The Great Student Loan Writedown. The cost of forgiving debt keeps growing and growing and . . .

Wall Street Journal ^ | February 13, 2020 | WSJ Editorial Board

[Vigilanteman]

They merely had to agree to pay 10% of their discretionary income for 20 years—10 years for those who work in “public service”—after which their balance would be forgiven.

How many Americans have figured out that "public service" to a leftist means that the public is supposed to serve them?

[wita]

We somehow had a usurper in the White House for eight years who not only doubled our national debt from the previous 200 years but he was allowed to place student loans- the student loan industry- not just the health care industry- in the hands of the government

We allowed our government to take advantage of our kids

Most kids get out of college wth high tens of thousands
And way into hundreds of thousands for masters and professional degrees

We have a damned hell of a nerve making fun of these kids for wanting a break

Look around. They can’t get married and have families

Why anyone would blame them for this mess and call them freeloaders is
Pure insanity

Stop

I am not buying what you are selling. This is a generational problem belonging to the K-12 education system and parents. These debtor children have been raised to believe debt isn’t a problem and the Government has been part of the equation seeing they just happen to be the most glaring example of the largest debtor of them all. The idiot children need to be held to account just as their educators and parents for the poor understanding of economics and finance. I do like the idea of not letting the castles of higher education escape their complicity in the equation.

It could be we are somewhat on the same page, I just don’t think the children should be allowed to escape the reality many of them find themselves in because of bad decisions on how much loan and for what.

[stanne]

“ These debtor children have been raised to...”

Then it is not their fault

We Baby Boomers must stop finger pointing,expecting others to take the blame, put diwn the addictive substances, take the responsibility for creating and allowing this mess and be logical

No sale

[Darteaus94025]

I like it.

[wita]

Then it is not their fault

Really, I don’t believe I said it was their fault, nevertheless it is not right to allow them to escape reality. The are responsible as young adults for their decisions. The learning starts when they are very young. They are not in a vacuum without a bit of truth to point them in the correct direction nor are they in an educational prison. Correct principles are always available to those seeking them and available to those wishing to avoid reality. They need to accept their portion of the responsibility for truly stupid decisions.

[Svartalfiar]

Repeal the idiotic law that makes it impossible to shed the debt through bankruptcy and the problem will cure itself.

Those owed money will either make an arrangement with the debtor to repay with no interest constantly being added, accept a reduced total amount owed to some level the debtor can handle, or just accept the bankruptcy and move one.

And what good does that do? Pretty much all the student lending nowadays is gov't-run anyway, so bankruptcy costs taxpayers dollars just the same.

[Svartalfiar]

While the best option would be to get FedGov out of student loans in the first place, we should at least take a couple steps to band-aid the issue in the meantime:

- Why are these loans going to PhD programs? They should be limited to associate/bachelors degrees, and that’s it. If you want advanced schooling, pay for it yourself. At the VERY least, NO forgiveness on advanced degrees.

- Colleges should be charged for every student on this program (10%) - they have to make up the difference between the student payment, and what their normal payment would be. At forgiveness time, the college is responsible for half the cost of the forgiveness.

- Since this program has been around a couple years, we should have good data on which degrees use the program the most, and which ones are paying back higher than normal: start limiting those low-return degrees in how much student loan $$ the program puts in to them.

[pepsionice]

At some point, I think eventually...some state will stand up and ask for a full accounting by their public university system on the cost factor, wasted employees of the system, and value of the degrees. Then some governor is going to suggest to bring the whole system down, and lay off a quarter of all public university employees within that state....getting the cost down to $7,000 per year. The same guy will probably go and dump all optional classes which have zero value, and reshape the process of college education.

The same guy will probably dump NCAA sports, and bring college education back to the standards that they had prior to WW II.