Flashpoint: Student Loan Forgiveness and the Crisis of Higher Education Cost in America - youramericanmoney
Author: Michelle
Description: Student Loan Forgiveness has become a heated conversation related to financial policy, the cost of education and fairness
Date: 2022-06-07T09:00:00+00:00

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# Flashpoint: Student Loan Forgiveness and the Crisis of Higher Education Cost in America

posted on 7 June, 2022

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For the past couple of years the chatter around student loans and the cost of education has increased tenfold. COVID ramped up the partisan divide and forced the American public to begin having a conversation about the topic we’d ignored for so long. For the next 12 weeks (12 episodes) of the Michelle is Money Hungry Podcast, my guests and I will do a deep dive into the topic of student loan forgiveness. Is this a policy overreach or is it time to have an in-depth and honest conversation about the cost of higher education. Are we selling snake oil to current and future students and is college a part of the American dream? Or, has the cost priced people out?

In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please read my disclosure here.*

## Listen to the Episode

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## Show Notes

There are so many questions and emotions tied to the Student Loan Forgiveness issue. Issues related to fairness, accessibility and the cost of higher education in America. So, I decided to have deeper, more nuanced conversations about what we’re getting wrong and right about the Student Loan Forgiveness policy. Here is just a quick teaser of what my 9 guests and I will discuss during the upcoming weeks.

- Robert Farrington of The College Investor “Student Loan Forgiveness would be a part of any solutions but I think it needs to be tied in to fixing the root cause of the problem. How can these loans be so toxic that we have to fix them. But, not so toxic that we keep lending them. We need to help those that need the assistance.”

- Kyle Landis-Marinello Author-“Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program-This is a program available to people working ten or more years for the government at the state or Federal level. This passed around 15 years ago to encourage people to go into public interest work. When I graduated I decided to do something different. But, as we had a 2nd and 3rd kid, it was really tight and tough. If this program hadn’t been available, I wouldn’t have done it. There was one year when I met with my boss about a raise.”

- Ja’Net Adams Debt Sucks University “I’m a first generation grad. I was asked if you could do it over again would you go to college? I told them, of course I would. But, I would say you could go to the cheaper school. his was put into law. This is not a whim. I ask people “How would you feel if the promise that was made to have social security and it’s not fair to any one else.”

- Howard Dvorkin Debt.Com–I’m going to answer this in a couple of different ways. The first, all the consumer hears is “free money” but there are downsides to that free money. These politicians are using this as a political football. The only reason they are talking about it is to get more votes. There’s no way the country can afford this. Frankly, I’m disgusted when politicians talk about this. It’s not that I don’t want people to feel financially secure this is billions or potentially trillions of dollars. And I wonder where’s the fairness? What about the person who spent 20 or 30 years paying off their loans and then a year later someone else gets their loan paid off. Here’s an example: two people live next to each other one went to a state school the other went to private. State school guy paid off his loans in full and he’s done. The private school neighbor went through didn’t pay off his debt, got deferrals and made smaller payments. They get similar salaries and one chose to play the system. The other one did the right thing and paid off the debt. Who’s paying? The guy who works on their lawns. The other person benefited by getting a higher paying job. That’s inherently unfair. I think it’s wrong. I do have a plan that would make this simple (I believe) Instead of charging 5,6, 7% interest why don’t we just charge 2% for all Federal loans from accredited universities vs. giving Mr. Smith $50k and asking the people who work for him to pay for it (via tax)

- Stanley Tate Student Loan Lawyer (Tate Law)-“Most of my clients come to me when they have had these loans for at least 10 years or more. They may be in a better financial situation and are trying to figure out what they actually need to do now. There’s a lot of anxiety around what they need to do and are stressed the fuck out. It’s going to take some time and here’s the plan that you can work on”

- Lisa-A Lawyer and Her Money “The current proposal that $10k forgiven feels counterproductive. I want education to be more aligned with job prospects and colleges will have less incentive to manage the expense and pass on costs to future students. It must be really demoralizing for someone whose child has graduated from college in the STEM space but isn’t getting hired. People who struggle to find work even when they do everything right. We give colleges so much money. Colleges need to make sure that graduates are getting into jobs. This $10k will help some people. I’m not unsympathetic of that. But, what we need is not to have people in 10 years graduating with even more debt. Law schools are very particular about employment numbers. Their hopes should be dashed at 25 not at 23.”

