George Leef shares with Forbes readers his concerns about a federal program approved in 2007 to forgive student loan debts for graduates who take jobs in “public service.”
Under PSLF, students who find jobs that are officially regarded as doing “public service” can get their college debts erased after 10 years of such work. College grads who don’t land such employment can sign up for another federal program that minimizes their monthly payments, but doesn’t wipe out their remaining debts until they’ve been paying the government back for at least 20 years.
Does this make any sense? After all, public employment often pays better than jobs calling for the same skill levels in the private sector, as Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine have demonstrated. Also, job security is much stronger. The notion that it’s necessary to induce people to go into “public service” with the promise of student debt relief is badly mistaken—but it will certainly be popular with those who get to escape some of their debt.
Furthermore, how can we say that some jobs involve “public service” while others don’t? That was the question bothering New America policy analyst Alexander Holt in a recent piece he wrote for CNN.
What prompted Holt to write was a statement made by Ohio Governor John Kasich during one of the Republican candidate debates: “I think we can seriously look at an idea of where you can do legitimate public service and begin to pay off some of that debt through the public service that you do.”
But exactly what counts as “legitimate public service”? Holt argues that the current policy is flawed because it rewards many high-income individuals (such as lawyers working for the government) while it excludes other people who work at least as hard and clearly serve the public.
