TexasCHLforum.com

Trump moves to cancel student loan debt for disabled veterans

The Department of Education announced Monday that it will partner with the Department of Veteran Affairs to identify disabled student loan borrowers who are eligible for debt forgiveness. Such borrowers will be notified of their potential eligibility in the mail and will also receive a Total and Permanent Disability Discharge application, the avenue though which borrowers with severe physical impairments are approved to erase their debt.

Such outreach is needed: Many disabled veterans are currently unaware that they can be eligible for student loan debt forgiveness, said Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The Student Loan program is worse than welfare for universities, it's like government loan-sharking for universities. In general students bear some responsibility for signing up for these loans, but I am OK with loan forgiveness for seriously disabled vets. Unfortunately the next democrat administration will probably extend this to all kinds of social justice "warriors."

There are already programs in place to forgive student loan debt in exchange for service. Notably the Teach for America program where college grads agree to teach at underprivileged inner city schools and get some loan forgiveness.

Then you have the GI Bill / Army College Fund (which I took advantage of) that offsets the need to take loans in the first place.

Personally, I would be in favor of rolling all of these into one broad national service program that provides loan repayment / tuition assistance in exchange for public service of some type. This could be military or civilian. Pay a stipend wage and the education component would make up the rest of your pay.

The "new" part of the effort I mentioned above is that the Departments of Ed and VA are going to proactively look for disabled veterans who qualify. The forgiveness part was already established in law, but a disabled veteran had to know about it and then apply.