I'm actually in shock about how much negativity there is coming from democrats about

[peoli]

Cancelling student loan debt. It's actually making me sick. The nonchalant sacrasam about it on this message board shows a level of ignorance I've never experienced in my entire 30 years of voting for democrats. The attitude that you paid yours off and so everyone else should be able to as well and if they can't they should suffer in poverty for eternity is pure and utter ignorance. It's pathetic and disheartening and makes me want to vomit 🤮🤮
Poverty is a social issue that we as a party have always tried to remedy in various ways but when it comes to cancelling student loan debt some of you have blinders on. And to be angry about it also?....as if the people in debt are your enemy? Give me a god damn break. Seriously.

That's all I have to say about it.

[applegrove]

1. The cost of university has shot through the roof this generation. They

need relief.

[dalton99a]

4. +1. The overhead is obscene - layer upon fucking layer of vice deans and useless paper pushers

[SoonerPride]

2. Because I disagree with canceling student debt by fiat

I don’t think it can be done that way.

[lagomorph777]

36. I think the discussion is actually about debt relief.

"Cancelling debt" would not happen. Especially considering that President Biden is from Delaware, home of all the banks.

[SoonerPride]

38. No, if you look at the OPs prior post, it was about Biden simply writing off all student debt by EO

That's not debt reform.

see: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215527617

It is sheer nonsense.

[lagomorph777]

40. The OP didn't accurately describe Biden's proposal; agreed.

Did make a valid point that many DUers seem opposed to any debt relief, but could have stated it more clearly. I imagine debt relief more like some combination of working it off, banning usurious interest and back-interest, and (of course) some Federal sweetening for the lenders to buy them off.

[SoonerPride]

41. All of which I could support. But an EO simply writing off billions is patently ridculous.

I don't think it is possible.

Nor prudent.

What economic relief or concession do you give to the millions who did not go to college?

This would engender greater animosity from those who did not go to college and incur debt.

[lagomorph777]

42. Nobody ever proposed that (aside from the OP).

And Biden's from Delaware; he would definitely never propose it.

[SoonerPride]

44. Right. But this thread complains about the negativity of DUers in reply to the prior post of an EO

....an EO to erase all student debt is idiotic and should be met with derision and scorn.

Bad ideas should be called bad ideas.

Full stop.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. To me it's mostly a problem of messaging ... 'cancelling' is a dumb framing to use

esp. in the current climate. Much like 'free college' was dumb, and so was 'medicare for all'.

People like words like 'reform', or 'relief', not 'cancellation' and 'free'.

Same ideas, different words, different public perception.

Frankly I think we should start out with something like an 'Interest Holiday'.

And perhaps 'Hardship Credits' for times if people are out of work.

[elias7]

10. Kind of like "defund" rather than "reform" the police

[Hugh_Lebowski]

12. Another good example, yes! (nt)

[tirebiter]

5. Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Could Wipe Out Debt for 15 Million Borrowers

More than a third of federal borrowers could see their balances fall to zero with $10,000 in debt cancellation.

This sounds pretty substantial to me. Use it or lose it.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-could-wipe-out-debt-for-15-million-borrowers

[Hoyt]

6. People in poverty can easily get out of repaying a federally backed student

loan. Federal loans are over 90% of student loans.mLet’s at least be honest.

https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/repayment/plans/income-driven

If that were not true, I’d agree with you. I would like to see the rate of annual repayment — as a percentage of discretionary income — reduced.

If somehow student loans are forgiven tomorrow, I won’t get angry.

However, I think we have better use for that money than forgiving loans to doctors, lawyers, and others that earn a decent income and can afford to pay back 5% or so of their income after basic living expenses. Those in poverty or really struggling, forgive the loans or I will get ticked.

Biden is on right track.

