Of course, if only college material kids went to college (as done elsewhere), then we could easily eliminate much of the tuition. Would America accept that only the top 10% or so would shoot for college degrees? Probably not. Now almost everybody goes to college (and then drops out sooner or later).
4
I worked hard and paid off my college debts while forgoing other things as a young man. As a middle aged father, I worked hard and saved for my kid's college. Now as I near retirement, I need to pay for EVERYONE ELSE'S college education.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I'll vote for him in 2020 if he faces Ms Warren, over this issue alone. Some of the dems just don't get how badly socialist policies destroyed other nations. Other than universal healthcare, I don't support most of these handouts.
9
Vaccinations were wrong for those who got polio before them. is the argument against killing student loans.
Loans caused the price spike. Much like insurance has caused homelessness and high hospital bills. You eliminate all insurance cares life home medical.
Bring back personal responsibility.
If you dont build where it floods you dont was resources repairing damage. construction worker build homes not repair. more house equal lower price.
No car insurance no 2000 dollar dealer work charging you the same whatever insurance will bare price. You can own a commuter for the drive to work another for family not have to choose. See how fas hospital care falls without insurance to bill. the same out of control system is in higher learning. you fix it by not just forgive loans but outlawing them.
Elizabeth Warren's crackpot ideas of eliminating student debt, establishing free college programs, and government grants (read other peoples' money) to pay for them is too liberal for me, and I'm a liberal Democrat. She won't get my vote if she runs.
4
How about we fix the credit score system that never changed since it first began decades ago! Its obsolete! Everyone should be at the highest score once you turn 18. I wasnt. I started at 620. I never could get anything even with a job. When I finally was offered $300 card at age 25, it had a 27% interest rate. How about that gets shut down!!! Stop the credit score!
2
I’m troubled by some comments about college degrees being “worthless” — can we please stop denigrating the pursuit of learning as a whole.
3
A huge percentage of the population will see their jobs get automated and will need to be retrained, so the elimination of tuition is a smart way to address that need. People who went to college but didn't complete their degree for various reasons are the ones who would benefit the most from loan forgiveness. It would free up a lot of capacity for student loan debtors to participate in the economy. I see nothing wrong with this plan, and people's "I had to pay loans so you do too" attitude is very concerning. Between this policy and the universal childcare policy, Warren has my vote.
3
good grief, when simple pandering and identity politics alone won't do - essentially bribe people for votes (using other people's money).
The fact that so many people owe so much for in many cases nearly worthless degrees and non-degrees gives the progressives a great deal of leverage over these poor rubes. Sold a false bill of goods by the same people they will now be motivated to vote for.
6
I don't get it. People with college degrees getting a bail-out from the masses who don't? That's not what she said. The masses would have access to free college degrees, and it would be paid by the ultra wealthy, who have plenty of money to pay for it. Why didn't this article point out this discrepancy instead of merely regurgitating what everyone said (tho I do appreciate the legwork to get the quotes). The candidates and think tanks who mischaracterize what Sanders and Warren (and others) are saying are either missing the point (and therefore unworthy of our attention) or engaged in spin and propaganda. The free education proposal is a way to use the ill-gotten gains of the ultra wealthy to refuel society.
1
Senator Warren's plan is 1/2 Andrew Yang's plan (eliminate student loan debt) and 1/2 Bernie's plan (subsidize college)... but Andrew Yang has been dishing out comprehensive policies every day for weeks. I hope the NY Times is fair with their coverage.
I went to college for 9 years, while working over 50 hours a week just to pay for college (with no help from anyone). I still work over 50 hours a week just to pay my school debt. I just put all my house savings towards my school debt and thankfully I have less than a year to go.
So people who worked really hard to pay off their school debt would be forced to to have their tax money go towards peoples who still have school debt. Makes no sense to get penalized for paying of your debt just because others can't. If this ever does happen (which it won't), people in similar situations like me should get rewarded with a FREE house then. This plan needs to include something for people who already paid off their school debt or people who have paid a lot of money towards their school debt. It's our government so who I'm I kidding HAH
6
As one who came from a blue-collar family and worked full time while going to college four nights a week, paying my way as I went, I think the notion of handing free tuition for the 85% of courses not related to subjects making America more competitive or leading to careers that can justify the expense of a college degree is folly and fraudulent.
College is not a necessity. It is not in the same category as food or housing or even transportation. Why not free food, housing and transportation, Elizabeth? Why not free entertainment and vacations for our mental health?
If Elizabeth wants to subsidize college education beyond the taxes that already go to public (and many private) universities, then talk about interest-free loans with a ten-year payback period and then interest at the going rate beyond that timeframe. That's a pretty good deal and it puts the onus squarely on the student to make good choices. Choices should have consequences... good or bad.
6
We already have government subsidized tuition. I think it’s called the GI Bill. Maybe we should expect a quid pro quo for “free” education.
Knowing how human nature works I can imagine unlimited abuses associated with free college educations. If you think we have an immigration problem now...
Finally a large part of the problem is how colleges are run. They do not compete in a market place that emphasizes cost control. For example look at the salaries of administrators and football coaches. The cost of higher education needs to be reigned in.
4
Other than the service academies, all public colleges are run by the states or localities. Nice power grab by Warren.
1
I would rather invest in a constant flow of highly educated young workers entering the work force free of the crushing burden of debt and living with their parents and free to move wherever the jobs are in a dynamic innovative economy than any possible use that money might bring to America’s wealthiest families.
Elizabeth Warren made $300,000/year as a professor at Harvard. Will she be returning her income to help pay for all of the students who need bail outs?
3
So all that money I paid for my granddaughters college was wasted because if she had borrowed the money it could be forgiven by this proposal. Maybe the Republicans are right, Democrats are only about handouts.
7
Warren is absoulutely on point with her student debt and tuition plans.
These aspects of educating young Americans have been bantered about since the early 1960’s. Studied ad nauseum.
But pushed to the back burner by our Greedy Higher Education mavens.
College as we know is too expensive for the returns upon graduating. Unless nepotism and networking are employed. And that works for the wealthy connected.
Warren is great!!!!! Do it for the middle class and poor and our gen x to mellenial set and then educate cradle to grave. Free in state owned schools.
Buttigieg's losing points with me here. What, only elites will benefit from free college? Nobody from the middle classes/working classes would benefit? The soaring cost of college is contributing to the increasing class divide by putting higher education out of reach for a growing number of people. Moreover, those graduating with debt are often prevented from pursuing careers where they could make the best possible contribution to society, as their options are narrowed by the need to repay their loans. You want our best and brightest graduates to consider careers as teachers in inner cities or physicians in rural areas? Well, if you bury them in debt, good luck getting them to do that. Buttigieg is rehashing the tired old idea from the right that taxpayers who don't directly reap the benefits from one government service are somehow "subsidizing" those who do. So, people who send their kids to private school shouldn't have to help pay for public schools, and people who don't own a car shouldn't help pay for roads? Is this really where we're at? Free college will benefit society as a whole, and it's not a crazy idea. College is free in several European countries.
23
@TL Why shouldn't people who can afford to pay for some or all of their college education do so? Why should a wealthy American get free college tuition purchased by tax payers who are much less wealthy? Some should pay for their public education if they have the means, and some should get grants to pay for theirs if they do not have the means.
3
I worked my way through a bachelors and three graduate degrees almost debt free by working three jobs at a time, only going to schools I could afford, and using only a small portion of the student loan for which I was eligible. Other students I knew used their entire loan, only had one job, and had a lot more fun than I did. But they graduated with heavy debt. If their loans are forgiven years after I paid mine off, I’ll be a bit miffed. I can’t lie. And I like Warren.
6
@Alison Me as well. I was hoping Warren would win the nomination so I could vote for her. But I was also responsible, taking only the loans I could afford, to get a good degree that was for an in demand job, and I'm going to have it all paid off next year because of it. If reckless people get their loans paid off, it's not going to teach anyone in the future to be more careful. It's not going to get colleges to charge a more fair price. And it won't win my vote.
Maybe I'll just abstain from voting this next election if she wins the nomination.
1
Have I got this right? Elizabeth Warren proposes a tax on high incomes to pay off college debt. Then the article balances the presentation by quoting those who don't want to tax low incomes to pay off that college debt. Seems like comparing apples to oranges, or maybe cats.
1
This proposal reeks of Warren’s desperation to stand out and promise anything to get votes regarless of zero details on how it would paid for and by whom. There just are not enough rich people to go around for her policies, that means the next people to pay are of course, the middle class...
6
Lol. There are plenty of rich people and corporations to tax to pay for this plus some.
3
@Mons Unless they all pull a Trump and cheat the system to not pay taxes.
Perhaps the "Pell Runner" scam details haven't reached members of Congress yet....
2
I expect that Americans would welcome help with student loans, but I also expect that Warren will lose independents in droves if she insists on free tuition. This country has NEEDS such as healthcare and climate assistance, and free tuition is not something everyone needs.
6
@i.comment I'm an independent who'd love to see free tuition. I would not want to see people getting their loans paid off for them when they were irresponsible. It surely won't teach the colleges anything either.
How about zero interest rate and people just pay back the principal?
10
@BNYgal Banks would never go for it. First of all 18 year olds are risky and there is a chance they could drop out. 2nd of all the banks would rather instead lend that money and make interest. That's how banks make their money after all.
The opportunity cost would simply be too high.
1
@Eugene I think the gov. should lend it. And, there is no more of a risk than if there were interest. It would still have to be paid back, but just not at impossible rates - so you'd be paying back the actual money you borrowed. And yes, with inflation there would be a bit of a loss, but heck, Trumps vacations would cover a lot of that - not to mention that horrible tax break for the rich and all the corporate welfare in this country.
1
Many of the negative comments here smack of sour grapes. An education is a good thing. People with better educations generally make more and pay more taxes. That is a good thing, folks. Even better, if we had a better educated citizenry we wouldn't have Trump infesting the White House. After all, he loves the uneducated for a reason.
11
@Max Deitenbeck An education is an education is an education. The problem here is we will pay 6 figures for a basket weaving degree. There's nothing to guarantee that the recipient will actually go into an area of need, unless that choice is given up as a condition of receiving the benefit.
7
@Max Deitenbeck exactly. The same people that dismiss the value of education also put down the humanities and say degrees in subjects such as English literature, religion, history, and art are meaningless -- and yet are the same people who consume art (seeing it in public spaces, listening to music, going to art museums, watching films). Even more, dismissing the humanities is scary. Those who don't know and study history are bound to repeat it as we see with Trump and the nascent fascism and racism surrounding his rise to power. It's all in the history books and doesn't take a rocket scientist to see. Science, technology, and the "practical" money-making fields such as business are all in big trouble (we, as humanity are in big trouble), if we forget how to critically analyze and use these disciplines in ethical, humane ways. Tossing the humanities aside is taking us in that direction of chaos and inhumanity. Not everything has a price tag and not everything is about money.
5
Fine but first refocus colleges on education
- drastically reduce the growing administrative overhead
- minimize the frills: gyms, student unions etc this should be like a motel 6 not the 4 Seasons
- more vocational education, green new deal infrastructure will not be built by the “you pick” studies.
We like to reference Europe and we should adopt their practices
- not everyone is qualified or capable to go to university
- more structured programs , less freedom to take random courses and majors
- less campus life more commuter schools
- larger schools and larger classrooms, higher student to teacher ratio, this is university you may need help but not hand holding
9
It is very misleading (and Buttigieg, among others, must realize this) to say that Warren wants “the masses “ to pay for a “bailout” of those with the advantage of a college education, when she explicitly explains how this will be paid for by a tax on the very wealthy. It is a small minority of wealthy Americans, not the masses, who profit from student debt, and it seems they are trying to manipulate class resentment, as this has worked so well for them in using a figure like Trump to put the presidency in Republican hands. Other Democratic candidates promise people things they want. Warren stands out not only in the specificity of her proposals but in telling us how she would raise the money to pay for them
6
@Sarah What you say is misleading because even if you taxed the 1% at 100% rate it wouldn't be enough to pay off the $16 trillion of total student debt that exists.
7
The problem is tuition, not just debt.
We saved so our sons don't have debt. Other kids worked their butts off to avid debt.
A fair formula that reduces debt levels should also extend tax credits to those that worked hard to pay exorbitant tuitions. They were ripped off also
11
Well, I for one will no longer be a Senator Warren supporter.
My family took out loans to pay for my son’s hideously expensive college. We then scrimped and sacrificed and paid off that debt.
It seems grotesquely unfair that other people wouldn’t also have to do so.
16
@Robbiesimon
What about your grandchildren?
Yes, you had to metaphorically walk up hill both ways in the snow. Why can't that cycle be broken? The system, as your experience demonstrates, is broken. You want it to remain broken so others will suffer? Nonsense.
11
Digital (i.e., internet) education will be essentially free for all. stay ahead of the curve!!!!
1
@Bart
Free or not, online education is poor compared to a classroom environment.
4
The problem with student debt, unlike credit cards and mortgage payments that people here are comparing it to, is that the debt cannot be discharged for almost any reason including bankruptcy. This is a form of debtors' jail and student loans therefore become predatory because they are given without regard for how qualified someone is to benefit from their education. The law needs to be changed to make the debt dischargeable and then the government and banks will be more careful who they give it to. Tuition will come down because students will not be able to take out big loans. Also the federal government should not make any money off of these loans. That is morally wrong. https://money.cnn.com/2016/08/04/pf/college/federal-student-loan-profit/index.html
5
If student loans could simply be discharged through bankruptcy it wouldn’t simply be the case that we’d see a big spike in bankruptcies, it would become a rational decision for the majority of fresh grads to immediately go bankrupt.
At 22 years old you’d have your education, no debt, and you’d be able to pump money in your 401(k) without having to use that money to repay your debt - money you borrowed from taxpayers. By the time you’re 30 the bankruptcy blemish will be off your credit record, just in time to buy a house.
1
@C Agreed. One reason tuition is so expensive is 18 year olds (who think 4-5 years in future will never come) don't blink twice when taking on 6 figures of debt.
Student loans are too easy to acquire and most of the people committing to them are too immature to know the implications.
7
And yet again in the student loan debt discussion, in yet another piece about it, no mention made of the burden on those who are disabled.
Of the complicated, poverty inducing nonsense involved with getting the debt permanently discharged.
Not even Elizabeth Warren, a fighter for the average person, brings it up. And this paper doesn't explore it.
If you're disabled in this country, you're poverty level and on your own.
4
"Among the Class of 2018, 69% of college students took out student loans, and they graduated with an average debt of $29,800"
https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/
"Graduates with a bachelor's degree can expect to earn an average of $50,390 annually in their first jobs"
https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/14/pf/college/class-of-2018-starting-salary/index.html
Saving just 10% of one's salary ($5,000) every year for 10 years will more than pay off their student loans.
So much for preaching responsibility and financial budgeting to young Americans. Just give it to them for "free" on the backs of everyone else.
The Democrats are trying their hardest to re-elect Trump.
13
@rfmd1 Yep.
I paid off my student loans circa 2014 in just 4 years on a $40k-$50k salary. I've seen people making similar income instead opt to buy new cars and/or bigger apartments and, unsurprisingly, they are still paying off student loans.
Nowadays I make 6 figures so no doubt I will be punished for making prude financial decisions earlier in life while those who chose to live paycheck to paycheck get rewarded.
This is why I don't vote for Democrats.
13
Grow up.
I am an old school liberal who took out loans to get through grad school. Paid them off immediately.
While I can't support Warren's socialism, the GOP has been so thoroughly toxic the last 50 years that anyone who vote for them with a straight face deserves derision.
2
For all of those saying it's not fair: how is cancelling student loan debt any less fair than growing up in a wealthy family and not having to take them out in the first place?
The best we can do is try to level the playing field and boost our economy. It's in bad shape. Economic inequality has risen to a startling degree and the top 1% in this country hold a staggering amount of wealth due to corporate welfare and tax loopholes. Let's get out of the mentality of it not being fair and get into a mentality of seeing what we can do to help one another and make this country a better place for all.
8
@Katrina
Our economy is in bad shape? Record high stock market and record low unemployment.
So do tell...what is your definition of a good economy?
7
I’ve worked full time, taken longer to complete my degree and sacrificed on quality of lifestyle in order to save and pay for my graduate degree without taking out loans. How would it be fair to people like me to pay tuition for others who don’t sacrifice and spend their savings to earn their degree?
9
@AZPurdue disappearing middle class, people having to work two and three jobs to make ends meet (when in the past one job was enough), increasing income inequality, rising medical costs that are inaccessible to many. Doesn’t sound too good for me, unless one is super wealthy
I like it. The people who go to college and therefore make more money will wind up paying more taxes and pay their college debt that way.
People who go to college and go into lower paying careers, won't pay as much.
As for all the other needy people who need relief, I think Bernie and Elizabeth with help them as well.
3
@bob Why should we pay 6 figures for an expensive college degree geared towards work that doesn't even pay $50k?
I feel like there are easier, cheaper ways to train for such jobs than 4 years of college.
1
Wrong approach. The American government (i.e., taxpayers) should not be forced to subsidize loan forgiveness and free tuition for all. A better "policy" would be to force colleges and universities to roll back tuition by using their invested endowments for operating needs in order to make college more affordable across the board.
Google a few statistics:Why should U.S. colleges have $533 BILLION held in endowments even as they raise tuition to unaffordable levels? Why should Harvard have $36 BILLION under management and charge $67,000 for full-paying tuition/room/board but then give financial aid to 70% of all enrolled students, with 20% paying zero but the "average" student still needing to pay $55,000/year after grants? It's an out-of-date equation that may have sounded generous when tuition was under 20K/year; at 70K/year it is unconscionable.
Forgiving loans should be done by the universities that made students take loans to begin with, by ratcheting up costs while holding on to excessive reserves.
14
I am not sure how college can be paid for by the government, but the cost makes many kids come home. For most of them, it is an issue of how to pay for room and board.
I remember hearing a conversation in a high-school college counseling office, with young people who were struggling to find room and board money for a state college. Room and board itself can be $15 -20 thousand dollars; a loan over 4 years to cover the expense is not very doable for the student majoring in a topic where they will not be instantly employed post-graduation. I believe at least the first two years of college should be covered for all students by the government. Our own son. who is attending community college in the fall, if he chooses to live with other kids, will pay only 1,000. in tuition per year, yet $25,000 in room, board and expenses. Really, how many parents can sustain giving a kid that much money or borrowing it, when it is said most people do not have an extra $400. for an emergency?
3
Instead of paying off college debt we should invest in bolstering our ever-diminishing trade schools. There is a huge dearth of skilled electricians, plumbers, carpenters and other skilled trades in the US, which poses a very real threat to our economic future. Unfortunately, most parents and high school counselors value a college degree over a skilled trade, even when an experienced electrician/plumber/carpenter can make six figures. I don't know many communication/art history/liberal arts majors can even come close to that type of compensation.
11
I'm a millennial with student loan debt, but I can't say I really approve of this entire plan. I like her ideas on reforming the system going forward, especially surrounding public universities and the fund for HBCUs, but I really don't think the cost of bailing out those with debt is worth it. If we're going to spent a significant fraction of a trillion dollars on essentially an entitlement, I think it should target the poor, working class, and lower middle class.
And yet, many of those with student loan debt have it because they come from upper middle class families and had advantages that helped them get into expensive schools. Moreover, those of us with debt know what we signed up for--to take out a loan and pay it back. I worked in high school and college to keep my debt down. Many spent a couple years at a community college, or went to a state school instead of a private college that was less affordable. If money were no object, yeah, sure. But it is, and I think this money would be better spent on programs that are less of a giveaway to the children of the upper middle class who signed up to pay these loans back.
On the other hand, even though I don't entirely agree, I am consistently impressed by the quality of policy that comes out of Warren's campaign. I'm so tired of politics being about memes and ten word answers. So thanks to Senator Warren and thanks to the Times for covering policy.
5
Warren – who probably has had more good suggestions on how to fix some things than the rest of the Dem pack combined – sounds as dull as any of them, when she mouths bunkum like this...
Since so many aspects of her initiative need to be re-branded anyway – a suggestion to hide the soul-crushing confiscatory essence of socialism...
How about Modern Redistribution Theory – MRT, for short...
Now get a couple of third-rate academics at fourth-tier universities to scream it out in unison – as they apply for grants from foundations...
PS
Was hoping that Buttigieg might be an even-younger JFK...
The moment he started yammering this sort of stuff – realized he was just an even-older AOC...
3
With this and her impeachment message, Ms. Warren is showing her desperation. She was one of the first public figures to push for more extreme liberal positions in the Democratic party, giving her some attention among that segment of the party. Unfortunately, many others are now pushing those positions, and some of the those, seen as more effective messengers, have been moving ahead of her. It's still very early and perhaps this gambit will work.
2
Students end up with a lifetime of debt when they sign the loan agreements. Then atain degrees for jobs with low salaries that will never enable them to pay the debt. I just can't support tax dollars giving bad decisions a free pass. Too many of us in this country worked hard to pay for college or were not willing to sign loan agreements with no hope of payment.
8
They bailed out the banksters for all of their fraudulent and criminal activities leading up to the global financial crisis in 2008.
1
@David
Who is "they"? You mean "us". I paid for my daughters' tuition. Don't want to pay for everyone else too.
6
@David, yes, but the answer is to more strictly regulate the banks. And to prosecute bad actors who are violating the law. Many of the activities that the banks engaged in which gave rise to the global financial crisis were legal and even strongly encouraged because politicians like Bill Clinton and his economic advisers like Robert Rubin and Larry Summers bought into the idea of total deregulation. They worked with extreme GOP like Phil Gramm to end the Glass-Steagall Act. Together, policies pursued by Clinton and Bush, Jr. alike amounted to giving banks a total free reign and even pushed the banks to make shady and risky loans for political reasons. Bush, Jr's "ownership" society, etc.
The answer is not to follow the disastrous policies unleashed under Clinton and Bush, Jr. that led to the Great Recession and the bailouts but just in a different sector of the economy (education). Essentially, like Clinton and Bush incentivizing people to get home loans who arguably should not have, what Elizabeth Warren is proposing is to incentivize people to go to college who maybe should not (when the US economy already is not producing enough jobs that require a college degree).
2
@GRH 100% this.
Too many people are going to college for the wrong reasons. Labor statistics ultimately reveal this.
2
Reading the comments displayed how individuals feel about the economic divide, pretty happy with the status quo. This is a discussion point, the department of education is dismantling all the safe guards that President Obama put into place to give everyone a chance to secure an education without spending there entire lives paying the bills. Higher education even if it public is expensive when your working two or three jobs that corporate America isn’t giving you a fair wage. Look At Amazon are the salaries they pay. Education is important unless we want to be a third world country since our charter schools across the country are not preparing our children with critical thinking skills. In ten years or sooner A. I. Will be everywhere Walmart is currently using robots in there stores. Contractors are using robots to lay bricks, small farmers are using robots. Listen to the presidential candidates talk about the new world of work,
Instead of reacting why don’t we stop, learn and give valuable input before making sweeping decisions.
3
People write about how individuals need to have "skin in the game." Would they seriously argue that publicly funded grade school or high school education is a failure because students and their families do not have sufficient "skin in the game." Absurd.
3
@Mike P., families do have "skin in the game" for publicly funded grade school and high school because guess who is paying the property taxes to pay the public school? The tragedy is bipartisan elites of both parties who impose expensive, unfunded mandates on public schools and then opt-out for their own families. President Carter is last US President who enrolled his own child in Washington, DC public schools. Reagan and Bush Sr kids were older but Clinton, Bush Jr & Obama all enrolled their own kids at elite private schools, completely exempt from the mandates that normal families must deal with at public schools. Clinton; Bush, Jr.; and Obama families are the ones with no skin in the game, who refuse to follow the same rules for their own kids that they impose on everyone else.
3
@Mike P. Ummm we do have skin in the game. My $7k a year property tax bill is proof of that.
4
Free free free. Please stop. Let's go the route of the GI Bill. Give the US military or good will organizations 4 years, or Two years, and then you get something. We can call it something for something. This everything free stuff is nonsense. Someone's gotta pay
11
Mr. Buttigieg ends to get his head straight on basic facts of how the program would be financed.
The so called "subsidies" would be paid by the rich and corporations, not people making low incomes and/or who didn't go to college.
Why is a self proclaimed "progressive" protecting the rich and corporations? While being divisive to boot?
2
I hope Senator Warren will also look for funds from the incredibly bloated military/'defense" budget. It is in some part due to our tax dollars going for bombs that we neglect what makes a society a moral, ethical, and -yes- a great one. We neglect education, our roads, our poor. We have a punitive Corporate healthcare system. We are failing in many demensions compared to other "rich" nations - none of them have the military cost burden that we do.
3
@Ellen "none of them have the military cost burden that we do."
You're right, because we're paying for their military!
1
The Dems finally came up with a winner. People with unlimited funds always cause trouble with the money they have to burn. While it was still a blaze Notra Dame received a billion dollars from our wealthy. That kind of money will pay for Medicare for all as well as college funds for all. That is the kind of behavior that made us a world power. Good will is what we had and lost.
2
@My college degree came compliments of the GI bill, millions have gotten their educations the same way. When it was up for vote the Republicans were against it. Well, our education paid for itself and made us a powerful nation, with a great deal of good will, once.
1
Easy to just give more money but really do we need everyone to go to college?
Do we even have the money she is promising?
I notice that in NH polling she can't even break out of low single digits. Since that is basically a suburb of Mass, her state, doesn't look too good.
10
Her proposal answers your questions. You should read it.
1
My issue is not with the idea. But with the non specificity of how the idea will be funded. In the election cycle bold, sweeping statements are frequently made. The tired idea that we have trillions of dollars we can obtain from the very rich is questionable. It assumes this population of taxpayers (which Is never quantified) are static and will not react to such a taxation effort. I’d gladly short this idea if it was a stock......
2
You seem to assume the population of the wealthy is dynamic and will avoid taxation. Why?
The federal government does enforce laws. Tax evasion is a crime.
Unless you believe our government is permanently in the pay of the rich, you’re better off betting against them.
@James K. Lowden You seem to assume the population of the wealthy is dynamic and will avoid taxation. Why?
Because we have an infinitely complicated tax system with loopholes aplenty, if you have the right army of tax accountants to take advantage.
Do you live under a rock?
I’d like to see the math of how she would pay for all she promises.
2
@LAM It's all in the proposal. Making the ultra wealthy pay their fair share -- what they should have been paying all along if it weren't for tax loopholes and this sham of a Republican tax law, i.e., corporate welfare.
She's wrong. Her ideas are elitist. We should be working on how to employ young people who aren't cut out or don't want to go to college not how to siphon more people into a system already in decline.
Take the money and start trade schools. Let graduates choose if they want to go to work or to school. Remind people and educate them to what those paths actually mean.
Stop the huge for profit education machine and begin to give people real life skills.
Not everyone is cut out for college and giving it to them free is not going to set them on a path to a successful future.
10
Evidence?
