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Should an 18 year old be responsible for signing for a student loan?

Should an 18 year old be responsible for signing for a student loan?

Elizabeth Warren just announced her campaign promise to forgive student loans to the tune of over $400 Billion. She doesn’t think people signing up for this kind of debt should have to pay it. This is very motherly of her, but it begs the question.  Is an 18 year old, old enough to commit to signing a loan for $100K for college?

This is a very good question. In America, we consider someone an adult when they reach the age of 18. Some say this is too young to make life-changing decisions. Others say that we should LOWER the age of adulthood to 16 years for the purpose of voting in a national election.

But at 18 years, one makes some very weighty decisions.

At 18, you can buy cigarettes, which, for a certain percentage of folks becomes a lifetime addiction.  Turns out they are old enough to become a smoker, which on average  costs over $1 million over a person’s lifetime, along with a great amount of suffering in their final years.

They are old enough to enlist in the military. In addition to the risk of going into combat, this is a major life changing experience.

They are old enough to vote, which, in addition to having a share in controlling the most powerful country in the world, it means they will buy into either Democrat or Republican philosophies. This is a major fork in the journey of life that can have far reaching consequences.

They are old enough to get married and/or have a child (which many 18 years olds still do…). The average cost of raising a child is over $230,000.  That’s a heck of a commitment!

And, of course, they are old enough to choose a college major, be it engineering, which has great earning potential, or “gender studies” which has almost none.  This is a decision that really does determine the course of one’s life; it determines where your intellect, 8 hours a day, for the next 40 years, will be focused. If you make a bad decision, then you will either be miserable for a long time, or you will be wasting your time and money at an expensive university.

And of course, back to the original question, should they be accountable when they sign a large student loan to get to the next phase of their life? How does an 18 year old, with limited life experience have the where-with-all to make these life decisions?

It doesn’t matter, they HAVE TO MAKE THEM.

Unless you want to raise the age of adulthood to 30 years old and let their parent make their decisions for them, 18 years olds have no choice but to make decisions that determine permanent directions in their lives.

This is an exciting, exhilarating, frightening time in the life of an 18 year old. With the decline of the family in America, the support of wise and experienced parents is often absent. The lack of emphasis on responsibility and work ethic in our education system often leaves a young adult woefully unprepared.

But in my view, to forgive student debt, whether it was wise or unwise at the time, is to deny the adulthood of the 18 year old. If this is the age where one becomes responsible, this is both a right and a privilege.  The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, also includes the right to fail, the right to make mistakes and the right to learn and grow from those failures. Without those failures, there is no success!

Part of the socialist doctrine is to take the responsibility of earning a living away from the people. Is Elizabeth Warren right? Do we assume that our kids are too stupid to take care of themselves like we adults do?

Author’s P.S.: I agree that the student loan situation is a problem. It has been “socialized” separating the customer from the price and quality of the product, which means that prices will continue to skyrocket (i.e. tuition will keep going up), because payment is guaranteed.  Forgiving the loans is not the answer.

 

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16 Comments

  1. NavVet

    Senator Warren has the brain of an acorn that has been run over by a tank, the common sense of rock and the smarts of a grain of sand. She wants these loans forgiven then let her pay for the debt, not the tax payer. 18 year olds should not have their signature accepted for any loan of more that $100.00 and that amount only if cosigned by someone over 21 with a paying job.

    • Cryswat

      Sounds good to me

    • David Barron

      Is’t pretty easy for Senator Warren to offer student forgiveness when she comes from a background of cheating on applications and God only knows what else to get where she is today. She has no morals or scruples but that describes almost of her friends and colleges in Congress as well.

  2. Fire21

    Forgiving the loan lifts the burden from the student but places it on us, the taxpayers. I mean, someone has to pay that $800 billion…it’s not going to just materialize out of nothingness. If the schools and loan companies don’t get what’s due them, they will go under, and our education system will be even worse off! It’s insanity!

    • Cryswat

      Amen. Who does she think is going to pay for all this “free education”

      Most of us have trouble paying for our groceries and certainly can’t afford to pay for the gold plated educations the bleeding liberals want to hand out

  3. william

    High School Counselors are supposed to help direct these 18 year olds when they are about to graduate! If these kids are going into college for a useless degree the high school counselors are supposed to discourage such decisions. Are they not doing there jobs? I know for a fact that high school does not prepare their students for life! They don’t even teach kids how to create a budget, balance their check books, save or invest for the future, or even plan for the future!!!

