I just read an article about people who paid thousands for a Vacation Plan. (I won’t say which one. I might get sued.) Basically, they said, they had been sold a bill of goods. When they went to use it, they found they couldn’t collect on what they thought they’d bought, but they are still committed to the payments they signed for, using up the money they could have used for future vacations.
I’m writing this because it reminded me of the number of people who took out major loans because they were sold a bill of goods that exaggerated the advantages of having a piece of paper that said they had a college degree. It’s like mortgaging one’s future to buy a house unseen and finding it’s a dilapidated fixer-upper. As a former professor, I was dismayed when I saw the sales pitch because I know the difference between correlation and causation. I know it’s true that people with college degrees traditionally have better incomes, even better wealth. But I also know there are many factors involved, including the prestige of the school, the people of power one meets, the problem solving skills one develops, what career skills one actually learns, even what one’s economic position was to begin with. I knew that too many people were going to get stuck paying off loans without the incomes they had counted on receiving.
At one point I was supervising a PhD who was seeking licensing. One thing she was doing for extra money was teaching a psychology course for one of those degree programs advertised on TV. We were both horrified by the syllabus she had to work with – from Pavlov through Freud and Carl Jung, and everything in between, measured by answers to multiple choice questions, all in one semester! I don’t know the data for success of the students who paid for a program like that, but I’m darn sure they didn’t end up making the thousands of a graduate from Yale or Princeton. I hesitate to add, not all such programs are as bad as that one, but it is an example of paying for a bill of goods.
And now there are folks who are stuck with paying for the ramshackle, close to worthless house, limiting their options to start a family, buy a home, even spend money on better educational opportunities. Consider moves to forgive that loan, like the mortgage on an unlivable house. I hear too many people saying things like, “They took out the loan; they should pay it back. That’s what I did when I took out a mortgage. I never asked to have the loan forgiven.” Or something of that self-righteous ilk. But what would you have done if you found you’d been sold a bill of goods? That the house you hadn’t seen before you paid for it was a disastrous fixer-upper? That the promise of possessing a piece of paper called a college degree would put you in league with the top dollar earners and it doesn’t work out that way, no matter how hard you try?
At any rate, I hope it’s obvious that I’m arguing for loan forgiveness when someone has been sold a bill of goods. It couldn’t hurt the economy to have that money freed up for personal, family, and economic growth.
OK. Please have at it in the comments!
monagustafsonaffinito 
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