Who should pay for college?
Should it be the individual receiving the education (either at present, or in the future in the form of loans), or other people? Should people who don't go to college be forced to pay for education of those who do?
Should we further tell students not to care what price colleges charge them? If we forgive debt, we're telling students to go to a school regardless of the costs, and telling schools to charge whatever they want.
We're then forcing non-college-educated plumbers to pay (through the tax system) for the engineers college education.
This seems like a terrible idea.
I also see a huge problem with lumping all education together. There are some colleges, degrees and people where college can be considered a wise investment. That is, the expected value of the degree is more than the cost. There are other times when it appears college is a consumption expense, like just buying a four year vacation or a luxury car.
When someone graduates college with the same productive capacity they had before college, but now with debt, that's sad to me. Working at $10 an hour in a coffee shop isn't that bad. Working at $10 an hour with $50k in debt is very bad. Many times people were just 18 year olds who were handed a blank check (loan) for college, and didn't know better. But there was no checks or balances on this ignorant 18 year old, as the lenders dont care that the student was not increasing their productive capacity.
What we need is a system with no lender guarantees, with potential for percent of income repayment (earning equity), and have it be unsecured like other forms of debt. This will make lenders function properly, and only give loans to those who it believes are improving their human potential at college- and for whom college isn't the equivalent as buying a $100k luxury car.