Which country again was it that prospered by restricting higher education to the wealthy? The only examples that come to mind are counterexamples.
It seems to me it’s your proposal that’s elitist. Rather than making college available to all who qualify, you would (implicitly) make it the province of the rich or indebted. You would shunt those who lack means to trade schools.
I suppose it’s understood the plebeians are better off welding or pulling wire or in HVAC. After all, how could they possibly benefit from a university education?
1
The GOP has the Tea Party radicals and the Democrats have Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on the radical left. Whatever happened to the middle of the road that attracts more overall interest? These candidates should be working for sustainable changes that represent the Majority of voters. Healthcare, voter’s rights, stopping the accumulation of greenhouse gases, getting out of our constant war stance, protecting Social Security, revamping our screwed up Tax law to deal with our income inequality and so forth.
2
How about the "Bernie/Warren, or the Warren/Bernie ticket "?
All these people bragging or belly aching(depends on your perspective) about all the vacations they didn't take and all the dinners out they couldn't have and all the new cars they didn't buy seem to miss the point. Yes people should pay their bills but going to and graduating from College should not be a crime that is punishable by an almost lifelong debt, that follows you around for decades, and prevents you from really starting a productive life until after you pay it off. These young people are being economically stifled. They are not getting married or starting businesses or purchasing homes because of this . All these harsh judgments need to be reined in. Whatever happened to wanting the next generation to have a better and easier life than the previous one? Some of these complainers remind me of very old people that grumble when they hear that schools are closed due to blizzard like conditions and they go hey "I walked to school in 5 feet of snow". I mean come on people this is America. Aren't we supposed to be better than this?
9
@Marian
Not all are economically stifled. Some just plan better as it relates to their education.
3
if this senator wants to spend her money on paying off loans that adults took out years ago or future loans then so be it. leave me out. i loved paying for my own kids' tuition(3) and helping pay for my own grandkids(4), but not other parent's kids.
should taxpayers have to pay for an adult's tuition loans when that adult goes to school to drink, drug and party? what if they flunk out without finishing school within 4 years? should the student have to attend a community school, live at home and work?
7
Total nonsense. Unless Senator Warren is going to simultaneously provide a cash grant to repay every American citizen who has already paid back any or all portion of government-backed student loans, what she is backing is unequal treatment. She is saying that people who are older Millennials and Generation X and older are a bunch of chumps. She is saying anyone who went to college or graduate school in the 1980's and 1990's or early 2000's, and who has chosen a career and life path and worked to pay back their loans are a bunch of chumps who should be punished for daring to be responsible and taking care of their student loans.
How else does Senator Warren want to attack Americans and divide the nation between generations? Her support for this suggests to me she will find other ways to discriminate and try and penalize anyone over age 35 or 40 and up too. Unfortunate because her proposal for breaking up technological giants was not a bad one. Elizabeth Warren's candidacy increasingly seems designed to embolden former Democrat and now independent Howard Schultz to join the race for a dose of sanity.
Personally, thus far, hoping Tulsi Gabbard will go the distance and get the nomination.
13
Will I be able to receive a refund on the $30,000 that I scrimped and saved and delayed buying a house so I could pay it back?
15
The Democrats are usually looking for the candidate with the biggest shopping cart.
The Republicans want voters to hold their noses, jump in and sift through the swamp.
How is this fair to the responsible people who actually paid off their loans?
In the old days, debtors went to jail and worked in indentured servitude or prison. Now we're rewarding them?
I have a feeling Warren doesn't actually want to be President by taking such an unpopular political position sometimes. I admire her effort to punish Wall St but not this.
Something this should be done on tuition prices, not giving free money away unconditionally without thought. Warren's lost me on this and other issues. My guess is she's pushing away moderates and positioning herself for a cabinet position where she might put other plans of hers into practice.
10
@df, totally agree. On the one hand, she is clearly a smart lady who deserves credit for at least putting forth very specific policy proposals (in comparison to most of the rest of the field). On the other hand, she has abused affirmative action to further her own career in a manner almost reminiscent of the 1980's movie "Soul Man" and her entire candidacy is starting to just jump the shark. Given her raw intelligence and hard work, it is not clear it was even necessary for her to abuse affirmative action to get ahead. Why she now wants to punish people who paid off their loans is beyond me.
3
@df how is it fair that some people are born into wealthy families and live on massive trust funds? I see it everyday where I live and where I went to school -- kids from wealthy families in NYC, the Bay Area, and old Southern families with so much money everywhere. I am from Appalachia and while privileged to go to a really good school, took out a modest amount of loans to be able to attend. Is it fair that while I worked a work study job, my ultra wealthy classmates (one friend's uncle sent him a new BMW convertible his junior year), were taking vacations to Europe and going out on the town? I'm grateful for what I did get, but it's all a matter of perspective. Life isn't fair and we all have more than some and less than others. I just want to work for a more equitable world. I'm of a mindset that if I suffered, I don't want others to have to suffer in the same way. It's not a matter of, "I suffered, so they must suffer to." I want things to get better for others and even though things aren't fair, want to help level out the playing field as much as possible.
1
I do not agree with the idea of forgiving student debt. So many lived frugally, borrowed responsibly and repaid what they owe. It's a relatively small group that attended hellaciously expensive private colleges and pursued worthless degrees, winding up with huge debt. Instead, refinance to low or no interest and extend payment length.
We don't have to make public colleges free - just make them affordable. Take aim at the enormous salaries for presidents and coaches. Discourage luxury amenities in dorms. Pay adjunct professors more and give them a shot at tenure. Rein in sports programs and focus on academics.
My two cents.
13
This is going to be a thing. Not necessarily "free college," but the notion that specific tax revenue increases are going to be earmarked for specific uses. It's the antidote to the toxicity of "tax and spend" condemnations because you get closer to actually discussing the proposals merits.
2
We don't need to make public colleges and universities free. However, we should try to make them what they USED to be - affordable. Paying something puts value on higher education and that's okay. State systems, especially the best of them including California, New York, Pennsylvania, have transformed the lives of millions of students. That transformation should not require students and/or their families to go broke.
9
There is a sensible middle ground in which higher education is more generously funded and students are still responsible for following through and repaying their debts.
4
Yeah, right. Like that solves the real problem. Vacuuming the pockets of the rich does't solve the problem. Paying off student debt doesn't solve the problem.
2
I am a 68 year old undergraduate at a mid-level state university and an astute observer of human behavior. One third of jobs in the US require a four year degree, yet we send 2/3rds of high school graduates to college. If all college students graduated in a somewhat timely manner*, there would be a lot of college graduates ending up underemployed. As far as I can tell, every single one of the Presidential candidates is from an elite university background, so what they know about students laboring away (or idling) at state colleges across the country is an open question.
My observation is that about third of such students are diligent students who exhibit college-level curiosity, another third process what they agree with and ignore new information, and the final third are just plain idling as they pursue their own interests (part time jobs and leisure activities).
The last two groups would be far better off gaining work experience, in an apprenticeship, or at a community college. This is the real world that University of Chicago graduates and Harvard instructors have no visceral understanding of. Free tuition for community college, as President Obama proposed? Absolutely! Foregiveness of debt and free tuition at four year schools? No way!
*https://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2019/04/16/64395/is-the-four-year-track-for-a-college-degree-still/
4
I know this would be expensive but I also know, anecdotally, that this would result in the purchases of at least three homes in my immediate social circle. Not to mention hundreds of dollars each week from each individual directly into the local economy.
4
Paying college tuition is seen as an investment and a pretty good one. Based on my college experience, many students don't work hard enough on their studies and therefore their diploma is not worth that much in the job market. But it is their own fault if they blew a great opportunity. A diploma from a good school accompanied by good grades is very valuable and should allow students to be able to pay back their loans. Tax payers are already subsidizing most of the tuition at public colleges and universities for in-state students. I think there are better uses for tax money than making tuition free.
7
"...Cancel Student Debt and Eliminate Tuition"
I hope that applies to all of our undocumented immigrant workers, their extended family members living abroad and our newest immigrant group of "asylum seekers."
If it isn't free for them- then I will not be voting for Warren.
1
I have a hefty amount of student debt and being relieved of it would be great. How about a more likely idea? No more interest. The government (or whatever entity bought the debt from the government) would get its money back and a great deal of the burden would be taken off the shoulders of students. And give credit for interest paid by those who are already paying down their debt.
13
Contrary to what this article asserts -- that Warren's reasons for coming out fast and furious with one pie in the sky proposal after another is to stand out from the pack and to establish a progressive legacy -- what she's really seeking to do is tap into the donor base of Bernie Sanders at a time when her campaign coffers are already running dry. She just isn't the candidate Americans are looking or hoping for at this juncture, regardless of her elective delusions of grandeur, and very few of us really want such all-out government intervention in all dimensions of economic life.
5
The cause of sky-rocket student debt is sky rocket tuition which will continue to increase so long as money is readily available. Pump another $2.75 Trillion into this pool and its off to the races for colleges increasing tuition. This is simple economics supply and demand, something even a socialist should understand.
5
I just donated to Elizabeth Warren's campaign.
I appreciate someone with courage and plans to bring fairness to society.
9
@Thinking How is this fair to those who paid back what they borrowed, often at great sacrifice?
7
@Thinking
Talk about throwing good money after bad...
2
Wow. I love it, assuming the numbers work. We are killing our country by not spending money on education. Tax breaks for corporations do not help us as much as investing in our young adults.
7
I think easing of student debt would be a great thing to do, and would pay dividends for our society. It would be great if it were tied to some kind of public service, however. That is what I would consider a win-win.
3
I'm a liberal Democrat, but stop all this talk about free stuff; especially for people who knowingly went and got an education, paid too much for it and now are whining about having to pay it back. I'll go along with free healthcare but the rest of this nonsense has to stop.
12
@Aurora -- Thank you! Now you will get all the bad responses from others ;-(
Seriously, these are young people we are talking about. They can save and pay back their debt. They have lots of time. Seriously, what about those who have lost their homes in the last economic downturn? Those who were able to hold on to a job, any job, are the lucky ones. The older people, well, they lost their house and their job. Yet I don't see them making demands.
It all comes down to entitlement.
7
@Don Juan - Bernie started this sillyness and now it's spread like a wildfire. Far better to ask and answer this question: why has the cost of a college education kept pace with the cost of healthcare? It's ridiculous. First figure out why things became so expensive in relation to other costs (many of which have gone down as a percentage of the average annual income) and then fix the cost problem.
That said, I'll still vote for a crazy Democrat before any Republican. All they want to do is hurt he average American, while pretending to be helping the average American.
How does this work for someone who has been very diligent about paying off their student loans? I don't make much money but I have been sacrificing a lot to keep paying away at it. With this in mind, I likely wouldn't benefit much from this, as I'm getting closer to paying off my loans. Does this incentivize and in some cases, reward, fiscal irresponsibility?
I'd much rather have the interest rate be subsidized, or be more forgiving in terms of payment timing than just simply relieve peoples student debt.
13
Eliminating debt altogether is not the answer - these people have chosen to do this. Plus, how is eliminating debt going to address the real problem - the outrageous and increasing cost. But as someone with 250k+ debt, it could be a little easier. How bout the option to pay student loan debt with pretax dollars?
10
A lot of this "free stuff" chatter from Liz and Bernie reminds me of similar dialogue when Obama got elected to his first term.
Sad when voters get sucked into this nonsense and realize it's not going to happen.
3
Hey Elizabeth Warren, I'm a small business owner with a loan I'm paying back to get my business up and running. Can you find someone in the government who will pay back my loan for me or even better, make the bank forgive it entirely? Thanks, I appreciate the help since I cant get a mortgage BECAUSE I'm a small business owner and as such only show a fraction of my earnings on my tax forms so as to not pay the insanely high taxes the government would force me to pay had I shown all my profits. (thanks also for the exemptions in tax law that allow me to do this)
Why would it be fair to forgive all the student loans (especially now that the government owns them all) without helping out the people who actually help move the economy along? Where's all the help for the small business owners of America? Why does one group get special treatment? I dont have any student loans but my business loan being paid off would help me out tremendously! Thanks again for your consideration.
10
@Monica: obviously you're not "woke"
2
@Monica, unfortunate Senator Joe Manchin is not running in a fusion candidacy with someone super moderate across the aisle like Senator Susan Collins. People like HBO's Bill Maher and others have tried to save today's Democratic Party from themselves but they do not seem interested in being saved.
1
Partial student loan debt relief for people earning up to $250,000? Outright dismissal of a debt knowingly signed up for even if the debt is being honored? No difference in debt relief for those who chose out of state schools? Why does that burden all get shifted to taxpayers? How about all those people who didn’t take on the debt and went to community college while working or those who didn’t go to college because they thought they couldn’t afford to. Warren and Sanders are trying to one-up each other on broad giveaways that are fiscally imprudent at best. But hey, all those people with student debt are sure to vote for her!
12
@Charlie -- neither are electable.
1
@Charlie We simply don't have the money to throw at this one, single, self-created problem. Let's solve the health care crisis first -- that serves all of the taxpayers instead of burdening some to give the few a free ride.
2
Nothing wrong with investing in your future with a student loan. The government could help those with skin in the game though and offset some of the higher interest rates.
3
Numerous studies show that those who attend college earn more on average over a lifetime than those who don't. Free college tuition is a subsidy that supports inequality. Even graduates from poor and middle-class households earn more than poor and middle-class people who don't attend college. This proposal is simply an attempt to pander for votes.
6
This article mentions that "Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was credited with thrusting the issue of free college onto the national stage during his 2016 presidential run," but it fails to mention that Jill Stein proposed canceling student debt during her campaign as Green Party candidate for president in 2016.
1
@James Goodman, yes, and we all saw how well Jill Stein's reality-based campaign did.
3
My alma mater, Purdue, has kept tuition frozen for seven years. They did it by cutting administrative overhead. They’re probably due for a bit of a tuition raise, but before we publicly fund college tuition, I’d like to see public universities make real efforts to cut bloat. If Purdue can do it and maintain academic integrity, it’s clear others can, too.
10
@Kelly
Exactly! Some on this board will whine about GOP governors slashing funding for higher education during the great recession.
And in the case of Purdue, the governor of Indiana who presided over those cuts has been President at Purdue and has led what will now be eight consecutive years with a tuition freeze.
It's great to be a Boilermaker!
2
Wow! I had no idea that we had so many wealthy people that they could easily pick up the tax tab for so many things -- free college, cancellation of a trillion plus in college loans, free child care, free medical care, you name it. I just hope some right wing crank doesn't start harping about trivia like requiring people to demonstrate a modicum of ability before being sent off to a four year free vacation studying useless subjects, or maintaining a certain minimum grade point average, or how government subsidies will invite ever escalating college costs, or maybe even reparations to generations of college grads who actually did pay off their loans -- that sort of thing. And just wait till you find out YOU are "wealthy" under an ever declining threshold.
15
Well, some of those wealthy people were able to cough up healthy sums of money to get their kids into some prestigious colleges, so maybe they won’t miss what they’d pay in taxes to help those kids who are drowning in school debt.
@fisch99 -- while Bill Clinton was in office, a person eating $250,000 was considered a millionaire!
@Stephen -- you just don't get it, do you? The wealthy will pay for their own spawn but they will do squat for you or anyone else that is considered hoi polloi.
Another politician promising “free stuff” paid for by taxpayers in order to win votes. What a shocker. This woman is shameless - if she’ll lie about her ethnicity to advance her career she’ll basically say anything. She might as well come out and promise to increase everyone’s taxes with her $50,000 student loan giveaway stunt. At least she would be honest for once.
11
Sounds good but who pays the staff, pays for the logistics, the equipment and on and on. Nothing is free. I'm assuming that all public college and university staff will work for free - no benefits except health care for free as well? It isn't so simple.
Everything is more expensive yet we continue to subsidize the wealthiest among us with the pyramid scheme that is called a tax plan - take from 90% to pay off the 1-10%. What a deal.
I respect Sen. Warren and she has some excellent ideas about taxation, corporate monopolies and how government should work for the people but it seems to me she's throwing stuff into the fan hoping something will stick with voters. Time will tell.
Have you not been following Elizabeth Warren? She is nothing if not thoughtful, intelligent, and determined to do right by Americans. She is a true public servant. I trust her. She is very smart and if she crunched the numbers and said it can be done, then it can. She doesn’t do political talking points.
And as someone raised in The-Middle of-Nowhere, Kentucky, she’ll have my vote. I grew up in the backwoods of Kentucky. I’m tired of people assuming that we have no aspirations. My parents took out a second mortgage on the farm to send me to university. They never recovered financially.
11
@Elizabeth Schmidt
I trust her too! I think it's her Native American heritage which makes me warm up to her.
4
@Elizabeth Schmidt as someone who grew up in Appalachia, I can relate to what you are saying. Preach it!
Rather than a bail-out, offer transfers into federally subsidized government student loan programs, like those that once existed. Keep the interest rates low, and allow for interest-free forbearance during times of crisis, such as unemployment, family leave, deployment, or illness. Then, turn to the colleges and universities and begin setting caps on tuition rates and tuition escalation. If a college is to participate in the new Federal student loan program, it must then abide by the caps on tuition hikes. Most importantly, include training in the skilled trades in this new plan. College is not the only route to a rewarding career and financial stability. It's past time we begin to value the skilled tradesperson whose abilities and knowledge are indispensable in our day-to-day lives.
6
@Tintin -- beautifully stated.
2
Skimming through this comment section is a little frustrating. There is a general notion that graduates are blowing money elsewhere instead of paying off debts.
I am a millennial in NYC, and not one of my many friends has less than one job. I graduated in 2012 with a B.Sc in Physics, and went straight to work in Engineering. You'd think I could be able to make payments and live comfortably, but no. Since 2013 I've always had a second job in the service industry so I can make more than the minimum payments. I know many teachers, engineers, kids from all walks of life working double jobs.
We don't need handouts, we need relief. Those of us lucky to find work can barely make it, many of us can't.
Don't think these massive defaults won't affect you when it blows up.
If we can continuously give tax reliefs to the rich, give massive funds to the military, bail out banks, we can surely help future generations. You can start with lowering tuition, tax cuts to students, finance courses in high schools, compulsory courses before loan documents are signed, whatever. Just do something before this blows.
The Ashantis have a saying: "If you see your neighbor's beard on fire, water your own." I don't agree with a 100% bailout, but some form of relief is in order.
10
@Emmanuel
Isn't another option to live somewhere which is not as expensive as living in NYC? Probably wouldn't require a second job.
10
Let me guess, you went to a private college when you should have gone to public school (that cost a lot less). Assuming that is the case, would you agree that you share some blame in your current financial predicament.
7
@Emmanuel
Isn't another option to live somewhere more affordable than NYC? Probably would not necessitate a second job.
5
Elizabeth is showing us two things:
- she is trying to buy votes
- she is an idiot when it comes to finaces
12
I was fortunate - my parents were solidly middle class and paid for my college.
They also limited my choices to public schools we could afford. They also pinched every penny, drove cars for 2 or more years and limited our vacations tagging along on my dad's annual convention for work.
Increase the funding of schools - from elementary, middle & high school and through college.
Don't retroactively pay off people's debts who should have made better choices.
14
A bold move, but that level of debt relief is so expensive voters will balk. And what to do for those now entering private universities and colleges? Plus, relief of private tuition debt creates heated philosophical arguments regarding societies role in alleviating the public’s elective choices.
Keep the offer of free public education— that would change things going forward. Create competition with the private education sector by developing incentives for the best minds in education to teach and do research at public institutions. Develop job tracks that are integrated with public curricula. Change the narrative on college/ graduate/ trade education for future generations.
4
Praying that ALL of her ideas and plans be tested thoroughly on and by the voters and taxpayers in her home state of Massachusetts.
Formerly known as "Taxachusetts," they would be used to the burden.
It would also repay those citizens for putting her on the national stage.
4
There is no way Texans could ever compensate the American people for putting Cruz on the National stage. The damage he has done is beyond repair.
4
Cancelling student debt... now I’m listening!
1
@Jessei’s Girl
Need your mortgage and car loans forgiven too?
9
@AZPurdue -- but of course, everyone can use a little debt relief. What's good for the goose...
1
We can't have the over inflated military budget that we have and also pay for public education. The country isn't Americans' country any longer. It is the country of the world elite. That is who America belongs to. It was sold to them through the privatization of the FED, through the fractional reserve system, and through Citizens United, the final nail in the coffin of democracy, allowing the corporation to have all the rights of personhood but none of the responsibilities.
2
Agreed that military spending is far too high but any cuts to it belong back in taxpayers pockets, not directed into new or increased social spending. One way to slash the cost of the DoD is to resume the draft. Enlistees could be paid a small stipend ($25/mo?) since all other living costs are covered. A return to the open bay wood frame barracks of our grandfathers could make accommodations low cost. Currently, an E-5 who re-enlists with a spouse and two dependents assigned to a base in a high cost region of the US revives pay/benefits with a value of $50,000 a year.
3
Combined Social Seurity and Mdicare spending is already three times higher than the total military budget, and that's before these Socialist financial suicide plans proposed by Warren and Sanders are even considered.
But keep spreading the deliberate (and easily fact checked) lie that military spending is somehow keeping the government from giving away more "free" stuff.
Never let the truth get in the way of the always promised, but never delivered, collectivist / socialist utopian pipe dream.
1
But such policies would make us like Germany and the Netherlands —failed communist states!
We're 'murica, we have a constitutional right to suffer needlessly for our entire lives so that ten families can buy private submarines which fit 40 of their closest friends for cocktail party tours of coral reefs while doing a little banking in the Cayman Islands (oh yes it's a thing)
Do you want to take that away from them in the name of GODLESS socialism just to give some poor kids with high IQs a college education?
Sadly many don't. You can't fix stupid. Warren won't win the nomination because she's a woman (oh yes that's STILL a thing too) but god bless her for lighting the rich people's feet on fire.
5
@Arthur, yes, but people have been screaming bloody murder at the idea that Germany and Netherlands (and virtually every other country in Europe as well as many other places in the world) pay for their own military defense instead of having American taxpayers pay for them. If Germany and the Netherlands wants to pay for their own military defense as well as pay for America's military defense, that no doubt will free up much more money for domestic investment in United States. However, when Bush-Cheney neo-cons and their Democratic Party enablers like Hillary and Biden all vote in favor of trillion dollar wars like Iraq; and Obama continues wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and expands to Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.; and Trump suggests perhaps others should pay their share of NATO and everyone in the media freaks out; and Trump suggests US should withdraw from Syria and everyone in both parties and the media freak out, unfortunately there is going to be less US tax dollars to invest domestically.
1
So if all public colleges were free, what would happen to private colleges? How could they compete against free public colleges? Entrance to a public college would become so competitive that only the best and brightest would get in, or it would evolve to some type of needs lottery. The typical middle class kid would never be able to enroll in a public college due to capacity constraints. We would see less students opting for college.
2
Sure wish we hadn’t forgone vacations, larger home, newer car, eating out, etc to save for our kid’s college education. Or for that matter taken on a ton of student debt ourselves. We’re as left as it gets but will never support this give away. Dems must seriously want to lose in 2020.
14
At age 49 and STILL $40K in debt (yes, I pay $405/month), you have my vote Ms. Warren!
2
Warren's proposals are far better thought out than people in these comments are giving her credit for. So far almost every proposal from Warren stems from well researched studies that have analyzed the costs and benefits of these policies. Just as a start, here's a study showing the macroeconomic effects of one type of student debt cancellation:
http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/the-macroeconomic-effects-of-student-debt-cancellation
This study concludes that "cancellation would have a meaningful stimulus effect, characterized by greater economic activity as measured by GDP and employment, with only moderate effects on the federal budget deficit, interest rates, and inflation (while state budgets improve). These results suggest that policies like student debt cancellation can be a viable part of a needed reorientation of US higher education policy."
7
Yes! But that would require people reading and, you know, doing research. It’s much more fun for them to be smug, Republican shills.
2
How cliche is this idea, and what else can you do if you pull this off the US will look like a South American country with a Dr. in something in every rent controlled apartment with no job or real skills. This Senator is long on ideas and short in the foundations needed to get this done.
How about this. Make an education predicated on a solid usable major, you graduate on time and hey you go to a community college for 2 years to begin your education. Then we take these "grossly" over priced colleges and Universities and like medicare..pay a contracted price for the free education in addition to the criteria I described above. Oh yeah and you provide a certain number of hours of community service or a military service. Free is NEVER appreciated by anyone. Example: fundamentally we can't even get people to vote in a free society!!
4
Well, she certainly went straight at the student vote.
4
While it is true that the rich do not need to save money or earn scholarships for their children to attend college, the rest of us do.
We can buckle down and study and save, or we can become socialists in which case there will be no money for scholarships and no need for bright people -- sometimes bright people -- to become professors.
Much better to guide people into trade schools. As it is, we waste billions on attempting to educate the uneducable.
3
I was fortunate enough to go to college before it became as outrageously expensive as it is now, but even then, I did several things to make my education less expensive. I attended a community college for two years and then transferred to a public university, I chose to commute to save the cost of room and board, and I worked part time. My parents had low incomes and couldn't help me pay for college, but they let me live at home and I was eligible for Pell grants. As a result of all of this, I only had to borrow a thousand dollars total to receive my B.A. degree--lucky me! There is no way that college should be made completely free. For one thing, that would be very unjust to taxpayers and for another thing, students need to have a stake in their education. People tend to take things for granted when they get them for free.
8
@Sophie -- Thank you. And you did everything right!!
1
No doubt the super affluent should be paying MUCH more in taxes on earned and unearned income. Sorry, Koch, Mercer, Singer, Trump, Soros, Adelson et al - but if the shoe fits. The question becomes what is the best way to utilize the additional revenue: NOT for the pentagon; NOT for congressional salary increases; NOT for congressional perquisites; NOT for shoring up prescription prices; NOT to pay for Trump's weekly visits to Mara Lago.
1
Love the idea of loan forgiveness however her current structure needs closer examination. If someone owes 50k for undergrad and makes less than 100k/yr, all is forgiven. However before saying that because a person is earning more that they don’t deserve as much assistance, consider certain fields such as medicine. The cost of undergrad and medical school can easily top 300k. Even if a physician is making 250k per year the income to debt ratio is worse.
2
As a proud dad of four millennials, all I can say is Senator Warren must be confused about the primary season schedule. She apparently thinks there will be first , a Super Tuesday limited to major metropolitan areas only, so that young ambitious college grads will vote for this lollipop, and she will then gather momentum for other states.
This is crazy talk and not well thought out. It plays into the rights rhetoric that the Dems want to take all your money in taxes to subsidize others... who may be more fortunate than you. Get Free Stuff is not the basis of a campaign. Might as well hand over the rust belt to Trump uncontested with this proposal.
I am no economist, and I know that the price of tuition is criminal these days--- that is the issue that no one has addressed. Perhaps that might be a more successful approach.
