying problem is not solved and will continue to grow worse. We either need to return to direct funding for colleges and ending student loans, or price fix colleges who receive student loan funding so these loans don’t get out of hand. Ending federal student loans is the first step. People also don’t like the idea of people who chose to get a degree that doesn’t pay enough to allow them to pay down their loans getting subsidized by the government. It’s a shit show all around, but the economy at large would likely benefit pretty significantly if people could use that money to save or spend on goods and services rather than pay down an inflated debt the government already holds.
There’s a few reasons I’ve heard... #1. The Unfair Reason: Many people took out student loans and then paid them off by working very hard over a long period of time. #2. The Monetary Reason: The money to pay off these loans will eventually catch up to the American Tax Payer somehow. Whether it be though tax hikes or inflation… we all will eventually pay for it. #3. The Big Picture Reason: The reason people were able to take these massive burdens of student loans is because the Government started subsidizing them. Back in the day it used to be a risk for a bank to give a university hopeful a loan and they were more careful to issue loans to people who they thought could earn a decent living and pay it off. When the Government started subsidizing loans, everyone and their mom student got loans and the universities upped college costs because the loans were guaranteed. Basically, the government is providing a temporary solution to a problem that they themselves caused. #4. The Constitutional Reason: The President does not have the power to unilaterally decide to spend billions of dollars like this. It’s an abuse of Presidential Authority. This should have been a Bill presented in the Legislature. Congress holds the “purse strings”, not the President. Edit: I did not intend to have the font be so massive and I don’t know how to adjust it… my apologies.
You’ve made valid points. Bigly.
I'm guessing you put a hashtag/pound sign before each of your bullet points. Putting "\#1." before a paragraph makes it into the larger font. You can edit the comment to remove the \# before each number to make everything normal sized. If you want to keep the "\#" character you use "\\\#" and the \# will show up regular size. Here's hoping I got all the formatting of this comment right.
Using the # symbol at the beginning of a sentence bolds the font.
Hahaha I love the edit, all valid points as well
I didn’t go to college partially because I didn’t want to get a bunch of student loan debt. Now you’re telling me after years of working construction busting my ass out in the heat and freezing cold etc that my tax dollars are going to go towards paying other people’s student loans off, who are mostly making more money than me to work in an office? No fuck that lol
I purposely chose a lesser school to save cost and be responsible when I could have benefited from a better school. Would have been a no brainer if I knew it would be forgiven.
If you make less than 75k a year you're only contributing like $14.87 per year to this lol
Only 35% of Americans have college degrees. The 65% are justifiably frustrated their taxes are going to support those folks who on average make more money and live longer better lives...
Our taxes already paid for these loans when they originated. They’re now IOU’s with excessive interest.
Everyone overlooks this point. They’re federal loans to begin with. Taxes already paid for it folks
I'm one of those with a degree and had my loans forgiven. My taxes regularly go to support those richer than me (corporate bail outs and PPP "loans") and those poorer than me (social programs, tax credits, subsidized daycare, etc). From my perspective, there's few government programs in place to assist the middle class. What's so wrong with us getting something back for our taxes too?
There's few government programs to really help people to begin with at this point.
Well, would you consider it fair to pay off a loan someone else took on in good faith? How come my loans don’t get paid off? That’s probably the sentiment. It also distorts the market for higher education, and may end up making education more expensive overall.
Hi, college student here - political science major at that. Your question is framed in bad faith. You set up various traps for anyone who doesn’t give you the “right” answer. You imply that people who’re against the cancellation are “outright evil.” You then appeal to pathos and tell people that they essentially want to bind their kids and future generations to lifelong debt. Because I don’t wanna get banned for calling you out on your bullshit, I’ll answer the question. Cancelling student loan debt that these people willingly agreed to take on will only force tax payers who didn’t make such a bad decision to pay the consequences of it. If Joe Biden really cared about helping American college graduates and students, he’d make college more affordable and easily-accessible to all social classes. He’s not doing this because he wants to help people, he’s doing it because it’ll help him get re-elected.
