The student loans debate is interesting. Conservatives are …
The student loans debate is interesting. Conservatives are taking the side of the banks by accusing students for their naivety, and democrats side with the students by accusing the banks for predatory behavior on naive students.
In my point of view they are both right. The responsability here is shared, and making tax payers pay the bill is the worst solution, because it means that none of them have to pay for the consequences of their choices, and thus none of them learn and society keeps degrading instead of improving.
A better solution would be one that allows each party to have their part of the shared consequences. For example, the government could mandate that because of the predatory behavior on naive people, the loans have a reduced monthly payments of -50% but it is now 2x longer. That way the student still has to repay the loan in full, just with a lower burden, and the bank still gets its money back, but over a longer timeframe, so the loan is "worth" less to them, even if they resell it.
That way both can learn to become more responsible, and we have a chance of pushing society higher.
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The direct consequence would be that banks would stop issuing student loans for people who will not be able to repay them, diverting money from studies that are not productive to society, which means that universities would have to refocus on productive courses and/or drastically lower their prices. Young students would hear from their older siblings that you always have to repay your debts, so would keep incentives to quickly learn to be less naive.
And as a general principle of life, if you realize that the burden of a responsability is too high compared to what you expected when you sign for it, it is more responsible to negotiate for a lower burden rather than to completely drop the responsability to someone else.