10
Senator Warren’s plan may not be perfect and it may even be unfair to some. But, perhaps in some modified form, it has the potential to do for the United States what the GI Bill did about 75 years ago, create a strong, educated and informed middle class, made up of many who never before considered higher education an option.
Education works. For everyone.
2
@Walt -- Then if there is some kind of debt-relief those benefitting from it should spend an x-amount in the military. Nothing is free.
1
The GI bill was for GI's - people that served the country first and were rewarded later (if they survived the wars they were involuntary drafted to fight.) There are still very significant post-service benefits available to patriotic citizens who volunture for military duty.
Warren's plans (and Bernie's too) are just pandering to lazy children that made bad, entirely voluntary financial choices to attend risk-free college and now want other taxpayers to pick up their school tab.
The two ideas are in no way similar and the beneficiaries - likewise - are in no way the same.
2
The real problem with Ms Warren's plans is that they are reasonable and worse doable.
3
Instead, why not have most students claim "Native American" on their college applications? That way they'll likely qualify for more grants and tuition assistance.
Worked for you, Liz.
10
No. Just no. Education has value. Some value goes to society, most value goes to the individual. I graduated with $30,000 in debt (adjusted for inflation), got a job and paid it off.
The main problem is not debt, it is that people are getting worthless degrees.
Tuition has skyrocketed only because there is money available. If there were fewer loans available, tuition would drop. Schools aren't going hungry.
15
America must provide the resources to educate students from its lower and middle economic brackets. It is good for the country and essential for our competitiveness in the world economy. The prospect of massive student debt takes millions of our bright and dedicated young people out of the higher education equation. This is a tragedy. If we as a nation support the idea of having families, we must also require of ourselves that we support the education of children who are willing to take on the challenges of higher education.
To Elizabeth Warren I say, thanks for having the guts to address this terrible problem with an effective solution!
64
@Guernica But the country isn't Americans' country any longer. It is the country of the world elite. That is who America belongs to. It was sold to them through the privatization of the FED, through the fractional reserve system, and through Citizens United, the final nail in the coffin of democracy, allowing the corporation to have all the rights of personhood but none of the responsibilities.
3
@Guernica: that all sounds good, but why should someone trying to raise a family in NY on $50k pay for your kid's $70k tuition and R&B at Wellsley or Smith College? If you don't want to take on debt go to your state or city school.
14
@Artur The money wouldn't be granted to students who didn't perform well in college. You'd have to get good grades to continue receiving the free tuition. This way, we educate our best and brightest instead of shackling them with debt.
2
What a hair-brained idea. What about all the students and families who sacrificed and worked to pay their way through university to graduate with no or minimal debt, or who incurred the debt but have now paid it off? They will now pay the taxes to fund this giant give-away? The fairer way to do this would be to give everyone who attended post secondary school during the last 20 years $20,000 for each year attended as a reimbursement of excessive education costs, to be used to pay off any student debt they still have and to pocket the rest. Elizabeth Warren is trying to buy voter support with promises so extreme, so outlandish, she has no need to think them through because there is zero chance they will happen If this is the best she
can do, I suggest you look for someone smarter, and less desperate.
7
Why have we not heard form Ms Warren about students giving something to their country in return for debt forgiveness and free college? In my day in this very country, two years government service was expected and even more if you went to a military school. Everyone talks about the cost of free tuition, but wouldn't the government get back a few dollars if every graduate had to give time back? OK maybe 2 years free community college if you pass an exam, but a free 4 year college with no obligation is NOT the American way IMHO
5
On baby! If canceling student debt doesn’t get young voters (& their parents) to the polls...Nothing will...
It’s might have a transformative on US society...
1
As a parent who has paid for their child to attend college, I think this makes me feel like I'm a fool. I made a lot of sacrifices and this idea of eliminating student debt somehow doesn't square.
20
Only in America are free tuition for the qualified,and health care for all citizens left wing ideas. No self respecting European right winger would suggest the elimination of health care for all. Medical school in France costs 200 euros a year. If you qualify then your education is paid. Other than electing Trump it is why the rest of the world sees us as none too sharp
3
@Dr John, yes, apparently when a nation-state does not have to pay for its own military defense, nor for the military defense of dozens of other nations, it is able to offer much more generous benefits to its own citizens and domestic investment. But when President Trump suggests that perhaps the nation-states of Europe should pay slightly more to NATO (let alone pay for their entire military defense or to pay for the United States, as we have for them for 50-60 years), everyone screams bloody murder. We can't have it both ways. Does the US want to emulate Europe or not? And if so, will Europe (and Japan and others) now return the favor and pay for America's military defense for decades so the US can invest in its own society? Or should the US continue the bipartisan, trillion-dollar "Forever" wars, carried on by both Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden for the last 18 years, and every other hot-spot in the world?
1
As an example, take a manufacturing company with 35 employees — a few of them making minimum wage — that has a small truck fleet to transport its goods.
It will see higher costs from highway tolls and an hourly minimum wage that would gradually rise from $10.10 to $15. Paid family medical leave, which would apply to firms with a single employee under one bill, could mean the company has multiple workers out for 12 weeks at a time, making it difficult — and potentially more expensive — to find replacements, especially in an industry already facing a major talent shortage.
1
A college degree is still a high-value acquisition. It still provides returns on the investment (if you earn a marketable degree). The idea of a bailout for an investment that generates positive returns is absurd. Some relief is necessary, true, but Warren’s plan seems politically desperate.
4
The all or nothing approach will likely fail. Why cant we have free junior college and higher federal subsidies for public universities?
2
Because those things already exist, yet hundreds of thousand of "students" still voluntarily took out more than one trillion dollars in college loans and now want taxpayers to foot their bills.
1
Why do we need to keep sending students to college who hardly made it through high school? Why don't we make high school challenging like it once was - graduating students who can actually read, write and do basic math first?
13
@Sarah99 -- oh, this wouldn't be politically correct. Now we must graduate everyone even those who can't do basic math, speak properly, or wrote properly. Sign of our times.
1
it appears that some assume that taxing the rich will pay for everything with no consequences. There just isn’t enough money from that pot to do all the things Senator Warren dreams of doing. She is being disingenuous.
9
Free stuff. More and more free stuff. How do I get line?
8
Elizabeth, be a dear and cancel my car loan and mortgage too so I can live and drive for free. It’s ok as I have a degree - it’s not like I’m actually in need or anything like that. And since my loans weren’t backed by the taxpayer so they won’t even be short changed. Just print a wad of dollars and send some my way. Or how about just relieving those banking guys who freely lent to me some of their wealth? I mean it’s not as if anyone’s pension will suffer or property values plummet. Thank so much!
PS if you could hold off on implementation until I get an even bigger home loan that would be just perfect. But don’t tell the real estate agents in case they put the price up on me.
13
I cannot think of a better way to lift the American people and supercharge the economy.
2
If that's true, you have no understanding of how the economy actually works.
Pandering to people who voluntarily took out college loans but want taxpayers to pay those loans off is not clever - it's theft.
Warren and Sanders want to buy votes by stealing other people's money via extortionate taxes, then divide that money up and give it away for "free" to their voter / supporters.
That's not governing - it's a legalized crime syndicate.
3
Naysayers here may have forgotten the two trillion robbery of the federal treasury (our tax dollars) to enrich the already obscenely wealthy. Remember too the bailouts of banks and financial institutions that cost taxpayers billions during the great recession.
I refuse to believe that it is wise to put all the burden on lower income groups. We place the onerous of investing in our future through education on the feudal class.
Americans have been brainwashed to think money to workers and students is unacceptable, but shoveling the country's riches to the 1% is acceptable. Sad, that those are our values. We are brain washed by those who make the laws and control the reigns of power.
3
@Truthseeker
Lowering the rates taxpayers pay is robbing you of "[Y]OUR tax dollars"?
1
@Truthseeker, the answer is to more strictly regulate the banks. And to prosecute bad actors who are violating the law. Many of the activities that the banks engaged in which gave rise to the global financial crisis were legal and even strongly encouraged because politicians like Bill Clinton and his economic advisers like Robert Rubin and Larry Summers bought into the idea of total deregulation. They worked with extreme GOP like Phil Gramm to end the Glass-Steagall Act. Together, policies pursued by Clinton and Bush, Jr. alike amounted to giving banks a total free reign and even pushed the banks to make shady and risky loans for political reasons. Bush, Jr's "ownership" society, etc.
The answer is not to follow the disastrous policies unleashed under Clinton and Bush, Jr. that led to the Great Recession and the bailouts but just in a different sector of the economy (education). Essentially, like Clinton and Bush incentivizing people to get home loans who arguably should not have, what Elizabeth Warren is proposing is to incentivize people to go to college who maybe should not (when the US economy already is not producing enough jobs that require a college degree).
Other things should be considered, including for colleges to lower the price. Is it really necessary to have indoor climbing walls; gourmet vegan cafeterias; or for universities like Harvard to be sitting on multi-billion dollar endowments while raising tuition to nearly six-figures per year?
Finally, a viable 2020 candidate tackles this incredibly important problem, both a drag on the economy, and a cause of much personal suffering throughout the nation (my family has been hit hard by student debt). We, the older generation, owe this to our youth, because we stood by helplessly while the powers that be raised tuition beyond inflation year after year, with little consequence or adult oversight. Warren has got my vote and support.
3
I say force universities to charge less rather than forgive all student debt.
In fact, why not force all universities and colleges to simply offer different cost levels on a sliding scale?
4
So say my household income of $224,000 is four times the average American household income of $56,000. My high income is well justified of course by my undergraduate and graduate degrees. Now the average household is going to help me pay my student loans? Who says God does not exist? Who says there are no miracles? I'm going to vote for Warren. (Don't tell me that it will all be paid for by taxing the billionaires. Taxing the billionaires can also be used to create higher income support credits for low income families or free childcare for working single Moms who do need all the help they can get.)
2
Let’s pump out more aimless liberal arts majors? Not so fast.
How about significant subsidies for students entering needed professions? May have something there.
5
Instead of forgiving debt that was taken on willingly, why don't you put your force behind shoring up Social Security so that the folks who paid into the system their entire working lives won't see cuts to their SS payments in old age.
10
Can’t we do both? Funny how there is plenty of money to bail out banks and to start endless wars—but never any money to educate our youth or to care for our elderly.
1
We definitely need to find a way to make college more affordable. My husband and I borrowed a combined amount of over $120,000 for his medical school and my law school in the late 1980's. We worked hard, lived frugally, and repaid our debt shortly before we had children. We saved aggressively for their college educations from the day they were born. They will all graduate from private universities debt free. This sounds great except when you consider that the practical effect is we worked almost our entire lives simply to pay for education.
9
This is another poorly thought out proposal from Warren, who is failing in the polls and desperate to stand out.
14
I am a bit ambivalent. I graduated in 1978 from a private university with no debt. I worked my way through school as a welder and a painter.
I was able to pay my tuition, US $ 3,000 per semester working part time during school and full time in summer.
Today that same school costs US $ 30,000 per semester. I would never have been able to work my way through school at those prices.
My daughter-in-law has US$ 60,000 dollars in student debt. She and my son estimate it will take 10 years to pay off.
Personally I would love to see them out from under that debt, but I sympathize with those who took on the debt and then paid it off. It hardly seems fair that my daughter-in-law should get a get out of jail free card when others managed to honor the debt obligations they voluntarily assumed.
8
@gpickard
Using an on-line inflation calculator with a 3.37% inflation rate (using the U.S. consumer price index), $100 in 1978 is equivalent to $389.88 in 2019. Therefore, $3,000 in 1978 is equivalent to (30 x $389.88) $11,696.40 in 2019. So your private university is charging about 3 times as much per semester (in inflation adjusted dollars) as it did when you were a student. Presumably the students today are not getting a 300% better education and are not graduating 300% smarter than they did in 1978.
In simple terms, the problem is, "Why are students and their families being fleeced?" I suspect the answer is "following the money" in 2019 will lead to different destinations than in 1978, i.e., the answer is the problem.
I went to a cheap state college and took out student loans to buy expensive mountain bikes and to travel. I could have worked more and really had almost no loans, but I chose to live while I was young. I now pay $500 a month - a sum that doesn't bother me too much. At first it did but after ten years it's not so bad.
But if Senator Warren wants to let the rich subsidize my fun times in the nineties, I'll gladly vote for her; you go girl!
9
@Walker Same here..and that's what's lost in all this. Just because you have debt doesn't mean you're unable to pay for that debt. Some choose to pay minimum and live in the short term instead.
For some, it's sending a message that your good financial habits don't matter.
9
The student loan industry needs to be reined in to offer mortgage-like instruments with 15, 20, 30 year terms, with 3-5% interest levels, and the requirement that borrowers may pay extra on principal. As it stands now, most stydent loans are for indefinite periods, carry 9-15% interest, and borrowers cannot pay extra on principal. Every extra payment is divided into miniscule principal, inordinate processing fee, and usurious interest. If a person is obligated to $1500/month, and chooses to pay $3,000, he/she is not allowed to put $1500 on principal only. The entire $3000 is likely apportioned as $500, principal; $180, administrative fee; $2320, interest. When all that is recalculated, the borrower ends up paying about four times the original cost of the education......and is broke, with no savings and no house.
What a way to support young adults in their pursuit of a satisfying career! Maybe they can purchase their first houses when they are 55 or 60 years old......
Sad! This is America???
3
@ultimateliberal Mine was 10%, which is why I paid it off in 5 years on a $40k salary.
It's easy to forego the 2 BR apartment and the new car to pay off debt. I had to do it, why can't others?
8
@Eugene Was your student debt $150K and was there a 20% unemployment rate in your field? Did you also pay $8000 going around the country interviewing for jobs you did not get selected for? Was your first job in a high-rent area where $1500 will get you 400 sq ft?
Sure, health sciences may pay well, but the education is costly and the needs for new graduates fluctuates wildly. There was a period from 2008-2014 when schools doubled their enrollment and turned out 20% more graduates than there were positions available. My daughter was caught in that sewer for two years..........a couple of her desperate classmates ended up as receptionists in dentists' offices because there were no pharmacist positions anywhere...
2
@ultimateliberal -- the way the loans are structured definitely needs to be revisited so that borrowers can pay off earlier if they can, etc.
1
"Who wants free stuff?" will be 2020's "Make America Great Again"
17
Or maybe Americans should start demanding that OUR taxes be invested in OUR health care and in OUR children’s education—instead of thrown at our bloated military industrial complex.
My cousins are Europeans who went to university and then medical school tuition free. Now both are doctors—with no debt—serving their communities
2
@Zejee, it is very difficult to do this when the 1%er bipartisan foreign policy establishment insists the United States must not only pay for its own military defense but also the military defense of all of the nation-states of Europe; Japan; South Korea; and how many dozens more? And when both political parties insist on paying for trillion-dollar "Forever" wars based on lies and intervene in every hot-spot around the world. Obama & Dems made big talk in 2006 and 2008 about being different than Bush-Cheney neo-cons but forgot to tell us they were just LBJ and Vietnam repurposed for a new age.
Are your cousins who are European prepared to begin paying the taxes not only for the outstanding social benefits and domestic investments available in their country/countries but also for their own military defense and for the military defense of the United States? If so, the US could no doubt free up significant tax dollars from US taxpayers to actually invest in its own country. Unfortunately, nearly everyone screamed bloody murder when Trump suggested European nations might want to pay a little more toward NATO to lighten the US load (and he was not even asking for Europe to repay the favor & pay for decades of US military defense going forward).
2
Thanks Senator Warren.
In 2010 I returned to school, graduating from Shephard Broad Law College with a masters in health law. Along with the degree came $60,000 in student debt. Upon graduation I joined the United States program, AmeriCorp where I volunteered for four years, working with U.S. military veterans. Veterans who lacked support in travel, home hygiene or just needed someone to provide comfort and companionship.
Instead of using the education award that I had earned at the end of my four years to advance my learning, I have had to apply that award to pay the interest on my student loan. I continue my volunteer work today still visiting with and providing companionship to shut-in veterans.
Whether my loan will ever be paid off is problematic as I recently celebrated my 76th birthday and am committed to continuing my volunteer service. Yes, my decision to return to school was voluntary as was my electing to draw on a government sponsored student loan program. I would do it all again because the emotional rewards derived from my voluntary contribution to these veterans far outweighs the looming threat of my student loan repayment.
2
What about my medical school debt? Does this go away - or are my taxes going sky high so I, a doc for the poorest of poor people in inner city Chicago, can buy a degree for a dermatologist in Lake Forest?
2
@ Fred..very unfair. He stated he's a doctor for poor people in inner city Chicago. I highly doubt he is "a rich". His point is why should he subsidize medical school for someone who truly will be rich?
As a rich you are a taker—how about you think about someone else for a change?
@hey nineteen --don't you wish you had applied for medical school just now, at NYU? Free. Others will follow.
Obviously you chose compassion over profits working where you do. Good luck to you! You sound like a decent human being.
Ridiculous proposal for a program that will be rife with fraud and is doomed to fail. The much bigger issue with student debt is in the for-profit business where students are getting worthless degrees as the industry is set up to soak the government. This proposal doesn't touch that issue.
7
Yes her proposal does touch that issue. Look it up!
We bailed out the Savings and Loan crash under HW Bush and bailed out Wall Street and the Banks crash under W Bush in 2008-2009. Now people say no bailout for student loan debt? I do object to a bailout without some strings attached but to dismiss the idea out of hand is unfair and a potential threat to our economy. Why should banks be able to rob students who were trying to get an education and a better future and hopefully pay higher taxes? We should give a bailout to students at the expense of the Banks and Wall Street companies we bailed out--raise their taxes/rescind their undeserved Trump tax cut and take that money to cover the bailout. If our national debt goes up from this, I can accept it rather than increasing our debt to give the rich and corporations more fluff money.
3
@EPMD Not everyone who has student debt is in financial trouble.
I paid mine off early by living small for a few years.
A few of my peers who were around the same income at time decided to pay the loan through the life of the loan and spent more money on BMW's and other luxuries instead.
Should they get rewarded for short term financial thinking?
3
College professors are worth their pay. States no longer fund their colleges like it they did in the post WWII area - a move that started about the time the federal government got in the loan business. (The feds will bankroll the students so the states took advantage of it.) Millions of dollars are spent every year to keep up with requirements like Equal Opportunity, Title 9 and during the last administration a quasi judicial system to handle maltreatment of a student. I’m not commenting on their worth, just noting the impact they have on funding. None of the federal mandates came funded. A long string of good intentions has been overcome by unintended consequences. Forgiving debt without addressing the causes will not solve the problem.
Oh no.. Trump won't even need to campaign..
14
Because nobody has children who are yoked to high interest student debt? That money could be put into the economy instead of making banks even richer.
1
Most of these student loans are securitized (i.e. packaged into bonds) so i have no idea how you can break the bond covenants with the bond holders or else you have to make them whole.
Either way, this will make future student loans much more expensive for students since the government can any moment declare their repayment optional, and the lenders will demand higher interest rates for this risk.
This policy does not make sense.
3
@ KJ.. there you go with your common sense again. Don't you realize this is all about who can promise people the most free stuff to win votes?
5
Some candidates seem to understand the issues that are affecting most Americans. The high cost of for profit health care and high interest student debt are two such issues. Note that the US—the richest nation the world has ever known—is the only first world nation that does not offer these benefits to their citizens.
How about paying off all the debt my sons incurred attending medical school...
3
Well my cousins went to university and medical school in Europe. They did not pay tuition and have no debt.
I guess her rich donors will be sending their checks somewhere else.
1
Why does she want to subsidize the Catholic colleges? The discriminate against women, minorities and LGBTQ folks. Eliminate those schools and redistribute their wealth to the poor and downtrodden.
How exactly do you eliminate private institutions like Catholic colleges? Just because you don't like what they stand for doesn't mean you can just wish them away. If that were the case then I'm sure the right would love to wish away many left wing institutions.
1
I wonder if Ms. Warren has studied the lessons learned by countries that have free University education.
There is no free lunch. Free access comes with drop out rates unacceptable to most US parents
I studied at University in Europe where access was free. The drop out rate at the first hard comprehensive exam (a written , 2 days, 4 hours each per day examen on the entire math learned in the first two years) was 70%
You can have limit access with dollars or with "elitist" measure. Meritocracy, and access on ability is increasingly not acceptable to most American
11
If students drop out then they lose an educational opportunity and the remaining tuition is refunded to the Gov. No problem!
@Lars Interesting parallel to immigration and socialism in general. Most of those European socialist countries are impossible to migrate to, but some who would vouch for those policies here seem to think we can have open borders and eased migration standards.
5
@ Lars... this is my main problem with "free college". Lots of kids who have no business in college will waste a year or more trying to extend their high school years on the taxpayers dime before inevitably dropping out. Why should we foot the bill for extended adolescence when it serves no greater societal purpose? Now if you want to do something targeted and smart then I'm all ears. For example, any student that scores above a certain threshold on the SAT is given either a full ride or substantial help with tuition at any school they choose to attend IF they pursue a major that we as a nation have shortfalls in qualified professionals. That would make much more sense.
2
Sorry, no bailout. When people lost their shirt in the dot.com crash, there was no relief. When people lost their homes due to the crash of the economy and becoming unemployed, there was no relief.
Stop crying and pay your bills. We all have to pay our bills. No one is helping us. Enough already. Stop acting so entitled!
Elizabeth, I am really disappointed in you!
128
Student loan debt is the one debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Did you know that?
20
Bailout? The interest rates charged on student loans are near usury. It is a crime and not helpful to the security of the country.
35
@Don Juan "When people lost their homes due to the crash of the economy and becoming unemployed, there was no relief." Wall Street did ok.
36
Elizabeth Warren is the most exciting candidate out there, unveiling proposal after proposal to improve the lives and futures of all Americans.
She's also creating roadmaps for how these programs can be funded. And she's out there selling these ideas to the American people, rather than meeting with all the wealthy donors.
As significantly, she's raising the bar on these issues for all candidates, forcing them to let voters know where they stand on issues such as universal access to quality childcare and tuition-free K-16 public education.
No matter whom you end up supporting for President in the long run, it is worth it to sending her whatever you can -- $5, $10, $15, whatever -- to keep her campaign going. She is the idea candidate in this primary and we need to keep her voice in the race.
203
@avrds - After watching Republicans campaign on Repeal and Replace with no plan whatsoever, Republican voters should get honest about what all talk is versus talk with a workable plan behind it.
10
@avrds Thank you for this comment. A lot of naysayers about Senator Warren but she actually starts the conversation instead of pandering to incrementalism. We are a nation of big ideas and innovation and we need a leader to match.
28
@avrds
" He has more solutions than there are problems". A " kind" assessment of Hubert Humphrey.
Elizabeth Warren is no Hubert Humphrey.
The most loyal long suffering base of the Democratic Party looks like Kamala Harris and Maxine Waters.
Donald Trump baited and dismissed Elizabeth Warren with his Pocahontas quip. Detailed thoughtful policy proposals are wasted on the most of the American masses.
Warren is academic who accidentally became a politician.
3
It's young people that can't be bothered motivating themselves to vote and this should give them an incentive. That's what our PM did in NZ, well not eliminate student debt; our PM said all first time students could have the first year of University education free and she got voted in.
Education loans should at MOST be interest free. Not above all but the clearly usurious rates charged by banks for credit card "loans" - which clearly are born by the people who can least afford to do so.
What a sad commentary on the generosity of the American public.
3
@Glenn The problem with that is you are forcing the banks to take a big risk. Nothing is stopping a student from dropping out. Yes they will have to pay back the principal but that is money that could have been made being loaned elsewhere. The opportunity costs would be enormous.
Banks would find a way around it.
It's the federal government and individual states tha make most student loans and set the interest rates thare are charged, not "the banks," almost all of which exited the student loan business a decade ago.
Is your own government somehow the villian here? Now you want "the government" to give you relief?
Irony much?
1
@Fred Rick The feds set the rates at that which the banks would agree to. That money has to come from somewhere.
But I agree with you. No banks would be interested in interest free student loans, especially to a segment of the population as risky as 18-22 year olds. They would rather invest in other loans that carry higher interest rates to less risky people.
...some prominent Democrats have gone from the vague advocacy of "making the very rich pay their fair share" to specific proposals to shifting the tax burden back on to the rich. Senator and announced presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is proposing an annual “wealth tax” on Americans with more than $50 million in assets. The tax would be 2% on the amount in excess of $50 million and 3% on amounts above $1 billion.
The probability of the 2020 election resulting in a change in the tax code that significantly reverses the massive shift in the in the tax burden away from the rich and onto the middle class is still very probably low as long as the Democrats continue to combine such tax proposals with plans to spend the proceeds on various social programs like free college tuition. However, a plan to raise taxes on those with assets above $50 million and/or incomes above $10 million and use all of the proceeds to reduce the taxes on everyone else might have a much higher probability of being enacted.
It is hard to envision the Democrats being politically savvy or ideologically flexible enough to embrace a policy of directly shifting the tax burden away from the middle class and onto the rich.
.. in many cases, middle-class voters have been willing grasp at any chance they think could lower their tax burden, and thus support candidates who promise them a tax cut, no matter how odious the candidates might be otherwise..."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4235884
This "proposal" by Warren is more magical fairy dust sprinkled by the Socialist kooks that are ascendent in the intellectually bankrupt Democratic party. Like children in a toy store that cry and scream, demanding that mommy and daddy should buy them whatever shiny toy catches their eye on every aisle, the financially illiterate mobs that support this nonsense miss the most important detail.
All "goverment"money ultimately comes from taxes paid by people who work and build the private economy. This "free" stuff comes with an enormous future tax bill, which will be paid by the very folks that think they are somehow going to get something for nothing "from the government."
It is deliberate liars like Warren and Sanders that spread this impossible fairy dust nonsense. And it is the finacially ignorant mob that will learn - way too late - that life is hard, and even harder if you are stupid.
6
With an average graduation rate well below 60%, the problem with colleges is not affordability, but student preparedness. Taking in students who are not ready for college has been a vast waste of resources on both private savings and public funding resources.
Warren's alma mater, University of Houston, has a four year graduation rate of mere 25% (6-year graduation rate in the high 40s%). You'd think she would know.
Making public colleges and universities free is throwing good money to make the waste even worse.
6
If you dig deeper than the stock market or official government statistics, the economic picture is not as rosy as the official narrative suggests. In particular, the number of people who have seen little or no benefit from the recovery following the 2008 recession is not insignificant.
I can definitely relate to the situation a number of people with loans find themselves in--my career hasn't panned out the way I had originally hoped, to say the least--and the reality is a lot more complicated than the straw man argument of "worthless degrees" that gets trotted out every time the topic of student loans comes up. Nonetheless, I managed to to pay my student loans off.
I am certainly fine with forgiving loans in certain circumstances: e.g. as an incentive to get people to work in public service. However, I find forgiving student loans on the scale Warren proposes just as unfair as the response to the 2008 recession, which propped up a few select failing financial institutions, while leaving basically everyone else to fend for themselves.
