Oh no, it turns out Biden isn't using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans after all. I'll have to pay them back myself, oh the humanity! Responsibility for my own actions? Gross. I perish the thought.
Slapping a bunch of 18 year olds with huge debt because college is ludicrously expensive is rather gross. I would rather our taxes go to making us better than other places. But I think a more important goal is to make college/universities not so stupidly expensive and then implement debt programs.
Cars and houses are also ludicrously expensive, yet I don't see anyone rushing to pay off mortgages or car loans. I don't see why student loans are so special (aside from being held by such a small part of the US population).
I'd argue that the government's attempts to "fix" college costs with low interest student loans are actually what drove the costs so ludicrously high in the first place. The ability of students to take out massive loans when they have little concept of the value of money is causing universities to get away with overspending. It's much the same reason that the stimulus money given to individuals and businesses drove inflation sky-high. If you give out what amounts to free money to 18 year olds, then businesses will exist to take it.
Paradoxically, I believe that if student loans were either more expensive or more difficult to acquire, you'd see college costs coming down. The only other way is having the government foot the entire bill, but then we're just putting the burden of over-paying universities on the taxpayer instead of students.
For example: it's not a coincidence that for-profit universities have their tuition set precisely to the maximum pay-out of the GI bill.