Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Student calls Biden student loan handout ‘slap in the face’" video.

This is being somewhat addressed by this in terms of capping the payments and increasing the amount that's protected. There's also more options being provided for having the loans discharged for public service. But yes, I totally agree. I put pretty much all my tuition and fees on credit cards because the interest was lower and they could be discharged in bankruptcy if something prevented me from working. (I was using introductory offers and balance transfers that were like 3% transfer fee and 0% interest, but the interest rates on the loans were absurd)
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There's a few reasons. Guaranteed loans, reduced government subsidies and the lack of competition. Much of the spending is on administrative positions that have noting to do with education and on building projects that make the college more competitive in attracting new students, even if it also doesn't do much for the quality of education being provided.
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The plan is imperfect, but it does address some of those affordability issues by reducing the student loan payments. If I understood correctly, it also does something about the interest payments. When I was paying for my previous degree, the student loan interest was more than what my credit cards were charging and I actually put most of the money on my credit cards because not only was the interest lower, but if something should happen, like disability, I could get that waived in bankruptcy court. Student loans are virtually impossible to get discharged in court.
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@jillellis2146 What bigger picture? We didn't fix it years ago, so we can't fix it now? It's also not fair that the pandemic happened and a bunch of people lost their jobs. I was going to be making somewhere in the order of $60k a year as an entry level teacher, and I'm making like half that working at a grocery store. The $3k in student loan foregiveness that I'm getting is still a tiny fraction of how much I lost having to switch degrees to complete on time. Even if I had gotten the full $20k, that's still less than the difference in salary for a year. It's also worth noting that the other changes should make college more affordable for a broader part of the population by doing things like capping the student loan payments and raising the amount of earnings that are protected from the loans. What's more, a bunch of the people who are getting forgiveness didn't graduate college or are doing things like counseling that don't pay well enough to ever compensate for the expense of some of these degrees. That's also not fair. For decades society has been telling kids to go to college to make up for the jobs being shipped overseas while making college more and more expensive. But, we still do need a bunch of jobs that have a need for these expensive degrees, but the actual pay doesn't make up for the expense of college. Sure, there are jobs in the trades that pay well, but there's only so many plumbers and electricians that society can support without literal make work jobs.
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Yes, the slap in the face here is the failure of the government to do anything real to deal with the cost while giving out tons of free money to the rich and powerful. This executive order does help somewhat with affordability, as do the fixes to the public service waivers, but the real fix here involves legislative action to restrict how much money colleges can spend on things that aren't education related. Particularly with administrative and facilities expenses that aren't related to education. A $100m gym is impressive to look at, but probably not worth $100m if it's not being paid for by an endowment from a philanthropist, when it's paid for via student fees, it just contributes to bloated tuition payments.
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