[GoodRaisin]

8. Great post and research. K&R. nt

[MichMan]

7. Where is the discussion on why it is so expensive in the first place and how to fix it?

No one wants to talk about that

Just wait and see how expensive it becomes when students and parents aren't responsible for paying for it themselves.

[summer_in_TX]

9. Our federal and state governments used to understand that investing in education

gave back more than put in. An educated population earns more money, is more productive, and pays more back in due to higher wages and higher taxes.

The portion government invested in my college education in the early 1970's was by far the majority of the cost. Over the last decades states have withdrawn most of their investment in the education of our students.

To survive colleges and universities began raising prices. They had guaranteed income before, it's now less certain.

Our students are entering into indentured servitude for decades to pay for college loans. They don't have money to move out of their parents houses sometimes, or to qualify to own a home even if they have a career. They're told that they need to get a college degree for a decent job / life. The stats do show that college degree is helpful but it isn't the be all end all now.

But we've lost sight of the public good investing in the education of our population provides. The creativity, inventiveness, and productivity of those years when education was invested in was incomparable.

[MichMan]

11. Investing in colleges to make tuition way cheaper would be very popular

Instead, it appears that we would rather let colleges charge whatever they want and rake in $$$$ while we talk abut debt forgiveness on the student side.

I understand that red states would stop investing in educations, but I don't see tuition is any cheaper in blue states either.

[summer_in_TX]

65. It worked well for my generation (Boomer).

I graduated with no debt.

[ProfessorGAC]

24. Good Point

I looked this up.
Since my last year of undergrad (1976), college tuition has gone up 5.15% per year, with an explosion over the last 25 years of nearly 6.7% per year.
Inflation over that same time period averaged 3.9% annually. But, over the last 25 years only about 2.5%.
So, when inflation was averaging nearly 5%, college tuition was going up at 4.4%. But, when inflation was 2.5, tuition went up 2.7 times that!
The question is why.
Why would tuition so radically outpace inflation for more than 2 decades?
That appears to be the root cause of student loan issues.

[JHB]

27. Would appreciate your opinion on this article, Prof

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/05/why-does-college-cost-so-much

Why does college cost so much?
By Paul Campos / On May 30, 2021 / At 8:51 am


***
So why has the cost of college gone up so much, during an era when public subsidies for college have increased on a real dollar per student basis, overall per-instructor faculty compensation has declined sharply, and the degree premium has been transformed into essentially a statistical illusion, driven as it is by declining wages among non-graduates, rather than rising wages among those with degrees?

***

(1) A huge increase in the amount of money that’s being spent on administration. While over the past 40 years the size of university faculties has increased more slowly than student enrollment, the sheer number of university administrators has increased far faster than the student population. On top of this, while compensation for faculty has stagnated or declined, as salaries for full time faculty have barely kept pace with inflation, and more and more formerly full time positions have been filled by low-paid adjuncts, compensation for upper administration has exploded.

***

(2) Closely related to (1), the upper administration of universities has become its own world, increasingly cut off from if not actively hostile to the faculties it is overseeing. As a rough generalization, prior to the 1980s or so, American universities were run by their own faculties: the top administrators were typically drawn from an institution’s faculty, and they would usually rotate back into regular faculty positions after a time.

***

(3) All this, of course, means that the people running American universities have to be positively obsessed with increasing revenue, in order to pay for all this resume-enhancing growth. For example, the annual expendable endowment income of my alma mater, the University of Michigan, is now equivalent, in constant inflation-adjusted dollars, to what was the combined total annual expendable endowment income of all the nation’s 1,497 public colleges and universities when I was an undergraduate 40 years ago. (During this time Michigan’s endowment has grown from $115 million to $12.5 billion).

***

Perhaps I'm being overly selective in the parts I'm quoting, but administrative bloat, "keeping up with the corporate executives" syndrome, and careerism and counterproductive incentives for administrators is a much bigger part of it than usually gets talked about. It certainly ain't adjunct professors working "gig academic" jobs causing ballooning costs.

