Millions owe six figures for degrees that never delivered the promised paycheck, while people who skipped college — or already paid theirs off — foot part of the bill either way. Fair relief, or a bailout for bad decisions? Argue it out.
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Add your commentI'm 58. I paid for my degree working summers and part-time. Tuition at my state school was $1,400 a semester in 1987. My nephew just started at the same school. His tuition is $14,800 a semester. These are not comparable situations. Stop telling young people to just work harder. The math stopped working before they were born.
my parents told me no loans were getting forgiven when i was 19. they were right. congress told me loans were getting forgiven when i was 32. they were wrong. i deferred life decisions based on that promise. i didn't buy a house. i held off on kids. and then the supreme court threw it out. at some point broken promises from the government ARE the injury.
My son has Down syndrome. I never went to college. I worked in a factory for 31 years. My taxes have paid for a lot of things I personally don't benefit from — wars, farm subsidies, corporate bailouts. I'm not complaining about helping young people get out from under a system that clearly got out of control. That's what a society does.
I paid mine off. Every last dollar. Ate ramen, drove a 2002 Civic with a broken AC through Georgia summers, took every overtime shift I could find for six years. And you know what? I still think cancellation is probably the right call for people in deeper holes than me. My pride in paying it off doesn't mean the system wasn't broken. Those are two separate things.
I paid off $67,000 in student loans working two jobs for eight years. Every single dollar. If you forgive everyone else's debt now, what do I get? A thank you card? The people who sacrificed and did the right thing get absolutely nothing out of this deal.
I'm a bankruptcy attorney in Ohio and I find this debate almost comical. You can discharge gambling debts in bankruptcy. Casino losses. But student loans? Almost impossible. Congress specifically carved them out. So we've literally decided as a society that betting on blackjack deserves more legal protection than betting on your own education. Let that sink in.
I just want my kids to be able to consider college without fear. That's it. That's my whole position. I don't care who wins the political argument. I just don't want them to be 45 and still paying for being 18.
Fun fact: forgiving student debt would cost roughly what we spent on the 2008 bank bailout. We found the money then. Nobody asked the bankers if they made bad decisions.
Unpopular opinion incoming: most people complaining about their loans on the internet are not the worst-off borrowers. The worst-off borrowers often didn't even graduate. They have debt AND no degree. Nobody ever talks about them because they don't have Twitter accounts or time to debate this stuff. They're working three jobs.
I'm a first-generation college student who took out $67,000 in loans for a nursing degree. I make decent money now. But I want people to understand — nobody in my family knew how any of this worked. No one explained what interest capitalization meant. I signed papers at 18 because a guidance counselor told me it was the only way. That is not a fully informed decision.
The most underrated point in this whole debate: the real beneficiaries of the current system aren't students or even schools — they're the administrative class that has exploded at universities over the last 30 years. Vice provosts of diversity initiatives. Associate deans of strategic initiatives. Six-figure salaries, multiple layers deep, funded by your loans.
My wife has a chronic illness and had to leave her career. Our household income dropped by more than half. Her loans went into forbearance and the interest kept compounding. She now owes more than she borrowed 14 years ago despite making years of payments. The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. It was designed to extract.
My daughter has lupus. She took out loans to become a nurse so she could understand her own disease and help others like her. She graduated, she's working, she loves it — and she owes $94,000 that will take decades to pay off on a nurse's salary. Tell me again how this is just about bad decisions.
forgive mine please im begging. $94k for a social work degree. i make $38k a year helping foster kids. i will never pay this off. i am not a bad person who made a bad decision. i was 17 and everyone told me to go and i went and now i help children for a living and i am absolutely drowning
My daughter is 16 and already stressed about college costs. She's brilliant — valedictorian material — and she's literally telling me she doesn't want to go because she's scared of debt. We failed her generation before they even got started.
My brother dropped out after one semester, never got a degree, and is still paying off $23,000 twelve years later because of how the interest compounded. He's not asking for a handout. He's asking why the loan he took at 18 is now worth more than his original balance despite years of payments. That's not a bad decision story. That's a predatory lending story. Call it what it is.
