Don't hear much discussion on how candidates would address that. While loan forgiveness and free college is very appealing, wouldn't that drive costs even higher?

anything else, in same way easy loans inflated the housing market. The real tragedy is the interest rates US GOVT charges for student loans. THAT is the area that can easily be addresses and been a failure by democrats for 20 years to do so....throw in reform where colleges MUST have skin in the game as well for the success of their students or they absorb some cost too.

Each state must examine their higher education system, the outright giveaways like sabbaticals, the outrageous pension benefits, etc


Out right loan forgiveness punishes all those who did the hard work and paid their loans off and to me is a dealbreaker with any candidate I would support

Just because you didn’t get something somebody else got is not a “punishment”.

The current system that imposed crippling debt on young adults entering the workforce is immoral and needs to be abolished. Those still saddled with crippling debt should not be left to suffer simply because some people have paid off their loans.

Especially if they lived very frugally to pay back their loans after bypassing their first choice of schools to attend one that was much more affordable. Then saw their neighbors or co workers that borrowed the max and defaulted on paying, get rewarded for it.

I understand how people would feel that way.

and the interest rates need to be lowered to zero or a few %. One of the reasons costs have risen so fast IMO is the easy availability of loans. It didnt matter how much colleges charged, students kept borrowing more and more. There was no incentive for colleges to reduce them.

I do not think the the principal should just be forgiven. Forgiving all outstanding loans and making college all free would raise the costs exponentially if anything.

If you spend any time visiting a large colleges the amount of bloat, construction and amenities compared to when I went is staggering. I have not heard any candidate addressing on how to slash tuition and housing costs.

A college degree is required for many careers. The stunning cost of that degree is beyond the means of many families without taking on debt, enormous debt.

So framing this as a simple choice is pretty much bullshit.

1) Many good paying jobs do not require a 4 year degree. All kinds of skilled trades are begging for apprenticeship applicants. Earn $$ while you learn

2) Choose a nearby college and live at home

3) Choose a college with more affordable tuition. You may not be able to attend the school of your dreams where your friends are going

4) Select a major that has strong job prospects and salaries making it much easier to pay off the loans. ie Engineering or other STEM majors

5) Go to night school while working during the day

to doing anything to address the student loan debt crisis. Fuck’em, they made bad choices, college is for the upper middle class, go to trade school loser.

These are skilled hard working people that repair our cars, build houses, build roads and bridges, install and repair HVAC systems, ensure that electrical systems are safe, make sure our plumbing works, and build and repair industrial equipment. You know, all those things we rely on daily.

I am all in favor as I stated in making student loans interest free. Just blanket forgiveness of all principal, not so much.

Who needs artists anyways? Musicians? Bah. History? Lets forget it. Critical thinking and logic? Sorry, you can't afford that!

of your position was my insertion of the word “loser” to describe your attitude toward the people from families too poor to afford the massive cost of higher education.

But they are losers. They lost the random birth lottery.

… all while having no student loans to pay back.

the terms are outrageous when Govt charges what they do for interest rates. I manage to go to college and I did the hard way by community college first than last 2 years at a state university, unlike most, I got my degree in 4 years, not 5

What year did you graduate college? What degree? What area of study? What line of work afterwards?

university pensions are way out of line, why should any college professor get $100,000+ PENSIONS? But that is another discussion

Last edited Mon Jul 15, 2019, 02:35 PM - Edit history (1)

I think it looks more like a centrist “M”

Starting to look more like the Yahoo comments section.

became precious.

Making $100k in pensions...and school administrators making near $300k...

and created outlandish benefit where a high school english teacher can have a $ 75,000/yr pension....its all bad for taxpayers and no one willing to discuss and do the hard work to fix as requires changes to state constitution as well. To me, its 100% wrong to have such payments go out at those levels as every day working people who have nothing like this in their future are all paying for it. We need a reset. We need honest and fair discussion. Paid sabbaticals, outlandish pensions, all need to be addressed as the public can not afford these costs any more

A list of former U of Il. professors making x dollars in pension doesn't tell us anything except there are former U of Il. professors making x dollars in pension. This information is anecdotal; we can't tell if x dollars is the norm at U of Il., let alone at any of the hundreds of other public universities across the country. More importantly, your repeated insinuation these pensions are too high is completely arbitrary. Your subjective feelings on the matter do not constitute objective evidence these pensions are not commensurate or deserved.

Every time more money is thrown at higher education, they gobble it up and expect more to be tossed into their ever-widening maw.

How about requiring that a student submit a plan for how they will pay back a student loan, just the same as a business person starting out would have to show how they would generate revenues and profits to repay a loan? Maybe forcing them to take a look at the job prospects for art history majors would jolt them into realizing that they need to take a course of study that might actually be worth something.

The humanities, arts, literature, and classics sectors in particular would be devastated.

You would create a small group of elites who came from wealthy backgrounds as the only effective source of students for these vital areas. Universities have already drastically cut into these areas already, your proposal would be the death knell for a large percentage of them.

A horrid idea.

If you borrow $$$$ to obtain a degree at an expensive college in which job prospects are scarce and/or salaries are low that is your prerogative.

Dont however complain about how difficult making student loan payments is on your salary as if you were some innocent bystander or victim.

I attended Engineering college at night after working during the day while working in a low paying job. Borrowed the equivalent of 22K in student loans and couldn't have made it without. Forever grateful for the student loan program as it was life changing for me. Paid it back in 10 years and it was easily the best investment I ever made. Yes it was a hard major that wasn't particularly a lot of fun, but has allowed me to be employed and earn a decent living.

