Opinion: Student debt relief calls traditional college education into question

By BRIAN ADAMS

Published: 10-20-2023 5:00 PM

Brian Adams of Andover, Mass., is a UNH alumnus originally from Londonderry. He has previously worked as a financial professional with over 10 years of experience in the 529 college savings plan industry.

According to WhiteHouse.gov, the Biden-Harris Administration has cancelled more than $116 billion in student loan debt for 3.4 million Americans, including $39 billion for 804,000 borrowers so far. Recently, an additional $9 billion in debt relief has been proposed.

If you’re one of those borrowers, that’s great news. If you’re a taxpayer without student debt, maybe not. Regardless of your opinion, this debt forgiveness will likely be changing some aspects of society for years to come.

The more skeptical crowd might see it as a way of pandering to voters, but I’m willing to believe there are some positive results that could come from this in the short term.

The rationale behind this debt relief makes sense on a fundamental economic level: unburden the middle class from the payments that cause them to live paycheck-to-paycheck and let them put more of that money back into the economy with newly found disposable income. Maybe even a little left over to put into a 401(k) plan for themselves or a 529 plan for their kids, so they won’t have to endure these types of loans. But will most of the children of these borrowers even enroll in college?

The oldest of my three kids is turning 6 years old this month and, while my wife and I imagine her going to college, it’s increasingly easy to imagine that by the time she graduates high school, seeking higher education may not be the common goal that it is today.

It is widely agreed that college is unaffordable for a growing number of families and the expense of an undergraduate degree far outpaces the salaries of most employment opportunities waiting for graduates at the end of their school days. What is not clear is whether future generations will continue to simply accept this disparity and willingly saddle themselves with significant debt before they have even truly begun their adult lives.

I used to laugh when my wife would mention all kinds of possible alternative future paths for my daughter that did not involve attending a four-year school.

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“Maybe she’d like to be a hairdresser? She can go to cosmetology school. It’s much faster and less expensive,” my wife has said. “Or plumbing! Plumbers make good money, you know.”

As difficult as it is for me to imagine my Barbie-worshiping daughter fixing pipes and snaking drains, it is easier for me to see now that seeking more practical forms of education looks so, well...practical.

It is not as important how I see it as how the next generations see it, though. They’re the ones who will decide how important a college education is to them. When they hear about these massive bailouts that happened for those who took student loans in the past, will they interpret it as something that will also happen for them? More likely, I believe, they will see it as a cautionary tale that inspires them to seek alternative paths into their future.

Of course, students who wish to become doctors, lawyers, and the like have to follow a more traditional path, but it has been made clear: the debt incurred by student loans often does not “pay for itself,” as once believed. Because our country has been so adamant about the importance of a college degree, this is not a change that will happen overnight. However, college tuition has far exceeded the threshold of being cost-prohibitive and I believe that student loan forgiveness may be one more brick in the path leading students away from college.