What does student loan forgiveness going to do to address future problems in financing education or to improve our educational system in general? Is it going to crack down on predatory loans?
I-5 wrote:Does it have to be either or? Why can't it be both, and attack the problem from multiple directions at once? Provide relief for those that were taken advantage of (yes, it could/should be more targeted), AND make tuition itself much more accessible to those who want to pursue higher education?
If you want to address to address the issue of
"those that were taken advantage of", the first thing you have to do is define the issue. What constitutes
"taken advantage of"? How many students fit this definition? My guess is not very many, given that less than 1 out of 10 of student loans are private and an even lower percentage were what could be considered predatory loans. Trying to solve it by making a blanket forgiveness of around half a trillion dollars makes no sense at all.
But to answer your question, yes, we can do both. But the two issues are completely unrelated and should be tackled separately.
I-5 wrote:I paid about $1,500 in-state tuition per quarter at the UW for a full load of 15 credits in the 90's, and I did it on credit through the UW loan program, so when I graduated, I had a minor debt to pay, but it was manageable even with my modest first job out of school. I don't know when tution started going through the roof, but I feel so lucky to have gone when I did. Most of the professors in my dept just retired a few years ago.
The average debt in 1993 was about $9,000 compared to around $33k today. I ran $9,000 through an inflation calculator and came up with $18K, and when you compare it to the actual amount of $33k, today's average debt is roughly 2.5 times what it was in 1993, an astounding increase. In 2003, the average debt was about $18k, and running that amount through the inflation calculator, I came up with 29K, which isn't that bad, at least not compared to the increase ten years earlier. And finally, the average student loan debt in 2013 was $29,400, and running that through the inflation calculator, I came up with $37,391, or less than what it is today when adjusted for inflation.
But run the numbers yourself and see what you come up with:
https://thecollegeinvestor.com/32031/av ... %20rows%20https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/So it would appear that the increase in debt was mostly a problem that started in the 90's but in the past 10 years, has been pretty much under control, with a 2013 debt, when adjusted for inflation, being higher than a 2022 debt.
So in reality, the debt problem is getting better, not worse. That doesn't mean that it isn't a problem or that it should be ignored, just that it's not on the same scale as other issues facing our society.