As the next election nears, the current administration is pulling out all the stops to try and forgive student loans. On the heels of a stinging Supreme Court loss over the original student loan forgiveness plan, the Biden administration has attempted many side and backdoor routes to achieve the same ends. I am fortunate enough not to have any student loans, but I know many people who do, and they are waiting with bated breath to see if the next forgiveness package applies to them. Obviously, this is understandable, but one can’t help but wonder: What if they knew what they were signing up for in the first place?

When I tried to buy my first car, a Dodge Charger I couldn’t afford to buy nor maintain, I applied for a loan. The bank said absolutely not without a co-signer. I remember thinking it was so weird for them to tell me I couldn’t get a $20K car loan from Chrysler without my mom, but Sallie Mae approved me for three times that amount without half of the scrutiny the car dealer did. In time, I came to see that Chrysler was correct, which is hard for me to say as the auto loan industry is not known as a beacon of financial responsibility. But they did want their money back, and that made them carefully evaluate if I could actually pay it back and decline me when they thought otherwise.

The student loan industry runs on hope. Hope that you will complete your degree. Hope that the degree will catapult you into a well-paying job. Hope that you will take the earnings from that job and pay back the loan. But hope doesn’t put food on the table. It doesn’t put gas in the tank. It doesn’t pay down a $100K debt. And many of the long-held assumptions about college and the income it would lead to are now being re-evaluated.

This is not to say that people shouldn’t go to college or even that people shouldn’t take out student loans. But if we feel it is necessary to look under every legal nook and cranny for every opportunity to forgive student loans, then maybe we should re-evaluate the system that thought it was appropriate to approve such massive loans for teenagers in the first place… or at least warn them.