In 1965, Congress and Lyndon Johnson decided that student-loan debt was good debt and should be encouraged. Progressives stood and cheered. They knew better than the market, and everyone would be able to go to college.

But almost 60 years later, everyone doesn’t go to college (or want to). The student-loan program has been expanded way beyond what Lyndon Johnson envisioned, and still, as of 2019, only 36 percent of Americans over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher. The median American adult has no student debt because the median American adult has never borrowed any money to attend college.

The progressive beliefs that the laws of economics can be suspended by legislation, that everyone should go to college, and that the government should pay for it is what led to borrowers holding $1.7 trillion in student debt, many of them with useless degrees, while universities blow money on turning dorms into luxury apartments and hiring hundreds of new administrators (who still won’t answer phone calls or emails from students in a timely manner). By forgiving student debt, President Biden would be changing what was agreed upon as a loan into a gift, at the taxpayer’s expense, while doubling down on the economic delusions and educational superstitions that will guarantee that this broken system will stay broken for years to come.