[dalton99a]

43. +1. College administrators screwing the public in their quest to imitate corporate CEOs

[ProfessorGAC]

51. See Post #50

My basic opinion is that colleges have been taken over by people that don't realize that their basic function is not to maximize revenues & profits.
The article seems to reinforce my concern.

[MichMan]

30. As fast as tuition went up, students just kept taking out bigger loans

Colleges had little downside for increased tuition as students kept borrowing more and more to pay for it. At some point, it just becomes like monopoly money.

Students are not blameless victims however. In many cases, any amount of internet research would show that average salaries in their field of study would make borrowing excessive amounts at high cost 4 year colleges a poor return on investment.

Colleges will only start cutting costs to attend when enrollment starts plummeting; until then it's full steam ahead.

[ProfessorGAC]

50. My Only Pushback

Supply & demand theory should not apply to not for profit organizations.
"What the market will bear" is a construct related to maximizing profit. While you may be correct about this, that doesn't let the colleges off the hook for following an economic model that should not apply.
I agree on the failure of some students to not better explore earning potential when choosing a school, and insufficient exploration of lower cost options. (Does one really need to go to Vanderbilt or Northwestern to become a history teacher, for instance.)
All that said, it's doubtful you or I had to explore the cost/return model when we entered school. (Unless you're much younger than me.)
I honestly didn't know what a lab chemist made until I got my internship my last semester. But, I wasn't borrowing money, let alone huge sums of it, to get through school.
So, I'm still not letting colleges off the hook for rampant tuition inflation.

[MichMan]

52. Well, I took out student loans and went at night after working all day

Took me several years to earn my Mechanical Engineering degree that way.

That student loan was the best investment I ever made.

[ProfessorGAC]

53. Did You Have To Do A Cost/Benefit?

My last year of undergrad was '76. And, the companies I worked for paid for the advanced degrees.
So, I didn't need to do a cost/benefit analysis, and for the advanced stuff, that was their money, so their analysis.
But, the last 25 years the analysis is mandatory, although we agree too many don't consider it.

[MichMan]

55. Well, I choose a high paying major and was working at slightly over min. wage at the time

Wasn't too hard to figure out the loans were worth it.

[ProfessorGAC]

59. Of Course!

Makes perfect sense.
Most of the engineers I knew were ChemE, EE, & IE. Several had MS degrees specializing in areas like fluid dynamics, heat transfer, regulatory affairs, safety systems, environmental, etc.
I didn't know any MEs or EEs with an advanced degree. Probably a result of the operating environment.
But, all of them were well paid. If the younger ones were carrying loans, they never said anything. Maybe all very manageable.

[Grasswire2]

13. why not give those who paid theirs off a big fat tax credit?

Allow the economy a double boost. Cancel student loans, and give a credit to those paid theirs off by themselves.

Everybody's happy then. Tax revenue takes a hit, but the boost to the economy would more than compensate.

[Blue Dawn]

14. Totally agree.

My son owes $240,000 in student loan debt for his PharmD degree. He makes an excellent salary but will be making large payments the rest of his life.

The attitude that "I had tp pay my student loans so why shouldnt everyone else?" sounds like something a Republican would say. It is a disgusting attitude. We live in a far different world today than when I attended college and accrued my own student loan debt. i was able to make very reasonable monthly payments, even on my moderate salary, and I was able to pay them off.

Tuition costs are soaring. My children and my nieces will possibly spend the rest of their lives with student loan debt hanging over their heads. Yet, I havent heard one of them complain about this issue. Not one of them is an entitled person who expects a handout from anyone, least of all from the government. Each of them felt lucky to be able to pursue a college education, and the high cost of attaining their education was simply an accepted part of the deal.

As a mother, I was excited when I heard that there might be $50,000 of student loan forgiveness. What an incredible help this would be to thousands of students in our country.

