The entire higher education system in the United States is broken. This debt relief is a good first step, but it's just that, a first step. Tuition prices have gone through the roof in the last 40 years, states have cut education funding to keep prices down, and the schools use the guaranteed federal maximum amounts as a starting point for setting tuition and fees. In just the last 20 years, prices for state-run schools have tripled or quadrupled. They're now to the point that a student has to take out a full load of student loan debt just for a basic, run of the mill school.
There are a lot of problems with how education is handled in the US compared to the rest of the world. A lot of this goes back to Reaganomics fucking things up for everyone but the extremely wealthy. Instead of establishing free and cheap college like the rest of the world, or easily forgivable student loans with little to now interest, they're designed to make money for a select few.
I have 6 figures of student loan debt right now. My original loans were for about $65,000 including grad school. I have multiple STEM degrees that should be in high demand. I did everything right, did everything my parent's generation told us to do. Guess what? It was all a lie and the game changed. Now they want to blame my generation for us being lazy because we don't move out on our own until we're in our thirties, if then. They blame us for studying crazy majors like Gender Studies when they literally told us "It doesn't matter what you study, you'll get a good job with any degree. It shows you're trainable." They get mad at us for drowning in debt they saddled us with because they didn't want to foot the bill for paying for the things their parents paid for, like infrastructure or cheap college, or affordable health care. When the rest of the world embraced things like Universal Health Care and Free College, they screamed that those were Socialist ideas and came up with much worse alternatives.
There's this thing called loan interest capitalization. When your student loans surpass how much you can pay on an Income Based Repayment plan (which is skewed for even more fucked up reasons) that extra amount each month gets added back to the principal and included and the next month's interest is compounded on that. If you have to declare a forbearance or your income is so low that you have no payment to make, what you should pay gets recapitalized and new interest gets added to the principal. I'm finally in a comfortable position in life where I could pay off my original loan amount without a problem. Guess what? It's grown to the point I'll never pay it off, all because I happened to graduate college right as the Great Recession started. Fuck me for wanting to have a better life when the economy turned to shit and it took 3 years to get a halfway decent paying job, right?
Then there's the clusterfuck of how loans are handled. The federal government isn't the one you pay, they get sent out to various loan service providers. Each one is supposed to follow the same rules and laws, but they each differ in how they interpret them. When you take out your loans, you choose a provider. What happens when that provider decides to get out of the business? They sell your loans to other providers, without your consent as to whom they sell them to, and they sure don't make it easy who they sell them to. My grad school loans were taken out with one company but sold to 3 different companies. Each one interpreted the rules differently as to what qualified as required payments, spousal payments, and whatnot. This is on top of my undergrad loans with another company and loans from my first attempt at school with a 5th one. 5 different companies, each interpreting the rules differently, each one refusing to acknowledge the other's debts and take them into account for how much I had to pay each month. Each one refusing to recognize my wife's loan amount that we had to pay but demanding that I include her salary in calculating how much I had to pay. It got bad enough that I had to consolidate them into one, but even that wasn't helpful. It made it easier to pay each month, but when the interest each month is twice what the IDR is, and your choice is either keep paying the IDR amount while giving your family a comfortable life or pay the actual amount but lose your house and put your family on the street, it really isn't a choice.
WB, want to know what the difference is between student loans, a mortgage, a car loan, or a business loan? You cannot refinance student loans below the original interest rate. You cannot sell off an asset to eliminate your student loans. You cannot discharge your student loans through a bankruptcy. My only three options for getting rid of my student loan debt without faking my own death is to literally die and make sure my wife never pays a cent on it, win the lottery, or hope that I can eventually pay off my house far enough down to refinance it so that I can then pay off the student loans that way and then pay off the new mortgage which will have a much lower interest rate than my student loans. And I'm in a good spot. I have dozens of friends worse off than me that can't even pretend to pay off their loans. Forget moving out or buying a house, they're paying a mortgage payment each month but it doesn't go down. It's kind of hard to pay property taxes to prop up the Boomer's Medicare costs when you can't afford to move out due to crippling debt. And the DTI is crazy as well. I will never have great or amazing credit because of my student loan debt, even though I haven't missed a single bill payment in 20 years.