When Ronald Reagan was Governor of California, Community Colleges were tuition free as well as some Universities. He tried to change that, but caved to lobbyists for the Universities. He came to accept it.
It can work. To me equality means everybody gets to start from the same starting line. That means access to higher education if you academically qualify. Many will fail, but at least they had the chance.
1
50,000 in debt relief is not an answer to a problem that starts with very high tuition, inadequate financial aid. It would be far better, after addressing the cost of tuition issue to reduce what a student can borrow (esp for graduate school_) and cut or freeze interest rates for 10 years post graduation to allow students to pay off the principal before it rises completely out of control.
1
Pretty much everyone who is against this plan can be summed up as "I was miserable because of this broken system, so it's unfair to fix it now that I don't directly benefit from it".
8
@Greg. I disagree. I am interested in re capturing the White House. That means winning back the rust belt. This issue will not do that
Ms. Warren also advocates for 'reparations'. If she actually followed through and thought out these proposals, she would recognize that they are intrinsically flawed and have no realistic chance of being successful. But, no, she goes for the click bait and it will hurt her in the polls.
4
What about the majority of people who never go to college at all? What do they get? Most trade schools are for-profit and under Warren's proposal these students get nothing. Does the working class get left behind even more? Again, if you do not go to college for whatever reason, you get nothing under Warren's plan, and most high school graduates are not college material. College was never meant for everyone, that is why you have to apply for acceptance.
I'm a liberal progressive myself, but when I hear about working class resentment toward the Democratic Party, and I then see Senator Warren's proposal, I understand these Trump voters and their resentment. My own Party, the Democrats, are completely tone deaf.
3
The idea of cancelling student debt is plain silly, like promising to bring back coal. The average student debt is less than $40K. Paying it off over ten years is less then $400/month. A bit of money, but not overwhelming. Buying a car will cost about the same, but we don't suggest that the government cancel all car loans.
7
@David
Just wait a week or two. Warren will propose a "car relief" program very soon.
5
To all those whining about Elizabeth’s policy — we are only as smart, and our future as bright, by doing whatever it takes to ensure higher learning for all. It is plain idiotic stupidity to not support higher learning, no matter whatever it takes. We are doomed without it.
1
@rebecca1048 We already have that.
Result? $16 trillion total student loan debt despite a labor shortage. More people are going to college than before but that isn't materializing any hard benefits in our work force.
The bottom line is too many people are going to college for the wrong reasons, and easy access to student debt is the culprit.
2
@Eugene
You missed a decimal point. We don’t have $16 trillion in student loan debt.
Can't believe the GOV'T even provided high interest student debt to any and all students or any or all universities. 6.8% fixed rates. And then there are the parents gov't PLUS loans at 8.6% (may have all come down since my time), also provided to any and all who asked for it.
Unbelievable, now tax income-generating people more and gov't buys down the debt to cancel it? Wow. Terrible on all sides. Negative ROI - for taxpayers, gov't, uni, graduate.
1
Easy access to student loans is part of the reason college expenses have grown five times the rate of inflation. With a steady supply of students with seemingly deep pockets, colleges have gotten to be more like resorts in the last decade or two - fancy gyms, a variety of restaurants serving every ethnic delight 24/7, beautiful dorms, etc. As taxpayers, do we really want to support this "free" lifestyle for every teenager (many of whom would be better off learning a trade)?
9
I paid off my student loans in full 5 years after college by living beneath my means. I paid off roughly $40k on a $40k salary. Would I get reimbursed?
My problem with this is that some people have student debt not because they can't pay it off, but because they are driving new cars or living in bigger apartments they don't need (things I purposely could have had but denied myself to pay off student loans)
There has to be alot of vetting of the recipient for this to be in any way fair.
7
This sounds great, but a nice middle ground would be canceling the portion of student debt that went directly to tuition and books. For the remainder of the debt -- the portion spent on living expenses and maybe that trip to Florence -- there should be subsidized interest like other western countries. Swedes, for example, have tuition-free college. But they take out loans for living expenses and pay about .25% annual interest.
1
voted for Democrats my entire life...if the Democratic candidate in 2020 espouses this and/or other such cockamamy ideas that are out there I think I'll be sitting out the next election...
7
I certainly support the notion that college should be a lot less expensive and that students should not be burdened with huge debts when they graduate. I agree when people are better educated and able to realize their full potential, everyone in the society benefits. But free, no. In fact most people tend to take greater ownership of things if they have had to extend themselves and work for them. Lets make college affordable; lets put a college education within reach of everyone who is qualified and motivated, but I don't think free is a good idea.
6
Um, some of us took out reasonable student loans and have been dutifully paying then back for years. If all student debts are canceled, people who behaved responsibly will in effect be punished. Those who took overly large loans or haven't paid anything back yet will receive the biggest reward. That seems to encourage all the wrong kinds of behavior.
Instead of canceling debt, why not improve financial education and lower the student loan interest rates to a reasonable level? Contrary to popular belief, the rates are not low. My government grad school loans had close to an 8% interest rate.
7
No. I'm fine with raising taxes, but not to pay off someone else's debt, and not to cover astronomical college tuition. If the schools continue to think their bills will be covered, we'll never get out of this mess. Raise taxes but use it for something else like healthcare, elementary schools, child care, or minimum wage.
I paid for my degree.
6
Great idea except many of the voters Warren needs and who would truly benefit from this would not vote for it l, taking a “principled” stand for freedom.
So the hard right propaganda mills like the Cato and Manhattan "Institutes" can't "stomach" the idea that Warren would tax their billionaire donors to pay for the college educations of less fortunate students? I'm shocked.
In the current state of play, the employees of these donors (and of the corporations in which they own stock) go into debt so that they can comprise an educated workforce. The donors get huge benefits from that, and it is only right that they should pay for them. Moreover, American corporations have slashed the amounts they spend on employee training from what they spent on past decades. Which makes the right wing propaganda even more disgusting.
2
@Sunlight,
If you think it's only partisan think tanks like the CATO or Manhattan Institute that oppose Warren's policies, you are gravely mistaken.
I have been a registered Democrat for multiple election cycles and support policies that make higher education more affordable.
However, as one who has paid back student loans I will not support any candidate proposing, like Warren is, what amounts to a bailout of student loans.
And for those of us responsible enough to save for college and pay off our past student debt.......?
Warren is a clown. If you can't afford the tuition, go to your in-state school.
I've seen people "wipe out" out of state tuition debt while others make tough and responsible choices to attend state schools.
Warren should excuse herself from her senator "work" if she can spend so much time on the campaign trail. She and Biden also stuck their irrelevant noses in the S&S strike while providing zero insight.
5
Why don't we radically reduce the cost of college by putting most of its content online, for free ?
What are we waiting for ?
2
Things that are “free” are not valued and therefore the investment in and future value of them will decline. Health Care and Education come to mind.
Air and Water come also to mind. We are battling to save the planet precisely because GLOBAL capital markets do not value environmental health properly - free goods!!!
Student debt is real and must be addressed but a massive bailout as proposed has the effect of penalizing nearly any parents who have scrimped and saved to offset their children’s education cost.
Maybe start with cutting off government student loans to for profit colleges who use the loan program as their fuel to deliver investor profits at the expense of actually educating students.
I am a dyed in the wool D but massive giveaways are not the answer no matter who is selling.
3
Fantastic. Student debt is the reason anyone younger than the boomers can't get ahead like our parents did. Home ownership down, credit card debt up. It all starts from the massive student loan burden we start our adult lives with. We need solutions, thank you Warren!
1
Oh boo, hoo-hoo. You voluntarily took out a student loan and later learned that taking on personal debt limits your future life options?
This is the existential crises facing your generation?
Apparently, WWI, the Depression, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (wars which were fought by armies composed of involuntary draftees) the hyper-inflation in the 70's and early 80's, etc never happened and presented no barrier to personal advancement for earlier generations?
It would appear that the primary subject taught in college today is how to don the cape of personal greivance, label oneself a victim, then blame others for the miserable state of one's own life.
Tell you what. Loan me $50,000, so I can later paint you as a "predatory" lender, talk myself into being your "victim" then refuse to pay you back, while insisting that taxpayers pick up your bill.
Sound like a good plan?
3
Warren is the only one with any courage and any real meaningful policies. Everyone else is checking the pulse of the voters. Warren is leading. While Pelosi makes excuses for Trump, Warren is leading the charge to impeach because justice demands it. Warren has my vote.
3
@Kurt: "Meaningful policies" like 'reparations' for slavery? Gimme a break!
4
will this senator's plan first determine if past students and prospective students in the future are qualified to attend college and thus be able to pass without remedial classes? will said students be under any requirements that they are not simply in college to drink, drug or sex? after all, some colleges today do prohibit booze, drugs and sex while in college. it is not harsh. why should taxpayers pay for a young person to be able to put off having to work if all he wants to do is party?
The scandal is the behavior of the schools and the lack of focus on costs. If tuition at my private university rose at the same pace as the CPI over the last 40 years, the annual cost would be $16,250. Tuition at the university for 2019-2020 school year is over $53,000. Now the government is supposed to finance even more overspending?? Student debt is a problem, but the universities should finance the repayment since they are the ones who caused the situation.
3
In general, I favor reining in student debt loads, but Senator Warren and her followers should be aware that while most students take on debt they really need to pay tuition, some do not: https://creativeloafing.com/content-185289-Cover-Story:-Their-cost-to-bear. I don't know how she plans to tell the difference between past borrowers, but there's no reason why taxpayers should support lifestyle spending.
1
Oh, great idea for a candidate who is desperate for votes in 2020. Now, how will we pay for this, exactly? M-m-m is that a huge hollow silence I hear from Warren?
After we do that, I think President Warren should guarantee “chocolate for life” to anyone who paid for their own education and repaid all their student loans timely. Then, the chocolate entitlement can be paid for with money Warren earned after lying about her race to get into Harvard.
That should just about do it for unreality.
2
The public flagship university in my state has an estimated cost of attendance of $25,000 per year. That’s $100,000 to get a 4-year degree. Forgiving $50,000 of student debt still leaves a $50,000 bill just for a bachelor’s degree. And since it seems that a lot of jobs are starting to demand a masters degree, this proposal really seems like a drop in the bucket.
1
I think colleges and universities need to have a role in addressing the student loan issue, currently at $1.6 trillion. Most of these schools are not-for-profit and pay no taxes. And they have billions of $ in endowments and donations. If the education that they are providing is not of such quality that their graduates cannot repay the student loans, then they need to be made to help defray the cost by repaying their graduates' student loans. It is not right for the taxpayers to foot all of the student loan forgiveness and free tuition on top of Medicare for All, Green New Deal, UBI, reparations, etc.
3
Universal day care and more subsidized housing are worthy proposals. But this free college tuition reminds me too much of mortgage tax deductions, in that it will primarily benefit the wealthiest citizens. Our universities are overwhelmingly peopled with children of the relatively prosperous, that is to say people with household incomes well over $100,000. Of course not all attendees are from prosperous families and college can be a stretch even for upper middle class families. Still, better we should return to the days when needy students could get government loans at or near cost, say at the rate of inflation. The loans could be good for room and board, not just tuition. We could also increase grants for middle and working class young adults. And rather than forgive current loans, let's have them refinanced as ten or fifteen year notes at the present rate of inflation.
1
There are rights and there are privileges. Education, along with medical care, proper nutrition, decent housing, freedom from fear (as President Roosevelt maintained 75 years ago), and perhaps even transportation are rights not privileges, and a right always supersedes a privilege. Not a nickel for profit until proper rights are provided for all.
Warren, and Sanders and several of the younger candidates understand this; and it’s time.
1
Many people who comment here are probably being dragged down by their mortgage payment. Why not forgive that? Housing is a necessity, isn't it? What's that you say? The homeowner could have purchased a smaller house or a condo and would have less debt. Well, students could have gone to smaller schools, community colleges, commuted, etc. but they didn't feel like doing that. They wanted the "college experience" complete with financial aid payments that cover Starbucks and hanging out and the name brand degree. Okay, if that's what you want, then pay for it.
What about the students who could have gone to expensive schools but instead pieced together their degrees by going to community colleges or taking a few online classes? They get to watch people who did not avail themselves of less expensive options possibly have their debt forgiven? Come up with doable payments, ditch the interest, let the students pay it back over a long period of time on an income based amount in order to help them. But forgiveness? That's insanity.
9
My wife and I have busted our butts for college tuition. We are currently paying the 2nd of 3 kids college costs. When the 2nd is a senior the last will be a freshman. We work long hard hours to put them thru quality state schools. Now we have to work harder to put other people's kids thru college? All these "free, free, free" proposals for everyone "else" is definitely determining which way I'll be voting in 2020 for the 1st time.
10
Only the very wealthy can put their own children through college. It is for the greater good that your taxes must be increased to fund college for the deserving who work honestly.
@Fred your assertion is patently untrue. We've put two through state schools already and have saved enough to put two more through (state schools) on a modest two-earner income. What we didn't do was buy new SUVs, take fancy vacations (never took them anywhere we needed to fly to) and cooked most of our meals in. It can be done. It just takes determination.
4
@Fred--try working 10-12 hour shifts and as much overtime as you can. Hard work. State schools, not private schools. Maybe you just dont want to work so hard. We want our kids to be and have it better than us.
1
As an official Old, I remember paying $349 a semester at a state university in the 20th century. The same school now charges $11,000 a semester for in-state students.
I left without any student debt; it's nearly impossible for a middle-class kid to do the same. As for working class and poor kids, it's also an onerous burden to take on: in addition to tuition, they have to come up with room & board, or find a place to live if they aren't at home with family.
Colleges do need to get rid of all the bells and whistles that have increased tuition exponentially (as suggested in another comment), but students who want a college education shouldn't be forced to choose a career that will let them pay off their debts (as opposed to, say a public service career), or have to spend the majority of their income for years paying back a bank, sometimes in amounts far greater than the original amount.
The GI Bill and other subsidized or free tuition programs created the middle class in America that's now being hollowed out.
And the money spent on loan repayment could be spent on real goods that would drive our economy, now too dependent on providing services, rather than real things, like houses, cars, clothing and more.
Warren is absolutely right about this, and even if she's not the Democratic nominee, whoever is needs to adopt this plan.
4
@Kathleen Warnock
Great idea. How do we finance such an entitlement? How?
1
Economics 101 teaches that the more money that is thrown at something, the more it costs.
I am all for helping kids go to college, but where is Sen. Warren's proposal for tuition cost reduction/control by the colleges and universities themselves? Increasing Pell Gants (free money to college and universities) will simply result in colleges and universities gobbling up the extra Pell Grant money with higher tuition as schools have always done whenever taxpayer state and federal aid increase.
Under Warren's proposal there is absolutely no incentive for schools to control costs, and in fact her proposal encourages schools to increase costs. Fix the tuition cost that's the real problem.
6
I really believe in automobiles. I think every American should own one. So, anyone who took out a car loan should just have their debt canceled. Vote for me.
14
Never thought I'd support something like this. Butit makes sense. Wealth is more lopsided in this world, not just US and France, forcing me to think about the remaining middle class. How will their kids afford higher education? Bigger student loan activity hurts America.
Without education we, as a culture, are lost.
1
“... eliminating tuition at every public college.“
Does this only apply to undergraduate studies? Can I go back to school, 30+ years after graduating with a BA, and get my Ph.D for free?
2
Am I correct in assuming the teachers and professors will work for free?
7
lol $50k of debt. if you only have $50k of debt it'll take care of itself.
1
Please. You so called Liberals must have some reasonable people. Kamala seems reasonable, so does Bernie. Although Bernie represents a universally failed economic system. In any event, this woman is annoying and frankly, ridiculous. Just ridiculous. It pains me when I hear her latest bone headed policy. I refrain from any Pocahontas shots. No need. 😉
4
I have a very hard time believing this will be a winning issue for Warren.
I heard a similar tale when I last went home. A niece, who majored in Woman’s studies was lamenting her student debt from a fancy private university that was multiples of her yearly wage in a menial job. When I was the only family member who did not think her plan was a good idea six years ago, I was harshly criticized by the family but who could not see the writing on the wall?
Sometimes it may seem unfair but we all must live with our choices. If promises were made by lenders or Universities, then they should be held accountable. But I think taxpayers will have enough to deal with between rising medical costs, funding their own retirement, the effects of climate change and the exploding deficit. Because increasing taxes on the very wealthy will be a very difficult. They hold all the power.
10
Don't begin with free. It's catchy and easy to understand but it is not the answer.
We can begin by eliminating interest and fees. We can base payments on income and we can eliminate debt for those working a public service job after 10 years. We can invest in processes and people to make the loan system accountable and accurate - there is a lot we can do - don't begin with free.
9
if they say "non-college people shouldn't have to subsidize college people who'll earn more than them," they're lying. the subsidy comes from a small tax on the super wealthy, not on the lower class.
if they use the word "bailout," or other terms of that ilk, they're lying simply using hot-button words to distract the argument and inflame your passions.
2
So many of these lame articles cite outstanding loan debt and tuition costs without accounting for schools' expenditures. Paying lip service to skyrocketing tuition costs is now campaign speech boilerplate--why doesn't the NYTimes put out an article tracking expenditures at a selection of schools over several decades? Surely such reporting would inform the times' readership, and more broadly the American electorate. Is that not the point of journalism? Or does the times aspire only to regurgitate press releases from Democratic Party hopefuls?
If any of my fellow commenters are sending a teenager to undergrad soon (may God have mercy upon you), pay close attention to those campuses which you visit. Did your UC school in the '70s have brand new dormitories, Olympic sized swimming pools, robust student recreation centers, etc.? Who do you think pays for all of this? Do you think your teen is interested in a school without those amenities? Do you think that demand, supported by easy access to massive loans, may have pressured tuition prices over the last four decades? Do you think any articles in our nations "most esteemed newspaper" will ever profile these market pressures?
8
An excellent policy. It will level the field for poor kids to compete with rich kids. Parent’s poverty should not propage to their kids.
3
Cancel home mortgage debt and solve the Homelessness Crisis while you are at it.
17
A very worthy goal of a rich, but brutally unequal society. Debt is Prison: Break open the bars!
I would rather see college repayment tied to future earnings vs. the "blank check" proposal made here. As others have pointed out, the taxpayer should not be made to subsidize those who attend school and increase their earnings potential. It is well known in economics circles that when something is "free", more of it is consumed. The cost of college is out of control, and I am sure that most of us agree on this point, but it is something that should be provided free of charge, with no accountability or repayment schedule?
For what it is worth, I also believe that those living unhealthy lifestyles should pay more for health insurance, in the same way that unsafe drivers pay much more for car insurance. Accountability is key to the functionality of any system that provides a service or product that is not paid for directly. Otherwise, some will take advantage of the system, resulting in the rest of us being left to subsidize that group.
5
There are several major issues that combined make millions of Americans’ financial futures seem needlessly bleak:
* Astronomically-high tuition fees in many U.S. colleges
* Draconian, exploitative student loan models that allow young, often financially-naive borrowers to go hopelessly into debt, which they then make it nearly impossible to discharge
This is a major issue that affects the daily lives of tens of millions of people, as they put off buying a home or starting a family, as financial anxiety eats away at their well being.
This is an unacceptable and unnecessary state. Free tuition, combined with reforms to the loan industry, is a serious and fair response to a crisis.
Of course there will be unintended consequences. Some universities will complain about overcrowding and lack of ability to raise research funds. Compared to the situation now, their concerns are small potatoes.
Some people will complain without any evidence that free tuition will make college a non-stop party. Germany among many countries has had free tuition for many years. Is anyone seriously prepared to make the argument that German students are non-stop partiers?
The good news with this idea is that it has been tested for many years. It works pretty well and most importantly, it helps the U.S. solve an actual crisis.
3
When Warren said that she loves the middle-class, I didn't realize she meant how we taste.
15
Oh how will we ever pay for college for all? I mean, its like proposing free grade school and high school for all. Or like paying for a bloated military so guys like Cheney can be rich.
Free college for all is just a dream. Kind of like putting a man on the moon. It'll never happen.
Not only should it happen but we should now require our students to have at least a two year degree instead of a high-school diploma or a GED.
2
Students who took out loans knew what they were borrowing and promised to pay the money back. They should pay it back.
17
This is the first time I have seen something from Warren that will cause me to seriously consider voting for her.
2
When I went to college in the 1970's, my student loan interest was 3% while mortgage rates were 15%. This country has its priorities backward! Also, today's job market is very unforgiving, especially for groups like teachers - the need is great but not the budgets. A college degree is no guarantee of a job, and having less or no debt means young adults can buy a car, afford their own home, and contribute to a thriving economy. And having affordable healthcare means more people can be healthier, contributing members of society. Why are people missing the big picture?
Neelie, New York City
3
How about closing down all universities after the top 100? The rest are unless anyway!
2
Elizabeth Warren:
This seals this deal! I am voting for you!!!!!!
A parent with a college student about to graduate.
4
@Genevieve La Riva--so you will have paid for your kid and now you can be taxed and pay for everyone else's kids.
3
She is truly crazy.
I always thought she was simply a very liberal politician, but this kind of lunatic thinking is appalling..
21
The only thing left is for her to do a striptease.
12
Senator Warren is using the ultra-millionaire/billionaire tax as the source for many of her policy proposals. The article estimates the tax to raise about $2.75 trillion over a 10 year period. Student loan forgiveness will cost about $1.25 trillion. Medicare for All is projected to cost $25-35 trillion over a 10 year period. WSJ reported today that by 2035, Social Security trust fund reserves will be depleted and Social Security will no longer be able to pay its full scheduled benefits. The ultra-millionaire/billionaire tax is no where near enough to pay for all these programs and policies. Unlike the other candidates, Senators Warren and Sanders are showing leadership by proposing policies that they feel are good for the country. I just don't know how we are going to pay for them without a significant tax increase on many more tax payers worth far less than ultra-millionaires/billionaires and drastic cuts in other programs. All of these programs sound great if we had unlimited funds.
4
As a UC Berkeley graduate and someone who taught for 21 years at a local private university, I have mixed feelings about this. I agree that any tuition offset should only be for public education. It makes no sense for anybody, regardless of their wealth, to subsidize private university study when a much more affordable public option is available. Similarly, if there's any debt forgiveness, it should only be based on the cost of public education. It's my impression that if students gain entry to the Ivies or equivalent, attendance is generally need-blind. I know of several families who've taken on huge debt for a private university in NY or Boston when a UC was an option and I, for one, don't want to subsidize that type of choice just because the kid wants the east coast experience. That is what I call a consumer choice, not a need or entitlement.
97
Universities ought to be like Medicare for All—Only a public option. Private Universities are playgrounds for the wealthy. Eliminate them.
7
@Juarezbear
I'm a college graduate as well. I have an MBA. Most people I know didn't go to college. Should they have subsidized my college experience?
4
@Juarezbear state universities of choice are not always an option. Take the University of Washington, for instance. Because it's become so STEM focused, students need a very health math SAT score just to get into their state school, even with a healthy GPA. And, UW is setting aside a large number of seats for full pay foreign students, because of budget cuts. I know plenty of smart, capable kids who didn't get into UW, and maybe whose next best option was a private college. You know what you know, but don't forget everyone has a different story.
5
It grates on me that colleges have had such terrible control over costs for 40 years now. Tuition has gone up at a sizable multiple to inflation in that time. Administrative cost have gone up beyond all reason.
I don't see why this situation calls for total subsidization.
Help kids out, of course. But just hosing money at the institutions as they exist, and forgiving all student debt, regardless of how fecklessly it was taken on, seems very imprudent.
This is a reckless suggestion made by a candidate who can't gain traction, so she's ratcheting up the ante, trying to buy support.
124
@Mike I don't know if that's what it is or not. But sure nice to come here and read intelligent posts. There are newsites on the innerwebs have some low minded rhetoric.
2
@Mike
The reason that tuition has gone up so much is because state funding for universities has declined accordingly. Today, students pay most of the cost of a university education themselves in the form of tuition. In the past, costs were shared among taxpayers.
8
@Mike Education costs have spiraled because states have cut university funding over and over causing tuition to rise constantly beyond inflation. Private Universities are another story some like Harvard have huge endowments, which could be used to keeps costs down. A college education in most European countries is virtually free. My children EU citizens will not be attending U.S. colleges. people don't understand the true cost of our military.
16
I can't agree with this idea. Student debt is a pressing issue and many students take on too much debt. But other Americans are also saddled with enormous debt. At least student debt has a very low interest rate, something people with credit card debt do not enjoy.
We did nothing for Americans during the great Recession. People lost their homes and we left them high and dry.
I'm more on the page for reducing the cost of public universities but I can't agree with eliminating all debt burden that students have taken on.
103
@DP
Student loan debt often has much higher interest rates than other types of consumer debt, federal loans are not able to be refinanced and still be public loans.
16
@DP My federal student debt had interest rates as high as 9% and my lowest rate was 6%. In contrast, my car loan is 3% and I qualified for a personal loan at 4.5% a few years ago. Also, student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, like credit card debt can.
13
@DP Student loans are outrageous because they are not set up like mortgages, and the interest rates are horrendous!
They should be regulated as mortgages, with the borrower having the privilege of paying extra on principal. That is the main rub; the usurious hidden secret that causes the student debt to balloon over 30 years.....
It's big banks making money hand over foot from little people who have nothing until they pay up to four times their original loan in interest and administrative fees. It's a criminal racket...........
9
Instead of eliminating tuition entirely, perhaps we should be thinking about debt-free tuition. We need commitments from students, and those who are taxed should have representation. I applaud Senator Warren's policy-oriented thinking, but we need to be realistic here.
1
The objections to Warren's educational proposal seem disingenuous. The 'masses' of those without college degrees are not made to pay for those who ambitious enough and committed enough to take advantage of higher educational opportunities----those who are living high off the hog will have to pitch and share, they will be taxed fairly in proportion to their outsized, some might say, piggish share of the economy. The super-rich simply put have more than their share. Her plan levels opportunities and costs those who have-not nothing. Let's be honest about that.
3
There is a major problem with means testing in these 'entitlement' programs so I don't think deeming every human need a 'right' and something that should be free for all is the answer.
My husband and I are both over 60. We just finished paying off our student loans after working for decades in human services jobs which required a great deal of time and dedication for relatively little pay. We chose to not have children so that we could live modestly and self-sufficiently.
Neighbors who've chosen work as artists, yoga teachers and massage therapists now have free health insurance, SNAP vouchers and live inexpensively in "affordable" (subsidized - by us) housing. Those with children - again, a choice - are first to receive benefits and I've noticed that most now are demanding more like free tuition, fertility treatments etc. adding to the list of human rights.
The AVAILABILITY of shelter, food, education and water is perhaps at this time a human right in this country. But in many professions it's easy to claim a low qualifying income or a disability and working & middle class bear the greatest burden for so many benefits offered in perpetuity - not just to get past a short-term difficulty. We know that we would simply be forced to pay for more of these "human rights" so that others can feel free not to plan and save. Unless we can get reimbursed for all we've paid for our health insurance, tuition, food and housing, we're crying foul.
