Is it fair to forgive college loan debt?

My wife worked her butt off cleaning rooms at the Jersey Shore. She bused tables at MCV while was a student there and had a job cleaning animal cages there. She graduated with a National Defense loan which we paid off in three years. Remarkable since she was earning Puerto Rican wages which were the US minimum wage at the time and I was an E3 with one year in the Navy. She lived in the dorm the whole time and ate in the cafeteria. She didn't own a care and took the bus everywhere.
It isn't just high college tuition creating the debt these people are carrying. It's borrowing money for more than school expenses. They own cars, go on ski trips and other travel like Cancun. They party hardy.
But most .of all they take courses in fields that don't pay enough. I read of one chump with $260,000 debt getting a BA and an Masters in Fines Arts and couldn't find a job paying more than $30,000 a year. My wie has a niece who lived five miles from a teachers college but insisted on going out of state to college charging four times more for out of state students.Most o these People don't seem to be able to compute interest. Think? A four year or more loan without collateral and not one payment due until after graduation. And no, we weren't making big money.

And they are so mis- and uninformed. They think the banks are screwing them when it's the US Government which took over the school loan business when they passed the Obamacare bill. Yeah, the bill no one read had a section on that.
My wife and I started a savings account when my son was born. We spent $125,000 for five years of school at NC State could he could get two civil engineering degrees. When he graduated he got a $15,000 CD as a gift and I signed over the car he'd driven for 7 years for a trade in. He makes more money than my wife and I ever did. And guess what? His wife and he have a savings plan for when his two children are ready for college.
How about more parents taking responsibility for the children they bring into the world instead of passing off the debt to the taxpayers?

Yes higher education is expensive. Too expensive in my humble estimation, because there is a huge bureaucracy ov overpaid, under worked professors and administrators.
That having been said, when someone signs a contract guaranteeing that they will fulfill the requirements, isn't that like enlisting? If an enlistee decided to just stop paying what was required of them and went home, wouldn't that be AWOL and subject to punishment?
It cost me plenty to get a higher education; and I took advantage of every grant that I could. I would never have dreamed of not paying back my student loans, and even paid them back early. Responsibility in engaging in debt, including understanding the fine print, is something that should be expected of any adult who can legally engage in accumulating student debt.
Just as there is a cost for freedom, there is a cost for higher education. Abdicating responsibility in either results in someone else being disproportionately burdened.

You can start by holding colleges and universities accountable for how the money is spent. Private colleges can pretty much do anything they want (except where government dollars are involved), but put public colleges need to account for how their governments money gets spent.

Lower interest rates. Record low mortgage rates and some kids are paying 7-8% and getting screwed.

CW2 Michael Bodnar - you are correct and it is being abused by the schools and some students, the system needs to be fixed, forgiving loans will not fix the problem only buy votes.

I paid for My own education except for the help I got from the VA but i earned that. My Brother and Sister both paid for their own education also themselves and both worked to earn the money to do so. Not a one of the three of us took a dime from our parents to pay for own own education and none of us owed anyone any money after We graduated not had any of us ever taken a loan. The system now involves parents to pay and I did help for two of My kids both Who also had worked and still had to take out loans. The cost as charged by the colleges has got out of control.

CW2 Michael Bodnar - So only the wealthy and gifted get educations? That's how it was before.

LCpl Sidney Green - Hey warrior, not sure how you came to that conclusion based on what I posted. Everyone gets a crack at using those benefits but the federal gov has no business managing a program of any kind since they cannot manage their way out of a paper bag.