Because you went through it, you want everyone else to go through it too.

This is how progress gets blocked.

Yeah. Didn't think so.

in subjects that there are only a handful of teaching jobs for them to fill.

Perhaps you prefer that there is a large group with no way to pay back the money they borrowed, living on a slim hope that somehow a Democratic President will be able to get a loan amnesty passed through a Congress that will surely have Republicans voting against the idea.

Maybe we don't need so many people with all that elite knowledge.

That is a suicidal path to put the nation on. The myriad unintended consequences of moving to a hard, economic-based form of utilitarian rationing and bottlenecking of broad, varied, well-rounded tertiary education-gained knowledge would be catastrophic.

For one thing, innovation would collapse via the resultant hyper-specialisation. You cannot keep ratcheting up the levers and pathways of systemic control into ever more narrow, ever more vertical superstructures without ossification and stagnation occurring.

Furthermore, such pyramiding of qualitative humanistic thought and knowledge would (via the linkages I just posited, as well as uncountable other interlocking mechanisms both micro and macro) put into motion forces that would exacerbate wealth inequality and embed a rigid technocratic socio-educational caste system. That in turn would have extraordinarily negatives impacts on most all human endeavour that occurs in the nation, even down to the rather quotidian.

Any societal structuring that puts a self-generated padlock on non STEM, and/or 'soft' sciences, and the more esoteric arenas of human intelligence and academic study (and all those denied to most, save for a small cluster of chosen elites) will rapidly devolve into authoritarianism and tyranny. We already see that happening now. Critical thinking and multivariate analytical skills are going the way of the carrier pigeon. Your 'idea set' is a sure recipe for fascism to be given the whip hand over society at large.

Why do you think one of the first extermination waves carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was to take most people who wore eyeglass, truck them out to the rural areas, and execute them en masse?

Because.........

But I'll just agree with you and add in a Yikes or two.

degrees

well lived and full of enlightenment. So often, society as a whole has benefited from such a person.

Not everything in life can be placed on the scale of simple, reductionist economic measurement.

Making $35,000/yr with $120,000 student loan debt for a art history degree....and want to blame others for their plight?

Even well into the 70s loans and scholarships were concerns for private college attendance.
Degrees were attainable for less than $1,000/semester, sometimes a lot less, not
including room and board, at many State Universities even in conservative southern
States, certainly no bastions of California free ed. There was little if any need for a
concern of getting a degree in a field "worth it" so you could then get a job to "pay
for it". That degeneracy has led into making a college education, and, indeed all education
and learning, into nothing more than training for a job to pay for things. The cost of
college education, even including some two year colleges, has far outstripped the
inflation rates and cost of living in general.

into kingdoms and the whole point became enrollment, expansion and less caring about putting out a quality product. Problem is no one wants to take on the issues of higher education, as it viewed as "attacking" education. When college admin staff goes up 400% while enrollment stays the same, there are problems. When college top management is making $$$$, there is a problem. Problems that need discussion. Easy money led to this, high school programs and counselors led to this, kids AND parents with stars in their eyes led to this as they al wanted the kids to be "college" educated no matter what. The no matter what and easy money made the system ripe for basically corruption from top, down.

No one wnat to hear this or discuss. lets just wipe out their debt and who can offer the program that gives the most away

Student loans have been issued by the federal government since 2010. There is no reason that the government needs to profit off the backs of students. These rates could be lowered in one fell swoop to much lower levels or perhaps even zero

but its big money and somehow that part of govt enjoys ripping off PEOPLE

I'm from the "you borrowed the money, you repay your debt" school of thought.

However, I do support reforming the manner in which student loans are issued and repaid.

For starters, in today's market I feel it's unconscionable to charge more than 3% interest on student loans. Furthermore, interest should not accrue while the borrower is in school (or working during the summer), and non-accrual of interest should continue for a significant period of time (e.g., nine months or a year) following the time the borrower leaves school (whether due to graduation or otherwise). Monthly payments toward repayment of the debt would not begin until the expiration of this grace period. Should the borrower return to school (e.g., to pursue a graduate degree), non-accrual of interest would resume and no monthly payments would be required until the student leaves school again (with another nine-month or one-year grace period of non-accrual of interest and no requirement to make monthly payments toward repayment of the debt).

I would definitely support revising outstanding student loans to bear interest at 3% and enjoy the periods of non-accrual of interest described above retroactive from the time the student received the first installment of his or her loans. I believe this would significantly reduce the outstanding indebtedness of most student loans, while continuing to require that the debt be repaid (at relatively low monthly payments, with the option to make higher payments without penalty).

I received student loans under such a program and was able to repay my loans in full over a roughly ten-year period in manageable monthly installments.

For the record, I agree that tuition and related expenses at many schools is much too high. I believe that every individual who wishes to attend college (and graduate school) (or a trade school) should be afforded the opportunity to do so without amassing unmanageable indebtedness. In cases of demonstrable need, partial or full scholarships should be granted. However accomplished, mechanisms must be in place to enable every individual to receive the education of their choice. As is the case with health care, a good education should be a right, not a privilege.

This is my position as well. Any kind of principal "forgiveness" would lead to the next wave of Tea Party idiots, in my opinion.

Important issue.

I wish that as the front runner, Biden had a clear position that is at least similar to Kloubuchar's.

It's unfortunate that this issue is dismissed so frequently by posters here. This problem deserves the kind of attention it's getting from Harris, Sanders, and Warren.