11
It's amazing to read some of the comments. People don't remember any other America than the one that is too expensive, has great income inequality, is anti-labor, and throws millions of people in jail.
We really did have a better idea for running the country before Ronald Reagan and the rich bustards took control of government and the courts.
10
Instead, give cash injections to the population as a whole and mandate people who have student debt to use it on the debt This will be less divisive, and savers will not be punished. As a young liberal who pinched pennies to pay down their student debt, I will NOT be voting for this policy. I agree something needs to be done about wealth disparity and crippling debt to young people, but this is not the fair way to remedy it.
11
Can Democrats please find some way to get elected besides giving away other people's money?
18
Warren how about promoting state funded colleges and not Harvard which robs students blind. You use to teach there and they sit on an endowment of billions. Do they need to charge that much for college? Unless you are a doctor lawyer or in tech you really don't need to go to a school that costs over $60,000 a year. There is something in life called personal, fiscal responsibility and I wish you would promote it. Also get the gvt out of the loan business. As soon as you put your hands in this mess it blew up. Maybe turn to the colleges ESPECIALLY YOURS and say why in the world are you charging so much money when you sit on billions? Do you not see you are part of the problem professor Warren? What was your salary at Harvard + benefits? These ridiculous proposals will NOT win you an election they just make you like the person in grade school that says "vote for me pizza for everyone"
5
and create a $50 billion fund to support historically black colleges and universities.
Are those like segregated colleges and universities? Not that a white college or university would be called racist. How does discrimination end once it's institutionalized?
2
This would have the absolute opposite effect on tuition just as zero interest rates had in creating other asset bubbles. The Dems got banks out of the student lending business. How's that working out? This is a stupid idea that will not fix the real problem. Higher education should be free and hopefully someone with a brain will come up with a real solution not just a populist tease.
1
Here we go again with the "moral hazard" bit.
Sen. Warren: my wife and I, middle class for the time being, saved, scaped by and sacrificed to put our two boys through college and paid their tuition out of our savings and out of our budget so that they would not be saddled with student loans.
Now, you want to reward those folk who did not save, did not scrape by, and did not sacrifice, but instead, signed their name to a promissory note and voluntarily took $s as a loan.
You want to reward the foolish and punish the prudent (through making us pay taxes to fund this boondoggle).
Is this just (another) scheme to buy votes? Well, not mine.
Can't somebody, anybody, come up with a policy that does not involve taking property and giving it away?
18
@ace mckellog thank you! I completely agree. Democrats are proposing ideas that are pie in the sky. It's ridiculous. There's no personal decision making in any of their proposals. It's like no one appears to have choices and there's clearly someones gun to their head when they apply to a school that costs $50,000 + a year. In NYC SUNY schools are in fact free if you make under $100k and are looking for an undergraduate degree. That sounds pretty great to me vs NYU at what $65,000 a year? Are we just financially illiterate as a country?
A bribe by any other name.
6
And I want a pony, too.
15
It's a bit ridiculous and telling that this piece is running 2nd to the Amy Klobuchar piece. This is news - the other is just fluff.
Can we please start focusing attention on the candidates who actually have ideas?
4
Why don't we just cap student loan interest rates to 1%?
That way the student can pay back the money (to the tax payer) without be raped for profits.
4
She is a senator in terms of this story, not a Ms.
2
Buying votes
6
So, now every church, entrepreneur, scam artist, or rich person can call themselves (with a little paperwork) a college and rake in the bread compliments of all the American taxpayers, rich and poor alikea.
Warren should stick with the circular firing squad she is in, a skill she seems to know best.
2
America is a richer nation today than we were in the 1940's when the GI Bill was enacted. We're richer today than we were when California subsidized college for countless students in the 60's and 70's.
We can afford this. If Warren's idea seems so revolutionary and impossible, it's a measure of just where one's perspective has settled after 40 years of trickle down/tax cuts above all/faux-meritocracy.
We have the money. And should use it to invest in our future. Period.
1
Millennial here. Everyone I know went to college and graduated with debt ranging mostly 25-50k for undergrad. Most of us have maybe paid half our loans, are not having kids, and not buying homes. Forgiving loan debt on any scale would be a much larger stimulus package than the wall street bailout of 08. I try not to dwell on these ideas from politicians that might have such a dramatic and positive impact on my life, because that's not how the system has ever worked, and life is just supposed to be hard and harder right? Any politician that will address this issue will have my vote.
7
You can't abolish debt that people have voluntarily taken. No one put a gun to people's heads and forced them to take out the loans. This is something that they, as adults, decided to do. If they made bad choices in the courses that they took and the degree that they got, so that they cant' get good paying jobs, that is on them as adults also.
The better idea is to change the law. Right now you have to go to school until you are 16. This is ridiculous. Change the law so that someone has to get an Associates Degree. Once this is done the first two years of college should be free. It would be part of public policy, and therefore in the interest of everyone in the country, that the first two years of college be free. If someone wants to go beyond the first two years of college (i.e. a bachelors or masters degree) it's on them to pay for it. This will guaranty a more educated country, with less debt on the individual.
The thought of a wealth tax is totally stupid. Does Senator Warren really think that the wealthy will sit around and take this? Is she going to have Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or Jeff Bezos fork over $50 billion each to the federal government? Is she for real? These people will hire attorneys and tax specialists to get around every law that she can write. How will she determine the wealth of people that own private companies? This is a bad joke.
55
@Peter
Yes, you can. It's called bankruptcy and it happens all the time.
5
@Peter
You can abolish debt, she does believe they will take it, she would have the very wealthy fork over those amounts, she is for real, and she will determine the amount of wealth.
4
@Moehoward
That’s correct. However, student loans cannot be discharged by bankruptcy.
1
Even before Trump's Tax Cut, we could not afford the cost of Warren's and other "progressive" proposals. Increasingly higher taxes on the "rich" will cause our economy to fail as businesses will not have any incentive to grow. I think we should roll back most of Trump's tax cuts (they were as well though-out as Trump's tweets) and change how we spend our tax dollars...less on military, more on education. A legislative reversal of the Citizen's United case would also be welcome, so my vote and my money can once again actually make a difference.
1
I am about to pay for a third college education. In the 70's I put myself through college in CA where the tuition for UCSD was around $1K/year. In the 90's I put my wife through college out of my paycheck with no loans. Now, near retirement, I am facing a $300K bill to put my daughter through college. Yes I can pay that sort of bill without taking out a loan. I do not want to pay that amount out of my retirement savings then watch everyone else's loans forgiven. That plan is too simplistic. Fairer would be to pay everyone back for the price gouging of the last decade from the huge endowments of the universities, but the world is not fair and. There are steps the government can use to put pressure on college costs:
1) Competition - Public colleges and universities, including world class universities, are much less expensive than private colleges. While "free" sounds good a truly non-profit would be a good compromise. Tuition should not be used to subsidize research, and academic achievement should be the only barrier to get into the best public institutions. Here in MA our "State University" system provides a 4 year degree for less than $20K per year.
2) Federal loans should be capped on a scale based on the "quality" of the institution to discourage taking out $70K/year loans to attend colleges that have poorer outcomes than the public schools.
3) Also review the rules concerning the "non-profit" nature of colleges and universities. Where is all that money going?
I think Elizabeth Warren's heart is in the right place, but she's making the grandiose the enemy of the possible, and she's less likely to attract more votes this way than to lose them. Trump got into office despite such a tactic, but Trump's base and the Democratic voter population are not cut from the same cloth. She should be fostering discussion over ways to reign in the cost of tuition, lower the interest rates on college loans, design relief programs for students and graduates ambushed by high structural unemployment, dependence on the gig economy or underpaid but necessary professions, personal health issues, and such. Simply saying that the wealthy will pay the costs of free education through their increased taxes is like saying Mexico will pay for Trump's wall. Campaign rhetoric starts to morph into campaign promises that so obviously can't be kept. Ms. Warren could start by reading the critiques, ideas, and suggestions offered throughout this comments thread.
I do not think people understand how much this could positively impact the economy. I applaud Sen. Warren for bringing the issue of the student loan debt crisis to the table and I hope this sets a precedent for the rest of the 2020 presidential hopefuls.
My personal experience with student loans is that I took out $61k in loans from the federal government between 2006 and 2013 to pay for a 4-year degree in Economics and Mathematics from a public Virginia college as well as a 2-year Master's degree in Accountancy from a non-profit private university. I have diligently paid my loan payment every month since graduation in 2010 under the income based repayment plan and I still owe MORE than my original principal balance. I currently work as a financial Controller for a private company, but have been working a second job at a wine bar to make ends meet.
If I didn’t have a huge monthly student loan payment it would have a significant impact on me and my family. I would be able to not have to work a second job and I could spend more quality time with my family. I could put more money towards my 401K plan and invest and save my money for the future. I would be able to afford to donate money and/or time to improve my community. This is just me, one person. Imagine this multiplied by the other 42 million American families in a similar situation. If 42 million households were contributing back to the economy in this way, EVERYONE will benefit.
4
To the numerous comments here waxing nostalgic about the days that college was actually affordable in the 60s and 70s: Most Americans do not understand why the costs of college have gotten so out of hand in recent decades. The major issue is the expansion of student services and higher costs of living (i.e. healthcare premiums). Back in the 60s and 70s colleges and universities were not required to have services such as disability services, fully staffed health clinics, and IT departments. These services cost millions of dollars per year to run. Institutions generally respond to higher costs by increasing tuition, and many (mostly small private) schools are closing now that students and parents have figured out that it's not worth it to take out ~$50k in loans when the perfectly respectable public school down the street costs far less. I'm all for making college more affordable (and having public schools be tuition-free), but canceling student debt to me seems ridiculous. Same argument could be made for canceling people's mortgages because housing is a human right.
5
Billionaires and corporations have been taking us for a ride but we have been doing all the rowing. It's time they carried us for a while... at least until the wealth created from big stable markets filters down to those who do the work.
2
As if degrees weren't already worthless.
Ask your local barista how their degree helped them get a high-paying job. Meanwhile there is a shortage of workers in the trades to help rebuild our failing infrastructure because lettered mush-heads are too educated to pick up a shovel or a welder.
At the managerial level destructive decisions are being made by degreed imbeciles who's parents bribed their way into college, then subsequently were hired by their aunts and uncles.
But it is fine, I'm okay with the events that are unfolding currently...
Diploma'd dunces can nod at each other knowingly while buildings and businesses collapse around them.
3
More free stuff. The problem with free stuff is that they lack quality.
7
Billionaire tax cuts are free stuff too
2
Nothing more than click bait and happy thoughts.
‘if you vote for me, I will remove your Arts Major debt. No clue how but we will’.
Yea right, let me tell the IRS that I will pay them, no clue how but I will. Do you really think the IRS will clap happy happy joy joy claps and cheer for me?
Not at all.
People, if some one tells you that you will get something for free, read the fine print.
As we say in NYC, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
In this case all she is saying is ‘vote for me and in exchange here is an empty promise’. Don’t fall for this, it’s change you should not believe in.
10
SUNY used to charge tuition that a student could earn in a summer
3
Picture a Wes Craven movie featuring an angry and wild-eyed kindergarten teacher with retractable claws and fangs that relentlessly assails her students with warnings ( a la Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God") of death and destruction they are doomed to without the triumph of socialism.
Then, you've got an accurate picture.
When something is free, it has no value.
7
Free tuition is a better investment than a wall. And for sure you would get only the best brains as competition would be rampant. While Trump has taken us back to our racist past, Warren is bring us into the future.
1
This should only apply to women in STEM programs. They're the ones most likely to be able to fund the continuation of this otherwise socialist idea.
I will remember the day Senator Warren shot herself in the foot, allowing for a profitable book to be written perhaps, but also ruining her credibility by proposing this lame, millennial bait policy. Said the middle income father who paid through blood sweat and tears for a couple kids to attend private NY school. Zero regrets. But if you can’t afford it, maybe think about something else for education. Also, Trumpistas love this kind of Democrat (socialist) policy.
5
She has the policy wonk tendencies of Bill Clinton without any of the charm.
7
Sure. No problem. I am not interested in "targeted" taxes like this.
After living like a pauper and working two jobs to get a degree in STEM and paying off my student loans - and helping my children with their educational costs - why the heck not target me to provide "free" tuition to others?
Just when I think it's time to really enhance my retirement savings, because remember, I now have those extra years before retirement age, let's attack my earnings. NO.
8
I worked hard to pay off my student loans. Who's gonna help me with my car loan?
Crickets..
9
Nice idea if Warren is simply chasing the poor voters. You can keep grasping at straws but I suggest focus on real world issues like healthcare, global violence, US infrastructure and community well being.
Free handouts simply leads to abusers learning new ways to game the system.
5
My wife and I worked hard for decades to get to where our combined income made us comfortable. Along the way we sacrificed a great deal to set aside thousands of dollars a month to accumulate the $300,000 or so we have to pay as the full tuition to send our kids to decent colleges -- no fancy vacations, no new cars, no upgrade from our nice but basic home. We did this because the system gave no financial breaks to middle class parents and we wanted our kids to start life debt-free.
So now, Elizabeth Warren would have people like us A. Look like saps for having taken the responsible course B. Pony up a huge amount of extra tax dollars to pay off the trillions of dollars other families didn't pay, and C. Pay higher taxes for the rest of our lives -- even though we already paid through the nose to educate our own children.
This strikes me as yet another assault on people who do what they are supposed to do, and act responsibly.
19
@Philboyd - the description of your life includes that you were comfortable and had the extra income to save thousands of dollars a month for college tuition. Maybe it will warm you that your income probably put you at the highest 10% of earners in the US. During this time, income tax rates fell and the nation's needs were partially paid for with deficits, bonds, and other IOU's which our grandchildren will be covering. It is apparent you've been blessed with talent and ability in order to store away thousands of dollars per month - this is the opposite of "paying through the nose", which entails cashing in retirement accounts, remortgaging the house, working an extra job, and paying high rates and fees for student loans, interest rates which are much higher than mortgages. My dad paid my almost all of my tuition (my loans were minor) and he was very pleased watching me graduate plus driving his Town & Country station wagon with the college decal on the back. Noblesse oblige.
2
@Honeybee - having a choice about saving thousands of dollars a month while remaining, as he described, as "comfortable" is not the level of EFFORT and SACRIFICE I observe daily among people who can't make ends meet or have other expenses for health crises. Thousands of dollars per month to save -- this is an option for the top 10%. Most adults in this country do not have savings for emergencies or retirement and it's not always because they are any less hard-working or motivated than well-paid people. Another thing: many colleges and universities aren't "needs blind", so students who apply to schools who come from households without means are doubly-penalized. The United Negro College Fund pitch was right: A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
I disagree with free tuition and debt cancellation. But I do think college is far too expensive, and the consequent debt load far too burdensome.
I graduated from the University of California in 1981, just before Republicans officially declared "tax" a four-letter word. (It seems they never could count.) Tuition was not free, but it was affordable. (Technically, as a California resident I didn't pay tuition, only "education" and "registration" fees.) Many of my classmates had financial aid, but it was nothing like today's inescapable lifetime obligation. Some of that aid was in the form of grants; and many students were in a "work-study" program in which campus jobs defrayed their fees. I didn't have financial aid, but I had a part-time job that complemented my education, paid my expenses, and even provided a surplus when I graduated. That would, of course, be impossible today.
The California model of taxpayer-subsidized, reasonably-priced university education that served me and millions of other Californians so well seems a better and more sensible approach than free tuition. (Just as I believe health care should be affordable, but not free.) I'd take a similar approach to outstanding student loans: Rather than canceling them, reduce the balance to the new tuition level. For many that would have the effect of canceling the loan, as they have already paid what they would owe under the new scheme. (A rebate of any excess would be ideal, but probably asking too much.)
4
Impoverished means no money for education. "Responsible" parents would need less savings, but pay more taxes and the results are a wash for parents. Plus many impoverished achieve a higher level of economic potential, and those taxes would improve your country's revenue: reducing tax shortfalls. True trickle down economics! And no tuition scams.
This would be a colossal giveaway to lenders and encourage colleges to raise tuition costs even more. Grads want their $10-20k in loans wiped out, but the real zealous backers of this idea are College Deans, who know they'd reap a windfall that would create the most grossly profitable moment in their lifetime as they gorge on a seemingly infinite amount of government cash. I love Elizabeth Warren and many of her new, bold proposals, but this is one I hope won't ever happen.
4
It is a good thinking. Education should not be based on parents income. However free education also has great potential for discrimination. Not everyone has equal opportunity to prepare for college admission. Also some education like medicine costs lot more than studying liberal arts .
A logically correct and ideal solution is to let people pay for tuition based on percentage of income after they start working. Everyone would pay same percentage for up to 10 years. After that loan can be all forgiven. Educational institutions can be penalized for under performance of their students.
There are many reforms necessary to address the prohibitive cost of a college education, but this is not one of them.
First, most states inadequately fund K-12 "free" public education and grossly underpay their teachers. Is there any reason to believe that they would fund a "free" college education any better?
Second, many Americans are underwater on their home, auto, and other loans. Do they also get debt relief beyond the exemptions they receive for filing for bankruptcy protection?
Finally, most of the existing higher education debt is privately-funded and "canceling" it sounds nice, but unless someone repeals the constitutional prohibition against taking private property without just compensation, it will be the taxpayers who repay those creditors.
Efforts are better expended, in my judgment, in making college more affordable and increasing financial support, prospectively, for college students than spending billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded student loan repayment.
5
This proposal seems eminently fair to those who scrimped and saved to pay for college and have already paid off their student debt.
It is a policy to punish prudence and reward profligacy.
8
Sorry folks, whether it's a good idea or not, it is not going to happen. The rich will find more loopholes as will corporations, and universities will continue to aspire to be "everything for everyone" with huge fat-laden administrative budgets and underpaid adjuncts pulling the classroom weight. Do people like my wife and I get rebates because we scrimped and saved so our kids would have little or no debt? I doubt it. BTW the states can't be saddled with any part of the burden: their budgets are tight at best.
Warren posits that everyone who might have money should pay: it's just like "round up the usual suspects" in "Casablanca": for Warren, it's round up anyone who can be robbed whether they deserve it or not... and those with the money will go unburdened.
False or at best misleading promises from a desperate candidate.
1
Those who prudently avoided student debt and worked their way through college would be given the short end of the stick by Liz
Warren's proposal to forgive student debt, but no other kinds of debt.
9
why forgive only student debt?
all debt should be forgiven.
2
Whether one agrees or disagrees with Senator Warren's audacious proposals, Democrats should welcome and be proud of the fact that only in their party do various discussions on a wide variety of policy issues occur, all with the intent to assist middle and working class Americans. This diversity of opinions is a great strength. Trump Republicans argue over the desired size of obscene tax cuts to reward their plutocratic/corporate donor base, while dueling over what federal judicial candidates should be their nominees based upon who is more ideologically extreme than the others.
82
@John Grillo It is not a discussion, it is trying to buy votes. Pretty desperate and crazy hail mary pass from the sound of it.
1
Yes, we should be spending more on education and the environment -- investments in our country that pay long-term dividends.
I’m always skeptical of revenue projections from tax increases. The 0.1% probably have armies of accountants to avoid paying extra money. What happens when Sen Warren’s tax increase fails to generate expected revenue? Every day working people will get stuck with the bill.
2
Brilliant! Finally a bold initiative that would have an extraordinarily beneficial effect on the lives of millions of Americans and give them hope for a better tomorrow. The higher education racket in the US is often bolstered by fraud leading so many to believe that high paying jobs will be waiting for them after they graduate. They're often not. And really, no 20-something should be allowed to sign up for the kinds of loans that they are getting saddled with, not at that age. This proposal is the sort of leadership I have been waiting for from the Democratic Party. If only Hillary had run on this!
64
@iverson28
Giveaways to the college sector from taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Brilliant !
4
@iverson28
If only Hillary hadn't run at all...
1
This would be a spectacular relief for those of us who are drowning in SL debt. God bless Elizabeth Warren.
2
Lizzie wants to buy your vote! But if you make 101,000.00 Not so much. Whne Warren first burst on to the scene I thought great straight talker Champion for the middle class then... She created a feckless agency to " protect " us from the predatory bankers. Because she believes she is smarter than the rest of us. Warren created a toofless agency with an appointed czar in other words political hacks and hangers on. The simple law that prevents usury will allow all citizens to be free of predatory lending not some hack politician gumming on about how they will save us by reading the fine print. It is obvious that Warren hasnt needed a loan in a long time.Again she isnt addressing the problem of education but hands even more cash to the colleges who hand out clown degrees and debt.
5
Student debt forgiveness is a slap in the face to everyone who worked through school, paid off their loans, and made intelligent choices about major and where to go to school. NO WAY.
I would support tuition free public education for:
a) students who score in the top 10% on the ACT or SAT
b) who are studying from a list of majors that lead to a productive and socially beneficial career path: STEM fields, Teaching and Education, medicine and nursing, etc.
There shouldn't just be a free ride for anyone to study anything at the taxpayer's expense.
13
@A F You know what is also a slap in the face? Making tuition free public education available now and ignoring the people who made the "right' choices about major and school but are still saddled with so much debt because they graduated college during a recession. I scored in the top 10% on the ACT in 2006 and I got a degree in Economics and Mathematics from a public college. I worked through school. I have been paying my student loan debt for 9 years and I still owe MORE than I originally took out due to accrued interest. It took me years to find a decent paying job in my career field because no one was hiring new grads in 2010. The lost wage opportunity has haunted me ever since. Yet I continue to pay on my student loans, in fact, I have paid about $20k in payments over the years, 99% of which went towards interest, not my principal balance.
This is not an either/or issue. It's not either you worked hard and saved and paid your student loans or you didn't do these things and have loans. There are so many of us that have worked hard and contribute to society and make good choices yet still have significant loans. What about us?
1
@Danielle
What about you? You still have to pay your loans. You took them out. You signed. You have the degree they paid for.
I graduated from grad school in 2010 AND my spouse's career was set back for five years by cancer.
Yes, it stinks, but we aren't the first people to face a recession or hardships. We worked multiple jobs, took jobs in our field that weren't ideal just to get "in", made sacrifices, and eventually got on our feet.
The government can make better policies for the future, but it's not the government's job to make everything perfect for everyone or solve everyone's personal sob story from the past. Life has bumps.
And Economics and Mathematics, studied without any connection to a profession like engineering or certified K-12 teaching, is, like most other liberal arts and sciences degrees, often difficult to find professional employment with.
Life is unfair, I get that. But what I hear you saying is that just because you suffered and sacrificed, others that haven’t been able to accomplish paying off their loans didn’t also suffer and sacrifice? If you want others to continue to suffer because you suffered that’s very self-absorbed. There is a bigger economic picture.
I do have to pay my loans and I have been doing so faithfully since graduation. However, the structure of the loans and the interest rates have made it so that I owe more principal than when I took out the loans, even after paying on them for 9 years. Clearly, there is something wrong here and that is what the government needs to fix. My point is there needs to be political policies to fix the student loan debt crisis. Is Warren’s policy proposal the best? Maybe not, but it would be terrible windfall on the economy if current student loan debt gets over looked and we solely focus on subsidizing incoming college student tuition.
Also, you do realize that Economics and Mathematics degrees (STEM degrees) are connected to a whole lot of fields besides engineering or teaching and are instrumental in so many facets of businesses? In fact, I ended up in the accounting field and work as the Controller for a private company. I also work a second job in order to keep up with my student loans, be able to contribute to a 401k and Heath Savings account and maybe, just maybe, save a little bit so I can actually afford to buy property and/or start a family.
College should be free, no question about it. The benefits to society as a whole for educating its members it significant. That's why most other wealthy countries do exactly that.
But I completely disagree on forgiving student debt: These people already have an education and no further benefit is realized by forgiving their debt (i.e. it will not make them any smarter, more educated, or more productive).
Sure, student debt is annoying and it would be nicer not to have any, but there are better ways to spend that money.
1
Earned Income Credit.
Earned Debt Credit.
What next.
So what happens to the kids who don't get into the (limited available) public school slots?
The devil is in the details. Which current student loan debt would be canceled? Those of students who racked up the debt getting four-or five-year undergraduate degrees? Those who got associates' degrees from community colleges? Those who have medical, dental, or law school loans? Those who got Ph.D. degrees?
In terms of making undergraduate study at public universities tuition-free, would the states have to collect additional taxes on the wealthy to pay for it or would the federal government issue block grants to the states to cover what students would have paid? How would this work?
I'm all for this proposal but being pragmatic about it is important to sell it to the American people.
I'd also like to second the proposal by many progressive Democrats over the last several years that we beef up our community college system to prepare young people for vocational jobs that are going begging in the tech sector. Not everyone wants or needs a four-year degree but everyone needs job training for our technological industries.
1
"Policy ideas"?! Vote buying pure and simple. The issue facing American higher ed is the wild excess of higher ed capacity and the shortage of qualified students to actually benefit from it. Doing as Warren suggests would merely add to the capacity and cost and continue the delusion that higher ed can make college educated silk purses our of terribly prepared K-12 students/pigs ears.
And Warren knows this. I'm sure if you asked her she would tell horror stories about how poorly prepared her students are for doing college work. If she's not honest enough to say so, talk to her colleagues.
If no one understands what Warren's plan would do to higher ed, we should think in simpler terms. What would happen if the Feds gave cars to every student? Everyone would want one. Would they want a simple, basic, form of transportation? No, they would want it tricked out as many ways as possible. Would the dealer offer a basic model? Of course not. Every imaginable "option" would be bundled as standard. Would students bargain with the dealer to get a better price?
If we want to get more college grads coming out with marketable degrees, we should be making college harder, not easier, to access. This would force the need to get a good K-12 education back into the K-12 years where it belongs. We would be better off as a nation with more solid K-12 grads, with no college, than what we have now. Let's not make it worse.
5
I assume Senator Warren understands that when debt is forgiven, it produces taxable income?
Has anyone else heard that the unofficial, working name of this program is "Participation trophies for all."?
5
I love my Senator for moat things, but not this. Unless it limits loans to private colleges. Some people make their way through college without assuming immense college debt, they were smart. Those that chose to get $150k in debt for an English Lit degree at Swarthmore made a stupid decision. Maybe we should have mandatory education on finances for those signing up for these loans, so they don't do anything stupid. If they drank the "private college will make you more successful in life" kool-aid, I don't want to pay for it. Myself and my children are wise to manage education without loans, not impossible if you look at various options instead of just signing loan papers.
Helping with public college tuition I can get behind.
1
Another tax-payer subsidized candidate. This millionaire former republican should give up her $174,000 a year senate seat before running - as should the other incumbent democrat millionaires now scrambling for a promotion.
Say, let's all do this: call in to work tomorrow and tell the boss, "I'm looking for a new job so I won't be coming in much for the next... year and a half. But be a sport and keep me on the payroll like a good chump, will you?"
Warren has been in the senate how long? And introduced how many (meaning ANY?) serious bills to do these things?
