President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan has been controversial since before it was officially announced. In 2020, Biden ran on a platform promising significantly more than the $10,000 of forgiveness that was announced on Aug. 24, initially promising to forgive all student loan debt for those students whose income was under $125,000 per year. This was supported by up to 63% of Americans, according to a Pew Research poll conducted in 2021.

According to the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, 65% of all jobs required at least some post-secondary education in 2020. In 1973, only 28% of jobs required post-secondary education. A college degree in the present day is roughly equivalent to a high school degree in 1973, in terms of job opportunities. The modern expectation of a college degree for even basic jobs effectively requires young adults entering the workforce to go into debt for upwards of a decade, on average, before being able to get a professional white-collar job and make significant money. This exacerbates pre-existing issues with the economy, resulting in a growing segment of the population struggling to meet the basic cost of living, and encourages poor financial management by teaching young adults that going into heavy debt is normal and necessary. One counterargument to this is that some areas of work, such as the trades, are almost always available and do not require a college degree, but that does not justify an effectively wealth-gated white collar workforce. America claims to be a land of equal opportunity, and if we are to provide that, 65% of jobs can’t be pay-to-play. 

Clearly, in order to prevent the entire system from becoming blatantly biased towards those from wealthy families, we as a society must either lower the requirements for a large range of jobs, or include college as basic education under the public school system. Forcing businesses to change their hiring requirements is blatant government overreach and nearly impossible in a practical sense. A high school education has always been provided free of charge in the form of the public school system, and folding public college in with public high school does not significantly expand the power of the federal government, while helping those people who care to improve their station in life, even if they come from nothing. President Biden’s loan forgiveness program gives an opportunity for some of those who are less well-off to achieve the American dream that we speak of so often at Hillsdale, through hard work and study, rather than handicapping them right at the beginning of their professional careers. This program is a trial step toward including college as optional free education in America, and as such, it should be supported.