Why your student loans shouldn't be forgiven

"The way the income driven repayment program changes work is that you pay back a lot less. It's removing price signals from the system which is going to make things worse," argues Peter Suderman.

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[Justin_Beaver]

The big problem no one talks about is that the government shouldn't be guaranteeing student loans to begin with.

[SeraphsWitness]

Whenever a third party enters to subsidize a transaction they have nothing to do with, two things happen: The buyer cares a lot less about the cost, and the seller cares a lot less about the quality.

[mustang]

Next there will be a bill to forgive bad banking decisions primarily caused by unforeseen consequences of certain government banking interference. Oh, wait. 2008.

[filipserec]

The title should be "Why you shouldn't get in debt for education"

[hasimirfenring]

Tell me Emma's parents paid her student loan without telling me.

[BigBoyJay_]

We need an overhaul of higher education loans. They shouldn't be one of the few debts that can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Ever since then, higher education costs have skyrocketed.

[polyphonicdavid]

this going in circles on this is crazy. college prices aren’t coming down, student loans aren’t being forgiven, so they need to find creative ways for ppl to live with the debt. maybe eliminate the interest? note: i paid out of pocket for my own bachelors, and now about to pay my own grad degree. it is possible to work and go to school without getting into debt

[Furluge]

We need to stop guaranteeing studen loans in the first place and allow the loans to be treated like any other loan and be nullified via bankruptcy. Do that and the entire problem form the loans to high college tuition will start to heal itself as removing the marketing forces that limited college tuition in the first place is what let the costs balloon.

[RougeDeBlah]

Who cares, if the govt is going to give handouts may as well benefit the average person

[carlthecaveman]

You can tell the student loan thing is a "Crisis" because they keep giving the loans out.

[SocietyOfOne]

I was too dumb and immature to take student loans but I still got about $20k worth of student loans on a college that was pure shit. Thanks college admissions people. 13 years later, I just paid off $16k in one shot and didn't get a government bail out. So F all you people, especially all the 'too big to fail' bailout recipients.

[mustang]

It is truly amazing how utterly generous you can be with other peoples money, if you can get away with it.

[jallexon]

There is no guarantee the remainder will be forgiven after 25 years of continuous monthly payments or 10 years of the same for non—profit employment. If Congress wanted to help, they could have lowered the interest rate to 1% or kept the interest rate at zero. The problem is that when the Dept of Education farmed out the administrative overhead of these loans to for-profit NGOs via government contracts, the Department of Education and, by extension, the president lost all power and authority except in particular situations to forgive loans. The interest is the profit the loan handler makes on the loan. If the Department of Education was both providing the loan and handling the loan, the president could do his blanket forgiveness as the money did not leave his authority.

It is the interest and not paying the full accumulated interest plus principle that keeps browsers in debt. Because the Return on Investment (ROI) on degrees and certification is near zero especially when competing with outsourcing and visa workers. Colleges are losing on the ROI and value question in many people's minds. Edited for sentence structure.

[BOSTONROCKFAN]

I would end the student loan program so that colleges and universities are subject to the same market forces as everything else.

[maxbaugh]

There are a lot of potential solutions that would be a lot better than the current system. An easy first step would be to reset the interest rates to 0% on all government student loans, by itself that would eliminate much of the problem. Income-share agreements, where the student pays nothing up front but pays 10% of their income for 10 years starting 5 years after graduation would be a great way of incentivizing universities to make sure their students are actually employable & would ensure students "get what they pay for".

[myblacklab]

I'd like to see good data on tuition inflation.
It feels like tuitions have gone up about 500% over the past 30 years.
Meanwhile, a lot of people can't afford rent, so it's not a great idea to make repayment so burdensome that it causes people to become homeless.

[superjesus]

The ONLY reason they shouldn't be forgiven is they accepted the loans and the responsibility.

[Dancing_Alone_wRentals]

I don't understand why people would agree to pay off student loans and in doing so crush the moral of people who never attended university.

[daniels.]

I did six years in the military to pay for college. If everyone gets their student loans forgiven, then my sacrifice was for nothing.

[monak]

The answer is because YOU don't have one. Higher education is free in every other developed country in the world except USA. Wake up!!! We have student loans, we have insurance premiums to pay! Where else do you see this?!!!