Thanks for the article. I have survived student loans but not to the magnitude of those purveyed in the US these days. I too was a parent during my university days.
Student loans are like shackles or perhaps the hobbles on a horse. The horse may be fit, healthy but it is impossible for it to trot let alone gallop, it is destined to shuffle.
The for profit education system/business is the problem not the naive hope-filled student. Look at Scandinavia, some of their programs are amazing.
The greed and avarice of the corporate interpretation of the 'American Dream' is the predator of captialism and the nightmare of the unsuspecting.
Investing in your citizens makes your country wealthy, not just a few select individuals or corporations.
How could the student loan quagmire ever be solved? A blatant 'clemency' would be inappropriate and inconceivablke for both the holder and issuer of the loans.
If the loan was designed to enhnace the receiver could they not be forgiven on a percentage basis after half the specified term has been honored? Providing the enrollment was completed and the individual has worked in an associated field for a minimum of five years?
If you studied history and are working as an assistant curator in a local museum, struggling under student debt and life but have managed to not default more than twice could you then be allowed to refinance under a government bonded scheme. Forgive half the debt, lower the interest and shorten the payment term?
Freeing up cash within the pockets of the many will rejuvenate a struggling economy.
I believe Sanders wanted to construct a redemption program for students and that may have been the death knell in his campaign financing.
Scandinavia, where I have lived, has extremely high taxes, but these social leaning states look after their citizens. The support systems, education, infrastructure, medical are staggering in their humanity and magnanimity. Not without fault just impressive.
They do not toss their citizens on the pyre of captialist inspired morality and yet they are functioning democracies.
I admire your creativity in trying to make ends meet. I hope 2021 brings you and yours a dawn of hope and success.