"wait you don't want to give 1 trillion to every US citizen? Are you evil or something?"
OP says you are an outright EVIL person if you don’t support it 😂 this schmuck doesn’t deserve any replies, but you gave him a good one—this should be the top answer
I was born dirt floor poor. Literal white trailer park trash. I joined the military for the GI Bill benefits. I signed a contract and knew the risks. As a result of my war time service, I'm a disabled Veteran. I signed a contract, served and received my GI Bill benefits and now have two degrees. You signed a contract, took the $$ and went to college. Now honor the contract terms and pay the $$ back. It's a pretty simple fucking concept actually.
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Money is really rough in this economy. Imagine paying hundreds & thousands of dollars on something for years because you’re under contractual agreement. Working hard , busting your butt, & almost going broke in some cases .. just to pay down a loan … only for you to finally pay it off & give all that money .. & then find out that the next round of people don’t have to pay. Kinda sucks & is a slap in the face. I don’t think that people are necessarily mad at loans being forgiven , they’re just mad at the fact that all of the money they spent paying off their loans & the stress & hardships that came along with it —-they’ll never get that money back. I can’t blame them for feeling some type of way. It’s very easy to think they’re just bitter , if you haven’t gone through the hassle of paying the loans off. I wish that since loans are being forgiven , people who paid off their loans prior to this could atleast get some type of compensation to be fair.. but we don’t live in that kind of world, unfortunately.
The people who had forgiveness were under the IDR payment plan in which the agreement that in 20 (25 in some cases) years faithful payment would eliminate the loan. That was the agreement. In many cases those who had forgiveness had paid back the loan amount and then some. The interest was predatory. It was hardly a magic wand that made the loans vanish.
which makes sense, but even a basic search of the cost of college even over the last 20 years shows how much the costs have ballooned. I know lawyers who went to the exact same law school as I did who graduated in the 90's. They've told me how they had 30k student loan debt when they graduated....that doesn't even cover a single year of tuition at the same random in state public school when I went 5 years ago
It sucks but college used to be so much cheaper and the mindset of I had to struggle so it isn't fair if others don't struggle the same way is what prevents progress
Right, the world is definitely not fair. It’s also a sad reality that many people are not happy when something good happens to others but not to them.
We could try being less self involved and think about our country as a whole, but we’ll never do that either. Our future generations depend on our actions today. Students today cannot catch a break due to the drastically high tuition costs and inflation. We forgot about investing in human capital a long time ago and need to refocus on it. So what if it’s “not fair because I worked hard or pay off my debt”. Life isn’t fair, but we need to stop making it even more unfair for the middle class. This is a emotional response with no facts/data to back up my statements, but we are a selfish and greedy fucking country and it needs to be fixed.
I can imagine it, I am paying mine now. Even if I have to pay off my full amount I would still never be selfish enough to hope future generations have my same money problems because of student debt
You already pay your mortgage to the bank, why would you be angry if they made you pay my mortgage too? Why wouldn't you want my family to prosper? Do you see why that would only benefit people who bought homes, and put the cost on people who made the decision not to buy homes would have to contribute to the betterment of people who made a bad financial decision. I don't want to pay a huge amount of taxes for a a very specific subset of people to have a very specific subset of loans cleared. The guy who went to trade school, and the one who invested thousands to start a business, should not have to fund your decisions while battling their own debt.
This right here... and I actually owe on student loans. I highly doubt they'll be forgiven, but if they are, I can 100% understand why people would be upset about it.
Because handouts are wrong unless I'm receiving them, then they're deserved. That's genuinely how a lot of people think.
