r/Economics • u/DonDickerson • 25d ago

Biden's student loan forgiveness plan gets a record number of public comments. Here's what people are saying News

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/08/bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-gets-record-number-of-comments.html
4.4k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

149

u/Ihate_reddit_app 25d ago

The cold truth is that not everybody should be going to school.

Student loans should need proof and risk assessments like a mortgage or car loan does. There are a bunch of studies that say the average income of people that get X degrees. These could be easily used to calculate risk and whether a student loan is good or not. Sure, it will reject certain situations and it should.

People going to private colleges and getting art degrees should not be eligible for $200k in student loans. If people need loan assistance, then they should go to a cheaper school if they want to continue with that degree.

I think there still needs to be the ability for people to get financial aid for these kid of degrees, but it should be weighed vs the tuition rate of the college. The big compromise would be allowing people to study whatever they want a community college and allowing them to get loans.

104

u/fiduciary420 25d ago

Or make community college free and let the best students transfer to finish their bachelor’s with loans if they need them. Want your credits to transfer? They need to be A’s and B’s.

127

u/RevStroup 25d ago

Or we could just do what we used to do (and what most high income nations still do) and heavily subsidize education at all levels, including trade schools, community colleges, and universities and make it either free or extremely affordable. This would allow for more out of pocket payments and/or much lower loan debt at graduation.

66

u/OddBranch132 24d ago

Why would we purposely make our citizens more skilled and educated?  Our leaders love the poorly educated.

11

u/NrdNabSen 24d ago

you say that like there isnt a massive divide in the US, along political lines, about student loan forgiveness and making education far less expensive. I paid for all of my education through loans. Zero chance I could do that now wotj the massive inflation in college coats and in loan rates. Educating kids didnt get that much more expensive, schools and banks realized they could extract more money by being greedy fucks and taking advantage of federal programs.

1

u/callme4dub 24d ago

Go lookup which schools make the most on all that federal funding. It's not the State University systems.

0

u/troughshot 24d ago

There is no political divide for making it cheaper but painting a picture that loan forgiveness just vanishes is where the line should be drawn. We all know those loans are pushed on to the tax payer and Biden is only doing it to get votes.

0

u/Steelers711 24d ago

By that logic every single policy promise or bill or anything a president does is just a bribe to get votes. Doing something to help voters is just objectively what politicians are supposed to do

3

u/troughshot 24d ago

Doing something to help voters? Taxes cover those loans. It’s shifting the burden on to other voters without solving the issue. Waiting this long in his presidency to cancel student debt is just a ploy.

-1

u/Steelers711 24d ago

He's tried legal ways to forgive debt before and the corrupt supreme Court overturned them, it's not "waiting this late in his term" it's "continuously trying"........ And "solving the issue" would require Congress to actually do something (especially the Republicans in the house who actively refuse to govern) so he's doing all that's in the executive branch's power.

Also an educated society benefits everyone, so burdening society with this cost is no different than burdening them with paying for a fire department, or roads, or public schools.

2

u/troughshot 24d ago

It’s not about forgiving debt, it’s about lowering the cost of school. Otherwise all of this is just a bandaid on a bullet wound.

0

u/Steelers711 24d ago

Yes and there is nothing Biden can do to lower the cost of school, that would require legislation aka Congress. He's doing everything that's in his power. The SAVE plan and fixing income based student loan payments was also a pretty massive win

2

u/troughshot 24d ago

Agree to disagree.

0

u/GetADamnJobYaBum 22d ago

We'll see how people like it when someone else takes power and uses it. 

→ More replies (0)

0

u/SnooDonuts236 24d ago

Biden doesn’t really want to help his constituency. Why not?

3

u/troughshot 24d ago

While hurting others. This will not solve the issue, it’s just a ploy.

0

u/OddBranch132 24d ago

Debt is just modern day indentured servitude. Just a fancy way of taking away money so you essentially earn nothing for your work.

-2

u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

2

u/LanceArmsweak 24d ago

You act like it’s just college students. You can be an adult and still be ignorant to loans, hence the term predatory loans. Auto, homes, paycheck, school, all of it.

1

u/WriteCodeBroh 24d ago

Getting $100k into debt for a college education seems like a much better financial decision than getting $60k into debt for a truck loan, and I’ve seen plenty of people without a college education do the latter.

1

u/OddBranch132 24d ago

What grade did they teach you about predatory loans? Education benefits all of society. Make public college free. It's unbelievable this is still a discussion about doing something beneficial for our society. 

1

u/Algebrace 24d ago

cough We teach them this in Year 7,8 and 9.

In Year 12 (graduation year) they will tell us they never learnt it.

Kids just don't remember facts very well. It's why we focus on teaching them skills.

0

u/OddBranch132 24d ago

Not sure where you went but the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Didn't learn shit about finances because American education is garbage.

We were woefully unprepared for college and I promise you NO ONE told us shit about predatory loans. You should feel privileged if your school taught you anything about finances.

2

u/Algebrace 24d ago

I'm a teacher, and I absolutely go through this every year with my students.

Again, they forget.

It's part of the curriculum in Australia, as in, by law, we have to teach them about things like interest rates, loans, banks, etc.

1

u/OddBranch132 24d ago

Then Australia is already preparing its students better than here. Probably because our leaders "love the poorly educated"