[donquixote99]

There is a huge social pressure/obligation for young people of middle-class aspirations to go to college. Because of inexperience and lack of effective guidance, they are in many cases unable to realistically assess career options, or the not-obvious connections to educational choices. Class privilege plays a huge role in career prospects, a thing that America is in denial about and does not talk about. Families that have not broken into the higher income strata must depend on the loan programs for a shot at social mobility, or even stability. The student loan program, coupled with the huge and inelastic demand for college education, basically created the huge inflation in tuition. Costs were free to rise to with no effective limit to available funding. Then the students were stuck bearing the burden of the huge costs created by the easy availability of loan money.

Education and its funding should be rethought and radically reformed. But the intent and power to do that are not obviously available. Incremental reform is more possible. This loan forgiveness is one step. It is a just counterpart to the gigantic tax cuts made available to the upper class in recent years, an extension of social benefit to the general public.