There's been a lot of talk about college loan forgiveness lately at the federal level. Personally, I have issues with that. When I went to college, I worked to earn money. In fact, the summers that I held down two full time jobs helped crystalize the notion that I didn't want to do that the rest of my life. I also saved. Except for comics (and even then I usually had coupons to a number of stores), I bought pretty much everything secondhand. The first apartment that I had during my last years was a pit (which makes the occasional nostalgic memory kinda weird). Even then, I was so obviously broke in the last year that my father kept asking me if I needed money. The reason that I have issues with loan forgiveness is because a lot of the people who are griping/protesting are the same ones who have to have their morning Starbucks as well as the latest version of the Iphone. They're the ones on Gamefaqs and the Escapist who take this weird pride in the notion of never buying used games. These sort of spending habits often kill any sympathy that I have.

But I realize that things are different from when I went to college. The internet has killed a lot of jobs (When's the last time anyone got a summer job at a music store? How about Blockbuster?), college is more expensive, etc. So I'm not wholly heartless to the situation. I think that any loan forgiveness program should have two key points which focus a little less on how much a person has and more on what they're going to do.

The first is something that borrows inspiration from the U.S. between World Wars and modern-day countries such as Germany. Countries like Germany have analyzed what their country needs and offer their loans accordingly. We should do the same. Under this system, nurses and engineers, both jobs that labor studies keep saying that we have shortage of, would be far more eligible for partial to full loan forgiveness. Philosophy majors, lawyers, and game designers would not because of either having a surplus or having no real overall value to the country as a whole.

For those who wish to attack that last statement, I'm not looking down on those jobs so much as I'm asking "What does our country need?". Any federal loan forgiveness should be based on how vital the job is to our country. Game designer is a great job and, if you can get it, more power to you. But it's not something that our country needs on the whole and there's a large surplus of people who grew up on games that are trying to design games for a living.

The second is that any loan forgiveness should cut off at the Bachelor's Degree. The fact of the matter is that a lot of students are doing grad school as a way of hiding from the real world for a few more years. While I understand the impulse, I don't have a problem with weeding those people out. The ones that are truly serious about grad school as a way to enhance their career will find a way to fund it (especially if they're having their first four years funded for free). This may mean that many will have to go out in the world for a few years but I don't see that as a bad thing. Working on the lower rung of your chosen profession helps a person focus on what they want to do with their career rather than just getting a catch-all MBA. It also gives people an idea of whether this is really the career path that they want to take. Finally, it gives them a taste of life after college which is usually the sobering experience people need before they decide on a Masters. Having a year or two away from the keggers often forces a lot of people to do the "growing up" that they really should do before going on to graduate school.