Agree with your last sentence. When taking out a student loan, the student had all the information necessary to make an informed decision. They knew the term, amount, interest rate, etc. They also are able to research the average starting salary of their degree from their college. If the government wants to subsidize a portion of future tuition, I could potentially get on board. But, they made their bed...
It doesn't have to be fair, but it can't be a monster windfall. I support 0% interest so people can get out from under the debt. I support future government funding of education. What I don't believe in is a lack of accountability.
Isn't there an economic argument to be made about loan forgiveness, too? There are currently millions of college grads paying loans off decades after they graduated. Isn't there a viewpoint that says that we've created a barrier to broader economic success by imposing such insane interest rates on student loans? These are people who are not able to buy houses, cars or pump money into the economy because they are stuck in the vice grip of outrageous student loans, sometimes owing more in interest than their original tuition, and working in jobs that haven't given out meaningful raises in 20 years (broadly speaking about wage growth here). It doesn't seem to make a lot of holistic sense to say "Oh well, them's the breaks" when that money could be going to areas of the economy that do a lot more to generate wealth on a familial and societal level. I knew a lot of people who graduated around 2009 after the economic crash. They were unable to get meaningful entry-level employment for a very long time, but their loans came due immediately after graduation. Yes, the students knew the terms of the loan they agreed to four years prior. But, they didn't know the job market would be the worst the country had seen in decades upon graduation. They were behind the 8-ball from the moment they threw their cap into the air at commencement. At least we have younger folks driving this discussion. It's tiring to hear Boomers speak about their part-time summer jobs that covered $75/semester tuition bill and off-campus apartments when they have had not any clue about what's been happening to higher education in the last 30 years.
I thought that at first too but not now. It isn’t going to get votes in the Midwest and fly over states and that is where Democrats need votes.
We can strongly disagree with the policy but I think it's clear that it's a genuinely held position from Warren seeing as she has expressed a desire to eliminate most student loan debt for a while now.
No - the difference here is that you're rewarding / punishing decisions that were considered equal. People had the option to work their way through school or get loans, and how quickly to pay them back. Now you're retroactively telling one group that we'll reward their decision. The people that chose work vs loans are now disadvantaged for no actual good reason. It goes against any basic sense of societal fairness. In the examples you gave, there are different time periods and thus different groups of people involved. It would be stupid to take two people sentenced for weed and tell one of them later on that, because you had weed in your apartment instead of your house, you're free. Or if the GI bill said "if you chose the Navy, you get benefits. Army? Nothing."
Good point, but maybe it's to win the party's nomination, not necessarily a good tacit for the big dance.
I think she just genuinely holds these positions. She's an ideological individual who has put plenty of thought over her decades of experience as a professor and senator on these policies. Nothing wrong with disagreeing with positions but sometimes people have genuine desires for policy that aren't meant to pander.
Yea, as a millennial who is extremely aggressively paying off their student loans I very much do not support a loan "forgiveness" program. I think the cost of education is outrageous and needs to be curbed but yea, I cannot stomach screwing over everyone who sacrificed to pay their debts the last 20 or so years.
Ya, we definitely should have never enacted programs like the GI Bill. It screws over the former veterans who had to work their ass off to pay for college. We should also never decriminalize weed because it screws over the people who had to serve hard time over it. We shouldn't have ceased slavery because it isn't fair to those who had to suffer a lifetime of enslavement. We shouldn't have ever enacted women's suffrage because it screws over the women before them who never we're allowed to vote their entire lives.
Dude, everyone has read your lame GI bill argument. The GI bill has been around off and on since just after WWII. In various forms or fashions. Long before the explosion in the cost of college tuition. Is there any evidence some veterans have paid huge educational costs and others haven't? Or is that only in your head? If, I was a veteran who paid $100,000.00 to get my education, hamstringing my finances for years, and then shortly thereafter a the government totally made it free without any consideration for me, yes, I would resent that.
Um, how about, like, all his other points? Do you ever try to fix something if it's not fair to those who suffered the unfixed version?
The student loan debt fiasco is another example of government feel good policies that blow up in the final results along the lines of increasing home ownership and regulating healthcare. Why did educational prices skyrocket? Mainly due to the ability for a student to get nearly unlimited funds for expenses beyond school which led to a huge increase in the demand for education without addressing the supply of education available. (Sound like healthcare?) Because student loans are guaranteed by the government, private banks make loans and they're processed by Navient/Sallie Mae. Now the perverse part is that if a student defaults, a bank gets their money and then Navient/Sallie Mae makes a fee to go after the student for non-payment. They make more money on poor loans. There is no component in terms of grades, no component in terms of incentives for the students to work. Now let's invert the situation. Who has Benefited? Tenured professors, school administrators and bureaucrats. You have these tenured professors teaching 6 hours a week supplanted by low wage adjuncts and school administrators growing in salary and number. It's a terribly inefficient system. Harvard and Oxford were great finishing schools for the children of wealthy people that need to have wide ranging conversations at dinner parties but that isn't the system that a poor kid with debt should be learning about. I'm hoping many in the future will realize that education comes not from college but from learning and employers are less focused on conventional education and more on the actual skills. I'm hoping many people forego college as a terrible investment which leads to harsh deflation in costs and the firing of many of these overpaid and underworked professors and school admins.
I think he added a couple after I responded. Do I need to respond to the idiotic slavery/suffrage analogies? Clearly, voluntarily taking out a loan is not a "wrong" anyone has suffered akin to slavery/denial of the right to vote - it is a freely made financial decision. The decision is much more akin to a decision to get an auto or home loan. We all have to drive and live somewhere right? Let's pay off everyone's auto loans, let's pay off everyone's home loans.
Very silly argument. I’ll add one to fchowds list We should have never discovered antibiotics as it’s super unfair to all those who died beforehand to bacterial diseases
GPA is definitely taken into account in student loan applications. Is GPA taken into account enough? Probably not and it is a valid crticism. Banks do accept loan applications too easily for students who don't have the motivation and drive to excel. I've said it before, the supply side of education, as you refer it, should be dictated by academic merit rather than money. The barrier to become a doctor or engineer or accountant etc should not be whether you were born into parents who could help ease your burden of over the top costs for higher education but rather how well you performed accademically. Does that mean colleges should be more restrictive in who are accepted to certain programs? Seeing as there is a 70% national drop put rate for engineering programs accords the nation, yes, too many kids get accepted to programs that they don't belong in. Education shouldn't be a part of a free market supply and demand curve. Education according to our founders was the great equalizer. It is one of if not the most important tool that theoretically allows a child of poor laborers to be financially be successful aka the American dream. Limiting that tool based on free market principles is only going to create a glorified caste system in the long run.
A child doesn't have a right to a auto loan. A child doesn't have a right to a 5 bedroom suburban apartment. They can earn that from the hard work they did to earn a living that allows them to be financially responsible enough to take out those loans. Higher education is one of those methods where a citizen can eventually be one day successful enough to take out that home loan and auto loan. A child should have the right to pursue becoming an engineer or doctor without the fear of having to pay off debt for 20 years. The ONLY barrier that should be in place in a modern developed nation for a child to pursue a high skilled proffesion is their drive to excel in their education and craft.
As well thought out as comparing student loans to auto and home loans. And arguing from the point of hey I was screwed so everybody else should be too. College education prepares humans for skilled careers. The value skilled workers bring to the country is not really comparable to a object like a car or house.