Forgive it all. Burn it down. The entire system is a scam built on the backs of young people who were told their only path to dignity and employment ran through a $60,000-a-year institution. I have zero patience for 'but it wouldn't be fair' arguments from people who went to college in 1987 when tuition was $800 a semester.
I want someone to explain to me how we find hundreds of billions for defense contracts, bank stabilization, airline bailouts, farm subsidies — without a single 'who's gonna pay for it' in the room — but the moment it's regular people asking for relief, suddenly we're fiscal hawks. I'm not even saying forgive it all. I'm saying the selective concern is obvious.
Does anyone else remember when politicians from BOTH parties were pushing 'college for everyone' as the solution to economic inequality? Where's their accountability in this conversation? This didn't happen in a vacuum.
hard disagree. i grew up poor, never went to college because i couldnt afford it, learned a trade instead. why should my tax dollars cancel debt for people who got a shot at higher education that i never even had?
I paid mine off. And yes, I want others to get relief. These two things are not in conflict. I don't want everyone AFTER me to suffer just because I did. That's not principle, that's spite.
Bold of everyone here to assume Congress will do literally anything about this. They've had decades. The debt ceiling drama, the partisan fights, the election cycles. This issue will be campaigned on forever and solved never. That's the actual prediction.
The person above isn't wrong but they're applying that logic to a systemic problem. Yes, individuals make choices. But when millions of people make the same 'bad decision' based on the same cultural messaging, the same counselor advice, the same federal loan availability, the same university marketing — at what point do we admit this was a system-level failure, not a million individual ones.
My honest position: cap forgiveness at $20k, make it income-contingent, and pair it with mandatory tuition controls going forward. Will this satisfy the 'cancel it all' crowd? No. Will it satisfy the 'pay what you owe' crowd? No. Is it probably the right answer? Yeah, probably.
I keep seeing people say 'I paid mine off so why should others get relief' and like... that logic would have stopped every piece of social progress in American history? 'I didn't get the Voting Rights Act so why should they?' That's not how policy works.
The thing people keep glossing over is that a huge chunk of this debt is graduate and professional school debt. Medical school. Law school. Dental school. Those people are going to be fine. Lumping them in with the underwater art history grad working at Starbucks is intellectually dishonest and it's why this debate never goes anywhere.
The problem with 'forgive it all' is that it does absolutely nothing about the underlying cost structure. The day after forgiveness, schools charge the same tuition, lenders make the same loans, and we're back here in twelve years having the same argument.
My take: forgive loans tied to predatory or fraudulent institutions completely. For everyone else, cap interest rates retroactively at 2%, give income-based repayment with real teeth, and forgive balances after 10 years of payments. That's fair to borrowers AND to people who already paid.
As someone who teaches high school economics — the real scandal isn't even the loans. It's that we've built an entire credentialing system where a piece of paper from a specific type of institution is the gatekeeping mechanism for the middle class, and then we're surprised people took on debt to get through the gate. Fix the gate or stop blaming people for trying to walk through it.
people keep saying 'bad decisions' like the 17-year-old sitting in a school counselor's office with a college acceptance letter and zero financial literacy had the same decision-making infrastructure as a 35-year-old taking out a business loan. come on.
okay but nobody is talking about the 18 year olds who were basically children being handed $80,000 in loans by adults who absolutely knew better. the predatory lending aspect of this whole system gets completely ignored every time
can we talk about how 18 is considered old enough to take on $120,000 in debt but not old enough to rent a car or in some states buy a beer. just an observation.
I keep seeing folks say 'you signed the contract' as if that ends the conversation. By that logic we should never have restructured farm debt in the 80s, never modified mortgages after 2008, never given airlines or auto manufacturers a dime. We restructure debt all the time in this country when the scale of the problem demands it. The selective outrage here is telling.
Here's what I want someone to explain to me: if we forgive all of it right now, what exactly stops universities from jacking tuition up another 40% over the next decade knowing the government will eventually clean it up again? Anyone? Anyone at all?
