Grace Is Stoked
Gold Member
- Jan 23, 2019
- 594
- 262
- 180
In my opinion "free" college education is misunderstood a lot of the times. It really can't be and shouldn't be 100% free. Now, "free" tuition is something that I think is realistic and that I would fully support but there is more to university education than just the tuition. If tuition were free for students then there would still need to be revenue generated through things like semester fees collected from the students in order to provide other important services for students on campus, living circumstances on campus, and to help the school progress.
I think full student loan forgiveness that you hear people in the Democratic Party talk about sounds great but is not full realistic and could lead to crashes in certain other systems. I think the best route regarding government student loans is to provide better incentives through the government to complete your studies on-time. So for example if you take out $5,000 in government loans to help pay for student fees or living circumstances (since tuition would be free) then you should get a percentage, possibly up to 50%, of that loan credited back as "paid" if you finish within a certain amount of time so that you end up only paying something like $2,500 total out of pocket.
I also think depending on the major you choose it should provide a better financial incentive towards your loan. So for example if you pursue engineering or medicine or business or biology or finance or teaching then finishing on-time would yield a higher reduction in what you ultimately would owe on the loan if you finish on-time. Same with certain vocational trades such as construction, welding, and so on. Whereas if you study a liberal art such a music or philosophy or sociology and so on the financial incentive of loan "forgiveness" would be slightly lower since the long term return on those degrees is usually lower. In my opinion this could encourage career choices that yield better long-term returns for the student and ultimately for the country, but the incentives would also help lower income students not stress too much about crippling, massive loans. A few thousand dollars to get a degree creates much more optimism for a student's future than paying or being in debt of upwards of $50,000+ from a public university.
There's more to expand on but it is doable and realistic in my opinion.
I think full student loan forgiveness that you hear people in the Democratic Party talk about sounds great but is not full realistic and could lead to crashes in certain other systems. I think the best route regarding government student loans is to provide better incentives through the government to complete your studies on-time. So for example if you take out $5,000 in government loans to help pay for student fees or living circumstances (since tuition would be free) then you should get a percentage, possibly up to 50%, of that loan credited back as "paid" if you finish within a certain amount of time so that you end up only paying something like $2,500 total out of pocket.
I also think depending on the major you choose it should provide a better financial incentive towards your loan. So for example if you pursue engineering or medicine or business or biology or finance or teaching then finishing on-time would yield a higher reduction in what you ultimately would owe on the loan if you finish on-time. Same with certain vocational trades such as construction, welding, and so on. Whereas if you study a liberal art such a music or philosophy or sociology and so on the financial incentive of loan "forgiveness" would be slightly lower since the long term return on those degrees is usually lower. In my opinion this could encourage career choices that yield better long-term returns for the student and ultimately for the country, but the incentives would also help lower income students not stress too much about crippling, massive loans. A few thousand dollars to get a degree creates much more optimism for a student's future than paying or being in debt of upwards of $50,000+ from a public university.
There's more to expand on but it is doable and realistic in my opinion.
