To the Editor:

Amid the predictable criticism of student loans being partially forgiven, I decided to make a comparison.

From 1977 to 1979, when I attended SUNY Potsdam, in-state tuition was $25 per credit hour, or $375 per semester, plus fees (less than $100). Today the in-state tuition is $3,535 per semester, plus $871 in fees. Ten times as much.

I was lucky. My parents' divorce agreement covered the cost. I borrowed the money to earn my master's degrees, and I worked my way through my doctoral program as a Graduate Teaching Fellow. When I was all done, after 10 years in college, my debts were $3,600 to the government, and $4,000 to my father.

Yes, I diligently paid off those loans, more rapidly than required. Do I think it is unfair to bail out recent graduates while offering no relief to those who paid off their loans, or worked their way through, or could not afford to go to college in the first place? In principle, yes, I do.

The bailout could have included some retroactive payments. But the farther back in time you go, the cheaper the tuition was, and the less onerous the debt. The average student loan debt is now $37,667 -- 10 times what mine was.

I am OK with taxpayer money being used to lighten the burden which so many young people face today. I would have preferred a different approach, across-the-board elimination of the interest payments, with retroactive reimbursement, reminding Republicans in Congress that usury is not biblical (Exodus 22:25), but I don't get to make the policy.

It is said that the student loan forgiveness plan will cost $500 billion. By comparison, we have spent $1 trillion on the war in Afghanistan, and $2 trillion on the war in Iraq, already, not counting the costs of ongoing medical care for the veterans of those wars, many of whom suffered traumatic brain injuries or loss of limbs.

None of this is fully paid for. The federal deficit was close to $6 trillion for the last two years alone (one under Trump, one under Biden). What's another half a trillion?

If this country ever gets to the point where no one will lend us any money and we have to pay our debts, it is the younger generation, the very ones being bailed out today, and their children, who will be carrying the burden.

Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
Canton