I challenge anyone who thinks this is purely about 'bad decisions' to go look up what for-profit colleges did to low-income first-generation students. Corinthian Colleges. ITT Tech. These were fraud operations. Those students deserve every penny back.
My brother in Christ, the federal government OWNS most of these loans. Forgiving them doesn't work like canceling private debt. It means the Treasury just... stops collecting. The 'cost' to taxpayers is largely notional because most of this debt was never going to be fully repaid anyway. Anyone citing the sticker price of full forgiveness is not giving you the real number.
The comment above me is so confidently simple I almost admire it. Sir, the federal student loan program has been generating billions in profit for the government off these borrowers. This is not a normal creditor-debtor relationship. The government is not your bank.
What nobody talks about: forgiving debt for people who already repaid nothing. Forgiving debt for people currently in default everything. I paid mine off responsibly and I got nothing. My neighbor who stopped paying gets a windfall. If you can't see why that feels wrong you're not trying.
The 'bad decisions' framing drives me absolutely insane. High school guidance counselors, parents, every authority figure in a teenager's life told them college was the ONLY path to a good life. That was the cultural mandate. You can't blame 17-year-olds for following it.
Veterinarian here. 8 years of school. $310,000 in debt. I help animals for a living. Not apologizing for it. But I will tell you the average vet makes about $100k and rural vets make considerably less. The 'you chose it, you owe it' crowd seems to think we all went to school to get rich. Some of us went because we had a calling. That's allowed.
I'm a small business owner in rural Tennessee. None of my employees have four-year degrees. All of them make between $48k and $85k. I'm not against college but the idea that it's the only path to a stable life is exactly the myth that got people into this mess and nobody wants to say it out loud.
I work in financial aid. The number of students I've seen talked into loans by their own schools' enrollment offices — schools with a direct financial incentive to get those kids signed up — is staggering. This is not purely a story of individual irresponsibility.
Student loan forgiveness is basically a massive transfer of wealth TO relatively educated people FROM working class taxpayers who didn't go to college. Progressives should think about that for a second.
I dunno man. I feel for people drowning in debt. I really do. But I also feel for the electrician who went to trade school and is watching his tax dollars potentially bail out someone who got a master's in creative writing from a private university. Both of these people are real.
I have a PhD in electrical engineering. I have zero sympathy for my own loans. I chose a field, I knew the salaries, I did the math, I signed. It's going to be fine. What I DO have sympathy for is the 22-year-old who was sold a bill of goods by a for-profit school that's now under federal investigation. Those are different situations and we need to stop treating them identically.
My husband and I paid off our loans AND our kids' loans. Six people. Combined maybe $280,000 over 20 years. I'm not bitter — we managed. But I will never understand why the answer is to make the debt disappear rather than to make the system affordable. One is a fix. The other is a reset button that leaves the machine broken.
The credit card comparison doesn't hold up. Credit card debt doesn't come with federal backing, federal interest rates, or federal collection mechanisms including garnished Social Security checks. When the government is the lender AND the collector AND the regulator, 'personal responsibility' has a different meaning than it does with a private bank.
I teach at a community college in Arizona. My students are mostly working adults — parents, veterans, people changing careers. They're not the stereotype. They're trying so hard. The least we could do is not crush them financially for wanting a better life.
forgive ALL of it or forgive NONE of it are both wrong and i'm exhausted by everyone acting like nuance is cowardice
The economic argument FOR forgiveness is actually pretty strong. Debt-burdened millennials aren't buying houses, aren't starting businesses, aren't having kids. The drag on the broader economy is real and measurable. This isn't just charity — it's stimulus.
lol at the idea that 18 year olds signing six figure loan documents is a free market transaction between informed parties. one side has entire departments of enrollment counselors and financial aid offices whose jobs literally depend on getting kids to sign. the other side is a teenager who has never seen that much money in their life. totally equal negotiation
I will never understand the passion with which some people oppose relief for others. Like, it's not your money sitting in an account somewhere. We're talking about debt — entries in a ledger — owed to a government entity that printed the money in the first place. The moral outrage is just... strange to me.
