Forget discharging the debt. Make the universities pay it back. Go after the endowments. The universities committed widespread fraud against an entire generation.
Except they didn't, even remotely. A college degree is still an income premium, even after the debt is factored in. And I'm really iffy on the idea that the poorer two thirds of the country should have to subsidize the debt repayment of the richer third of the country
Two things can be true at once. It is true that having a degree allows workers to demand a wage premium. It's also true that University degrees have seen healthcare-like price inflation without a correlated wage inflation for degree holding workers. There are many causes of this, but two big ones have to do with rapid expansion of administration and pretending like the tenure system can sustain an exponential growth pattern which it was able to do up until about the 1980s. The latter trapped a lot of young people, particular in the science industries in low wage "grad student" positions which are never going to lead anywhere from a career perspective.
The fraud is that they told the middle class this was their key to financial success, or at least financial security. And yet we're talking about a massive scale debt bubble that is holding back an entire generation of young workers. It was a lie. I believe they knew it was going to be a lie. But they also "knew" the taxpayer would be on the hook, so they didn't care. That's why I think the taxpayer should shove it back on the universities by holding them accountable for selling students a lie.
this assumes that college graduates can get better jobs because of their degrees. This is not true for everyone. And is largely false for college dropouts, who can end up with a large fraction of the debt from trying to get a degree, and none of the value of the degree.
It's really unfortunate that we changed from an attitude that education is a public good that benefits everyone - e.g. employers getting access to a more educated workforce, the economy being better for everyone, etc - to it being an investment in individual people, that those same people are then expected to pay for up front.
To me, the biggest problem is that universities have hired huge administrative staffs that are largely unnecessary, and students are living in posh dorm apartments instead of the concrete block buildings back when I went to college. If student loans weren't so easily obtainable, universities would have to cut their administrative staff and become more efficient. As long as the money is flowing in, they have no incentive to do that.
