Opinion: Student loan cancellation doesn't solve high cost of college

President Biden’s decision to cancel $10,000 to $20,000 in federal student loans for individuals making less than $125,000 is the latest illustration of the president’s inability to offer sustainable solutions to the issues impacting Americans.  That is not to say student debt is not an issue, it is. But it is merely a symptom of a much larger problem: the high cost of college.

As the first one in my family to attend college, and with loans I paid back, I understand firsthand how a good education and hard work can bring opportunity.

This month, millions of college students are returning to campuses across the country. Many of those students will take on debt to be there.  What solution is being pursued to benefit these debt-saddled college students? Why haven’t Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the federal government to stop giving loans to people that can never be paid back? Do these leaders really think that a college degree must cost $60,000 to $70,000 a year? Better yet, what relationship is there between the degrees and the jobs available to graduates with those degrees? Will the graduates be able to reasonably service that much debt? This last point is the key toward any long-term solution, not just "forgiving" unmanageable debt.

This administration’s debt cancellation scheme is merely an extension of an ill-conceived and, frankly, selfish attempt to foist the costs of higher education onto taxpayers who have nothing to do with the debt. In fact, most of the benefits of this program will go to higher-income people who can most afford to pay their loans back.

In Ohio, we have shown that you don’t have to choose between forgoing higher education and a lifetime saddled with student loans. There’s another way − one where college becomes more affordable because the higher education institutions are held responsible for the price they charge and the value they give students for an education.

When I was president of the Ohio Senate, I challenged Ohio’s public colleges and universities to reduce the cost of a degree by 5%. By encouraging cooperation and demanding results, we exceeded expectations and saw the average cost of a college degree at was reduced by almost 12%. Many colleges developed innovative ways to cut costs − tuition freezes, adopting open-source textbooks, and tuition rebates are just a few of the ideas Ohio’s schools adopted to serve students at an affordable price.

Just last week, my office released an audit showing that College Credit Plus, an Ohio program that allows students to take college credits while still in high school, has saved Ohio families more than $1 billion. Yet, this program remains underutilized and Ohio students suffer as a result. And who are the students who miss out the most? We found that it is frequently minority students from urban school districts who are often the first members of their families to attended college. You can review the results at OhioAuditor.gov.

Americans must reject public leaders who tell us the only solution to skyrocketing student loan debt is for the federal government to forgive those loans. President Biden’s cancellation of student loans is nothing more than a crass political attempt at saving a floundering presidency by offering an expensive bribe, bought and paid for by you − taxpayers of the United States. With this decision, he may have attempted to save his administration, but he has done nothing to save the American people.

Keith Faber is state auditor of Ohio.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Student loan cancellation doesn't solve high cost of college