Should Wall Street pay off student debt

[Dill]

(06-28-2019, 01:38 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Most amount of blame:
1. High School Teachers (for pushing the narrative that a college degree is the only path to happiness/success)
2. Students
3. The Student's Parents (for not teaching them fiscal responsibility)

When I was in HS back in the 60s, it was pretty clear to me that people with college degrees lived better and seemed to know more than people without college degrees. My fellow students could see this as well.  Teachers encouraged (didn't "push") students to do well in class and increase the life opportunities, including the chance to go to college. I always assumed it was because they wanted us to do well. And there were students who were NOT encouraged to go to college. (Mostly native American.) People who went into the sciences (including medical school) did so because they liked science, not because they thought it was a good way to earn a living. Same for people who went into the arts.

My parents wanted their children to go to college, but I needed no pushing. My home state, Montana, had limited higher ed opportunities but I took advantage of them as best I could. No shot at an "expensive" school.  My three sisters started college. One dropped out. One became an LPN, the other a registered nurse. The one who dropped out is kind of a bum. We figured it out once--the registered nurse, with two more years of college, earned about 300,000 more dollars than the LPN over 25 years, including a couple years off.

And I needed loans, eventually about $5,000.00 worth, repaid in about 4 years.  

So fast forward 5 decades or so.  HS kids are still going to college, but even when attending public schools, the loans they accumulate now are like the down payment on a new house--30-100,000 dollars. And they cannot be erased by bankruptcy.  My daughter spent $60,000.00 getting an MA in vocal performance. (Now she makes more money than her parents as global project manager at the head offices of an international corporation in Manhattan.)

I cannot understand this drastic change in costs, and its effect on opportunity, by blaming students and teachers.  Nor can I begin to imagine a policy which would correct this imbalance.