And now, on our dime, Warren will - as democrats always do - run to the left in the primary with all these fantasy projects. History shows that these primary season conversions never last. Democrats have promised a living wage since 1938 and universal healthcare since 1945.
Like the man said: Fool me once... fool me twice... fool me for over a half a century. Nice racket.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
3
@Rev. E. M. Camarena, PhD I recall Dems creating a new healthcare law called "Affordable Care Act". Have you heard of it? I suppose not. It attempted to provide universal healthcare for all. It made decent inroads, but for some reason lots of Republicans were fit to be tied over it. They tried to repeal it. They have filed lawsuits trying to stop it. Tis a shame, but I think the blame should go to the GOPs.
And why should anyone give up a salary? Don't we tell people to get educated, work hard and you can prosper? But maybe not? Are there limits? If so, $174k is not much, go after Zuckerburg and Bezos please.
Free tuition was done in NYC CUNY schools in the 1970s.
I went for free.
Temporarily.
City went bankrupt.
11
How is this fair to all the millions of students and former students who sacrificed during college and only spent what they could afford? How is this fair to all the former students who paid back their loans? She isn’t thinking about that. She’s a typical Democrat. Hubba, hubba, hubba...money, money, money. Who do you trust?
6
Medicare for all has legs, but this dog won't hunt. A large percentage of folks with big debt made their own beds with foolish decisions--going to a private school instead of an in-state public school, etc. Why should they be bailed out with public money? Taxes already support public schools. Students should have some of their own skin in the game.
6
It's always amusing every election cycle that career politicians like Sen. Warren tout what they're GOING to do, but only if they become President. Well, Senator, if you don't already know, Congress makes legislation, not the President. So let's see you get your brilliant idea passed both in your Senate and over in true-ally Pelosi's House. Then you can raise cain, hoot and holler about something you've actually DONE! Until then...
3
I just turned 65 my doctor a year younger than me just payed off his college loans. Make it Free!
2
When you lagging in the polls and donations, you start promising even more unicorns and rainbows.
Geez, can we get some adults in this process?
3
As a first-generation college student, scholarship boy, and English major who became a social scientist and just retired after 30 years of college teaching. I can't agree that completely eliminating tuition is a good idea. Student debt is a terrible problem, one that has horrific consequences for many of my own recent students and for our society long term. Let's find ways to deal with current debt and make future debt manageable.
But let's also be realistic about the fact that those who have to invest nothing in their education will likely be far less committed students than those who have to invest at least something. Based on my observations, some will take full advantage of such an opportunity, but many, many will not. (Nearly all the scholarship kids I knew were also working in some capacity, and many of my finest undergrads have had at least part-time jobs, where they generally learned valuable things about time management and being members of teams.)
And shouldn't part of this conversation be the likelihood of having skills upon graduation that may well lead to a job, especially if society as a whole is to help subsidize this program? Shouldn't debates about the cost of higher education also include questions about what sort of education is needed to survive in an economy increasingly based on permanent part-time employment? Student debt and the cost of higher education are key problems, but solving them will require tackling related problems as well.
3
It's impossible to take Warren seriously. Every policy idea she comes up with is just attention grabbing. None are executable in the real world. She thinks promising "free everything" will work as a campaign strategy. She is wrong.
3
This is an interesting issue. I am open to the possibility of being convinced that student loan forgiveness is a good idea, but I’m not there yet. I accept that our current system for higher education needs to change, but wiping away debt seems to be treating a symptom of the problem rather than addressing the underlying structural issues.
As a society we have been conditioned to believe that college degrees are the only way to meaningfully participate in the modern economy. Almost every high school graduate in the country tries to get into college. This creates an excess in demand for a limited resource (enrollment in university), which coupled with a predatory student loan apparatus underwritten by the government that gives young people almost unlimited funds to attend school, creates a vicious cycle of tuition increases.
What we need to do is divert people away from college educations when possible, perhaps channeling them into trade schools. And rather than wipe away college tuition carte blanche, we should subsidize fields that are the most needed. We can pay for the educations of doctors and teachers if they agree to work in places that are underserved for example. I think this would be a much more targeted and effective way to get the ball rolling on this issue.
3
Agreed: Trade schools and colleges should be included.
I received my degree in 2005 with a $50,000 government loan debt. The loan was immediately transferred to a big bank (Wachovia). It has been transferred three times since then to other big banks and now stands at nearly $60,000 due to interest rates, shady practices, and, yes, some missed payments incurred due to family emergencies and casualties. Still, that's fourteen years of burden endured because I needed the degree to meet the requirements of my government technical job. Despite a popular myth, government employees are not paid near what the public sector is paid. Teachers are at the bottom of earnings in the government sector. We were promised a forgiveness program for government employees, teachers, and others not in the "public" sector. Hundreds of thousands of applications were made. To-date, less than 20,000 applications have been approved. It does not matter for me now. I was forced to retire due to life circumstances, including total disability. I now have an annual income less than twenty percent of my former income. I don't fall in any of the categories who would benefit. The saddle is getting too hard to bear. Something needs to be done for all of us.
3
@Angelsea
After 14 years you still haven't paid off a $50,000 loan?
What am I missing here?
After a decade and a half it is your obligation and ethical duty to pay off the loan.
6
A year ago, I paid off our daughter's $40,000 student debt balance with an early retirement payout. Although she is gainfully employed, her salary is relatively low and she lives in a high-cost city. The debt was a tremendous financial and psychological burden, and I knew that it would be decades before it was paid. Her future was mortgaged to acquire the skills necessary for her career. She was relieved, and we were happy that we could help.
I suppose that I could be frustrated that if I waited a couple years, her debt might have been cancelled at no cost to me. Of course, that depends on the stars aligning just right to achieve a Warren administration and a supportive Congress. But I still feel it was the right thing to do.
I passed through college when annual tuition at Stanford was $2000. I was a grad student at a UC campus when fees were $237/quarter. It was possible to work in the summer to pay those kinds of costs. Today that is no longer the case.
Having spent my entire working life in higher ed, I see there are multiple causes for the current state of affairs: reduced public appropriations, administrative bloat in universities, expectations of luxury amenities, predatory loan companies, failure of parents to begin saving early, and more. Canceling loan balances and eliminating tuition won't solve the problem without accompanying reforms, but if this starts a conversation about the larger picture, it's a good step.
4
I've always appreciated Warren as a left leaning policy strategist. However, this is the first proposal in her campaign that address a legitimate problem with the Sanders platform.
Young people support public higher education. Namely government funded public tuition and cost of living grants. However, Sanders never addressed the issue of all the students who already paid an unfair cost in tuition in the form of federal loan debt.
Furthermore, Buttigieg is dead wrong. The masses are already paying for college. At least some college is the only path in the United States that leads to median income. If you don't go to college, you're not going to make $50,000 a year anymore and you might not anyway. In terms of total compensation, the median wage doesn't even cover a reasonable quality of life.
Why shouldn't companies making record profits off the high education and stagnant incomes of their employees pay to subsidize the public misery of our college education system? No one is asking the masses to pay. We are asking for the masses to benefit without paying. $2 trillion in stock buy backs could pay for an awful lot of college.
2
College isn't particularly valuable if you enter it unprepared. Let's fix our primary and secondary education systems first.
8
Senator Warren there is no such thing as free college tuition. Someone still has to pay.
7
Let's all see how much of our money the politicians promise to give away to win an election.
8
Here is the part I don’t like - my grandson and one of his buddies headed to the same college. The buddy’s parents are not college educated and consequently do not earn as much as much as my daughter and her husband, who are both college educated. The buddy is able to take adavantage of grants, where my grandson is unable. The buddy will leave college owing little to nothing and mine will owe $72K, because he is unable to take advantage of those grants. Why should one start off debt free in life and another be in debtor’s prison? (And my daughter and her husband are by no means wealthy, with more children to put through school.)
8
These are bad proposals for several reasons:
1. Most state universities are funded by state monies and governed by state legislatures. Should the federal government take over governance of these universities?
2. Federal funding of universities (as opposed, perhaps, to funding of students) risks creating incentives which are. Ot necessairly aligned with education
3. He proposals fun the risk of copying what has happened in the UK when Tony Blair set a goal of having 50% of 18year olds attend university. The number of university places expanded to take in a greater number of students, without regard to the quality of education. As a result,there are now many “graduates” who find they are less well prepared for high paying jobs than students who went directly into the workforce or technical training or apprenticeships at 18. University education is not a panacea. Education and training should be designed in line with skills needed in workforce.
4. What is the rationale for injecting $50bn inti “historically black” universities? Does she wish to promote increased segregation in higher education?
3
I see the middle class and married households being completly forgotten again...
And so much for those who already paid their loans off through hard work. Can i be reimbursed?
5
May as well cancel all mortgage debt, all car loans, all corporate debt, and let's not forget RV and boat loans, too.........
Oh, and while we're at it, let's repudiate the national debt!
I've probably left some things out.
4
Super! So what creative ways can universities discriminate against all these tens of thousands of newly eligible students who want four years of freedom from parents and responsibilities? These free ride ideas will simply destroy the already overburdened schools of “ higher “ learning. How about giving these kids decent educations during the first 18 years of their lives!
3
It’s little wonder that college tuition is so expensive. The taxpayers pay the president of the University of Washington a whopping $910,000/year. That is an insane amount for a public university and no doubt these bloated salaries are replicated all over the country. Each of these wealthy presidents no doubt has a constellation of wealthy bureaucrats under them.
5
I’m running for office, I’ll promise you anything. We’ve seen it over and over again. And you know why politicians do it, because it works. Maybe a smarter electorate could shut this kind of nonsense down. I doubt it.
3
So, let me get this straight... I paid full tuition, spent years getting out of debt and now have the joy of paying for every new useless degree..
IT IS NOT FREE
6
I won’t disagree that something needs to be address spiraling college tuition especially related to state/public universities. But as someone who graduated from a state university in 1983 and paid off his student loans long ago, can I get reimbursed too?
5
As the nation plunges into debt for giving (gifting) unnecessary trillions to arms dealers, “allies”, tax givebacks to billionaires, big oil, Agra, pharma, etc.., everyone shrugs their shoulders. A politician suggests a plan that actually directly helps ordinary folks and suddenly everyone pulls out their calculators and shakes their heads proclaiming that it’s irresponsible and can’t be done. We really have a kind of Stockholm Syndrome for the plutocracy in the US.
193
@Mickey
I can't believe I have had to read 9 comments before I got to one that is sensible.
9
You’re comment is spot on! Any time there’s a plan to help the people who could actually use the help the sky starts falling...
It’s shocking to see how the elite have trained & manipulated ordinary folks to vote against their own best interests.
4
I can’t give you the exact day and time, but I can tell you with considerable precision how our college loan and national debt problems will finally be solved.
One day, minor functionaries at the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve Board in Washington D.C. will inadvertently spill pots of hot coffee over the large banks of computers they preside over, while they are simultaneously browsing the Victoria’s Secret and Fox News websites.
Sparks fly, the lights go out and soon it is discovered that the college loan and national debt problems are no more.
There is a hurried conference at the White House between the President and leading congressional figures, and it is quickly decided to never speak about these matters again.
3
Turning Elizabeth Warren loose on the US economy would lead to disaster, and forgiving tuition debts would enrage the many who had paid/worked/saved to pay their own way through college.
I am neither rich nor wealthy and, yes, I am jealous of how much money US billionaires have. However, what Elizabeth Warren and her ilk are proposing is pure Communism: From each according to his (or her) ability, to each according to his (or her) need.
While income tax is authorized by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, nowhere does the Constitution nor any of its Amendments authorize government confiscation of accumulated wealth.
Besides, not only will those affected fight such confiscation, they will also find ways to move their wealth offshore to places where such tax policies are not in place.
As Margaret Thatcher so aptly put it, "The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money."
The same concerns apply to the corporate sector, which would surely suffer if Warren were elected President.
Spending trillions on debt-forgiveness and free tuition is merely her way to buy the nomination and votes.
Warren has such limited personal and political appeal that she is unlikely to gain the nomination and would, if made the Democratic candidate, virtually guarantee Trump's victory.
Why is the Democratic National Committee so unable to develop and put forward a platform (and a candidate) that will appeal to a large majority of US voters?
6
Our country has a knowledge based job market and economy. We are now in the era of lifelong learning and ongoing retooling of skills. Therefore this policy is not the subsidizing of College for a few by the many but rather a conduit to make higher education and technology skills development affordable and attainable debt free to all workers at all stages of employment and life. This would also put predatory and mostly worthless for profit colleges out of business.This seems like a worthwhile idea.
3
As I college professor who has worked in higher education for 38 years, the first 22 in student affairs at CUNY, I can say that at state and city colleges the vast majority of students don't party - they work. Many of them work full-time. A number have families.
Over the years I have witnessed the cutbacks in funding for public education by both Democrats and Republicans. It was the "liberal" Mario Cuomo who cut the money for the Regents Scholarship at SUNY. That is what helped pay for my degree in the 1970's.
I don't voice my politics in the classroom, but I do remind students that if young people voted at the same rate as old White guys like me then college would be free.
159
@Greg: you went to the City University and are one of countless examples that you can get an affordable quality education in ones own state, with options such as SUNY Binghamton, Albany or Stonybrook without incurring excessive debt. However, if a kid wants to go to Penn State or Boston University, then that's their choice, but why should I have to subsidize that?
4
@Artur
I don't get it when you say you may have to subsidize that.
You are probably not subsidizing anything, and the rich have their offshore accounts too, so please spare us your sad story of having to help everyone to the point of suffering terribly.
It ain't so.
It is the poor who have been subsidizing you for years and years. It has to stop.
Cancelling student debt simply rewards private colleges and universities which, as far as I can tell, are the only institutions on earth that seem not to have to live on budgets. For the last 4 decades it has been a simple formula for them: Want new buildings? new programs? No problem -- just raise tuition and force students to borrow more.
6
Much like the Healthcare debate, the policy solutions from Democrats is on relieving the burden of costs on the individual.
What is avoided addressing, is why education and health care cost so much to begin with?
What are we really paying for, and why does it cost so much?
2
I cannot abide by Senator Warren's plan because it is meant to provocate rather than resolve the problem of skyrocketing tuition costs and onerous interest rates associated with student loans.
The student loan crisis needs real solutions. Allow the debt holders to refinance the debt. Where else in this country do we have debt that cannot be refinanced into a lower interest rate? Allow chapter 13 filings for student loan debt, with the government as a proferred creditor, so that 100% is repayable, just on better terms. Allow student loan interest to be deducted from GI on tax returns, irrespective of the income threshhold.
There are real solutions out there; asking me to subsidize someone else's education is not one of them.
5
I had $10K in student debt that I repaid decades ago. I always wonder how people with six figures of student debt are able to sleep at night. But anyway, these levels of student debt are preventing people from participating in the economy so I think Senator Warren's proposal is a good idea. I like that it applies across the board to all people , it can create a new middle class and eliminate a lot of the existing negatives in this society.
From time to time, I think of the initial GI Bill and how it created the middle class in this country based on free college tuition and housing assistance. However, the GI Bill applied only to white WW II veterans, so black WW II veterans, like my father, were denied these opportunities - this is a debt the government has yet to repay or even acknowledge.
6
These are the things that matter:
I pay an interest of about 6% on my student loans. My grad school (part-time) tuition takes up 12 percent of my annual gross income. Can't wait to get done with my Ph.D so that I can start making some decent money (although it'll be nowhere near comfortable).
Pursuit of knowledge should be decoupled from the financial gains it produces down the road. The people who comment on "skin-in-the-game" surely haven't gone through the poverty a doctoral student or a post-doc faces. Today, a person is around 32 or 33 before they apply to assistant professor positions because of the ever-increasing constraints placed on research "impact". Grad students work 70-hour or 80-hour weeks because they think their contributions make a difference to how we understand our world.
Out of every dollar my mentor receives in funding through grants from external sources, 58 cents goes into the university's coffers. It's what my mentor calls academic prostitution. Start by changing this unsustainable university model. Remove profit-seeking motive from education. Teach kids that college is supposed to teach you how to think, not how to land a low six-figure job and resume a career of indentured labor.
8
@SK - I thought most competitive Ph.D candidates are funded with research and teaching stipends?
@Midwest Josh
We tried living in our expensive west coast city on my graduate research assistant (GRA) income of 23k/ year with my wife in between jobs. We were newly married. It wasn't a good experience. So, I had to look for a job based on our circumstances at that time. BTW, all full-time Ph.D students in my grad school are funded. All admitted full--time Ph.D students are paid 23k/ year and have their tuition covered.
A piece of unsolicited advice: Don't do your Ph.D in an expensive west coast city without a hefty savings account.
On the whole, this is a very good idea. It will serve the individuals and society far better that the current system. Society gains well educated people for private and public employment who can contribute to raising productivity, and the students are able to begin to acquire assets and pay higher taxes earlier in their lives. However, since the late 1970's a culture of base selfishness that despises helping people without lots of money to obtain good educations without crushing debts has taken hold of the popular mind, and that mind says that educating people at taxpayer's expense is wrong.
2
You can enslave people with whip or debt. Our society has chose to use debt.
The proposal to eliminate some debt based on income is a good plan. I would prefer our younger generations have the opportunity to purchase a home than just make interest payments on a student loan. A home purchase leads to more purchases to build new ones, furnish, remodel and maintain them, which is good for the entire economy, not just the money lenders.
The argument has been made that the better educated and well to do go to college more. I wonder how many great minds are limited by not being able to afford a better education. One is too many.
No matter how you look at it, a more educated country is better than a poorer educated one. Education for life should be free and socially encouraged. Any subject learned improves lives and society.
3
So does this mean we have to pay six-figure tuitions for scores of economics majors who will end up working on Wall Street anyway? I can definitely get behind free/low-cost college tuition for STEM majors, but not for students whose only ambition in life is to make money.
1
..There are a lot of problems with this idea... (will it lead to students taking on even more debt?). --- But there are a lot of questionable ideas coming from Elizabeth Warren.
Any continued tuition assistance should require good academic achievement. Our human capital are our country’s greatest strength. The greater the education or skills training, the greater the nation. This goes for vocational training and college. Continuing ed and on-line classes should be included, but have all students have some skin in the game.
1
Under this plan, parents who worked hard, saved, and lived within their means so their children could graduate college with less debt can also help pay for the parents and students who didn’t! Students and former students who lived and spent irresponsibly have nothing to worry about under President Warren - debt will be erased!
1
I'm with Mayor Pete on this. Why should the taxes of millions of lower earning Americans go to paying for the education of higher earning Americans? And hasn't the lesson been learned enough times yet that having no skin in the game is a recipe for failure?
Better policy: require colleges and universities that fail a reasonable test, comparing the cost of education to their graduates' earnings, to pick up a share of the student loan payments. That will force them to stop selling worthless degrees; force them to stop charging $200,000 for a four year degree that holds no prospect of commensurate earnings.
1
How would those who struggled for years and actually paid off their student loans already feel about this? Any remedies for them?
1
Why is it that any time someone proposes something to help those that are struggling someone has to pipe up with "what about me?". Everyone I know who has struggled and paid off their college debt, went to school before tuitions spiked. It doesn't matter haw much kids these days struggle to pay of their student debt. Their tuition is so high they can't. Not unless their parents paid part of their tuition or they make it big. It's not equivalent to what you went through.
@Adriane It's not a selfish question--the debt hung over my child like a horrible cloud, and I don't think it is fair to claim that the SIZE of the debt is what counts: it's the fact that until s/he was able to refinance it through SoFi on the basis of credit worthiness, trying to pay it off was hopeless, given the way the loans are administered by the outfits that do the lending and the runaround s/he got when trying to ask about options for payment.
For all us "old timers" who don't understand why the kids can't do it these days...
In 1982 I graduated from a State University with a Bachelors in Nursing.
My total tuition/room and board for all 4 years was approx.
$12,000.00 and my first job I made 22K a year, so let's say almost double my entire 4 years of college.
If I went to that school today, the total for 4 years would be $132K, about 33K a year. (Probably more than that as each year prices to up.)
Do you think I could find a nursing job that would pay about double? ie 260K or so??!!! Not likely! I would be lucky to make between 50 and 80 K depending.
All the scrimping and saving and working a part time jobs still doesn't make up for the explosive price of colleges these days. I am not for free college but I do think that the state school prices need to become a LOT more affordable.
6
I really do hate to write this, but could this be fixing the problem at the wrong end? If there is a problem that students graduating from college cannot find jobs at all, or jobs that pay enough to pay off college loan debt, wouldn't free college create more unemployed college graduates? Again, I don't mean to invoke "Caddyshack" by stating that the world needs ditch diggers too, but free tuition may be creating an unintended consequence.
Will canceling debt make the people who chose college on the basis of cost and debt angry? What about just erasing interest and have a straight payback?
1
This is a terrible idea. I hate paying my student loans. They've been a drag for years. But this would be a case of allocating resources for people who, thanks to their degree, will occupy the upper strata of earning potential for much if not all of their working years. If the government is going to throw $600 billion and change at a problem, it should be at the bottom third of earners, not the top.
1
In order for Senator Warren to be morally consistent, along with free tuition, she should proclaim that all Senators and Representatives work for free and donate their salaries back to US Treasury and The People. They (and she) should renounce all of their personal possessions, including their homes and financial assets and donate them to the US Treasury for The People. These actions would serve as a living example of how the 1% should live their lives in the service of others.
How about just making all student loans 0% interest? The problem to me isn't having to pay for your education, it's that you are being gouged for years to come by lenders. For those who graduate and can't find a decent job, even if you make monthly minimum payments you are basically only paying off interest and never making a dent in your principal.
College should cost money, if nothing else to support the faculty required to deliver an education - making it free devalues the educators that make college a desirable pursuit in the first place.
2
Warren's plan is a slap in the face to all those responsible students who took out loans to colleges they could afford and then paid them off as per the contract stipulations. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for individuals who choose colleges they can't afford, borrow much more than they (or their parents who are often also on the hook) could ever pay back, and frequently choose a major that has little marketability or relevance in today's job market (liberal arts, psychology, journalism, etc.). When are politicians going to start assigning some blame to these loan payback/default issues to the people who took them out rather then always trying to find ways to let these folks shirk their financial commitments and get something for nothing.
3
I am not for free college. We have a free public education system that is the shambles. After 13 years of free public education a person should come out with a marketable skill to earn a decent living. I am for reforming the existing free education system.
Also the forgiveness of debt if you make under a certain income just incentivized people to make under a certain level and penalizes those who earn more. The lack of new ideas from the Democratic Party just boggles the mind. The same old worn out ideas that don’t work.
3
I just want to note that countries like Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Finland, Sweden, France, Greece, Scotland, Spain, Turkey and others have free or nearly free public college tuition. In the UK tuition is capped at £10k, which is the *average* cost of public college in the U.S. As a country we have the resources to do better and there is no history to suggest that free public tuition or canceling debt will result in a generation of lazy students.
1
@Scoot
American exceptionalism again...
Education is a public good but it is not a free commodity. This expansive idea sounds like it is being packaged more to create focused election appeal and less to provide sustained education help. Colleges, whether you like it or not, are business entities. They may not all be "for profit" entities but nonetheless carry a financial statement that includes both a revenue as a well as a cost sheet. Has this gimmick been thought through? Countries that provide free public education including a 4 year college diploma do so as a result of an entire ecosystem that supports such largesse. There is give and take - if you provide $X to an entity then you have raise $Y somewhere else or cut $Z to some other place. It cannot just be that "you are rich and I am going to grab it from your wallet". Maybe I will not pay or move somewhere else. What then ?
5
All this will accomplish is to give the green light for colleges to continue to increase the cost of their tuition knowing that President Warren will pick up the tab.The tax revenue will not cover the costs.There are just so many folks with over 50 million to pay her wealth tax, then the tax burden will shift rapidly down the income ladder.
11
@Michael
I like your spin on the traditional market place transaction. Instead of the buyer and seller coming to terms after each considers the value of what they receive, the buyer just gives the seller whatever the sellers asks.
If I sacrificed to diligently pay off my student debt on schedule, I probably wouldn't be too enthused about this proposal. But we do need to come up with ways to significantly reduce the cost of all types of public college education.
4
Sen Warren might want to take closer look at tuition costs for public colleges and universities in her own state. They are very low because for several decades Massachusetts government withdrew support from public education while mandating a cap on tuition increases. The result? A proliferation of substantial fees that offset state support. Those fees would be untouched by the elimination of tuition. In all likelihood we’d see a sharp uptick in fees everywhere if Senator Warren’s plan were implemented. I’m not suggesting that her intentions are without merit. I’m merely pointing out that eliminating tuition might result in nothing more that a restructuring of how it is paid for. If high quality, low cost public education was possible when states actually supported public education, why can’t we revisit that model?
2
Maybe we could take that same $1.25 trillion and dedicate it to a real infrastructure plan for the country, so that we can continue to compete with the more modern countries. That would probably provide more well paying jobs than what many will find with their free college education. Not everyone is made to go to college or ready to go when they finish high school. While there will be some individuals who unquestionably benefit from this, there will probably be just as many if not more, who squander the opportunity.
9
Free college sounds great, but who is going to pay for it? The hundreds of people employed by State Universities still need to get paid. And it's not just faculty, it's also people in physical plant, custodians, administrative assistants, medical service etc, etc, etc. I agree that education should be made more accessible, but the hard part here is coming up with a plan for HOW. This is an idea that must be backed up with a workable plan.
Costs at public universities have risen at least in part because states now allocate significantly less money to their state colleges, in our case, less than 15% of the total budget. The state legislature is certainly not going to cough up the other 85%. So where will it come from?
11
@jm - Where will it come from?
1) Stop the war in Afghanistan and we can all afford to go to Harvard (providing Aunt Becky can get us in)
2) Legalize cannabis and tax it good and hard.
3) Clean up the stupid bureaucracy in the government which would reduce those costs.
An example of number three are the endless forms the government keeps sending me to fill out and they continue to ask me the same questions again, and again, and again. First, they ask for my SS#. After that begins the redundancy. Where was I born? (could it have changed in my lifetime). Mother's maiden name. Again, it has never changed along with my birthplace, blood-type, or race. But I have to once again write in all of the info that is already on file. And when you call a case manager on Wednesday, you find out that she doesn't take phone calls because it is her "paperwork catch-up day".
Do the roadwork crews really need six guys to stand around and watch one guy work? I spent the winter watching a street crew outside my window. Half a dozen guys stood around all day watching one guy work.
One of the many unintended consequences of instituting tuition free education at public universities is that competitive institutions, unable to offer the same benefit, become uncompetitive and will die (I'm not talking about the elite private institutions it is in vogue to criticize, but the thousands of small, private institutions of many stripes that serve local and often needier populations).
3
Warren and to an extent Sanders are repeating the mistakes of 2016. They are campaigning for / to the elites. The policies I have seen so far, seem to be aimed at the progressives on the coasts. Progressives cannot elect a President by themselves. They will need millions of people who voted for Trump the last time to help elect a new, sane, President.
