Not sure if that’s entirely true. I listened to a story on NPR that described people who did qualify under all the rules but were denied due to ignorance and incompetence at DoE or loan servicers, who not only mistakenly denied the forgiveness, but wouldn’t follow up or correct their own mistakes, IIRC. That story was the reason DeVos was forced to testify before Congress on the subject and promised to do better.
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I agree with most of your comments, but my point is we’ll probably overcorrect now with mass forgiveness. I’m hoping they’ll include FFEL as their federal loans but I’m debating whether I should move over to Direct just to have a safe harbor.
And again if it makes the moral hazard people feel better, I’ve paid over 55K in interest so far and still owe over 90K in loans over 15 years
I am not remotely surprised by this as I have been predicting it.
I have been telling people for years to not pay off their student loans because the Federal Government is going to wipe them out. I got into arguments with people and downvoted into oblivion. I even told people that they would end up feeling like suckers if they paid off their loans.
The reality is this is a great way for politicians to buy votes and appear compassionate. It will make the moral hazard worse and provide schools with no incentive to control costs.
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I’ve been predicting that too, but over 15 years I’ve paid 55k for that bet. At this rate I will pay enough in interest to match the principal while waiting for the bet to pay off.
For all the moral hazard police not paying mortgages was a bigger issue since it affected all our house values (mine, in particular, being in PHX) . I do agree that It would be better to control tuition/fees like it was for the boomers, not subsidize future loans that’re inflationary
Second kid going to college next year and current one still in college. So I’d like to get in on this deal before I pay more from the kids 529 Plans. Even if I have enough to fund their college studies fully without loans as it is, why not partake in free money if our government is freely handing out yet again more money it doesn’t have.
Hopefully they figure it before I have to make more payments next summer. I wouldn’t mind saving $30k combined for my kids’ college degrees. 
I agree… Biden’s main idea is to give out “free this & free that” to gain popularity. You should get in on the deal also.
I remember well when our 2 sons were in college at the same time. We scrimped & saved those double payments & managed to get by. Would have been sweet for Uncle Sam to come along & pay those bills.
So now, I suppose the rest of us “hard working” folks will get another tax increase. Gotta pay up
To tell the truth, I don’t want the borders opened up. Free welfare, Free Medicare for illegals! 
Who promised Medicare for illegals? Medicare has always been for citizens and legal permanent residents.
Also, wrong thread!
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Here’s a more recent article that summarizes the proposals:
Basically it’s up to $10K in federal loans to students who are “economically-distressed”:
Another proposal limits to students who went to public college (not private). In other words, don’t y’all count your chickens before they hatch.
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It’s hard to take very seriously all these proposals when he’s put out 6 of them, many of which overlap.
As far as the conditions for the $10K forgiveness, they seem to be very easy to engineer to me. Graduate in June, get your first job at the end of the summer to get 1/3 or 1/4 your normal AGI, don’t pay a dime to get to 90 day deliquency. 40% of borrowers already qualify without gaming the system, some probably trying hard not to default or barely making their payments.
The second proposal is even easier. All those who go to public school and earn less than $125k would qualify. How many kids earn more than $125k/yr right out of college?
Some of the other proposals make more sense to me. Income driven repayment plan or restoring bankruptcy are not wasteful budget busters. If Dems fail to get the 2 GA seats, I cannot see the more costly forgiveness proposals going anywhere but those more frugal proposals could get bipartisan support.
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You do understand that the cost of college shot through the roof in the last few decades though, so comparing what we paid back then to now isn’t really the same thing. … ?
Tuition is easy 2-3x now compared to what I paid & Kids today have almost 4x the student loan debts that I graduated with. (both after inflation)
When we went to school we got our free government money in the form of heavily tax subsidized tuition. I mean seriously if they just get 10k in debt reduction thats still a worse deal vs the tax subsidies for colleges that we benefited from
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I didn’t read the article, so my apologies ahead of time if this is clarified in it… Would this $10K be in addition to the Pell grants? I thought the government already gives some free grants to low-income students (around $7.5K).
