I'm against wholesale loan forgiveness and it highlights a problem I have with a lot of the policies on the left, it only addresses the "who's paying for it" not the cost.
I think the loan process needs to be massively changed. You should only be able to get loans for actual tuition/fees. The interest rate needs to be capped at no more than a 10-year T-note. No loans towards for-profit schools.
Probably the first REAL sensible post here - which I guess isn't saying much, we have come to expect tons of morons saying "Eh, why not?" all the time with no sense of rationale or reasoning.
Anyhow - first to your points on tuition costs....
To put it simply, forgiving student loan debt simply SLIGHTLY relieves a symptom of a GIANT HUGE FUCKING VOLCANO problem. Address the problem, not the symptoms, dipshits.
Second - the reason why these costs continue to climb as they make more and more elaborate campus' to try and "market" their campus to their potential new students simply circles back to the loans. If you can get loans to pay for all this shit, then who cares? When it comes to every sensible and rational sense of loans - we aren't doing what should be done.
It is mostly an evaluation of "How poor are your parents?" to justify "needing" these loans. This negates any sense of being called a loan - because what should be occurring is asking the question "How probable is this person to pay their loans back?"
In addition they need to evaluate
1) What type of job are they looking to go with?
2) What's the average income with said job?
3) What major are they going with - and does it have much place in our current job market?
4) What is the amount they are paying for this loan?
5) How good were they in school? Straight A's? AP Classes? Grants? Suspensions? Attendance %?
6) What is the historical performance of this particular school?
Thus any real loan system would do things such as...
1) Decline overpriced schools (for-profit, non-state schools, out of state, etc.). The point of a loan is to invest something - not to enjoy yourself for 4 years.
2) Decline covering worthless majors. This is similar to declining because the collateral is not worth enough to loan (e.g. won't loan you $40k to buy a car worth $30k
3) Decline based on a background/credit checks that may indicate they aren't serious about paying it back.
4) Encourage community colleges for knocking out basic courses - or better yet, be more rewarding of those that knocked them out with dual-credit AP classes
5) Would also be much more probable to loan larger amounts to students that have shown an actual history of working hard - e.g. in AP classes, qualified for grants, etc...
The same LOAN standards should be held for student loans. If you don't, you end up in the same shit standards we are currently in...
1) Colleges continue to increase rent, tuition, etc... because stupid kids will pay for it by getting loans that they have little intentions of paying back
2) As I said, forgiving student loans slightly relieves a symptom. It does nothing to address a problem. We will be right back to where we were in 5 years. No question.
3) Right now - colleges don't give a shit about ANY of these crucially important things - because the one holding the flaming bag of shit at the end of the day is the US Federal Government. Not them.
There should also be a real forgiveness program, so that if you meet certain parameters the loan is forgiven. If you are paying on an income adjusted rate, you shouldn't accumulate interest on the difference.
Easy - just make them dismissable in bankruptcy like other debts. We don't have to make it complicated.
I have known many people that lived high on the hog in college and didn't work, while I drove an old ass car, worked, and ate cheap. They should have to take some responsibility for their decisions, but again the loan system should be fixed to make living off the loans harder.
But the real issue is with school costs. State school prices are way up, meanwhile every campus is in an arms race for who has the shiniest new buildings and newest res halls. Nearly every top paid state employee is a fucking college coach. And schools are driving up cost by limiting supply. States have also limited funding to universities significantly over the decades (as a percentage). Private schools that don't meet some sort of endowment to freshman class ratio should have their endowments taxed.
Part of the reason school costs are way up is because students have infinite access to loans. Cut back that gravy train and university will stop charging $800/mo for a dorm room and $30/hr for sports facility bonds.
IMHO, you have to fix the loan practices and cost side, then start thinking about how you can forgive debt on people to where it "should have been."
Of course - the problem is the loans. Loans are supposed to have CHECKS in order to decline things that are too risky - or that don't make financial sense. When it's just a wide-open purse for anyone to grab - the schools don't give a shit - and the people taking it don't give a shit. Thus the person who SHOULD be giving a shit is the owner of the purse. Clearly they don't right now, and that is the core of the problem.
This just goes back to Point #1 - which is stop giving everyone with a pulse a student loan.
If their parents (or they themselves) want to outright pay for all that extra shit - more power to them. If they want a loan on it - then they can obviously go fuck themselves.