Why Should I Be Accountable to Repay Your Student Loan?

            Members of the possibly incoming Biden administration and others are pushing for a student loan forgiveness program. Most of my children responsibly borrowed money to attend college, and they paid off their loans. They made sacrifices, such as delaying the purchase of a home, to pay them off. Other young people did not go to college because they could not afford the costs. Why should any of us be held accountable for the loans of other college students who borrowed more money than they can repay?

            I am not the only person that has this point of view. Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame does not support any program that would provide loan forgiveness even though he does feel pity for the people involved. Rowe made a post on Facebook as a response to people who asked him to comment on proposals that would forgive billions of dollars in student loans. 

My reasons for opposing student loan forgiveness are not a secret. I’ve written at length on this page about the fundamental unfairness of doing such a thing – especially to the millions of Americans who have paid their college debts, and sacrificed much to do so. I’ve also said that forgiving student debt would send a terrible message to the very same universities that already gouge their customers with sky-high tuition. Tuition will never come back to earth, if we bail out those who borrowed more than they could repay. Kevin Williamson, however, has summed it up better than I have. /this paragraph in the attached article jumped out….

“The majority of student debt is held by relatively high-income people, poor people mostly are not college graduates, and those who attended college but did not graduate hold relatively little college-loan debt, etc. As the New York Times puts it, ‘Debt relief overall would disproportionately benefit middle- to upper-class college graduates.’ Which ones? “Especially those who attended elite and expensive institutions, and people with lucrative professional credentials like law and medical degrees.”

            Like Mike Rowe, I pity every young person who is saddled with a huge student loan debt. It is tough to start adult life with debt hanging over your head, especially a debt so large that it may be impossible to repay. Even though I pity such people, I have to say “Tough!” Life is hard for most of us, and some of us make it harder on ourselves than other people do.

            No one is responsible for the amount of money that a student borrows except the student themselves. They are adults now and are responsible to clean up their own messes. You borrowed the money and said that you would repay it! Do it!

            College is not for everyone. No one should feel obligated to attend college, and they should not go to college to see if they will like it or to party – or for similar reasons. Attendance at a university is serious work, but there are many universities in the nation other than the elite schools. Students gain good educations at those schools and do not have to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to go there. Besides, there are plenty of jobs in the real world that do not require university studies, even though the best ones need more than a high school education.

            As long as the federal government subsidizes student loans, the universities will continue to raise the cost of tuition. The universities know a good thing when they see it. The only type of relief program that would be useful in bringing down the cost of education is one that would charge the forgiven amounts back to the universities. The American taxpayers get nothing from the so-called education received at the liberal elite universities. Why should we be held accountable for loans that we did not authorize or receive?