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I not infrequently see this framing but it strikes me as being off, and fails to address the root of the problem.
While the things many students study are useless, the loans enable the University to teach useless disciplines. The University has no skin in the game. Like mortgage brokers, they've originated the loan, but don't hold or fund the debt. While being incentivised to originate as many as possible, here the barrier of lack of human capital able to engage in useful disciplines, may go someway to explain the expansion of uselessness.
Students may want to study useless things, they're young and mostly don't know any better. It should be the responsibility of the University to ensure uselessness is minimized and human capital is deployed efficiently in useful disciplines.
The problem being that the current proposed solution would essentially incentivize make the problem much much worse. The colleges are still guaranteed to get their pay even if the students learn absolutely nothing of value. The students won’t care because the government will forgive the debt so why not study the philosophy of Harry Potter?
My thing is that loan forgiveness is basically about the schools through the students. If the government chose to fix the 2008 mortgage crisis by paying back the loans to the bank then there’s no incentive to be more careful about who you loan to, how much you loan them, and whether or not the house is worth anything near that cost. Borrowers would have little reason to economize on their homes or worry about resale value.
I agree that loan forgiveness is not a solution, for anyone other than the students that would have their debt burden lifted.
I'd like to see underwriting standards for student loans that look at the human capital of the borrower and the proposed program of study. Only these conforming loans would be eligible for government guarantees, etc.
The issue is that only by removing the government from the loan business would you have any need for underwriting of any sort. As it stands, no matter what happens after the prospective student signs the loan, the college and the financial institutions are guaranteed the money. If I take out a loan to attend the university of Virginia, everyone involved at present is guaranteed the money even if I never attend class or do anything related. Until that changes there’s no reason to vet anything. It doesn’t protect them because they get the money provided I sign a loan and sign up for class. Forgiveness doesn’t change that, it simply changes the payer from the students to the government.
If there were a risk, there’d be reason to vet students. If they admit unserious or unprepared students, they potentially lose money when those students don’t get jobs after college. If they teach poorly enough that employers don’t want that schools graduates, they lose as well. If they admit lots of students who study trivial things, they’re out the money.
That would be the whole point of underwriting. To not fund high risk borrowers / disciplines / institutions. The remaining confirming loans could be sold off to a GSE to service after a period.
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