I'm a college professor and I'll say what most of my colleagues won't: universities raised tuition year after year BECAUSE the loans were guaranteed. We are partially responsible for this crisis. Forgiveness without reforming institutional pricing is treating the symptom.
That last comment is exactly the kind of smug condescension that makes this debate impossible. Some of us oppose blanket forgiveness because we've actually read the distributional analyses, not because of feelings. Characterizing all opposition as spite or ignorance is lazy and it's why nothing gets done.
the whole conversation assumes college 'should' cost this much in the first place and that assumption is doing a lot of heavy lifting that nobody is examining
okay but can someone explain why we are acting like the government setting the terms of the loans AND running the schools AND guaranteeing the debt somehow produces... good outcomes? wild that this surprises anyone
Blanket forgiveness is the wrong policy even if you sympathize with borrowers. Means-tested relief for people below a certain income threshold, targeting specific predatory institutions, and fixing the system going forward — that's the responsible approach. Writing off $1.7 trillion with no structural reform just inflates tuition costs further.
I grew up on a farm in Kansas. Didn't go to college. Took over the family operation when my dad got sick. Been paying property taxes for 30 years that fund state universities I never attended. Now I'm supposed to also absorb the cost of someone's defaulted MBA? I don't have a fancy argument. It just doesn't feel right from where I'm standing.
germany has free college. finland has free college. we have a $1.7 trillion debt crisis and we're debating whether the victims deserve help. priorities.
Here's my issue with the 'it's an investment you made' crowd: you can do due diligence on a stock. You can read a prospectus. What 17-year-old has access to reliable salary outcome data broken down by institution, major, and regional job market? That information barely existed in usable form until like 2015. We're judging people for not consulting data that wasn't public.
Hot take: the people most opposed to this have already built their wealth inside a system subsidized six ways to Sunday — mortgage interest deductions, employer healthcare tax exclusions, 401k deferrals — and somehow only student loans represent an unconscionable handout.
I have a JD and $198,000 in debt. I'm not a sob story — I practice law and I can manage the payments. But I want to be honest: the debt has shaped every decision I've made for a decade. Where I live, whether I have kids, the clients I can afford to take. The cost isn't just financial. It warps your entire life.
What about the plumber who started his own business instead of going to college and now earns $140k a year? He took a risk too. Nobody's canceling his business debt if things go south.
Here's a take I'll defend: the people most loudly opposed to forgiveness tend to be people who paid off their loans AND people who never went to college. The first group is motivated by a sunk-cost resentment they'd never admit to. The second group is making a policy argument that sounds principled but is actually vibes-based. Very few opponents engage with the actual economics.
I borrowed $45k for a supply chain degree from a state school. Got a job making $72k starting salary. I don't think my debt should be forgiven. I think the people who borrowed $120k for degrees with no labor market demand were given genuinely bad information and genuinely deserve relief. These are different situations and treating them the same is intellectually lazy.
The emotionally satisfying answer (cancel it all!) and the economically sound answer are almost certainly not the same answer and I wish more people in this thread seemed bothered by that distinction.
That last comment isn't wrong about administrative bloat but it's also a convenient way to be mad at universities without talking about the state legislatures that cut higher ed funding by 30-40% over the same period and forced schools to replace it with tuition.
My cousin has $200k in loans for a masters in communications from a mid-tier private school. She makes $38k a year. At some point we have to ask whether the lenders AND the universities share responsibility here, not just the student.
Forgiving student debt is regressive. Top quartile income households hold something like 34% of outstanding student debt. Bottom quartile holds like 12%. If you just wipe the slate, you are disproportionately helping people who are already doing okay. I'm not saying don't help struggling borrowers. I'm saying a blanket forgiveness check is a terrible way to do it.
