“If your college degree doesn’t produce enough value for you to pay it off, it certainly doesn’t have enough value for your neighbor to pay it off.”
That was a meme I ran into this evening, posted by a conservative I know on Facebook. The concept is very simple, but it fails to acknowledge the various shades of gray life throws at us.
Take, for instance, someone spending the time to learn a specific set of skills and running up a debt of $40,000. The set of skills has enough value to easily pay back that loan over a relatively short period of time.
Now, imagine that halfway through that person’s final semester, the professor teaching that set of skills comes to class and announces that because of an unforeseen circumstance, the skills that person has been taught have plunged in value. There is no market for the skills that a person has been taught.
Well… the college is developing curriculum to adapt to the new reality, but it will cost that person another year, maybe two, and another $10 – $20,000 to be paid later.
Add to that anguish the realization that the banks making the loans are charging oodles of interest – at least doubling, if not tripling the amount of money that will be paid by the time the loan is paid – presuming a student will still be alive when the final payment comes due.
Even if the skill set taught to the student has value, life is put on hold while the loan is being paid.
When I went to college, I worked my way through. Sure. I had loans and other assistance, but most people in my generation were able to work a minimum wage, or slightly above a minimum wage job, afford to live, and pay for books and tuition to boot! Young adults these days are saddled with essentially the same minimum wage paid 15-20 years ago, while the cost of tuition and books has skyrocketed.
And we’re not taking into account that one has to have a place to live, food to eat, and something to wear while attending classes.
I have no problem having my tax dollars funneled into loan forgiveness for college graduates. Considering my tax dollars have been used to bail out multi-billion dollar companies, bailing out student loans is a no-brainer. The current system has produced little more than debt peonage for a considerable number of students trapped by circumstance.
Better to lend someone a hand than flipping someone off.
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bdharrellauthor 
Your arguments are eloquent. (Shoe drop.) I have difficulty agreeing with this form of entitlement. Sure, you betcha, corporate forgiveness is heinous, and a problem with the political system that sorely needs to be fixed but two (or three or four) wrongs do not make anything right. Odd, that I have and still know many young students and returning (retooling) older students who have faced and dealt with criminal costs of university (and the insane cost of texts sold to prisoners of the school publishing cabal) without debilitating debt. How unusual that Americans will spend $50,000 to $70,000 or more for a cowboy Cadillac but balk at honoring payback of an obligation they knowingly agreed to. Complaining they didn’t “realize” how debilitating honoring their obligations would be is ludicrous – unless these minds do not belong in college because there is questionable intelligence to work with there. Let me put politics aside: conservative I am, Republican, I am not. I am tired of paying for others’ mistakes and simple poor judgement buttered over with sloth, leaving me to nurse at the dry teat to freebie the snot out of people as capable as I of carrying a load.
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I appreciate your comments, as usual.
In the case of the incident mentioned at the top of my essay, the student in question had every reason to believe that the course of study she chose would put her into a career that would allow her to pay off her loans (with interest) in a timely manner. It was not a case of poor judgment on her part. She went into a specific program with high expectations, only to find out from her professor halfway through her final semester that the game had changed and what she was being taught was useless.
(Disclosure – The student mentioned is my daughter.)
The idea that some high-roller is spending $50-$70,000 on a Cowboy Cadillac while at the same time balking at paying back a student loan is the same as Ronald Reagan’s “example” of the Welfare Queen dropping children right and left to collect child support from the government. There might be an isolated incident, but the exception is not the rule.
As you, I am not happy with having to pay for mistakes made by others – but it ain’t always the kid’s fault… nor are the vast majority of them not trying as hard as they can to pay back what amounts to loans with interest structures which would embarrass a loan shark. If we are willing to forgive PPP loans to people who really didn’t need them (like certain members of Congress), we should be just as willing to forgive student debt.
Oh. On a personal note, don’t be a stranger!
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