If they continue to campaign like they have written off anyone who is not a progressive, the results will be a repeat of 2016 as well.
5
@Bruce1253 the Democrats dont "need millions of people who voted for Trump the last time." If you'll recall, Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million. Trump, though, was able to squeak out wins in PA, MI, and WI by a TOTAL of 80,000 votes, and, as such, he won the electoral college. Trump will not flip any Blue States in 2020, so the question becomes: can the Democrats win back these three states or other close states and win the electoral college. Doing so will not require "millions of people who voted for Trump the last time"; it may require as few as 80,000 votes
@Bruce1253
They aren't making a mistake. They are who they are, and they believe what they believe.
The only people making a mistake are the people listening to them instead of hitting the MUTE button.
@Myles
I would remind you the economy is blasting along, North Korea is calm, it looks like Trump will get a deal with China. . . Be complacent if you want, but if you are, Trump gets reelected.
So far, Warren's proposals are only good as far as she goes. Instead of only 75%, lets forgive every loan for every student, regardless of race, gender or income and lets make all schools, public and private, free of tuition for everyone. Instead of taxing people to pay these expenses, lets have the US Treasury issue annual US Education bonds payable over 100 years with a 1% interest rate.
1
Please read about The law suit against Navient and how they intentionally steered borrowers toward options that greatly compounded their already astronomical debt. The Consumer Protection Agency did an audit - but that crook Mulvaney put it in a drawer.
Warren has my vote. She has been speaking truth to power for decades and is passionate about policies that will truly make my life better and easier for my family.
11
I would also add that nothing should be totally free. Everyone should have some skin in the game. Otherwise there is a reduced sense of value of what one gets. There should also be a limit of the duration or amount so that only a chosen few can be professional students.
9
@kenjf01 - Do you charge your kid's for their birthday presents? I bet you go all out on your anniversary:))
One of the worst higher ed financing proposals ever - millions of people would enjoy a huge consumer surplus they don't need or deserve. Hopefully the other Dem candidates will do better.
10
What of the bond holders of student debt?
2
@Lawrence You're missing the point. To socialists if you are rich enough to invest in the bond market then you can afford the loss of income and underlying investments. It's for a good cause, you know.
When will politicians stop promising free stuff paid for by others just to win votes?
31
@James
Like the border wall Mexico was supposed to pay for?
1
One thing one absolutely has to recognize in Warren’s campaign- she’s got the ideas, plans , and possible executions, full package in one word. Starkly different and immensely more serious than that stupid obsession with the nicely packaged windbags like the guy from TX and the charming IN mayor and his husband.
BUT, that’s exactly why she won’t get far in the Dems field, let alone against Him, due to the American obsession with form and not substance. Plus, this feels and looks like socialism which is an upfront anathema in otherwise ‘tolerant’ USA.
1
@ss - "One thing one absolutely has to recognize in Warren’s campaign- she’s got the ideas, plans , and possible executions.."
It's easy and lazy to propose ideas and policies that have zero chance of becoming reality.
3
Whatever the merits and shortcomings of Warren's plan, let's be clear on two points.
First, Neal McCluskey and the Cato Institute are wrong if they think education is a "private gain." The "private" gain comes later for employers who paid for none of their training but reap all of the "value added" from debt-laden entry-level employees whose bargaining power is deeply compromised because they can't afford a disruption to their income if they're going to stay afloat.
Second, that you don't personally benefit from a plan is not, standing alone, a reason to decide that there's no societal benefit. (Saying the benefits are not worth the costs is one thing and can be a fair criticism, but saying your neighbors should have to suffer on principle is another.)
16
Clearly this is unfair to those of us who spent a decade or more after college and grad school eating cereal for dinner in tiny studio apartments so that we could honor our commitments to pay off our school loans. I also feel it’s unwise to reward young adults by calling the money loans instead of gifts. We need to start educating high schoolers about the finances of adult life and education and how their debts will need to be repaid.
29
@BW this argument -- I suffer, therefore everyone should suffer -- is small minded and ungenerous.
1
@Margaret So an older worker, already working longer than parents or older siblings, at risk of age related discrimination and perhaps experiencing age related health issues, should be taxed to a level that could then risk their retirement and ability to live comfortably or sacrifice retirement goals to perhaps eat more cereal for dinner so others can be educated debt free?
Isn't socialism grand!
Though I do not agree with making college tuition free - I think Warrens' proposal of cancelling existing debt to be courageous and excellent. If done it would prove to be a financial boon worthy of any multibillion dollar tax cut, simply because the debt waiver would release for spending (or investment) billions of dollars middle class earners are now spending on existing loans probably dozens of years old. A great idea.
6
@Rick Morris
If you believe your own words, I have a bridge for sale.
No, people who are behind in their bills, will not suddenly come across a pile of money to spend on something else.
If you went to school to major in Art, or as a librarian, or as a gender studies major, chances are high you are already not making any money. not having to pay for your education will not suddenly make you rich, if you are already not making any money at all.
2
@AutumnLeaf
I said middle class earners. Someone making fifty thousand a year suddenly having an extra thousand bucks in their pockets every month will be spending it on things they need and deserve. And yes, probably pay their bills.
If the proposal is to have wealthy families pay for it, why do Klobuchar and Mayor Pete have a problem with it?
The wealthy already get their share from the government. As Warren Buffet says, he pays a similar tax rate, if not smaller, than his secretary.
We pool our tax revenue for social support. Reducing debt burdens would invigorate our economy.
7
@kj Exactly what are the wealthy getting from the government?
@kj
'Reducing debt burdens would invigorate our economy.'
When I hear this, I ask, why aren't you paying off some one's college bill? if it's such a good idea, why are you not all over it already?
Do you know why? because it's dumb.
Try it, pay off a random kid's gender studies major, take the debt as your own. You won't.
Insisting he government does, with no clue of how to pay for this will not result in affluence, will result in an economic crash.
I am so supportive of this. There is no better use of taxpayer money than for education. Perhaps something like this would be an easier sell: if you meet the entry qualifications, you only have to pay 10% of the bill. It would be interesting to see how people’s choices change as a result of that support. Do students go straight to a 4 yr campus? Does the mix of majors change, eg, more/less STEM? What is the 4 yr grad rate? Do GPAs go up if kids aren’t worried about bills? I think subsidized higher education would be good for the country. For it to work, certified trade schools (eg, union run programs) and 2 year colleges would need to be included.
11
I might be in favor of eliminating existing college debt in certain situations but usually people do make an informed choice to go to NYU with big loans or local community college where they might get significant aid. The government should not be rewarding the students for poor choices by canceling debt.
15
@Marjory Selig - So you are in favor of eliminating all bankruptcy laws?
1
Now, only to get into a university. Taxing the rich is easy. They just add more loopholes and places to hide their money.
1
All the cries of "Socialism" and and the derision of such plans for betterment of all citizens are predictable, boring and selfish.
All the calls of "communism" and "welfare state" are tiring and closed-minded. The government could pay for college education for all by combining any number of wasteful spending bills on the local, state and federal level.
Education and health care are the great equalizers in any society. Those who do not support it are in favor of making entry into middle class accessible for all people.
The mega rich must do more for the people who made them their millions: consumers.
16
@bartNJ
"...inacessible..." Correction.
1
As to student loan debt - of course it's unfortunate for us working-class people that rich people's kids graduate without debt. But I paid off my student loan debt by working hard, living in a lousy apartment, and driving (and repeatedly repairing myself) a ten-year-old car. What I favor is more programs like the one I initially qualified for as a prosecutor, where [x] amount is forgiven by the government after [y] years of public service.
As to tuition, and speaking as someone who went to community college tuition free and SDSU very inexpensively in CA - the easy solution to the quandary discussed in this article is to apply a sliding scale, which is done successfully hundreds of thousands of times a day in public defenders' and health care providers' offices: if you're wealthy, you pay full boat; if not, you get some offset.
I do not consider socialism to be a dirty word, because our country has had the GI Bill, Social Security, Medicare an other such programs since before I was born. But neither do I think the debate has to be 'all or nothing' from each side of the aisle.
128
@J Young I agree. Let people pay a percentage of their income until 10 years after graduation. That will make everyone responsible. Educational institutions would work harder to get their money back.
3
@J Young Not everyone is going into public service. Additionally, I appreciate your sour grapes and personally sympathize, but that's not a basis on which to inhibit progress, equality or relief. A seventy-year-old could have made the same exact argument when social security rolled out, and would have the exact same reason to feel frustrated. The point is to create a better space for future generations to live in though.
8
@J Young
Let people pay a percentage of their income until 10 years after graduation.
HOW do you think student loans are paid now?
8
These loans should be paid off through a tax on college endowments-
3
This does not address the root cause of the problem, though, which is that college tuition has skyrocketed over the past few decades BECAUSE the federal government has guaranteed loans and basically created an unlimited spigot of money. Largely spent on administrative costs and frivolous student amenities, as the fact that many professors are now adjuncts that do not even earn a living wage is well known.
So, let's also discuss pruning down the parasitic administrative class at universities - the ones who really profit off of these debts - and shutting down the for-profit and for-administrators-profit schools that take gobs of federal loan money and give their students worthless educations in return.
You may recall that Obama tried to put the brakes on the for-profit schools, but the scam schools' lobbyists were too powerful.
28
Another politician who is proposing free college tuition. And another politician who has not explained in exacting detail how the free college tuition will be paid for. Senator Warren, this idea certainly sounds great and will certainly help you in your quest for the presidency. And I certainly believe in helping find ways for kids to go to college that cannot afford the full freight charges. But until you and every other politician proposing this idea explains to America right now, in exacting detail, how free the free college idea will be, then as far as i see it you are just another typical politician looking to get elected with a great sound bite who has a form but no substance.
9
@Howard Herman its literally in the second paragraph of the article...
2
Dear Senator Warren,
With your grand-plan-a-week strategy, you've already spent your proposed tax increases 10 times over. Pretty sure your idea of the truly rich paying all the bills will quickly turn into the moderately well-off being required to carry the burden. Why not just make your next proposal "The modestly successful are going to pay for EVERYTHING" and be done with it?
31
@joinparis
Well, I guess it was OK then to bail out the financial institutions in 2008 with TRILLIONS in taxpayer dollars that ultimately, cost millions of jobs and Trump's gift of a TRILLION AND A HALF dollars that went primarily to the wealthy and corporations?
Yeah, that was a real good investment wasn't it?
Warren is plainly stating, "how about returning the favor by offering a bailout for those that aren't in that top 1%"?
@Deus
The financial "bailout" in 2008 was a win for the American taxpayer as all the loans were paid back with interest. Money was actually made for the tax payer on that deal. Curious that liberals always use that as an excuse when they are seeking another handout from the government. As for tax cuts, well good people can disagree as to what the proper tax rates should be but calling them a "gift" when in fact it is merely letting people who actually earned the money keep more of it? Doesn't seem the correct term to me. Is whatever you end up with in your paycheck a "gift" from the government?
1
How about Sen. Warren instead of "Ms. Warren"? This is a terrific idea and gets to the heart of two problems simultaneously: income inequality and student loan debt. As a retired professor at two major state universities--The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and Stony Brook University, I was constantly struck how all governors, both Democrats and Republicans, kept dis-investing in public higher education thereby raising tuition and increasing student loan debt to pay for it. Our democracy can only succeed if we have a highly-educated and highly-trained population. Education will make us better informed voters and also economically more competitive. Thank you, Sen. Warren.
#Make Democracy Work Again
6
And yet again we point out that every last jot and tittle of Ms. Warren's campaign rhetoric would be worthless if she didn't have the support of Congress. She can't rule by decree. But if there was a supportive Congress in place, these measures could be enacted tomorrow.
But soft, what is happening on the West Coast? Yes, a totally liberal Democratic government, Governor and both Houses! And so they must have already done all this, right? Doesn't California lead on pollution control, automobile regulation, health warnings on everything from bedknobs to broomsticks?
Well, California State University is cheap, but it ain't free. And the other systems there aren't free either.
Tells you something.
5
It is a start. A better plan is 1 reduction for each dollar paid.
1
So how is this fair to people who worked and sacrificed to pay back their college loans? Will they turn out to be chumps for being responsible?
31
@Tom Quinn fair is equal access to education and healthcare, whether you have $1 or $1,000,000,000. say you beat cancer, would you also wish it on everyone else? be generous; your struggles do not have to perpetuate in society forever.
1
I'm very troubled by this news. I am a moderate Democrat and believe Senator Warren to be intellectually superior to the 2020 presidential contenders I'm familiar with. However, this will be simply unacceptable to the broad electorate, and deliver our despicable incumbent a second term. Hillary was considered too radical just a few short years ago.
4
How about a plan to pay for it EW?
It's a very nice fairly tale but we need a plan.....
2
Of course this is unrealistic. But there is one way to make tuition (almost) "free": taxpayer-supported universities could offer the first two years of college on-line for a nominal fee. There is no difference between viewing a computer presentation in an expensive classroom or viewing it at home. In fact, on-line is superior due to ability to review the material, and savings in transportation costs, as well as reduced pollution, would be added benefits. State legislatures could mandate this plan in order to thwart higher-ed profiteers and better serve students and taxpayers.
2
@RC
Perhaps if viewing a computer presentation in an expensive classroom was all there is to education in colleges, this idea would make sense. Alas, the modern classroom includes socilaizing with one’s peers through team based learning, something that is poorly mimiced online. Then there are various subjects for which virtual substitutes are poor ones. A studio art class not taught in an actual art studio or a chemistry course without an actual chemistry lab is not going to give students the same skills or experiences. And you can bet employers will notice the resulting deficiencies.
1
@RC
" There is no difference between viewing a computer presentation in an expensive classroom or viewing it at home. " Really??? Nobody with any experience in higher education, teacher or student, would agree to such a bald statement.
Your fellow candidates might want to reconsider their opposition to your ideas, because there is really no problem with the government giving a boost to students who need it so that later they can give back to the system. It is a matter of coming up with the right formula for doing things right in the first place.
4
As the beneficiary of the publicly funded education of a bygone era, I applaud Warren’s proposal. Mayor Pete misunderstands the reason we educate our citizens. It’s not so that they can profit personally, but so that we can all benefit. One of the worst things my generation did was pull the ladder we climbed out from under the generations that followed. Warren wants to fix that.
25
As of right now, the huge costs of tuition represent a huge tax on professional opportunity, as all decent jobs require a college degree and a Masters, even jobs that use to require only a high-school diploma. So the BA plus Masters is the new HS diploma when it comes to jobs. It is very unfair and a poison pill for middle-class mobility.
I see that most of the older commentators who managed to pay off their debt are jealous of the prospect of making the world a better place for the younger generations but I believe it is for the common good.
Each tuition free public college should come with a requirement for students to have at least an 8 out of 10 average grade.
11
If I recall correctly from previous articles, those who learn trades can earn more than college grads over a lifetime because they have lower school loans and also start earning earlier in life. Vocational schools should be covered if colleges are covered.
Also, looking at the trend of AI to take over jobs: Right now increased efficiency with the aid of computers means fewer people do more work and others are displaced. It is claimed that this will create a new class of jobs rather than displace the folks who originally had these jobs. That can only be true up to a point. What jobs are safest? I am thinking that vocational trades are probably safest since they require both intelligence and (generally) physical ability. As an engineer, I have seen even these jobs erode due to the increased intelligence of tools.
This, along with all the other grand visions of healthcare and other reforms sound fantastic in principle, but part of me can't help but wonder if this is just the Democrats pulling out all the stops and making every vague promise imaginable in order to defeat Trump in 2020, only to ultimately fail to find a way to feasibly enact any of it (and then blame the Republicans). I sincerely hope I stand corrected...
4
@Adam
Grand visions indeed, but I believe that Warren will at least work towards a future where it becomes possible. In the mean time, Betsy DeVos, working towards a future based on Trump University... If a vague promise puts an end to that, education will be better off even if Warren accomplishes nothing.
1
I know! Sounds like fantasy about eliminating college tuition. But after pondering the issue, I realized that my first college teaching job was indeed in a system where tuition was free for all students. It was the Community Colleges of California in the 1960-70's. And...amazingly it was an outstanding system. My fellow faculty members were from many of the best universities in the country. And the level of teaching was outstanding (SF Bay area). Eventually it gave rise to location of Silicon Valley and many of our top companies in the USA...Apple, Oracle, Google, etc. etc.
So what happened? Prop 13 was voted into existence to reduce property taxes by some 58%, thanks to the wisdom of Republicans in 1978. Over time fees were introduced, then small tuition expenses and then big tuition increasers. Now, everything costs alot from parking to lab fees to tuition. And, new teachers can no longer afford to live in the Bay area because a one bedroom shack costs over a million dollars.
So...Warren's idea is not radical but a retreat to a time when college education was affordable and one could earn enough in the summer with two jobs to pay for the entire year. Ivy League at $2000 for everything. Community Colleges free! So what do we have now? A system where the rich govern the land and the poor and middle class struggle to even pay for community college. Whatever it is, it is not working.
22
Instead of free tuition, or in addition to, I would suggest that room and board be free, or that there is a cap on the expense. Our family has an 18 year old who will attend college. The tuition is the minimal portion of the expenses. Living expenses, including room and board, either on or off campus have risen in the past 10 years. Many kids are able to receive a scholarship for tuition, if their need calls for assistance, yet often poorer kids struggle with room and board, and many scholarships do not cover this expense. In many cases the cost of room and board, both off and on campus, is more expensive than the tuition. For many poorer kids, they are either faced with taking a $20 to 25,000 loan for room and board, which equals $100,000. by the end of their 4 year education.
2
@K.M
Why not attend a college close to home, or community college for 2 years before completing a bachelors at a 4 year institution?
"Going away" to college is a lifestyle choice; it isn't a necessary part of getting an education.
1
While this is a very noble idea, I can think of a lot of better ways to spend a whopping $1.25 trillion than to subsidize the bloated university system. That kind of money should be spent on badly-needed infrastructure, replacing existing bridges before they fall, building things like high speed rail and networks of bike paths, which will not only improve mobility and opportunity across our country but create lots of good jobs in the process. Universities have become so expensive because of overpaid administrators and absurd layers of bureaucracy. Warren's plan would do nothing to shrink that; on the contrary, it would create an incentive for universities to continue to become more wasteful, since the government always picks up the tab. If you really could raise over a trillion dollars through higher taxes, it would be a momentous opportunity that should absolutely be used for maximum public benefit.
7
Warren has officially jumped the shark with this proposal. She is starting to look like the Trump of the Democratic Party -- will say/promise anything for your vote.
I'm with Pete Buttigieg on this issue:
“Americans who have a college degree earn more than Americans who don’t. As a progressive, I have a hard time getting my head around the idea of a majority who earn less because they didn’t go to college subsidizing a minority who earn more because they did.”
12
@RP Smith Her proposal is to fund the debt forgiveness with an annual wealth tax on people worth more than 50 million dollars. So Pete's quote is irrelevant.
@RP Smith
Buttigieg, as a would-be progressive, should look at how free tuition has worked in reality, in the post-WWII U.S., where it produced the greatest increase in technology, industrial development and wealth that the world has ever seen.
Buttigieg has an awesomely privileged upbringing. I don't think he's the one to identify the injustices against the poor.
1
Warren and Sanders are the only two candidates who are authentic. They both have a vision of a country that is fundamentally different than now. Not all their proposals will be
enacted but they will try to begin to move this country in a very different direction. I have concern regarding Warren's apparent stance on foreign intervention and Israel but it is still early in the campaign. Supporting either condidate is a chance to dump Trump and bring about at least the beginning of real change.
9
As someone who has worked in private and public higher education for a fair number of years - I don't think this is a reasonable solution. This will lead to a hyper-competitiveness for spots at public universities that will leave behind those that are not initially able to go to college. People will say trades programs are the solution, which for some students they are, BUT there is still a level of math and reading comprehension that is needed to do well in that field, especially since technology is continually changing it. What many people don't realize there is a large sector of the population that is not able to do post-secondary education and we push them towards something they will not be able to achieve while acquiring large amounts of debt. There is a gray area of the population that we have yet to address
6
I put myself through college and paid off my debt early by working very hard and being very frugal, so will I (and everyone else in the same boat) be entitled to a refund?
12
@CED
College is three times more expensive now. I don't know about you, but I'd still be paying my student loan off today if I'd had to take out a $100,000 loan instead of a $32,000 loan. And no, we don't get a refund.
@CED I work hard and am very frugal. I also work in book publishing, where my yearly salary is half the amount of my student loan debt. I live in an expensive area, which is necessary because this is where publishing hubs are set up (NYC, San Francisco, Boulder, Seattle).
You are privileged and lucky if you can swing a job that pays off your debts. As for those of us who obtained higher education to qualify for jobs like publishing that pay notoriously low? We need reform. After making six months of on time payments, my loans have increased by $2,100.00.
If you want educated book editors, journalists, nurses, teachers, librarians, and other individuals who contribute to society for low pay doing jobs that keep our society functional and informed, then you'd best be on board for reform as well.
2
@CED You had it rough so nobody else can have it easy. Very selfish and bitter way to look at the world. I thought the whole goal was to make things better for the next generation.
1
What would bring the US much closer to *actually* being a meritocracy? Equal access to education and healthcare, as Elizabeth Warren aims to provide through her detailed policies that benefit all Americans. No other candidate has the gumption and intelligence to fight the good fight and WIN. Go, Betty, go!
1
How about just making college more affordable; and better regulating lending practices? And what ever happened to parents saving for their children's higher education ( and/ or taking some loans themselves) , so that the young adults just entering the workforce after college aren't crippled by loans?
9
@GBR
I agree. Adjusted for inflation, the price of college has tripled since I graduated. Which, speaking of whatever happened to saving, was when checking accounts with no minimum balance paid 5.5% interest. To further answer your question: the money I saved for my kids education got funneled up to the .01% when the economy crashed in 2008, along with most of my retirement funds. I suspect that like most people, I have been unable to set aside an extra $200,000 in the last ten years for college while, saving for retirement, paying $27,000/yr. for health care, and providing for the basic needs of a family.
1
I diligently paid back all of my loans knowing full well when I signed the loan docs repayment was my responsibility; why should others who signed the same documents as I did get a free pass while I and others honored our obligation?
15
@kathleen My family was bankrupt because of a broken healthcare system. Why should others get a free pass when we had to suffer?
Elizabeth Warren wants to invest in the infrastructure of society.
Donald Trump and the Republicans have been investing in 0.1% infrastructure since 1980.
A little course correction is long overdue.
We are a nation of 325 million citizens.
Time for the millionaire and billionaire class to get off their right-wing 0.1% welfare gravy train and let a few other citizens rise above poverty.
Brava, Elizabeth Warren, who is actually fighting for a decent American society.
53
@Socrates
"A little course correction is long overdue"
I agree. Shall we begin with why the cost of college outpaces inflation?
• Administrative staff including fundraisers, financial aid advisers, global recruitment staff, and many others grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009. This is 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.
• Specialized buildings of all kinds abound, and university fitness centers compete with the finest private clubs. Many colleges even sport climbing walls and lazy rivers. Bloated "student fees," which aren't included in tuition, may cover some of this academic bling.
• Salaries - Presidents lead the league. As of 2015, average pay for private-college presidents in the United States surpassed $550,000, with 58 presidents taking home more than $1 million a year (millionaire class members). The average salaries for full professors at top public institutions have risen 12 percent in excess of inflation since 2000. While schools might pay $250,000 for a famous professor, top coaches make millions. The top dog (Nick Saban, football coach at Alabama) makes $11-plus million not counting outside income
A seldom discussed issue: Work the expense side of the equation to get the cost of college down
@Socrates
Socrates, you always hit the nail on the head
1
@Miguel G
God forbid colleges improve their facilities.
Professors don't make as much as you imply. You use a comparison to inflation because if you used the actual average salary your argument would crumble.
Coach's pay is out of hand. So what? I attend a small public school where that isn't an issue. Most schools are not Alabama.
2
How fair would it be to the working poor who did not incur student debt, to cancel student debt for those who did incur student debt?
How about mortgage debt and other debt?
3
Professor Warren, how about paying off my credit card debt while you're giving stuff away to lure votes?
22
@Sarah99
Yet we rob the federal treasury for tax giveaways to the 1% and spend more than the next ten nations on a bloated military budget.
Someone is getting the benefit of the wealth of our nation but it sure isn't you or me.
1
Warren is in lala land on this and other topics. You don't want debt, don't incur it. Why should those of us who chose community college and/or the state school because it was affordable subsidize anyone who did not.
You can attend the CC, live at home, and then do the same for the 4 year school if needed. The campus experience is over rated.
Its far more important to create living wage jobs that don't require a 4 year degree and you don't hear a peep from Warren on doing that.
6
Great! But what about the person who finishes paying off a hefty student loan the year (or day) before the new policy is implemented?
I struggled mightily these past 10 years to pay off a $57,000 loan. Would I be reimbursed under the Senator's plan? Obviously not.
Maybe better to start by eliminating tuition from this day forward, and keep in place the obligation to pay off an existing loan. That may also make it more palatable to opponents (who will easily kill this proposal anyhow).
4
College debt loads are choking the economy, in a way similar to health care costs. My son and his wife have PhDs, but can not afford to purchase a home due to college debt, and they are hesitant to start a family due to the specter of disastrous health care bills. This is not good for the society as a whole. But, America is no longer the country that became strong (one might say “exceptional”) by allowing opportunity for everyone; now we are ruled by a small cadre of wealthy elites.
2
@Just Curious
What are their PhDs in? What kind of employment opportunities did they expect upon graduation? If they had the time and talent to spend that much time in graduate school, why didn't they do it in something that had better employment prospects, in a field better known for good benefits, or at a university with better funding and name recognition to secure a better job?
This might sound harsh, but If your PhD isn't being fully funded, with tuition paid for along with a decent stipend to live off of, or if you don't have phenomenal employment prospects upon graduation, such as in some STEM fields, you probably shouldn't be getting that PhD.
I used to work in with graduate students at a major university, and a lot of PhD students, particularly in the arts and humanities, were "following their dreams" with little thought to the financial consequences or actual professional opportunities that would come out of it. I encountered a lot of magical thinking from students who thought that that they would be the exception, the special one to find the tenure track job in the haystack or an elusively brilliant Alt-Ac career. A lot of harsh reality checks happened upon approaching graduation.
This is unfortunate, but it is not the taxpayers' fault or responsibility.
There are many of us who made more practical choices about graduate and professional school who have no problem affording homes, families, or medical bills.
What will we say to the people who worked and saved for their kids' college and paid for it (or most of it)? What about the people who worked and saved and then took college course by course, perhaps starting with an associate's degree, until they finished? You were thrifty and planful, so you pay and others get their loans forgiven?
I understand the burden of student debt all too well, but wholesale loan forgiveness is disrespectful of the efforts of many to get themselves or their kids through college with low or no loans. Let's make loan forgiveness easier for those who work in low-paid professions like teaching and social work, and work on making free college readily available to those who need it.
