Thread by @blakezeff

The idea that people with grad degrees shouldn't get student debt relief bc "they can make a lot of $" is over-generalized & misconceived. I’m making a documentary on student debt. There are true disaster cases & national problems bc of grad school debt. Here’s a fuller picture:

Take Vivian. Her parents came from P.R. & Colombia, and didn't finish high school, driving taxis & cleaning homes to get by. V worked like crazy to finish top in class, get into top undergrad & med school. Her lifelong dream: serve her community as a doctor at a low-cost clinic.

V embodies the "American Dream," but while she got college scholarships, she ended med school 200k in debt. At 31, she doubts she'll ever afford to buy a house or car, & doesn't know if she'll ever start a family. Meanwhile, her relatives didn't go to school & are way better off.

Due to debt, V can't afford to work at a low-cost clinic. She's at a big hospital instead, depriving her needy community of her services & giving up her dream. As she's on the front lines helping America fight COVID, she pays the gov’t a fortune -- for those very medical skills.

And thanks to predatory interest, she's still mired in debt. She's not alone: despite seeing medicine as "a ticket out of the working-class," young docs are increasingly talking about moving back home & sneaking expired patient sandwiches for lunch. 👇 nytimes.com/2018/08/20/opi…

If you're unmoved by V's personal burden, consider the cost to society (should that clinic lose a top-trained MD during COVID, just bc of $ concerns?). Thanks to debt, docs are also avoiding lower-paying specialties like pediatrics, just as we need more👇 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

There are many other stories: Scott the teacher, whose debt from his Masters got so high (due to compounding interest & a teacher's salary), he contemplated suicide. Or the VA psychologist who has to stop, because her job helping veterans can't put a dent in her 200k debt.

One of the least discussed but most impacted occupations for student debt? Veterinarians. A CDC study found their suicide rates are much higher than the general population, with student debt (which tends to range from 100k-200k in this field) a key factor. 10news.com/news/local-new…

You may think: That’s unfortunate, but why don’t they eliminate their debt through bankruptcy? Well, thanks to one line in the bipartisan 1998 Higher Ed Act (& the 2005 bankruptcy bill), student debt is effectively the only debt in America you can’t get rid of through bankruptcy.

That’s probably to stop annoying rich lawyers & doctors from gaming the system, right? Otherwise, they could just get their degree & eliminate the debt. This was a big talking point until the Government Accountability Office looked into it & shot it down👇 repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewconten…

Some might say: "Yes, the system is bad -- but folks should know better before taking loans." OK, that might point to the need for better education around these risks.

But even if they did know, do we really want people to stop being vets, teachers, docs, VA psychologists?

Others say the easy answer is to “fix” the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, designed to give relief to those who enter certain jobs. Well, as of last year, over 90,000 people applied, and *845* were approved. Over 99% denied. Is that fixable? forbes.com/sites/wesleywh…

It gets worse. Many folks are led by their servicers to believe they're actually in the program, but aren’t & end up paying tens of thousands that don’t “count” (toward interest *or* principal). This teacher paid $70K only to be told it was all for naught: nytimes.com/2017/10/27/you…

You may say OK, let’s help *these* folks but not everyone. Let the gov’t decide who does & doesn’t deserve it. But as the program above shows, implementation can be very difficult. And “means testing” has its own problems. (Should Medicare & Social Security be run this way, too?)

I’m not pushing a specific solution here (that’s a separate thread I’ll do another time). But I wanted to add context to the debate:

Each case is different & the current system brings a real cost to society.