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The Coming Student-Loan-Repayment Fiasco
- Bostonian 3y agoThe main argument for government subsidies to college education is that it more than pays for itself due to higher earnings and taxes paid by college graduates. If college is so effective in increasing earnings, borrowers should be able to repay their loans from those earnings. The Federal government should stop lending money for college. College costs would drop if it did, and private lenders would lend to good risks -- good students studying things likely to land them well-paying jobs. The article has less ambitious but more politically feasible recommendations: "Lawmakers should see this as an opportunity to fix the problems that got the federal student-loan program into its current state. Start by making colleges financially responsible for unpaid student loans, as a disincentive to loading students up with debt they can’t repay. In addition, Congress should cap or eliminate currently unlimited loans to graduate students and parents of undergraduates, which are most responsible for rises in total outstanding debt."
- ggm 3y agoI found this article more enjoyable if I mentally inverted all bad assertions to being probably at worst unfairly benefiting the rich. That aside, debt has been relieved. And, it appears its going to be hard to resume debt repayments quickly. Hooray! As John Perry Barlow meant to say: "education wants to be free"
- manuelabeledo 3y agoYou are right! I mean, isn't the following good news? > Since interest was not charged during the pause, it has effectively canceled $240 billion worth of student debt. That’s more than half the amount that would have been canceled through President Biden’s one-time loan-forgiveness scheme, had the Supreme Court not intervened. If the author wanted people to sympathize with the lenders, they did a really poor job at that.