7
The costs of higher education both public and private have gone up at far higher that the rate of inflation in recent decades. This corresponds with increasingly easy access government grants and guaranteed loans. They allowed schools to compete on amenities instead of price. Does anyone think making school free would do anything other than make this problem far worse. In addition this solution ignores the fact that a college degree adds a million dollars or more depending on the major to a person's life time earning. Being asked to borrow a reasonable amount toward that is appropriate.
6
A great lesson for our youth: thinks are free. How about something else: 1) lower salaries at colleges and Universities by 30%, 2) limit pensions to 50% of a 20 year average, 3) school students on what it costs to run a university, 4) get the US Government out of the scholarship business except for medical, math and science, 4) let students write-off their debt within 20 years as long as they perform real community work.
5
@dwkeller
I think we also need to re think the brick and mortar concept of college
Not every subject area needs a degree most things can be taught in vocational schools are apprenticeships think Germany
In most countries, most children do not go to college there are alternative systems of education that lead to well paying jobs
4
The trick is to charge enough for tuition that people will stop going if colleges do not deliver a quality education and preparation for life, but not so much that people cannot fail out without it being a disaster for their family or graduate with so much debt that their ethics get outweighed by pressure to repay their loans.
The good news is this is a range of costs big enough to drive a truck through. Even a divided government should be able to keep this bus in its lane.
Wouldn’t we be better off reducing the high costs of college before sticking the taxpayers with the bill.
If the taxpayers are funding college education, do they get to steer students towards degrees with actual job prospects? Or can they get degrees in philosophy, history and the like, so that we wind up funding well educated store clerks.
19
@Traymn
There are specific scholarships for people who take internships in certain industries and the like. Maybe this will become more common.
One of worst outcomes of the status quo is that we graduate some engineers who unambiguously do not want to be engineers simply because their parents forced their hand. This poisons the well both at school and beyond.
Tuition inflation is a direct result of students’ access to virtually unlimited borrowed funds. The schools win, the lenders win and the students lose. Ban third-party student lending, subsidize public college education and make the private institutions manage student financing directly with scholarships and/or loans. Once these schools actually have skin in the game, they will be more interested in want they can collect for their ‘product’ based on market value instead of getting 100% of whatever they ask because students will go and borrow it.
33
As a 76 year old, I guess I'm supposed to groan with this proposal from Senator Warren on forgiving student debt and free college tuition for public institutions. But I applaud her for doing so.
Senator Warren stands alone in the understanding of how our federal financial institutions operate, not only where the money comes from, in detail, but where it goes, in detail. Just leave her alone and she'll know where to add taxes, where to cut taxes, how much to budget the departments, and on, and on.
Elizabeth Warren has my vote.
25
By the time all is said and done, yours might be her only vote.
1
The problem is the cost of private universities. My top 20 university 25 years ago was 25k a year in today's dollars. The actual cost on their website now per year - 75k a year. My high school senior also got into my Alma-mater , but will be attending state college. Why? Because the middle class make too much to qualify for aid and too little to actually pay the staggering 300k+ that would be expected by these top schools.
You want to do something to make colleges affordable again ? Cut off the money supply. Don't let the banks and colleges get away with treating 18 year old kids as marks. The banks have no accountability, knowing that there is no way to discharge this debt in bankruptcy. The colleges know that kids have easy access to money and jack up their costs knowing they can get the bodies to fill their classes. (The colleges even put the links on the acceptance portal website on how to get those private loans...)
Do an actual root cause analysis Dr. Warren, don't just pander to the voters and hand out 'freebies'.
50
@Sikorsky
Great points!
The government should not blindly guaranty any student loan that comes along. Maybe only a portion of any student loan would be guaranteed, and only if used to attend an institution on a preapproved list of public institutions (based on % of students that graduate).
Any loan "forgiveness" for the mess we're in now can take the form of targeted federal income tax credits, as well as tax credits for employers who take on graduates with a heavy debt load.
The Warren plan will carry the day in the districts that are 90% democratic/socialist, and will result in Republican victories everywhere else. Too many students and families have sacrificed too much to be told to pick up the tab for others who took a different path.
I support Warren's proposal.
I paid back my student loan of $100,000 but I was fortunate in being able to earn a good income after I finally graduated with my Ph.D. It took me almost 15 years to pay it back and I'm glad that I did. I feel proud of myself for being able to do it, and it took working 7 days a week for all those years, not having a car and not going on vacations.
There are other people who cannot earn a decent income after graduation so I support having a reduction in their debt. Or make them eligible for bankruptcy court if they cannot pay it. When I first took on the debt, I thought I had the protection of bankruptcy. Later I found out that was no longer allowed.
21
After advocating free college in his 2016 election campaign, Bernie Sanders introduced a bill in 2017 that would abolish tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities for most students (subject to household income of $125,000 or less per year), and would make community college tuition-free for all students. Regardless of practicalities, Sanders' position understandably was immensely popular with young people and, presumably, their parents. Elizabeth Warren's plan seems intended to cut into Bernie's standing with this sector.
8
@Carl
Good observation. But the key question is, where is that bill now? Unfortunately, with big biz /big university influence peddling to both Rs & Ds, and with the current obstruction-obsessed Rs in House and Senate, sadly, I am doubtful any change will ever happen.
Good news is, I'm about half-way through the $150,000 of education loans I took out to fund my two children's college educations.
Yeah, I know, why aren't my children helping out? Well, although they are both married college grads, they are still paying their own education loans and going paycheck to paycheck to get by, so no extra money for me yet...
More good news: all of my education-loan debt will be forgiven when I die.
In the interest of full disclosure, I left college 30 years ago with the current-day equivalent of $14000 in student loans. I understand that college today costs much more and many students take out larger loans to help pay for their education. But I am uncomfortable with the notion of simply cancelling hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. My loan was not an unusual burden (my car loan payments were larger) and I was able to lead a normal financial life. I imagine that is still the case today for most students who leave with loans under around $25000. Student loan relief should be targeted to those who need it most, especially those in low-paying professions (say teaching or social work) who have large loans.
The reform I would most support would be loan-free freshman attendance in college. Students would have the chance to try college without incurring a large debt load. If college doesn't suit them, they could move on to the working world without the handicap of a big debt. If they excel in college, they could borrow money as they get closer to completing their degree. Loan eligibility would increase as they move from their sophomore to their senior year.
Last, I think colleges and universities are hugely responsible for the huge increases in tuition every year. They have simply not prioritized cost-control on their campuses. My university raises hundreds of millions of donations every year but somehow can't hold tuition increases to the rate of inflation.
45
@JohnK
The normal life you have been able to live is not available to college graduates today. 30 years ago wages were only slightly lower than they are today while everything else is 50-70 per cent more expensive.
Student debt is crushing and a barrier to upward mobility and contributes to the massive debt problem in this country.
35
@JohnK
I like your idea of a tuition free first year -- especially for students at public, especially community colleges. You are absolutely correct. Trying college out for a year would be a good way for young people to learn whether they are yet mature enough to pursue higher education. It would also allow students to try - and even fail at -- subjects they think they want to study but don't really know what they entail, nor have the background or skills to succeed at.
6
@JohnK I think your idea is an interesting one. However the biggest reason that tuition has risen astronomically compared to normal inflation is because of the ease of obtaining student loans. I can remember paying my own tuition at a major state university in 1992 and it was $1000 a quarter. And now it is $5000 a quarter. This happened because student loans have been far too easy to get. I realize that cutting off student loans would be almost impossible to do, but if you did that suddenly college would have to become cheaper.
6
I’m a Sanders supporter. But I love Sen. Warren and she is a voice this country needs. Those of us aiming to tackle the corporate-dominated political and economic system in this country are all part of the same movement. Bernie may be the leader, but Warren is a voice who will help us take it past the finish line.
It’s much bigger than whoever ends up at the Resolute Desk. Bernie knows that, Warren knows that, and everyone who supports them knows that.
Keep going, Sen. Warren!
69
This is a good start to alleviate some terrible pressures that we put on our young as well as our elderly, some of whom are having their social security checks cleaned out because of old student loans.
But those are not all the reforms we need in the realm of education. After DeVos, we will need a whole.new education code written from scratch. Before Trump, we were raising a society of smart fools. Our education system in great part is what led to the election of the worst possible president ever, and the worst possible cabinet ever.
---
Things Trump Did While You Weren’t Looking [2019]
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-3h2
4
I totally support these proposals although taxes on the rich are not enough, and many loopholes that benefit the rich should be closed.
However, I do not see Warren elected and not because she is not good - she is a MILLION times better than HRC, but because she has a small voice and lacks the commanding presence over big rallies that Trump and Sanders have. Warren, Sanders, and Tulsi Gabbart are my favorite but I think Gabbart is the most electable because she is young and poised and beautiful and comes across as quite strong. Warren comes across as a brilliant lightweight, but a lightweight. The most she could achieve, realistically, isa VP slot.
4
@Alexgri
I also love Tulsi Gabbard!!! I don't know why she is not attracting more press attention. She is young, smart, compassionate, and sensible.
We have a similar system in Scotland, it works very well. It opens the door for the working classes to have accessible access to further education. Students should be able to goto university without living in fear of the debt they are accumulating. Using salary levels to decide how much a student pays back on a loan allows students to know that if they fall on hard times like s redundancy or illness that they will not immediately need to pay on the loan until they go back to work. A fear many from working class families have, they do not have the same security blanket of family or parents savings.
We need to have more faith in people. Most of us want to work. Most of us will give back. Give people leeway. Buttigieg's statements are very out of touch. If we can allow technology companies huge tax cuts then we can allow students to catch a break from their debt if they cannot secure a job that provides a living wage enabling them to pay back the debt.
26
For all the naysayers, and many of them may have grown up like me, in the '70's tuition in the California State Colleges was about $100 per semester and Community College tuition was free. Student loans were not the norm and were taken out in very small amounts.
So we have tried this plan before and it worked wonderfully before the for-profit colleges and greedy tuition raising schools got their hand on student debt to finance their enterprises.
Americans are finally waking up to the FACT we are the only industrialized country with this level of student debt and we are the only country that charges the exorbitant levels of tuition (yes even at public universities) that we impose on people who are just trying to better themselves and positively contribute to society.
Once again, for the naysayers out there, why was tuition nearly free in the '70's at many public university systems in the U.S., but it is impossible to do so now?
Of course we can, if we have the will to do so.
287
@ScottW
Yeah, I went to college in the good old days at a public university when the tuition was low. What I got in return was an education mostly delivered by graduate students. The professors were paid so poorly that they spent all their time writing research grants and publishing books that we were all required to buy. I think making community college free makes sense. State schools are already less expensive than private, and maybe state legislatures should kick in more. But free? I spent a lot of years paying off student loans from later education (like the Obamas, still paying it off into my late 40's), but that was the bargain I knowingly made. As another comment mentioned I think students need some skin in the game.
12
Reason #1: Less number of corporations stashing huge amounts of cash instead of paying their fair share of taxes.
Reason #2: Increase in number of people who want to attend college.
Reason #3: People living in an utopia thinking that paying less and less taxes will result in better healthcare, better public schools, and free college education.
14
@ScottW
This was the world I also grew up in, Scott. There was a time when Americans believed in higher education, and saw it as an investment in their future and their communities. It was simply a given.
This whole idea of "I got mine" that is so prevalent now is very short sighted. Young Americans who desire a higher education are contributing not only to themselves but to their communities. They are the nation's future. We cannot compete in today's global economy without them.
44
and.....all the non huge endowed private colleges will go out of business.....She has no clue on education.
10
@JohnA
Huge endowed private colleges now are only accessed by the very wealthy anyway and Warren is talking about "public" colleges, NOT private.
2
YES! Go Liz! My student loans are utterly crippling, I can't start my own practice or buy a house or even a car because of student loan debt. Going to school is a responsible choice, but I can't claim bankruptcy to get rid of student loan debt, whereas I could to get claim that to get rid of irresponsible debt like shopping and vacations and gambling. It's nuts. Also debt for healthcare expenses should be canceled. Progressive taxation! Level the playing field!
58
@Leone
48% of income tax filers do not pay federal income tax as a reminder. They Do however pay social security and Medicare taxes. But our system already is progressive.
1
@Leone
Did you go to a private or public school?
@Leone
If university were free as in more enlightened countries like Slovenia, Leone you would have immediately been able to contribute to the economy and to you and your family. Instead, we waste our wealth on a military budget larger than the next ten countries combined.
Many posters here are inculcated with the idea that it's scandalous that we, the taxpayers, should suffer the burden of no government aid while corporations and the 1% steal the nation's wealth.
Democratic socialism invests in people; plutocracies invest in billionares.
Maybe she can explain why her husband makes $400,000 for teaching two courses. Does that have anything to do with the cost of college?
111
@Jackson Her husband is a lawyer who teaches law at the Harvard School of Law. That has nothing to do with "college" even at Harvard let alone UV or Washington & Lee or Northern Virginia Community College.
And I imagine that $400k is probably a pay cut from what he would make elsewhere. Harvard law professors don't grow on trees.
Generally, you seem to think college instructors are lucky-duckies laying about in hammocks. (Why else cite the most extreme example available - the most elite level of professional graduate education when the topic is an average bachelors degree?) That doesn't seem to comport with reality very closely.
26
@JDS oh stop, at least admit that getting paid $400k for teaching 2 course is a clear example of the inequality that Warrens proposal is attempting to address. Harvard or not.
1
I love Elizabeth Warren and hope she has a breakthrough moment during the debates.
A Warren/Buttigieg ticket, with a Democratic House and Senate, is what this country needs.
6
@Eric Buttigieg is a mini Macron, manufactured by the elites and packaged as a small mayor.
2
A debt is owed.
Will the debt holders simply agree no problem.
Or who will pay it.
And what about all the students and their parents who tirelessly worked to be debt free?
16
As we fiddle while Rome burns, the solutions to restore some level of function and fairness to our society get more and more expensive. I am newly retired and must now manage on what I've saved for the remainder of my life. As I always lived below my means and put money aside rather than live lavishly, I will get by fine. But because I worked hard to put myself in that position, and I am no millionaire, I am not sure if I'm ready for these sweeping forgiveness programs and free college for all. Everyone should have some skin in the game, and no one deserves a free ride. Work hard, be patient; you'll be surprised at that sense of accomplishment you feel.
24
My parents graduated with BA's in the late 70's and were hired into public service jobs the year they graduated, which they held until they retired. Wanting to follow in their footsteps of public service I graduate from college in the mid 2000's and sought a job working for a non-profit. At the time most organizations and the federal government were hiring returning veterans (and rightfully so - thank you for your service), which meant I kept striking out. I went to grad school from 2007 to 2009, but graduated on the heels of the crash of '08, when again no one was hiring. I spent a few years in part time work until I finally obtained a full time position.
As someone who is fluent in Spanish and capable in Mandarin with a MA in Economics, I have struggled to find a job, whereas my parents 30 years earlier spent no time looking for employment with a BA in communications. Not only do degrees not hold the same value today, they are exponentially more expensive. My folks graduated with $15,000 in debt, mine is closer to $130,000. The promise was "go to school, any school, and you will be able to get a job." I feel like I did what I was told and then some, and have found every avenue I have pursued to be a dead end. People of my generation bought into the promise of a brighter future, but were given a false bill of sale. I'm not entirely sure what policy change needs to be implemented, but we need officials who understand how the landscape has changed over the last 25 years.
133
@Mash
Medical translators are routinely paid $35/hr.
4
@Mash
Where did you go to school? Where I live, in-state tuition is around $15k. It can be done for even less with two years of community college. You say you owe $130k in student loans.
Sounds like some bad decisions were made. If your parents didn't teach you, then you're learning now: There are no sure things and no free lunches.
8
@August West To elaborate as you clearly missed the point: My in state tuition for my four year undergraduate degree was approximately $30,000, which I paid off by working in several part time jobs at once (retail by day, bartending by night, catering gigs when I could get them). But government incentives for hiring vets in the mid 2000's coupled with the crash in '08, followed up by the return of boomers who were laid off from the workforce created an economy where more requirements have been placed on graduates than in the past. A large majority of Americans who have graduated since 2005 have found themselves in the same position.
In addition, roughly 30% of the American population had a college degree in 1978, whereas roughly 70% of the population has a college degree in 2018. As such, more and more people have to return to higher education to set themselves apart. The average MA / law degree is $25K per year on the low end at a public institution. So to graduate in 2009 with significant debt and a dried up job market was bad luck on my (and thousands others) part, but high debt and a low wage market is a situation that has held steady for the last 15 years. A large majority of graduates from '05 on have found themselves saddled with increasing debt and shrinking opportunities. Again, I am not sure what policy changes need to be made to rectify this situation, but we should all worry that as more people default on loans the threat of another bubble looms on the horizon.
3
I graduated law school in 1981 with student loan debt of $20,000. My first full-time position as an attorney paid $21.5K. In years 2 and 3, my spouse went back to graduate school for a masters which meant that we did not have her salary. We borrowed an additional $10K. The first 5 years were not easy because my highest salary was $37.5K. We paid back all of our student loans without fail never missing a payment. How did we do it? We watched our expenses, avoided excessive consumer debt, drove modest autos, lived in neighborhoods we could afford and did not take expensive vacations. The investment we made in our education made us stakeholders in making certain that we earned the money to pay back what we borrowed for our education. Cost-free education sounds nice and it is a headline grabber but all it will devalue education and enable students to make bad choices. At the same time, it will create another glut in the market by pushing dollars to an already bloated system in which prestigious universities hoard billion dollar endowments supported by tax incentives. I realize that my comments might come across as old-fashioned but old ideas are still some of the best ideas around.
208
@Mike Agree with you, 100%. My spouse's and my accomplishments are similar, but we majored in Information Technology in the 80s. As someone whose parents did not foot my tuition bills, I worked my way through college and took out loans. I do not think a college education should be everyone's right - one has to earn it. In addition to your opinion, I'd prefer efforts to help public schools be more competitive in the world (they've languished), and then to reward high achievement in high school with grants and loans for college degrees that are in demand.
22
@Mike
Let's look at it from a different perspective.
I grew up in a working class family, the first person in my extended family to attend college.
Starting in the 1970s, I patched together a near-free government-supported junior college education with one year at a state university with a private grant, work-study (also funded by the government), and part-time employment and odd jobs.
Without continuing tuition support my fourth year I had to drop out, and it took me more years to get back to finish college, again relying on government grants, work study, and part-time employment. And several more years to get an MA and then a PhD (with government grants and a credit card).
My point is that it took me most of my life to finish my education, losing years of potential productivity and potential contributions to my community.
Unlike some here, I don't believe in pulling the ladder up after me. I want to see all Americans with a desire for a higher education to have an opportunity to pursue it in a more timely fashion, so that they, too, can contribute to their families and communities. Few can succeed in today's economy without one.
122
@Mike The keyword in your post seems to be: 1981.
Yes, 1981 was about the last year that middle class incomes kept up with productivity and about when government started to get out of the business of helping average people.
Since then wages have stagnated and government (both federal and state) entered the "starve the beast" phase and ceased with every tight revenue year to continue footing the bill for higher education as they had previously - multiple places like Michigan and California once had very near "free" college. Most every developed nation on earth has very inexpensive higher ed.
If you're worried that "bloated" colleges will get a free ride or that students will (for unknown reasons) take their own education less than seriously the make those conditions for financial support like in most other nations: only so many positions available for a degree in X, strings attached to federal money that limits what institutions receiving aid can do with it. But please stop with the self-virtue machine about how you managed to get through school in a different (subsidized) era and then worked in a more equitable era when those prerequisites do NOT now exist.
90
There are many private colleges that serve low to middle income student populations. How can they compete with free tuition at public colleges? Do we want to drive half our private colleges out of business?
13
@DS Who could care? The private colleges by and large charge exorbitant tuition rates that subject the unwise and willing to decades of debt servitude on the promise of a better tomorrow that is slowly becoming less realized. As for Elizabeth: I'm listening...
6
@Matthew
The administration, faculty, staff, students, and alumni of private colleges care. To be clear, I am not talking about elite colleges that charge obscene tuition. There are lots small private colleges that compete with state schools for students. I would guess that half the college students in New York State attend private colleges.
2
Ok so then the debt is cleared, and a new generation of students again will rack up loans to pursue worthless degrees at no name colleges. But hey, we can tax the rich again and clear the debt again, right?
21
It would make sense to levy a tax on corporations to help fund education, since they are the ones that gain advantage from an educated workforce.
13
Great ideas. But the crux of the next election is going to be healthcare. Until Warren presents a clear path to universal coverage, the rest of her platform becomes a sideshow.
Education is critical, but healthcare access and affordability has to be the priority, and if both cannot be achieved, healthcare must come first.
6
@Chickpea
I agree. Elizabeth Warren supports single-payer health care. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/sen-elizabeth-warren-announces-2020-presidential-run-3-healthcare-facts-to-know.html
1
There’s a lot to appreciate about Elizabeth Warren, but to me this isn’t one of them.
While higher education has been defunded, people need to put some of their own skin in the game.
On a personal note, my wife and I scrimped and saved to see our children graduate college debt free while many others cut their kids loose and bought boats and suv’s. I don’t appreciate now being asked to pay for others.
223
@Brad
Warren is proposing a "wealth tax" to pay the costs of higher education. That is not defunding it. If you are wealthy enough to be subject to the tax then you can afford to pay it.
39
@kinnanokinnan
College should not be free, period.
Every student needs some skin in the game to justify the time and yes, expense.
Don't want a loan, don't take one out.
You don't need to get it in four years either, work and figure out what you want to do perhaps.
Community college is already close to free with tax credits. Live at home and commute.
Everyone wants a free ride on with someone else footing the bill here.
16
@Brad I agree that free higher education is not my top priority, but we absolutely need to figure out how to provide more social support to the rapidly shrinking middle class. Wouldn't you like your children to not have to scrimp and save to provide for your grandchildren? I'm guessing that if you had a hard time paying for your kids college, you aren't making millions a year and wouldn't see the tax increases that will be paying for others. Please don't let your jealousy of your neighbor's boats stop you from voting for support systems that could help your family's future generations.
12
Universities have billions in endowments. Why not tax this cash cow. They have benefited from student loans and have looked the other way while students and their families struggle to repay these loans.
Elizabeth Warren is desperate and will make promises that can’t be kept.
56
@On the Ferry. They don’t have billions in endowments.
1
@On the Ferry
A tax one endowments was a component of the 2017 'Tax Cuts and Jobs Act'.
The tax works as follows; 1.4% on NET investment income for private non-profit colleges and universities that have more than 500 students AND an endowment that exceeds $500,000 PER student.
This is aimed directly at the small handful of schools that control more than 50% of the nation's $500 billion in endowment funds.
According to the article by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center linked below, this impacts 20 - 30 schools and will raise ~$200 million per year.
Additional information:
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-tax-treatment-college-and-university-endowments
2
@On the Ferry Small private universities are going out of business at an alarming rate.
1
The further she slips in the polls the more ridiculous her proposals get.
165
@JQGALT
Maybe you’re not used to hearing proposals, period. Warren is at least thinking, trying, floating ideas...it’s to be respected and appreciated, vote for her or not.
5
Hopefully she realizes that the monetary value of her promises will eventually reach a ceiling based on the GDP of the entire world - socialist spending beyond that limit would just be silly.
23
Senator Warren is pandering to a group who is prepared to ignore the practical reality of the gift they seek, a gift that comes at the expense of others. Those others are not the tax payers who would be paying for the loan forgiveness and the free tuition, but the societal whole which needs real tax reform, a long term infrastructure strategy, healthcare reform, retirement security, early-education programs with teacher pay increases, environmental programs that serve the cross benefit of continuing economic growth, etc., etc., etc.,
22
George W. Bush gave $1.3T to the wealthy in tax cuts, and Trump gave them $1.5T. Now here's a plan for $1.25T for the rest of us schlubs. I'm in!
Honestly, before this proposal I would not have supported Sen. Warren. But this would be a gigantic help for me and millions other like me. And I wouldn't use the "windfall" to buy a second home, a yacht, or a private jet. I would use it invest in myself (education/training for a second career?) and my home, and that investment would go directly into the local economy.
This is my kind of proposal. This would actually help people. And we can come up with the cash to give to billionaires, so let's not for one second think we can't come up with the money for this.
149
@Mike. Sure, why wouldn’t I want to absorb your expenses? After all, you couldn’t possibly be responsible for your choices.
35
How much do people think your state would have to raise taxes to pay the cost of state run colleges, universities, and community colleges if no tuition were charged? I tried to calculate it for Illinois. Looks like between $500 and $700 additional every year for every adult in the state. With more students, the costs will only go up, if the level of quality is to be maintained.
Why not eliminate interest payments, eliminate debt for grads who have developed debilitating illnesses, and for those who have served in the military or teach or nurse or agree to teach or nurse in underserved areas, increase scholarships for those who need them, and/or eliminate tuition for students whose parents make less than $50,000?
Sometimes, pie in the sky is not the answer. Reform, not revolution is.
10
Tax cuts for the wealthy or for anybody else don't "give" them anything. Tax cuts only allow people to keep more of the money that already belongs to them -- not to the government. Government may be able to force people to pay taxes they would rather not pay because somebody else voted for it -- but please don't call it a gift when the government takes less.
1
What a world that would change for my generation and the younger generations. For those of us who grew up poor but wanted aneducation and opportunities, our choices were remain poor or go into a lifetime of debt. previous generations could pay their tuition with summer jobs, I am just hoping to pay mine off by the time I retire. I'm 40 now with a good job but I will never own a home because the profession I specialize in required an MA. Just loosing my student loan debt would completely change my ability to own a home, save for retirement, and live comfortably.
87
@Adriane
You can't own a home because you live in Seattle, where the median price is a bazillion dollars. You can't pay your student loan because you incurred too much debt. If folks started school with the thought they'd have to repay the debt, they'd pick cheaper schools.
5
@August West
I am shocked and dismayed by the narcissistic, judgmental and uncharitable attitude that many comments display. It seems that there is an attitude that if they were able to go to a cheaper state school, borrow less, pay it off quickly, etc, etc . . . then everyone else should be able to do the same, and it’s their fault if they’re struggling.
I know in my own case, the only schools offering the program I needed were private universities and I need to stay in Seattle (where I too will never be able to afford to buy a home) because of my son’s chronic health issues.
Don’t presume to judge others unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
1
When they hear these ideas most Americans have one thought: hold on to your wallet!
46
...As opposed to the thought they have when they hear, “We’re going to build a Space Force!” Or, “We’re going to build a fifty foot tall concrete wall 2000 miles long!”
I’d rather spend money educating our kids for the jobs of the future.
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Many people become wealthy by starting businesses. That means hiring employees. Seems reasonable that the wealthy would benefit by paying taxes that eliminate student debt and tuition. Encouraging education and making it easier to obtain would result in a more educated, talented and skilled workforce. A great ROI.
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