This would save young Americans from going into crippling debt, but it would also make a university degree completely unaffordable for most. However, in the age of the Internet, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t get an education.
Consider the long term impact of this. There are a lot of different ways such a situation could go, for better and for worse.
I think student loans are a symptom of the problem. But not the problem itself. The problem is that college is so incredibly unaffordable for many American students. If higher education wasn’t so absurdly expensive, many students could take out fewer loans.
The loans are not just a symptom. Is probably the main cause of current college prices. Prices would not be so high if students would not be given money to pay them.
They are the cause for the high tuition. I don’t have it on me, but I saw a graph showing that when Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy, the prices for tuition positively skyrocketed.
when Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy
That’s a curious way to describe Republican-led, bipartisan legislation with where Biden was one of 18 Democratic votes in the Senate.
While he didn’t do it by himself, his support was critical in getting it passed:
He was still only a single yes vote on a bill that only 25 Democrats voted against, and it most certainly was not his bill.
The original claim was “Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy.” You can argue that Biden could have or should have done more on the topic but attributing this solely to him is just ridiculous, and that’s before delving into the reasons why a senator with a reputation for working across the aisle and building consensus might strategically accept provisions he doesn’t really like in a bill in order to achieve other, higher priorities.
I had edited my post to add that he didn’t do it himself but was critical in getting in passed. Perhaps you started your reply before my edit.
I would have settled for him having done less in getting it passed. Your version of what happened or may have happened is way too charitable to Biden. He was known for being very friendly to banks and credit card companies, as a Senator from Delaware would be inclined to be, considering that Delaware is home to many of those types of businesses.
He was known for being very friendly to banks and credit card companies, as a Senator from Delaware would be inclined to be, considering that Delaware is home to many of those types of businesses.
Is it? Visa is in San Francisco, Discover is in Illinois, and Mastercard and Amex are in New York.
JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley are in New York. Bank of America is in Charlotte. Wells Fargo is in San Francisco. Those are the nation’s six largest banks. Delaware doesn’t make an appearance until #94 on the biggest bank list.
Delaware is a popular state for essentially paperwork, due primarily to its efficient and well-established Chancery Court, but it’s not really a major player in the banking industry. There aren’t a many people or businesses in Delaware involved in banking beyond the local branch stuff in every community.
It’s just especially juicy since now he’s president when the cows have come home.
Senator from DE wanted loans not to be dischargeable in BK…
Biden didn’t do that. It’s been that way for a long time.
That seems valid. I think at least part of the problem is culture. Millennials were taught that college is a necessary stepping stone to a superior job, which it was in previous generations, but not so much nowadays.
I’m from a country with free university education and we also have student loans available.
Here’s something that works for us: forget about private universities, invest in federal or state owned collages so that they can compete with the private ones.
Do a scholarship program where students can get free entry into these universities if their grades are high enough in high school, or make it dependent on an entry exam. Those that don’t get in have a paid option that’s still partially funded by the state or federal government.
Student loans will still be useful, not for tuition but for families who can’t afford to send their kids to study in the cities where the universities are located.
The sad part about relying on scholarships is that disadvantaged kids are much less likely to have excellent grades. These people need school more than anyone else. The system works backwards.
Exactly this. I grew up poor and didn’t have a quiet place to study. My grades suffered greatly as a result, and a number of other reasons. I needed education for upward mobility.
After struggling to get an education, finally in my 30s I eas able to get out of poverty.
That’s a fair point, where I live we have a point system for entry and you get the majority of your points through your grades. You also get points if you’re economically disadvantaged and some other factors like certain disabilities, if I remember correctly.
It seems from the outside that a systematic change would indeed be a good idea, not something that would just help the poor but address the root cause of why people become poor in the first place.
I personally believe that society in general should be healthy and educated. If your citizens aren’t sick and/or dumb, there’s a higher likelihood of the country as a whole having a better economy with a higher quality of life. Besides, it’s just good for humanity to treat sick people and educate those who are trying to contribute to society.
I don’t believe that there should be an individual cost for these items. I don’t think that a rich person should be healthy while a poor person remains sick or worse. I also don’t think that a rich person should have a great education while a poor person stays held back from not being able to afford school. In my opinion, this economic disparity doesn’t make sense.
