EDITORIAL: Student loans

In her effort to corral the millennial vote with other people’s money, Hillary Clinton offers not only “free” college but also to allow young adults to stiff taxpayers on their student loan debt.

What could go wrong?

Now, two new books on the issue argue that the facts don’t warrant any significant federal program to forgive student loan obligations.

We hear plenty of horror stories these days about students who run up loans in the six figures yet can barely find work upon graduation. But in her book “Student Debt,” Sandy Baum points out that such examples are not typical. Only about 7 percent of borrowers owe more than $75,000, she reports, while two-thirds of student loan recipients owe less than $25,000.

That latter figure —while not insignificant to a young man or woman just entering the work-force — is as financially manageable as many car loans.

Meanwhile, in “Game of Loans,” Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos of the left-leaning Brookings Institute argue that mass forgiveness of student loans would amount to a large subsidy to top earners, cost taxpayers billions and perhaps even lead to higher tuition.

Both books make the case, as David Wessel writes in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, that “there is no student loan crisis — if by ‘crisis’ one means that a huge number of Americans are buried under piles of debt for college educations that aren’t paying off.”

In the aggregate, U.S. student loan debt now approaches $1.4 trillion. But let’s hope these books both help blunt efforts by Mrs. Clinton and her ilk to — at taxpayer expense — wipe away the obligations of those who voluntarily took on these liabilities.