Fair.
I honestly think that higher education is not something that each and every person needs - that's a lie universities and colleges sell people in order to hook them on the tuition hook. It's a pursuit one can choose, but not one that is absolutely necessary to lead a fulfilling life, not in the era of the Internet where anyone can learn anything at any time. If we're talking strictly about earnings, a lot of people find more luck learning a trade or engaging in entrepreneurship instead of spending what are objectively their best years learning things that may or may not be useful to them in the future. "Getting a degree" shouldn't be a de facto default part of one's career, it's entirely elective and based on the career one has chosen to pursue. As such, I don't lump it together with basic education every citizen receives free of charge, education that's considered to be necessary to function in society. I can see the allure, but I disagree when it comes to the supposed benefits. Should the government help in those pursuits? Perhaps, but not in a way that outright funds fool's errands. It's an investment, and as long as the investment operates under fair rules for both parties, it is fair.
Let's go down the plausible paths here.
Out of all of that I'm only concerned with the value proposition. If the cost of university surpasses the probable gains from the investment then it is a stupid investment in America, regardless of the educational factor. Schools are charging too much without providing value in return - that's what needs to be addressed, in my opinion. Either tuition fees need to go down or the value of a degree needs to increase. As a side note, a value of a degree partially increases with scarcity. I have to reiterate, not everyone needs to have a degree, or even wants one in the first place - it's elective. Multifaceted problem right here, possibly going beyond the scope of the thread that is strictly dedicated to Biden, so I'll roll it back a bit to the proposal. He wants to forgive 10K's worth of debt per individual - that pays some of it, not all of it. Not necessarily a bad thing, but that incentivises schools to charge more - by precisely 10K. Give it 10 years and you'll end up where you've started. If I, as a service provider, knew that the government is going to foot X% of the bill regardless of results, I'm immediately raising prices. I might be an asshole for doing that, but that's free money sitting there on the table.
yeah
Is it greed? Your cost as a student just fell, I don't see why there shouldn't be an equal but opposite reaction on the other side. Nothing changes for me as the provider, I simply have an opportunity to maximise profit, and it would be foolish not to do that. If you see a dollar on the ground, you pick it up. That's not greed, that's an opportunity. I would criticise anyone for *not* picking it up, in fact - somebody's going to, make sure that somebody is you.
Then you'd have no problem in the current higher education system. Its still preselecting for future job opportunities at those outside activities - with the most popular preselection indicator being 'being driven' and 'searching for opportunity'. All systems are set up to lap you up, as one such individual.
) Those jobs arent particularly well paying - but then - no jobs are. edit: Oh, and we need more climate change consultants! In all kinds of fields! Ever thought about trying out for one of those jobs, as someone with a higher (but not really) education?
"Your cost as a student just fell, so I should raise it back up and create the same problem all over again because I'd rather keep a serious economic problem afloat than back down to something vaguely reasonable" is not only greed but basically what led to this in the first place, and that's why the solution I suggested is to prevent them from picking up (or should I say, re-stealing, since the dollar in question wasn't picked up off the ground as much as it was pickPOCKETED from a guy walking nearby) the dollar.
There is zero reason not to raise your price if you know your customer can afford it. Greed is a selfish desire to accumulate, business is exchanging goods or services for money. If customers have a bag of free money all of a sudden, it makes perfect sense to charge more, particularly if the free money drove demand up (which it likely did) while your supply remained the same. You now have an army of students with 10K that they didn't have before and want to spend it - it's your raison d'etre to give them the opportunity to spend it.
That is a big part of economics, limited resources, printing more money isn't going to magically make more good and services available. With more money at the customers disposal and limited resources available, customers will use that extra money to try to outbid each other and to try to obtain that limited resource over the other person.
Either way... the fact that they're almost definitely going to do exactly this (because they don't realize that them charging as much as they do is the problem and that they can't avoid it by charging MORE, or they're so actually greedy as to willfully ignore it) is why the solution is to make it so that they legally can't do so.
I don't see how draconian price and wage controls are somehow going to allow them to expand in order to meet demand without raising cost. You have an opportunity to get the point of view of someone quite familiar with methods of separating people from their money in consensual transactions, so I'll give you my take. Facing government-imposed tuition controls, I would immediately raise ancillary costs. I don't have to charge you more for the service, I can charge *a little bit more* for all the add-ons, like a room on campus or other optional fees. *Something* has to generate revenue to account for new students who suddenly appeared once they were given a promise of 10K they won't have to pay, money that they didn't have before that now enables them to pursue a degree they otherwise wouldn't pursue. It's just the way it is. From where I'm sitting, cost of higher education is, in large part, caused by handing out student loans willy-nilly. It does increase the universality, but it decreases value and increases cost. All things in balance, like most things in nature. The alternative to all that are public universities wherein you *can* set prices, but those too need to compete for educators whom you have to pay a competitive wage, otherwise they'll just teach in the private sector. If you want to handle this problem, you have to firmly grasp the valve that's spitting out free money and make sure it doesn't spit out *more* in response to debt forgiveness. Without increased loans you don't have an increased amount of money to spend. The institution will always charge as much as it can feasibly charge, you have to control that number.
Can't there be some balance, though?
I've added a possible remedy in an edit. If you ensure that the bank can't loan out 10K more based on the 10K forgiveness, you limit the disposable income of the student and prevent an overcharge based on surplus capital. You're still forgiving 10K, but the student has the same amount in-hand that's disposable, anything beyond that is their personal money which they will naturally be less keen on spending.
...Huh, I hadn't thought of that.
The problem would need a multi-pronged approach, but it logically makes sense to me. A business can only charge you what you're willing to spend - the cap they face is however much money you have versus how much you want what they offer. If you make loans more universal while reducing their dollar size, universities would have to adjust pricing because they want that money, and they want to fill seats in. There are two possible outcomes - the prices go down and they remain packed *or* the prices go up and they become *more* elitist by only catering to the extremely wealthy. The former is easier because you have more students with more bags, the latter is harder because you have fewer extremely wealthy individuals who can pay out of pocket, but you can cut other costs. No way to tell how it'd go, it depends on the administrators and how committed they are to their mission of educating the public. There are ethical administrators, there are unethical administrators.
Maybe avoid the "elitism route" by also implementing a proportional cap on fees?