- Matt Lane Twitter @MattLaneWrites -“I think a lot of these conversations around loan forgiveness are frustrating to me. If I’m advising the Department of Education there’s not a lot that they can do without Congress. And Congress is not going to do anything in the near future. People are saying we shouldn’t do forgiveness unless we do something to fix the underlying problems. That’s all great and right. But, right now the Department of Education under existing law has the power to forgive student loans 20USC1082a for the nerds. That gives the Secretary of Education the power to forgive loans. We need a new law. We need 60 votes. It’s not possible, it’s not in the realm of possibility at least in this decade.”

- Jake Wang IAG “One thing, Michelle, that we haven’t really talked about is the impact of Student Loan Repayment program by employers. Today, more and more companies are starting to offer some amount of student loan repayment as a benefit. Another way people can get help today (while waiting for government) is looking for employment with companies that offer these benefits. But, when we talk about how to solve this problem-another way could be to work through the tax code so that companies can offer this benefit. This allows people to choose where they would like to work. This solution could help a lot of people with more freedom of choice.”

- Kevin L. Matthews Building Bread– “Forgive me this may be more of a rant. As far as “Hey, I paid my loans.” My answer is “Good for you. That’s awesome. That’s not my situation and not the situation for millions of borrowers out there who may have also paid.” We have to take into context how many people have paid on their loans and on Twitter people are talking about how I paid off my debt in the 1965 or the 80’s. Well, your minimum wage job covered tuition and college was less expensive then and now college is more expensive now. The economic argument is if you’re not for Student Loan Forgiveness then you must be for higher wages across the board. But, that’s not what you’re arguing for which really doesn’t make sense. You’re arguing for people to suffer just because you had to suffer which really doesn’t make sense. I don’t tell people hey son go to a dictionary when you have Google. Congratulations a trophy for you. Realize that you have benefited. But, you have prior to these prices taking off. The last thing is we have this really strange assumption that people haven’t been paying. There are people who have took out $30k, paid $50k. We need to understand the nuance of this situation. We never talk about people who took out loans and didn’t finish.”

- Amanda Claypool Millionaire by Next Year–“Making student loans a collateral based lending product. If you wanted to buy a car or a house the financial scrutiny is tougher than getting student loans. I was 17 when I went to college. There’s nothing underpinning these loans. Tomorrow we could go to a bank and request an unsecured student loan and we would have to qualify for these loans. The 3 things I would require 1. A national service requirement for SLF 2. A blanket forgiveness vs. all of these qualifiers and there is a historical precedence for this back to Biblical times. Debt Jubiliees-Hahrambi wiped away debt. More recently, Iceland eliminated a substantial amount of mortgage debt. 3. Maybe participation in local communities.”

## Buy Me a Coffee and Next Week’s Episode

Thank you so much for listening to the show. I’m excited to share this project with you and I’m looking forward to expanding the conversation around the Student Loan Forgiveness policy. Also, producing a project like this takes a lot of time and is a lot of work. Support this work by clicking on my Buy Me a Coffee Link in the show notes.

I truly appreciate your support and would love it if you shared this series with a friend. The next episode in this series is a general conversation about Student Loan Forgiveness with Robert Farrington founder of The College Investor.

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#### Michelle

I am an obsessive foodie, but not self-righteous with it, love travel, meeting new people, helping you look good, and am freaked out by people who don't enjoying reading...something! Grab a Perrier, read my blog, feel free to drop me a line! Hope to hear from you soon.

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1. […] Flashpoint: Student Loan Forgiveness and the Crisis of Higher Education Cost in America […]

2. […] Flashpoint: Student Loan Forgiveness and the Crisis of Higher Education Cost In America […]

3. […] It’s also important to remember – if student loan debt is so toxic we have to forgive it, how come it’s not toxic enough we have to…? […]

4. […] Additionally it is vital to bear in mind – if scholar mortgage debt is so poisonous we need to forgive it, how come it is not poisonous sufficient…? […]

5. […] It’s also important to remember – if student loan debt is so toxic we have to forgive it, how come it’s not toxic enough we have to…? […]

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