Reply to involuntary collections of student loans

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We really need a system that distinguishes between in-state public education and everything else. It is in society's interest to have an affordable public college system that doesn't burden 21 year olds with loans. That's what we need to build and subsidize - affordable public colleges for qualified students. And everything else - private universities, LACs - should sink or swim with market demand. There isn't ever going to be public support for forgiving the loans of someone who chose to go a gazillion dollars in debt to attend NYU or Colby. And retroactively forgiving those loans does nothing to make college more affordable for this generation of students. Focus on public education, and let market forces sort out how private universities go about attracting students. I strongly suspect the cost of private colleges will go down significantly if we make it difficult for teenagers to go into debt to attend, especially when they have very good and affordable in-state alternatives.   [/quote]

I agree completely with this.

Plus, I disagree with both extremes (blanket forgiveness is bad, but so is the attitude here that student loan borrowers deserved to be kicked in the teeth while they're already down). Nobody is addressing the COST of colleges. Easy loans has been a terrible idea, and I don't care if it was a Democrat or Republican policy. It's just allowed colleges to inflate the cost with abandon.

I'm not saying that student loan borrowers shouldn't be responsible. But I do think interest rates should be lower. Not zero, but not predatory. Give people a chance ot pay them back and not let the balances get out of control. Yes I get the argument that they signed the promissary note, they had the information about compounding interest blah blah blah. The real problem is that student loans are NOT like mortgages or car notes. Not only is there no collateral, it's NOT the same responsible-adult decision as taking on one of these types of loans. It's way more irresponsible for someone who makes $60K to finance a $100K car, and it's irresponsible for banks, a la 2008, to give someone who makes $75K a mortgage for a $750K house with 3% down. It's also irresponsible for the borrower, because they know what their income is.

18-22 year old student loan borrowers do not know what their incomes will be! Period. Yes, everyone likes to cite the strawman cases of $200K gender studies majors. But people with STEM degrees are also having a tough time in the market because of the tech recession and AI. How are they supposed to predict that? Are we expecting expert-level market analysis from 18-year-old Computer Science majors? Analysis of the job market decades into the future? We are asking people to make financial decisions on vague hypothetical income. That's ridiculous.

I'm not sure what policy would enable this, but we need to get the cost of education to be down to what you could pay off with a few summer jobs. Not free, but something that every graduate could pay, reasonably, with 12 months of paid entry-level full time work and/or part-time campus jobs. This takes a combination of strict regulation, pulling back on easy money from loans, and a hard crackdown on administrative bloat. [/quote]

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