EDITORIAL: Ask every candidate for president, ‘What’s your plan to end the student loan crisis?’

It’s clear that if we want our nation to have a strong future, student debt is a problem we can no longer ignore.

SHARE EDITORIAL: Ask every candidate for president, ‘What’s your plan to end the student loan crisis?’
Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (left) listens to a plea from Pamela Hunt, a mother with student loans, as he calls for legislation to cancel all student debt.

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, listens to a plea from Pamela Hunt, a mother with student loans, as he calls for legislation to cancel all student debt.

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

As some two dozen Democrats running for president put forth plans for dealing with America’s skyrocketing student loan debt, let’s start with an understanding:

The crisis is very real.

EDITORIAL

Young adults are putting off marriage, buying a car, going to grad school, having children, and buying furniture and appliances.

They can’t pull together the down payment to buy a house or condo. They can’t afford to take a lower-paying job that may be of great value to society, such as social worker, because they have to make that big monthly loan payment.

Many are living lives on the edge of financial despair. Decades from now, they may be unable to afford retirement.

All because the cost of college, that increasingly essential ticket to a middle-class life, has soared to absurd heights.

We have heard and appreciate many objections to the notion that the federal government should now step in to ease the burden.

Nobody, the critics say, forced anybody to go to college or take out those loans. As a nation, we don’t have the money to fully or even partially forgive the loans. It would be unfair to those students who chose lower-cost schools to keep their debt manageable. And it would be a giveaway to well-paid young doctors and lawyers.

For that matter, how fair would it be to all those young people and their families who already have made huge sacrifices to pay off their loans?

As a Sun-Times reader wrote earlier this month: “What about all the parents and students who worked, sacrificed and saved to help their kids pay for college? They get nothing?”

But the crisis is too real and great, and it’s only growing worse.

Outstanding student loan debt now approaches $1.6 trillion — a 58% surge in just 10 years — and it threatens to hold back an entire generation of Americans who didn’t really have much choice in the matter. In today’s economy, a college degree — and often post-graduate education — is as necessary to a middle-class life as a high school degree was two generations ago.

One in four Americans has student loan debt. Almost a third of student loan borrowers are falling behind in their payments or defaulting. Federal interest rates range from 4.5% to 7% for the 2019-20 academic year.

The AARP says a sharply growing number of retirees are having payments deducted from their Social Security checks for loans they took out for themselves or for their children. Those debts, by law, cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

The problem is compounded by shady operators who persuaded students and their families to take out loans with high interest and penalties. Others persuaded them to take out loans for substandard educational institutions that issue worthless degrees.

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As the Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote in a recent column, the number of corporations that pay nothing in taxes has doubled under Donald Trump’s tax cut, the cost of which could pay off all current student debts.

On Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a bill that would make public colleges and trade schools tuition-free and would cancel outstanding student loan debt for everyone. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also has offered a plan to cancel debt and make college tuition free, and other Democratic candidates for president have ideas.

When the candidates meet this week for their first two presidential debates, we urge you to consider carefully who’s in denial on this issue, who’s got a pipe dream and who’s got a credible plan. Which of their proposals best balance compassion, costs and personal responsibility?

This month, Sun-Times reporters Rachel Hinton and Ashlee Rezin documented the personal stories of students caught up in the student loan debt spiral. Similar stories can be told by 44 million Americans across the nation.

Hinton and Rezin wrote, for example, that Judith Ruiz, a 2010 graduate of Columbia College, must live with her mother again because of the financial burden of $80,000 in student loans.

“When I was younger, like 10 years ago, if you told me I would still be living at home when I turned 30, I would’ve said, ‘No, you’re crazy,’ ” Ruiz said. “But a lot of my friends are the same way, and they’re all between 28 and 34. They all say they’re stressed. None of us see an end to this.”

In 2004, roughly 34% of Americans 23 to 25 years old lived with their parents, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. By 2015, that figure had risen to about 45%.

Presidential elections have a way of crystalizing the important issues facing our nation. We expect to hear a great deal, in this week’s debates and in the next 17 months, about ways to resolve the admittedly complicated problem of student loan crisis.

We, for one, will be listening hard.

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