Don’t Forgive Student Debt

This week, the Left has intensified its calls for President-elect Joe Biden to forgive student debt via executive order, perhaps as much as $50,000 per borrower. Such a move would constitute both awful policy and an abuse of the discretion that Congress has granted to the executive branch in this area.

It is often said that Americans’ trillion-and-a-half-dollar student-loan debt is a “crisis.” It is not. As Beth Akers of the Manhattan Institute has noted, the typical four-year college graduate who borrowed starts with a debt of $28,500, which he...