Forgive All Student Debt Analysis

“Eat the rich,” the phrase so famously created by the French revolutionary and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is possibly ringing in the thoughts of lower-income students and their families’ minds in the face of rising tuition costs with the seemingly endless problems of Higher Education. However, the phrase can easily be the title of one of the many proposals; the student debt crisis had not only affected the community consisting of college students and their families, but all sectors of society. There have been voices regarding this issue from different personalities, different occupations, and different roles in policy making; from the articles in the New York Times to voices from political commentary such as Ann Larson. Even billionaires

This proposal, in Botstein’s mind, should consist mostly of two points: first, the President should forgive all outstanding student debt, and secondly a new loan program should be implanted that ties to incentives for college graduates to enter public service careers as well as indexing repayments for their student loans to their

The main expense students face when it comes to higher education is not only just tuition. In fact tuition only makes up a minor part of the heavy financial burden that college education brings; most of the costs that students and their families face are external costs, or non-tuition related expenses, such as textbook prices, dormitory fees, and cost of transportation. Even if their tuition loans are erased, most of them still face these external costs that are at the core of their financial burden. This leads to the main problem of high-college drop out rates; if the financial burdens of these families are not solved, students would often not be able to focus on their studies or wish to escape from their financial situation by dropping-out of college. With no job and no degree, the college drop-out students are far from the skilled and educated work force that is the end goal of our higher education system. They often struggle to pay off the debt that they have because they simply cannot compete with those that has a degree or gained higher education than them; by defaulting, the responsibility of their debt once again falls in the hands of the taxpayer. Without directly addressing this issue, forgiving all student debts would still have a disastrous affect because the