|
I always see a lot of talk about PPP loans or how college is free in other countries, but both of those have very little to do with Student Loan forgiveness in the USA.
For PPP loans, that was implemented to help with a government created mess, those businesses had no choice to get involved with. They didnt get the choice to shut down or stay open, they were told what they could/couldnt do. So it is completely different than a person making a choice to take on a loan to go to college.
For free college in other countries, again, its a different situation. My wife's family is from/lives in Germany. A couple of them got free college, a couple were put in the vocational tract and went to trade schools, a handful were basically told HS education is about the best youre gonna get and joined the military. From an early age, they were put in to different education programs, some that put them on the tract to university and some that werent. Theres a lot of nuance here, but essentially, from grade school on, they were told they would get to go to college or werent. Not everyone got the opportunity to go to college. It was decided by their teachers/government who did. There were also fairly stringent guidelines they needed to meet. If they didnt, they lost that opportunity. There is also a test at the end of their highschool that determines if you get in to college or not.
So if Americans are fine with the Government telling them who gets to go to college and what they get to study, sure, let the gov give free college out. Only about 30% of Germans end up going to college. Compared to the ~60% of Americans that go to college. There is a 0% chance the USA adopts a similar type system that allows free college for some, especially with how much college degrees have been pushed in our society for the last several decades.
End of the day, students took out these loans for college degrees. If you want to blame someone for the loans, blame the students, their family and their HS guidance counselors. Someone in their life should have explained what they are getting themselves in to. And i have 0 sympathy for people in the last decade that took on massive loans for terrible paying majors. All that data is easily accessible on the internet. With a quick google search, you can see average pay for your degree, top end/entry level pay, job openings and placement percentages, etc. There is no reason someone should say they had no idea their 6 figure college debt was going to result in a 50k/yr salary.
|