Too simple

Re “Canceling student debt would boost the economy” (Other Views, Dec. 27): Civil rights lawyer Remington A. Gregg strongly supported the progressive position of canceling student debt, arguing that it would help the economy by eliminating the large burden on millions of students. Unfortunately, his logic fails in several ways.

First, there is no such thing as “cancelling” $1.6 trillion in loan debt. Rather, the debt simply gets pushed from private users to public ones — taxpayers — who ultimately must pay off this debt.

Second, it would ultimately be an unfair policy. While I am sure Gregg and I would agree on many things about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, she is completely correct in her remark about fairness of a loan cancellation policy.

Such a policy would negate the many people who made difficult, if not prudent, decisions about where they or their children would go to school and how they would pay for it.

These include choosing lower-cost institutions, attending part time rather than full time, borrowing or taking funds from retirement plans, and taking large Parent PLUS loans rather than student loans.

The challenge with the latter scenario is that a debt cancellation policy would not repay parents who made these difficult decisions to borrow from retirement or take on large debts on behalf of their children.

Finally, such a policy wouldn’t remedy the issue of large-scale increases in tuition and fees, especially at public institutions, which have risen, on average, double the rate of inflation. Student debt is a real issue; but total cancellation of debt only benefits a very lucky cohort of students without consideration of the complexity of the situation.

Watson Scott Swail, president of the Educational Policy Institute, Virginia Beach