My kids are supposed to go to college when they're older. The oldest is a literal genius. I cannot recommend college to him with a straight face because I know that unless something drastic changes, he'll be buried in debt for the rest of his life.
I agree to a certain point. but when you said:
I have 6 figures of student loan debt right now. My original loans were for about $65,000 including grad school. I have multiple STEM degrees that should be in high demand. I did everything right, did everything my parent's generation told us to do. Guess what? It was all a lie and the game changed. Now they want to blame my generation for us being lazy because we don't move out on our own until we're in our thirties, if then. They blame us for studying crazy majors like Gender Studies when they literally told us "It doesn't matter what you study, you'll get a good job with any degree. It shows you're trainable." They get mad at us for drowning in debt they saddled us with because they didn't want to foot the bill for paying for the things their parents paid for, like infrastructure or cheap college, or affordable health care. When the rest of the world embraced things like Universal Health Care and Free College, they screamed that those were Socialist ideas and came up with much worse alternatives.
No. My parents told me I would never be suited to an office job. I should only attend a trade school and try to work at a barely sustainable level. My grades in school were not the best, and I can count on one hand the times I actually hit the honor roll. I had to fucking tear through my early life juggling getting an education, supporting a family and keeping a roof over our heads, while getting shit on by places I worked for being young and dumb. I can honestly say I am nowhere where I hoped I would be right now. But Even with my massive debts in the beginning, I still got up and chipped away at it.
But the cultural attitudes have shifted. My point is this.
Those "Socially progressive countries" with those universal health care and free college are a joke. Not to be disrespectful of them, but its kind of easy to hand that stuff out like candy when your cost of living and taxes are so high. its like the doctor giving a kid a lollipop before a shot. nice and sweet, then the sting of high income taxes. the only reason they look so good is that their standard of living is tightly controlled by the government, but in the end its still the citizens back that bears the burdens.
So what happened to personal responsibility, and taking on the world on your own, with your own thoughts and feelings and proper planning? Not talking about you Lt. but the generation. What happened to doing some research while in high school? Also depending on the loaner, you can get your debt interest reduced. Sallie Mae did it for me and my wife, we refinanced almost every time our financial situation changed. I am not proud to admit it, but we abused the hell out of the deferment system too, to miss a couple of payments to keep the lights on. There is more than one way to deal with that devil of a debt.
I also made a point that people like you, who I respect the hell out of for going into stem fields to try and help the world, should have their debt repaid, or made more manageable to support you in your pursuits. I told my daughters, who are working their way through college, if you go to college, make damned sure its a pursuit that can give you a life you choose to live. Then when you are comfortable and can afford it, take those funny courses, but make sure you have a base set so you can afford to pursue it.
I am not trying to make light of it. I know full well the heavy weight of that debt, But from where I stand, to me, its an easy way out, hand holding, slap to my face, practically saying I was stupid to work hard to pay off a debt I had to take, despite my parent's and my wife's parents protests. And you are absolutely right, the system needs an overhaul, but not like this, it will add more taxes to an already struggling populace which when the light shines on it, might cause a further rift between the generations. it was not a lie from the past, its the fact that shit changes. what was easy for them in the past, is harder for the next generation, as we go our own way, and oft times do not learn from their mistakes or lessons.
I feel you on not wanting to shoulder debts from the past. but if you think thats bad, wait until you die and even more taxes are levied against your estate. There is nothing anyone can do reasonably or legally to not incur any sort of debt. you get taxed for dying, the value of you stuff, AND in some cases, some debts do not die with you. its a completely fucked up system, but like I said before, kids need to try to plot and plan before just springing into a debt ridden trap.
Right now the highest paying job out of college one can get is the one job environmentalists are trying to outlaw: Petroleum Engineer. Learning to make a better, cheaper and less toxic fuel. Kind of funny, isn't it?
So my friend, Lt. why shouldn't there be a system in place to ensure an almost debt free system of higher education for those courses in fields that actually hold meaning and could make careers, instead of bullshit courses that pad a transcript?
On a final interesting note: This debt forgiveness will raise tuition rates. Because colleges and universities are greedy as all fuck.