    • Achmad

      Any comment that I can think of has basically been covered by the other commentators. I will reply to William because, he gives good causation that leads to the student loan dilemma for so many. I have met many teachers and readily see why so many people regard them, collectively as, ‘those who can’t’. Unfortunately, many of ‘those who can’t’ supplant themselves as role models for these young, gullible children. I am not implying that all teachers fit into this category as I have also met a few excellent, outstanding teachers in my lifetime. However, this group of a few are only able to impact so very few children as their ranks are so thin. Our education system is the true culprit in the process of leading our nation down the drain. Financial bankruptcy of a society is the most convenient means to fast track establishment of a communist society. As I see it, and as Professors Cloward and Piven, of Columbia University preached it, bankruptcy of a society is the best means to control a society. Student loan debt is really a diabolical plan to lead to the next phase of Americas destruction. I think the best means to relieve student debt is to have these impoverished students/graduates work it off like they have already essentially agreed to do. Certainly their must be some employment opportunities for professors in the gender studies area of higher education.

    • DAV

      These places of ‘education’ are now brainwashing, indoctrination centers. BUT, my question is not: Where are these ‘teachers’ coming from but, WHO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO HIRE THESE WACKO ‘TEACHERS’?????? Their hiring standards should be investigated! The dumbing-down of Americans is encouraged. A teenager CANNOT handle a debt of thousands and thousands of dollars. They are probably being told that they won’t have to pay it back, that it will be ‘forgiven’.

      • Achmad

        Hi DAV. The teachers that encourage students to bankrupt themselves today, are essentially the useful idiots that were groomed by their teachers who were groomed by the socialist teachers from the 50’s and 60’s. I will paraphrase a quote from, the young at the time ,Fidel Castro…’America will fall, we will take it through the schools.’ The problem America faces today is communism. When I was a child, the commonality amongst American families of all races and religions was its composition of a working father, a housewife and the children. Things were good. Women never bitched like they do today. Feminism led women to the workplace, disrupting families as they had been for eons. The people that hire these teachers are the useful idiot teachers from the previous generation who are now the school administrators and Teacher Union leaders. I wonder where teachers learn their life lessons from as their life cycle is: birth; school; death. The students of today, I’m certain, are not told that they don’t have to pay back their loans. Certainly today’s students are told that the blossoming of true socialism in the very near future will provide them to easily afford pay back of their loans.

  4. ray galle

    They can vote, which makes decisions for the rest of us they might as
    well learn how to be in charge of there feature finances

  5. Sterling Kelley

    The problem is not whether to do what you promised to do,(I know, politicians are not prone to consider that) but rather, are they getting what they paid for? The schools have become a large excessive bureaucracy, the teachers not held responsible for the quality and character of their teaching, because the Unions have stripped most of our work force of any work ethic, and replaced it with socialist programs. The kids are often being ripped off.

  6. JOHN DUMAS

    You can stop smoking, resign from the military, get a divorce. But, student debt is forever inescapable? Your own argument proves you are wrong. I can not get a business loan without a solid “approved” business plan. But some kid who has only spent her parent’s money can blow a hundred grand on an art degree? No one is approving these things other than the schools who collect. It is harder to get insurance policies!

    • Joe Gilbertson

      Smoking is an addiction, most can’t stop. Student debt can be paid off more easily than an addict can stop smoking.

    • Becky Barrow

      You cannot ‘resign’ from the military. You can be honorably or dishonorably discharged or die trying. Maybe if we stopped raising entitled, elitist brats with no sense of responsibility, this wouldn’t be an issue. I worked 3 jobs, one full time and two part time, while taking a full course load at night college and I took out one, $1500, student loan the entire time. I got my degree in Accounting and managed to pay off my student loan before I was 23. What I did not do was party, get drunk, miss class or flunk out. Maybe more people ought to give that a try.

      • David Barron

        You have my full support. Anyone that can assume or create their own debt should be held responsible especially if they say they are responsible enough to vote.

  7. David Barron

    If their old enough to vote then they are old enough to be held responsible for their actions including signing for a student loan. Raise the voting age back to 21 and I would say no.

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