It does make sense that a rich person might live in a large house while a poor person lives in a quaint apartment, or a rich person has a PlayStation while a poor person may not have one. In the US, your health and your education is in the same market as PlayStations. To me, this doesn’t make sense at all.
Ah yes, let’s make getting an accredited degree something only the wealthy can afford, that’ll do well for the working class you betcha.
Class mobility is stagnant enough, I truly cannot see any upside to this for the vast majority of people.
Shoulda been illegal/actually regulate, in the first place. Removing restrictions on raising tuition was also another lame move.
This is a horrible idea.
Generally oppose.
We would need massive structural changes in education and funding before banning student debt; you’d need to make university free, and give students a living stipend while they were there, as loans usually cover living expenses as well. I can’t see that happening in the current political climate. So if we simply outlawed educational loans, the effect would be that millions of people would no longer have access to higher education at all.
The idea that you can learn things on the internet ignores the fact that the internet is rife with misinformation–i.e., bullshit and outright lies–and it allowed people to get into thought bubbles, which higher education fights against pretty effectively.
I want to add:
Most books have never been digitized. Most information that you would learn in college is still in books and not on the Internet. You can’t replace access to information (and reading that information) in college with lack of access to information (and thus not reading that information) online.
In addition, the Internet doesn’t give you access to passionate subject-matter experts who are necessary guides to help us travel down the path of acquiring the knowledge that they have. Sure, there’s recordings of MOOC lectures, but they become outdated and you can’t ask them questions or have them help you by giving useful assignments and answer your questions and give you constructive criticism.
If higher education is going to work we would do better to pay those experts (the poor teachers) a fair living wage so that they can focus on the quality of their teaching and not be desperately trying to survive and navigate departmental politics while hoping that bureaucratic administrators don’t cut the library budget (again) while dumping money into a new football field (why is sports part of college anyway? Why can’t there be a separate and unrelated sports-academy system for the sports people so that it’s impossible to misappropriate from academic budgets in favor of sports?).
Totally agree.
In addition, the Internet doesn’t give you access to passionate subject-matter expert
You can find them on Discord servers, message boards, and YouTube channels. But knowing who is actually an SME, and who has a great line of believable bullshit, is quite challenging. In a university system, you have a group of peers that are making that determination.
Ban, no. Cap, maybe. Completely overhaul, yes.
- Any school that receives any public funds should make school completely free to all students with a permanent address in that constituency. If my tax money is going to a school, I shouldn’t have to pay tuition for my kids to go there.
- Students who graduate and are not offered (or are laid off or fired without cause from) a job that provides them sufficient pay and benefits to get them to 300% of the local poverty level should be forgiven each month’s payment for as long as they are in that state. Not deferred or paused, forgiven.
- Anyone who graduates and takes a job with a federal, state, or local governmental entity or nonprofit organization should likewise have their student loan payment forgiven for every month they are employed.
- Anyone who takes a K12 teaching position after graduation should have their student loans forgiven at a rate of one year’s worth of payments per month of teaching.
- Student loan forgiveness should be taxed at 0% in every state and nationally.
- Student loans should be capped at a total value that would limit repayment to 10 years, while allowing a student to maintain an income after repayment of 300% of the poverty line during that time. After reaching the cap, if the student is more than 50% complete with their degree, they should be permitted to complete that degree.
- Students who do not graduate, or who change their major partially through the program, should be able to apply the value of tuition already paid, adjusted for inflation, toward eventually returning to school; or pass that credit on to a child or other family member.
This is just off-the-cuff; I haven’t thought about the implications of all of these. But I think it would help significantly.
Completely nonsensical and screws everyone involved.
Student loans are supposed to be an investment the government takes in its population. If it works properly then the money that the government spent on the students tuition is both paid back monetarily by the student as well as societally because now you have an educated citizen providing ever increasing tax revenue. If you make student loans illegal you not only make it impossible for students to educate themselves beyond public school you destroy the entire post secondary school industry now that so few can afford to educate themselves.
