As someone who took advantage of the recent low interest federal loans and frozen interest payments from the current admin, I wonder if Biden will indeed step in and “forgive” loans.
Selfishly, that would be nice. But standing by principle, I don’t think it’s fair to others who did pay off their loans before me or to the tax payers who will take up my burden.
But to me, the loan crisis is a symptom of a larger issue. My generation has been mislead about higher education. There was a time where a college education was almost a guarantee at a decent living wage and a ticket to the middle class. Those days are gone. Hence I’m doing a MSc to be more competitive.
The larger issue I see is there are too many useless degrees, some of them ridiculously expensive at private schools. Another I issue I believe is key is the US undergrad program is 4 years, when I see Europe doing 3. I basically wasted 1 year of my undergrad licking rocks in geology labs and learning about sexual health. I’m not saying these are topics not worthy of learning, but 1 hour of youtube watching videos will provide more useful information for me in these topics not related to my actual major.
The student debt crisis could have been lessen by 25% just doing this. It would also prevent many students going to college just to go if they don’t know what they actually want to study. I think around 1/3 of students my freshmen year came to college without a major in mind, just wondering with a full year of studying general education classes like philosophy 101, environmental studies 101, music business 101, etc.