It's not fair and responsible (from a government point of view) to burden teens with decision that might lead to a debt for the big part of their life imho.
I would bet it's a small minority of students who actually did seriously consult their parents and whose parents did wisely caution against it (even refusing to sign a parent PLUS loan, a factor not talked about much) but who found a private lender themselves anyway and after graduating can't pay it back. You could protect this minority from itself by raising the age of adulthood, but if we actually agree it's a minority, this won't solve the problem.
My point is it's not good enough to blame stupid non-adult teens when you could blame their adult parents just as easily, and trying to solve the problem at either of those levels (less stupid teens through 'education', or less stupid adults with longer reaching power, or forbidding teens in general from making bad choices) won't work.
The sad truth is that some kids don't have parents. The fact that they need to take out a loan at all suggests that their parents (if they have any) may not be very experienced at making much money themselves.
Loan forgiveness should not be restricted to teens. I know many adults that could be similarly mislead.
And absolutely it is a minority, which is why student loan forgiveness is workable. Trust me, the banks will still make money, just not as much.
Ok, so where are the teachers at? Surely they're in even better positions to advise than the average parent. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13070885 report suggests otherwise.
Some loan forgiveness is workable and I think inevitable but it does nothing to stop the problem, it just relieves some people at the expense of others (generalizing to the whole economy) who can take the hit. In that it's kind of a herring. When you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging as the first thing you do. Loan forgiveness lifts some people out of the hole but incentivizes digging faster.
As some others have said, it all depends on how the debt is forgiven. If the government uses tax payer money to repay the loans, then you are correct. If the government makes universities and/or loan providers eat the cost in cases where it can be shown that they should have known the debt would not be able to be repaid, then the loan providers will not have an incentive to give out as many loans as possible to people who will be unable to repay them.
The party in the best position to know who will and won't be able to repay a particular loan is the lender, who has all the historical data and statistics about previous loans.
Stop making excuses for adults to engage in infantile behavior. I was perfectly capable of making life decisions at age 18 - 19. And I am not a special genius.
Unfortunately, it's not the target. The target is, as has been stated multiple times, people who are incredibly, irretrievably indebted with no hope of paying the money back, because the colleges with the relevant programs cost far more than someone who obtained the resulting job (or wasn't able to find one) can ever afford to pay back.
Being that student loans in the US are _no longer forgivable_ via bankruptcy or any other means, these student loans are essentially a permanent debt the student will never be free of otherwise, and bear more than a passing resemblance to a class of indentured servitude. Such things are not what any reasonable person had in mind for America.
Taking out a loan you don't realistically have the capacity to pay back is irresponsible. This scheme is nothing but privatized success and socializing failure.
If you want to fix the problem, stop subsidizing the loans and allow these colleges to die, shrink or reduce costs.
I won't copy my entire comment, but right here I lay out the math on why student loan forgiveness goes largely to those getting very expensive terminal professional degrees. Do you consider those going into medical school to be irresponsible people?
If you were misled by a loan provider, that's fraud and you should report it. The much more likely scenario is that you assumed a $150k degree guaranteed you a job, which is obviously not the case.
How is taking money for a degree irresponsible? The only party irresponsible is the lender. I hope the taxpayer loses 60 gajillion dollars on student loans since they are simply exploiting young people.
A decision to start your adult life with borrowing large amount of money and spending it on studying an esoteric subject would be considered extremely irresponsible in most societies ( assuming the person does not have any assets or marketable skills to fall back on).
If you enjoy art history, I have no problem whatsoever if you want to learn about it. But if you borrow $50k that you can't pay back to pay for your hobbies, that's irresponsible.
The problem is a university and/or loan provider who is only interested in your money (and doesn't fear their loans being forgiven) has an incentive to mislead kids into thinking that this is not irresponsible.
Not everyone is as well informed as you were at 18.
The article touches on this, but income based repayment benefits students who graduate with medical, law or other professional degrees the most. Entering into the workforce at a relatively low rate, then having some loans forgiven before their pay goes up a great deal.