Partial forgiveness tied to income and public service makes sense. Full blanket forgiveness is a policy that helps a Harvard law grad the same as it helps a community college dropout who never finished their associate's degree. If you can't see the problem with that you're not thinking, you're just feeling.
both sides of this debate treat it like it's a moral question when it's actually a macroeconomic one. do the math on what happens to housing markets, birth rates, small business formation, and consumer spending if you eliminate 1.7 trillion in debt overhang from people in their peak earning years. the numbers actually favor forgiveness pretty strongly. feelings about fairness are secondary.
Full forgiveness is a one-time fix that doesn't address the root cause. In 10 years we'll be having this exact same debate again with a new generation of borrowers. Fix. The. System.
Counterpoint to the above: if debt is 'just entries in a ledger,' why do we collect taxes at all? At some point money represents real resources and decisions about who bears costs matter enormously. 'Just print it' is not macroeconomics.
I went to community college, transferred, graduated with $12k in debt, paid it off in 3 years. People who chose expensive private schools for the 'experience' then want forgiveness... nah. choices matter
cancel it all and make public university free going forward. i do not care that my taxes go up. i do not care about the cost. an educated population is a national security issue and we are currently watching ourselves fall behind every country that figured this out decades ago.
I served 8 years in the Army. Used the GI Bill. Covered most of it. Still came out with $22k in loans for a master's degree I needed to get promoted in my civilian career. Forgive it? Sure. I'm not going to pretend I need it desperately, but it'd help. What bothers me is people acting like any relief at all is morally monstrous while we hand defense contractors blank checks.
anyone who thinks means-testing forgiveness is workable has never dealt with federal bureaucracy. you'll spend five years proving your income and the program will get quietly defunded. we've seen this movie.
I think people who already paid off their loans should get some kind of tax credit or refund if forgiveness passes. You can make policy fair to both groups if you actually try. The either/or framing is lazy.
every generation had its version of 'back in my day it was harder and we managed.' every generation was also partially right and partially missing the point about what changed. holding both of those things is apparently impossible online
genuinely asking - if someone got their debt forgiven, do they owe taxes on that amount? because i heard yes and that seems like it would devastate a lot of people who thought they were getting relief. someone who actually knows please respond
The libertarian in me says no. The human in me looks at what these universities were charging versus what they were delivering and says... maybe. I genuinely don't know where I land on this.
the real answer is that this is a political football neither party actually wants to solve because an angry indebted voter base is a motivated voter base and thats just the truth nobody says out loud
went to community college. worked nights at a gas station. graduated with $8k in debt and paid it off in three years. am i supposed to feel bad that people who went to out-of-state private schools need help? genuinely asking
Every time I try to have an honest conversation about this my liberal friends call me heartless and my conservative friends call me a socialist. I just think targeted relief makes more sense than blanket forgiveness. That's not a radical position!
I'm going to get roasted for this but: some people DID make genuinely bad decisions. Took out $80k for a degree from a school nobody's heard of in a field with no job market. Personal responsibility isn't a slur. We can have compassion AND acknowledge that outcomes aren't always someone else's fault. Both things exist.
Counterpoint to the nurse story above: sympathy for individual cases doesn't make good national policy. Lots of people have hard situations. We don't design a $1.7 trillion program around individual hardship narratives.
Blanket forgiveness is a wealth transfer to people who are statistically better off than those who never attended college. The numbers on this are not ambiguous. Median wealth of college grads vs non-grads. Look it up before you tweet about it.
nobody in this comment section went to law school apparently because the legal mechanism for mass executive forgiveness is genuinely contested and courts have already weighed in. the policy debate is almost secondary at this point
Hard cap at 10k, income verified, one-time deal, no negotiation. Done. Move on. Fix the universities next. This is not complicated people just want it to be.
That point about cost structure is correct and almost everyone ignores it. Full marks.
nobody forgave my credit card debt when i maxed it out buying groceries after i got laid off in 2009. im just saying consistency matters
Actually student loan interest is tax deductible so technically taxpayers are already subsidizing borrowers. Just pointing that out for the people acting like any government involvement would be unprecedented.
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