And just to let you know, my son attended community college his first two years in order to keep his loan expenses as low as possible. I am so incredibly proud of him. He worked incredibly hard to achieve his degree. I only wish that I were in a position financially to help relieve him of a lot of his student loan debt.

I must say that I am surprised that any Democrat would begrudge a student such assistance.
.

[peoli]

15. This x 1,000,000

The attitude that "I had tp pay my student loans so why shouldnt everyone else?" sounds like something a Republican would say. It is a disgusting attitude.

[Scrivener7]

60. How about those who are poor, didn't go to college and are working jobs that don't provide an

excellent salary. Why do we think it is better to give a break to the guy who has the great salary and the great prospects, rather than to the one with the low salary and limited prospects?

I'm not against tuition loan breaks, but to say objections to it are simply jealousy or "got my own", or whatever, is nonsense.

A wipeout of your son's loans is a transfer of wealth from lower income to higher income people.

[peoli]

17. Sorry but that's just plain jealousy

[USALiberal]

58. No, plain fucking unfair! Nt

[peoli]

61. You think people buried in student loan debt aren't also working their asses off?

[USALiberal]

63. Yes they are, i'm fine with them getting their loans removed and the one who paid it money back!

[Withywindle]

19. It's necessary. The younger generations are being destroyed by this economically

I'm 52. I went to college in the late 80s and early 90s. I had student loans and I did pay them off (there was some garnishing involved, I never did have a big enough income to do it easily, and that hurt me but I'm just glad they're gone, and they were gone before I turned 40, for which I'm grateful)

College tuitions have SKYROCKETED since then. Even an in-state public college now costs what an expensive private college cost when I was young.

I have friends in their 30s who have a loan weight equivalent to the price of a gigantic house. Interest rates are so jacked up that they can pay the original capital twice over and STILL owe. They will never be able to pay it off even though they have good jobs. They will live long lives earning a respectable middle-class income and this debt will likely still outlive them.

The rates are extortion. Young people are told they MUST do this to get ahead at all, even though a BA today doesn't mean much.

Yes, I had loans that I paid off. And yes, I absolutely want forgiveness for everyone still struggling. The entire economy suffers when two whole generations have so much of their income tied up in paying yet more money to fucking BANKS, rather than being able to spend that money in their communities. Widespread paralyzing debt isn't good for anyone but Wall Street.

[USALiberal]

21. I 100% agree! Pay them also! Nt

[hatrack]

26. I worked my ass off through college and ended up w. minimal debt which I paid . . .

And I wouldn't resent wiping the slate at all.

Which is better, tens of millions of Americans smothered in debt that they can never, ever, ever discharge, and which will take decades to pay off, or that my sense of "fairness" be soothed and cultivated?

You know what's not fair? Apple and Amazon and FedEx and Nike and SalesForce and Duke Energy and ADM paying zero federal corporate income taxes.

You know what's not fair? An entire political party dedicated to the proposition that the same companies should never, ever have to pay taxes again.

You know what's not fair? Toxic, broken, leaking water systems in cities like Flint Michigan and Jackson Mississippi.

You know what's not fair? 100s of emergency cleanup workers getting cancer and dying after working to clean up a massive TVA coal ash spill after contractors didn't supply PPE, telling them that it was perfectly safe to spend all day working in toxic sludge.

[Lemon Lyman]

48. :-)

Great post!

Great name too. If it's from THE NICE GUYS it REALLY tickles me!

[hatrack]

49. Actually, it's H.L. Mencken - short story from the 1920s

It was a test case for the First Amendment and obscenity laws.

[Marrah_Goodman]

62. We have to start somewhere

We have a whole bunch of kids who will never be able to buy a house or a new car because they are pinned down with debt they can never pay off.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. Keep in mind that different public universities have long had

vastly different costs.

