I’m down with subsidies/grants/discounts for majors that we need for our economy. Forgiving student loan debt for someone who borrowed six figures to get a degree in social justice or “insert here” cultural studies doesn’t make sense to me. STEM, nurses, doctors, okay I’m in, we need them and they are in short supply. But I run into people with 6 figure debt, from a private liberal arts college and they majored in women’s studies! I have a cousin whose debt is equivalent to the cost of a house and her degree merits her a job that pays $20 an hour. I have another relative who is a social worker with a MSW and a debt of 200k and makes 60k. We need her, but did she need to go to a 50k a year private school, her industry doesn’t care where her MSW is from. Where’s the ROI analysis by the lender, it’s like economic laws are ignored when it comes to college. I have another cousin in debt for 20k, went to a state school and now works for Tesla, now that’s an ROI I can get behind.I have two nephews with minimal debt from reputable UC and CS schools in engineering, I’d invest my money in them, they will make it back. Case in point, a berkely engineering degree and a Berkely community activism degree are not the same, thus should not be subsidized the same. I’ll ask Brian, what would China do?
I also have a cousin that has a PHD and didn’t pay a nickel or take on any debt because her parents were poor, her major has no economic value or public benefit, no job prospects other than becoming a professor and continuing the cycle, which she became.
College loans, grants, scholarships, etc. defy economic laws of supply and demand and that is the real problem. Throwing money at it is but a short term remedy. Evaluating earnings vs cost as a factor in loans would solve the problem. We apply it to people asking to borrow money for a business, but not for higher education, which is essentially the same thing.
