First of all, I’m all in favor of student debt relief. Back in my day (cue Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man) you could work a decent summer job and while it might not be enough to cover all your college needs, it’d make a pretty good dent and mean you weren’t saddled with as much debt as a new house when they handed you your degree. And the real go-getters could work a part-time job or a work study during the school year and cover even more. Today? Tuition and other costs have been rising at far greater than inflation and cost of living for decades, while wages have stagnated. The older generations that say “just get a summer job” really have no concept of what college costs these days.
But I do have a question that was presented to me the other day by a coworker. She’s in a situation where one son graduated college last year, and between scholarships and him working through college and through she and her husband’s own saving and contributing to his costs, he has only a little college debt to his name. She has another son who is a senior who’ll be headed off to college next year expecting much the same.
So her question is, what’s in it for them? They saved and he worked and now she feels like they’ll be penalized for doing so while others who didn’t do those things will be given the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars if their student debts are forgiven with no strings attached.
I confess I couldn’t come up with a good answer to her on the fly during the discussion, so I’m turning to the DKos community to see if you can enlighten me on this one. Hit me with your best arguments.