When my older brother graduated from high school in 1960 in New York State, he'd earned a Regents Scholarship for colleges in New York. However, the cost of going to college there was enough that he was better off going to New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM, and enrolling in the co-op engineering program. My parents only had to pay his first semester costs, which weren't really too high, and then he would work one semester, take classes the other semester, and eventually graduate with a degree and a guaranteed job in the field. As it happened, he dropped out of college and enlisted in the army, but that program still exists. If you have a kid interested in any kind of engineering, check out New Mexico State.

Or check out New Mexico Institute of Technology in Socorro, which has an amazing scholarship program based on SAT or ACT scores, and are quite generous. There are probably other schools I don't know of out there that have similar things.

Something else. If a student is in any kind of science, they probably won't have to pay tuition or fees after undergraduate school. Whic is unfortunate for those not in science, but I'll elaborate. When my older son finally got his bachelor's degree (he'd had a rather checkered academic career to that point, which isn't pertinent here) and enrolled in a Master's Degree program at a university in a different state, he got a series of letters. I'm forgetting the exact sequence, but they went something like this: 1. Dear candidate, we are going to evaluate your residency since you reside in a nearby state. 2. Since you reside in the nearby state we will give you in state tuition. 3. Because you are now in state, and in a master's program, your entire tuition is hereby cancelled.

Wow. How amazing and wonderful. I will emphasize that this is what science students get. Alas, almost any other aspect of academia does not get this benefit.

And so I strongly believe every student should get what my son has gotten. Full forgiving of tuition and fees. They will still have to pay for rent and the like, but forgiving tuition and fees is hugely important.

I first went to college at the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1965. I had two scholarships of specific dollar amounts. Those dollar amounts would seem ludicrously small today, so there's no point in telling them. But I will say that one paid my tuition and fees, and the other paid for my books. Which meant that attending school there was completely affordable. As it should be for college students today.

Some years back I explained to my younger son that back when I first went off to college, at least where I lived, if you worked a minimum wage job, lived at home, and saved most of that money, you could pay most of your school expenses. He found that completely unbelievable.

[Withywindle]

20. This!

And especially this:

Some years back I explained to my younger son that back when I first went off to college, at least where I lived, if you worked a minimum wage job, lived at home, and saved most of that money, you could pay most of your school expenses. He found that completely unbelievable.

If you live in a state where the minimum wage is $7.25, a student will have to work 194 hours just to buy the TEXTBOOKS for one year only

(2018-19 data, source: https://www.edmit.me/blog/how-much-does-the-average-college-student-spend-on-textbooks)

[USALiberal]

22. So in 5-10 years we pay off their debts again? Nt

[dsc]

23. There are several legitimate reasons this is a bad idea

One, there are underlying causes to why education became so expensive that need to be fixed. States not paying their share of college funding, colleges using creature comforts to complete for students, for profit institutions fleecing students, refusal to use endowments to hold costs down. Forgiving debt does nothing about any of that, so in a few years we would have to do this again.

Two, college debt should be treated the same as other debt. Currently the near inability to escape it via going bankrupt is one of the huge problems with college debt. But this debt isn't the only debt that weighs people down. Let this be like any other debt. Debts caused by fraud of the colleges, forgiven outright. The rest paid back at a reasonable interest rate or forgiven in bankrupcy as needed.

Three, this would serve to transfer wealth from a set of people who are both less educated and poorer to those who are more educated and richer. I don't see the fairness in that.

[Sympthsical]

25. My partner is a PharmD. He's still paying off loans in his mid-40s

I actually just learned about this recently. For some reason I thought he was paid off. He makes an amazing salary. But Newp. Still paying.

I finished off my loans in my mid-30s.

If people can’t see what’s wrong with this picture, I don’t know what to tell them.

I want someone to rationally explain to me why anyone should be paying until they’re 50 for an education in a profession much needed in our society.

[yardwork]

28. College costs more than ten times what it cost when I was in school.

Wages have not increased ten fold.

