Briefly discuss how President Obama, President Trump, and Senator Sanders proposed to deal with the student debt crisis citing specific legislation where applicable. Which plan best balances the need for an educated population with the need to pay for it fairly?

What will be an ideal response?

Students should note that Obama and Trump have attacked the symptoms rather than the core of the problem. Obama specifically passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, which raised the amounts of certain federal grants for low-income students to attend college, the law also removed private lenders from the practice of servicing—collecting payments and handling repayment options and other administrative tasks—and took over these duties itself. While it is true that under the program students whose incomes are not sufficient to pay off their entire loan balance after a period of 20–25 years will have those balances forgiven, there is a catch. The amount of principal and interest forgiven after that period is counted as federal income under tax rules, meaning that student debtors can very well be expected to owe thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in income tax payments when the balance of the debt is written off. The following year, he signed another law supporting income-based repayment. He has also used unilateral action and sped up the timetable for changes to the PAYE plan that were set to go into effect in 2014. The amended plan would allow low-income college graduates to pay no more than 10% of their annual discretionary income (down from 15%) for 20 years (down from 25), after which the balance of the student debt would be forgiven.
President Trump ended the student loan forgiveness program for borrowers who entered the public service sector, The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, reworked the PAYE income-driven repayment program, capping monthly student loan payments at 12.5% (it is currently 10%) and forgiving remaining debt after 15 years of payments (as opposed to 20 years in the current program), and proposed eliminating federal subsidized student loans.
Senator Sanders’s plan, however, attacks the problem at its source. Under his plan, public colleges and universities would be tuition-free, just as many of them were decades ago. Student loan interest rates would be cut; those with current loans would be able to refinance them at the new lower rates, and low-income students would have all of their financial needs met, including room and board as well as textbooks. Sanders proposed fully funding what he estimated to be a $75 billion program “by imposing a tax of a fraction of a percent on Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy” during the 2008 financial crisis.
Student responses to which plan is better will vary but should address the conflict between the need for an educated populace and the need to pay for tertiary education.