Likely to lose a lot my karma for this but oh well.
Not all the blame can be placed on schools. It is a combination of poor K-12 education on finances, ridiculous tuition prices, and poor decisions by borrowers. This is a blanket statement and has exceptions.
If you went to school and took a debt to future income ratio of more than 1:1 you made a debatable decision. If you took a debt to income ratio of 2:1 you made a poor decision. They tell you how much each credit hour costs. You can easily calculate how much a degree will cost you. You can somewhat easily estimate what a field pays for certain jobs. If you want to be in a field that pays 30-50k starting like a teacher in the Midwest, you should not be trying to get your MBA from Princeton with student loans. That’s entirely poor judgement.
However, I DO think these predatory loans and insane tuition prices justify a refund or cancellation of debt. Removing scholarships and grants from the picture, every person who attended college in the last 10-15 years likely got screwed by tuition prices…. Regardless of who paid for it, some one got screwed on value. My dad paid for 100% of his college by working a paper route and at a drive through. That was in the 70’s. You simply cannot pay for tuition in full at most state institutions anymore with a summer job. Not unless you are a part time surgeon. So yes, I think that is a huge problem that you have to rely on generations of saving money or boatloads of loans to attend college now. You cannot pay your pay through school yourself anymore in what I would assume is like 99% of all situations.
Also, I think K-12 in America is trash. The only useful stuff I retained from K-12 is the basics in every subject. Sure basic science and chemistry has saved my life from knowing what shit is highly flammable and don’t put an oil fire out with water. Same goes for every subject. The one subject I NEVER LEARNED the basics of was finance. I had 1 finance class in all of K-12 and all it taught me was how to balance a check book (okay so I learned 1 thing) and I’m 26 and have never written a check in my life and I’m doing fine. Income and debt need to be taught in school. They need to teach how real life works! I had no idea what property tax was until I got a letter in the mail saying I failed to pay them on my first car I purchased. They don’t teach anything about responsible budgets, how to handle debt, what APR is vs Interest, how to buy a house, what credit really means, etc. THIS is the root cause imo.
Okay, rant over.
TLDR; Gross tuition prices and predatory loans justify forgiveness. However, I think some borrowers need to take responsibility and admit that they made a poor decision. I blame the K-12 system for failing us by teaching us about parabolas instead of finances.