I agree with your post. I think too many people aren't finding out the facts.

[RegularJam]

29. And I'm in awe that the whole discussion isn't about....

Student loans moving forward. The whole discussion.

It’s like we take the winning message, substitute it with a much harder sell, and then go around calling others idiots.

That’s how to win.

[ansible]

31. Good luck getting sympathy from the older posters here

DU seems to be mostly full of older posters who don't care

[Sympthsical]

39. Basically this. "Got mine."

I remember a story from a poster about how’ve he worked at a gas station and paid for school (in the 60s), and why couldn’t lazy kids today do the same.

I facepalmed so hard.

[SoonerPride]

47. It amounts to a wealth transfer from the poor to the middle and upper class

Explain and sell that to the millions who never went to college.

I'll wait.

[Hortensis]

32. The pandemic may do good things for higher education, finally breaking

institutional resistance to extensive use of extremely inexpensive and effective computer teaching tools. Extreme personalized teaching. Not as a complete replacement for the classroom where that is needed, but as jet fuel applied to the educational process. Hope, hope.

Extremely inexpensive jet fuel utilized properly.

Btw, why should anyone who can complete the course work in 2 years have to spend four, and pay for them, instead of taking his engineering degree to the workplace where he starts being paid to continue learning?

As for the OP, I'd have preferred it was taken to Parler, where they love to attack Democrats full of liberal outrage over victimizing students for profit. Which is all of us.

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

33. Agreed, it's a very selfish, conservative point of view.

[George II]

34. If someone with a college degree is living in poverty, the issue goes beyond merely college debt.

[MineralMan]

35. College debt is a real problem for many people.

I'm not exactly sure what to do about that, though. The cost of post-secondary education has gotten completely out of hand, with a four-year degree from private and even state-run schools completely out of proportion to what graduates can expect to earn. That's particularly true for people majoring in the humanities.

So, some sort of relief is needed, no doubt. However, what is needed even more is a restructuring of higher education, with states returning to adequately funding state colleges and universities with subsidies that help minimize the debt students now have to incur. That was how it was when I was in college in the 60s and 70s. State colleges in California were tuition-free. There were some administrative costs, along with costs for room and board, books, etc., but I was able to finish my education with the money from the GI Bill and a small monthly stipend from my parents.

I lived in a crappy place, bought used books, and did some money-earning side hustles, but incurred no debt. I'm privileged to have lived in those times, of course, but there's no reason states cannot once again subsidies colleges, so people without highly-paid parents can still get a college degree.

[Marrah_Goodman]

37. I am all for canceling some of the debt.

But we need to go further and reign in the exorbitant cost of college. We can't just cancel current debt and continue saddling future students with the massive debt.

[Act_of_Reparation]

45. Republicans don't have a monopoly on "I GOT MINE"

[dalton99a]

46. No shit. Some people still think college costs $2K a year or something

The publishing industry joined in the fun - textbook prices since 2006:

[Calista241]

54. Just so we're clear, college students make well above median pay in the US.

And we're talking about a massive tax giveaway to the top 1/2 of earners in the US.

One of the cut backs coming in the future, will be fewer students taking and graduating in non-stem fields. It's a fact that students that graduate with engineering, math, computer science, and other fields will make more money, and will better be able to pay back their debts. Their skills are also in higher demand from the job market.

[BannonsLiver]

56. Meh.

I’m not interested in paying for some dimwits $350,000 art history degree. Make better decisions.

[Calista241]

64. Personally, i wouldn't be adverse to limiting federal scholarships to STEM fields.

Something that will contribute to our economy. If we’re going to pay for a students education, they should contribute to the country and the economy.

[totodeinhere]

57. I think there can be legitimate debate on how to proceed with policy changes on this issue.

Clearly, not all student loan recipients fall in the same category. Some do have the assets necessary to pay off there obligation, while others do not. It's a complex issue not well suited to brief sound bites likes yours.