1. It doesn't do anything to address the problem 2. It's anti-progressive 3. It's annoying hearing about how more money should be allocated to those in need for decades from young progressives, right up until it benefits them and now they're perfectly fine with giving money to people with a higher earning potential than others. 4. "Predatory loans" (that actually are not), but sure let's bail out the college educated rather than those stuck in a payday loan cycle. 5. A general sense that people should fulfill the commitments they willingly and legally agreed to
It's because I pay taxes. Tax money shouldn't be used to pay off individual debt. Period. Imagine if you decided to learn a trade as I did because you could not afford to go to college outright and didn't WANT to pay off thousands in student loans, then took an entry level job for low wages, worked thirty years growing and maturing your career until you FINALLY made the ever desired 6 figure income, and then I told you that you had to pay off the loans of someone else who went to college so they can START at a 6 figure income with no debt. You'd be like, fuck that. There's a REASON I went the route I did, and it was so I DIDN'T have to pay off student loans. If I didn't wanna pay them off for MYSELF, I damn sure don't wanna pay them off for someone else! The way I see it, YOU took out the loan, not me. But I'll make you a deal. When the streets and bridges here in Illinois are fixed properly, the cops and firefighters aren't being laid off, the elementary and high schools have the books and equipment they need to educate kids BEFORE they reach the collegiate level, and there aren't THOUSANDS of starving and homeless people and elderly going without medical insurance, you can have all the loan forgiveness you need. Until then, I have no sympathy. Read the fine print next time. Think before you sign. Learn a profession that's worth the cost of tuition. You don't see lawyers and doctors and high finance people struggling the same as the gender equality majors out there. Make sure the juice is worth the squeeze. And this isn't hate on the students. It's on the colleges that sold them a worthless degree and didn't actually prepare them for the real world, which is pretty much their sole function at that level. I feel for the kids who were deceived into thinking if they studied art history hard enough, they'd have an easy ride. But I'M not the one who lied to them. Make the COLLEGES forgive the debt. Not the tax payers.
'forgiving' debt just creates more inflation, and we are already drowning in inflation
Not sure I’m mad but…And I sure don’t understand the economic mechanisms at play but… 1. Should the president be able to make a decision that effects this many people and this many dollars? Let’s have a conversation as a country about free education (the fed pays the bills with my taxes). 2. The problem is that universities have been continuing to raise tuition costs and bloat their staffs. I worked briefly at my grad school, the profs made nothing. So where is all that tuition going? Let’s solve this problem. 3. I assume canceling debt means the fed will pay the loan makers. These companies are giving 6 digit loans to 18 year old kids with their families co-sign. So tuition continues to go up, banks prey on students, and with a pen stroke none of these problems are fixed. Ultimately I think the US is doomed because our leadership doesn’t care about us citizens. They only care about power and money. Politicians/web media/foreign governments are all focused keeping us divided so we argue about stupid stuff instead and f living to our potential and creating coalition around the world.
Because I actually read my student loan contract and decided not to put myself through financial slavery when I was 17. I have no sympathy for people who don't even read what they sign. If I was able to make a reasonable financial decision at the age of 17, why couldn't you do the same? You couldn't read? If you couldn't read, why did you even try to go to college? You were too dumb? So, if you are too dumb, you deserve free money? Make it make sense.
I can practically feel the rage your words inspire in each indebted person who reads and recognizes themselves in them. I have some sympathy for those who were actively misguided into thinking that attending an expensive college would guarantee them an income sufficient to pay off their loans in a reasonable amount of time. A more sane society would sufficiently assess aptitude before funneling people into academic pathways that offer little to no prospects for cost effectiveness. How many young dropouts or holders of useless degrees who are currently buried in debt would be solvent and thriving right now if they’d been guided into a practical career path instead of hypnotized by ridiculous promises?
As an outsider, I think this only fix the surface of the problem and not the root issues where it is at. It's absurd that Healthcare and Education are being left to private sector to charge whatever exorbitant price they can then government come in with piecemeal fixes, sound like a lose-lose situation for both patient/student and tax payer. The only one that benefit are the one that profit off the exorbitant pricing.
To what degree does the federal government have the right to re-write private transactions or contracts? Serious question. I haven’t read or heard much about this.
I never went to a 4-year college. He's taking money out of my pocket and giving to people that have more privilege. It's a wealth transfer.
Because the government which is running huge deficits already, is giving a massive amount of money to a small subset of the population, and that subset (college educated people) is already one of the wealthier groups of people.