What needs to happen is cutting out all the middleman bullshit and just making post secondary education free with your taxes, at least a couple years worth. If someone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or someone who needs to have more than a couple years worth then sure that can be on their dime. Otherwise those first 4 years are just unnecessarily saddling people with mountains of debt that there is no guarantee they can pay back after they are done
I hate capitalist economics, but the ease of obtaining student loans is one of the reasons for the high price of college tuition.
If student loans didn’t exist, then most people would not be paying outrageous tuitions. Colleges will be forced to accomodate.
Canada recently stopped charging interest on their student loans, that goes a long way to affordability. The other thing though is just plain cost of education. It can be cheaper to get a 4-year degree from a Canadian University than take one year of a comparable program in the US.
And yet as a Canadian I know a lot of people who did not persue higher education because it’s too expensive to do so. Only the rich can afford a “good” education.
The ease of student loans would not exist without government backing. In a pure capitalism, this wouldn’t be a problem.
There’s no such thing as capitalism without a state. It cannot exist.
Yeah. Anarchy doesn’t work. No argument there. But the blame for exorbitant college tuition lies with the state, not with capitalism.
I can agree that it lies with the state, but that doesn’t absolve capitalism. It’s the capitalist state, and we shouldn’t separate the two.
Most of the activities of the state happen to be anti-capitalist though.
So… Yes. We can separate the two because if the state ceased it’s anti-capitalist activities, this wouldn’t be a problem.
I feel the same way about that as I do about making ALL education - K through 16 (or tech/vocational) FREE.
I am all for it. We have way too many stupid people shoving their voices in matters that don’t concern them. Educated would be better.
You may know everything, but no degree no luck?
Why not think a but further? Money for people that need it, free universities? Like… in the EU?
What issue are you looking to solve? You state that you believe people are able to seek out, and attain their education independently through resources like the internet. So why would it matter if there are alternatives that cost money which one can pay, and receive loans for?
It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. Loans exist to allow the poor to “keep up with the Joneses” for a few years and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives. If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.
It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. […] If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.
I completely agree that our favoring of, or requiring of post-secondary degrees for employement is an important cultural issue. I don’t agree, however, that the solution is to make the provision of loans illegal – illegalization is rarely anything else than a band-aid on top of a gaping wound. An argument could be made that the government provision of student loans should be stopped (in countries where that occurs e.g. Canada), but I don’t think the solution is to simply make all student loans illegal.
and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives.
Hm, that is an assumption. There’s a few issues with that statement. The total cost of one’s loans are directly related to the cost of the post-secondary institution that they decide to attend. There is little reason to go to a very expensive institution. I do understand that some employers are elitist in that they won’t hire anybody outside of an ivy league school, but I would wager that that issue is not very prevalent – the free market should take up the slack. Furthermore, one’s ability to get out of such debt is related to the income that they expect from employment after attaining their degree, as well as their level of monetary responsibility, and savviness. If one decides to blindly go into student debt for studies that will offer little in return, that is one’s own risk to take. You must also not forget that there is no requirement that one must do white-collar work. Trades do not require such degrees, and are just as well-paying, if not better.
In my country loans are interest free. This makes them easy to pay off with destroying your life. You can also pause payments with no issue.
with destroying your life
(͡•_ ͡• )
Sounds like he means work
Loans can’t be free in a capitalist society. No one would offer them.
I presume that anywhere where interest-free loans are offered, they are offered by that country’s government. Canada, for example, as of April 1st 2023, offers federal student loans interest-free. Depending on the province, some may not have interest on provincial loans, as well.
That’s the only way it makes any sense.
Better solution would be a cap on tuition imo.
But even no interest loans or at the very least let them be discharged in bankruptcy would be better than what we have.
It’s not the tuition, it’s the funding being cut by the states that’s the problem (for public universities). States used to fund universities significantly more than they do now.
It’s not the tuition? The same tuition that has risen 70% in the last 20 years? The same tuition that colleges know they can charge any amount cuz the government will give out loans regardless. That’s not the issue?
I’m not saying colleges aren’t getting less state funding but I just don’t see colleges lowering tuition if they got more state funding. They’d keep charging more cuz they know they can.
Health insurance first please.
