Also the debt cannot be gotten rid of by declaring yourself bankrupt. It is a 'federal' debt.
Think the UK has sort of got this right. Your tuition fees are a debt (at very low interest rates) that you never have to pay off unless you start earning significant amounts of money. It's repaid as a percentage of your salary above a certain income level.
Not sure a political party can be relied on to do the right thing. It's the nature of politics.
20 years ago I could buy a house for a decent price. I started Uni in 1990 and that was the first year student loans were introduced. So you'd have to have graduated in 1989 (25 years ago) to not have been impacted by student loans.
What has changed is that the cost of going to University has now been transferred correctly to the student. I see nothing wrong in somebody choosing to go to University and I know many people of my era that just went to University because that is what you did. Now people try and evaluate if going to University is the correct career choice.
The important thing to remember is that this 'debt' is not an issue. You have to be financially 'successful' to even start to need to pay it off and the interest rate is currently at 1.5% (Commercial rates are around 6-9%) and is written off after 25 years, unlike the US student debt which is at commercial rates and you cannot escape.
It's a social investment in the future of the country, there's nothing objectively correct that at some arbitrary point in your education you suddenly need to pay. I wonder when you want to start having school children accrue their loans for primary/secondary school?
Why is part of your education free and part of it not? And perhaps the most important part that you arguably desperately need if you want to access a middle class job?
Isn't that massively elitist and a class discriminator? That when you do finally get that job you have to pay a load of money back that your richer peers just put in a saving account and earned some free money?
And if that's what's changed why do so many more people go to university now than previously?
Everything you've just said makes absolutely no sense from a different perspective.
The world is unfair and some people are born into money and many many more are not. The government has taken the decision to provide free education up to a specific level. Should you wish to pursue a degree, the government provides a debt mechanism to do this.
The debt is non-repayable until you have pretty much become financially successful and is written off after 25 years. I really don't see this as a major issue. There is nothing financially stopping you going to University.
I'd actually argue that the government debt should also cover residential accommodation and minimum living costs.
It isn't really "completely free" if it's coming out of tax revenue, is it? Paid for by taxation would be the correct way to describe that situation, it seems.
This kind of sky high prices necessarily deprives a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA. This directly has an impact on the economy in the long run. Instead of funding an expensive military, US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education and recover it over the entire working life of the person in small bits. Better to have high national debt in return for an extremely well educated population instead of a white elephant of a military.
Supply and demand. The demand is extremely high, with every high school graduate being pressured to "go to college!" (to what end, few know) and student loans being so easy to get. The supply is limited, as a nation can only produce so many professors and places for them to teach.
Your suggestion "US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education" (however paid for) would just increase the demand even more. You'd still be depriving a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA by the sheer mass of bodies signing up - and you'd still have a limited supply of teachers & facilities, so odds of the "deserving" getting what they need remains low.
Demand outstripping supply, prices naturally rise until equilibrium. Making payment easier thru cheap debt or government handouts doesn't solve the problem because that increases the demand without improving supply. MOOCs, by improving the teacher/student ratio by orders of magnitude, does work toward solving the problem (and decreases costs as well!).
Think the UK has sort of got this right. Your tuition fees are a debt (at very low interest rates) that you never have to pay off unless you start earning significant amounts of money. It's repaid as a percentage of your salary above a certain income level.