Sure, that would work, maybe, depending on the final wording. But that would mean, to be under the limit even if you don’t start until 10/1 (which seems very late to me, but I guess I don’t really remember), your annual income would have to be less than ~64k. And that’s if you didn’t work at all in college or at all between graduation and 10/1.
Yes this is seperate
THis is forgiveness of student loan debt and its not for current students.
Also, BTW, Pell grants maxed at $6345
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Thanks for the info, Jerosen.
example, UC Berkeley:
https://cfo.berkeley.edu/budget-101
" in the past decade, the percentage of Berkeley’s annual operating budget that comes from the state has shrunk from 27% to 14%, while tuition and fees grew from 18% to 34% over the same period."
State tax spending has dropped significantly in just 10 years and this has directly resulted in higher tuition.
Tutition is up 44% the past 10 years for Berkeley. It was $12.4k for '10-11 and now its $17.9k for ‘20-21. Thats double the rate of inflation. Over 4 years thats over $12k inrease in tutition’/fees above inflation. And thats in just the past 10 years.
So students today have had their tutition jacked up 12k over inflation and now we might forgive 10k in debt … still net loss of $2k vs someone who got the same degree just 10 years prior.
Of course many schools aren’t that bad, but ya can see the point.
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How much more are they spending per student though? Can these increases all be blamed on the states getting stingy with funding? I doubt it.
Schools seem to have vastly more programs and services than they did when I went, and tons more staff that aren’t doing any teaching. I went in 1985 tho.
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Around 1990, I came to this country with a TA/RA engineering assistantship. Tuition at that Ohio private university was approximately $400/credit. Today, 30 years later, tuition is $2100/credit. So, tuition alone increased at a rate of 14% per year. And the University instituted several “fees” that didn’t exist before such as a “matriculation fee”, “transportation fee”, “activity fee”, …
I think there is a problem with the cost of higher education. I understand public universities being affected by states reducing contributions for different reasons. However, private universities are seeing dramatic increases too, even though they don’t receive/depend on state budgets.
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Yes, and the problem is government subsidized lending for college. And they’re not trying to be good at it, so the colleges admit poor students to non-economic majors, but who cares if they can afford it? Their debt is your problem - via defaults on federal loans or Biden style giveaways.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/student-loan-losses-seen-costing-u-s-more-than-400-billion-11605963600?mod=hp_lead_pos1
Backup link
The U.S. government stands to lose more than $400 billion from the federal student loan program, an internal analysis shows, approaching the size of losses incurred by banks during the subprime-mortgage crisis.
The Education Department, with the help of two private consultants, looked at $1.37 trillion in student loans held by the government at the start of the year. Their conclusion: Borrowers will pay back $935 billion in principal and interest. That would leave taxpayers on the hook for $435 billion, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The losses are far steeper than prior government projections, which typically measure how much the portfolio will cost the government in the next decade, not the entire life of the loans. Last year the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the student-loan program would cost taxpayers $31.5 billion, including administrative costs.
After decades of no-questions-asked lending, the government is realizing that it has a pile of toxic debt on its books. By comparison, private lenders lost $535 billion on subprime-mortgages during the 2008 financial crisis, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
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Yeah private universities are different.
First of all they’re super expensive to begin and pretty much always have been. I just think they should be in a seperate category and not really part of any discussion about college affordability. If you’re concerned with cost you’ve no place paying inflated private tutition.
Second theres relatively low government funding. Private colleges do get tax dollars in the billions. I think its more in form of grants, but grant money seems to fund whatever at colleges. And its much less of a % of operating expenses than public schools.
Third the tuition rates at private colleges are more MSRP inflated rates that many/most don’t pay. So while their tutition might go up and up and up that doesn’t mean the net amount people actually pay goes up the same amount. They give full rides to a certain % of students, others get large merit grants, others get generous financial aid, etc. Its only the mediocre students from rich families who pay full sticker at private schools.