While the government is arranging to forgive college loans, it should also be working on a plan to considerably reduce the cost of a college education. There was a time when the expression “working one’s way through college” actually had meaning, and it was possible to do so.
Granted, at that time, college professors and instructors were poorly paid considering their value to the community and the cost of living as a student was much lower. However, the outrageous debt that students must incur now cannot be justified by the rate of inflation through the years.
It might be cheaper for the taxpayer to support a reasonable subsidy for students maintaining a satisfactory grade average than to try and repair the financial damage to students who overestimate their future earning power. Schools that try and turn government student support into additional profit would lose that support.
Many other advanced nations provide low or no-cost advanced education for those earning it; are we so backward?
— Don Neal
Anchorage
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