Is Anything Equitable About Student Loan Forgiveness?

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The premise behind federal student loan forgiveness is that it is “fair”: people struggling with student loans because of a down job market, personal troubles, or other of life’s inevitable strains should be “unburdened by what has been.” At the same time, debt relief administration problems include bureaucratic inefficiencies and the increasingly sizable cost, which must be passed on to other taxpayers who may not have been afforded the privilege of a college vacation, er, education. The effort also promises to amplify obvious government-created inequities by creating a destructive moral hazard.

Profligate Student Loan Payouts

A recent assessment of the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposed student loan forgiveness rules concluded the costs to US taxpayers could approach $600 billion at a time when the national deficit is already increasing by $1 trillion about every three months. The redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to loan defaulters is patently unfair. Sheetrockers and electricians work long hours rather than seek a government hand-out. The fundamental premise of student loan forgiveness is elitist – a transfer of money to the college-educated class, who statistically already fare much better than blue-collar workers or day laborers. Combined with massive payouts to “undocumented entrants” and poor citizens, such policies are pinching the American middle class into nonexistence.

This profligacy is patently unfair even within the pool of student loan recipients. People who paid off their own loans are now essentially called upon to pay off those of others portrayed as less fortunate but may simply be less motivated or made poor decisions in career study choices. Not everyone can become a psychologist or history professor, let alone a DEI instructor, a guru of Mesopotamian relics, or a gender studies expert. The practical needs of the economy are jettisoned when government rewards non-performance.

The premise of a student loan is to give prospective students a “leg up” in their investment in themselves and their futures, not fund a four-year sorority or fraternity binge where beer pong may be the focus of study. The market naturally rewards those who study hard and disappoints those who goof off; the Department of Education’s plan implicitly does the opposite. Suppose students undertake loan commitments knowing they may well not have to pay them back. In that case, a doubly damaging moral hazard is instilled: A lax attitude about repayment invites shoddy loans but also sloppy commitment. In the back of student minds during frat-house rush week will be, “Oh well, I don’t need to study because I can fail and get a write-off” rather than “What will I tell Dad, and how will I earn the money to repay my obligation if I fail and can’t get a job?” This is akin to paying people for the loss of homes in flood zones who lacked insurance because the insurance market does not incentivize building houses in flood zones. […]

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