America is waking up to a bitter truth: the student loan system has been rigged for decades, and conservative voices like Megyn Kelly and private-sector critics have been calling it out for good reason. On her show she’s rightly questioned why hardworking taxpayers should be forced to bail out generations of students and failing institutions, while investors and administrators walk away untouched. Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya has also publicly excoriated colleges for loading young Americans with six-figure debt for degrees that often don’t pay, a frankness we should encourage, not silence.

Here’s the hard, unglamorous difference the media won’t admit: student loans are overwhelmingly federal, unsecured, and largely non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, whereas mortgages are secured by real property and come with clear collateral and foreclosure remedies. That legal distinction matters — student debt sticks to a person for life in ways home loans do not, and that structural reality explains why wholesale write-offs are not the same thing as mortgage relief. Americans deserve clarity on this point before anyone waves a bailout flag.

The real criminality isn’t the loans themselves so much as the predatory ecosystem that produced them: thousands of borrower-defense claims, collapsing for-profit colleges, and institutions that misled students about outcomes and job prospects. Too many institutions treated enrollment as a revenue stream rather than an educational mission, and when those schools crashed, taxpayers and young graduates were left holding the bag. If we’re angry about debt, direct that anger at the scam artists and administrators who sold worthless promises, not at the neighbors who paid their bills.

Conservatives should be uncompromising here: no more blanket forgiveness that rewards failure and punishes prudence. If relief is on the table, it must be paired with accountability — force colleges to share the financial consequences of fraud, reinstate strict oversight of program outcomes, and incentivize vocational training that actually leads to jobs. Voices like Chamath’s pushing for a cultural shift toward trades over pay-for-diploma degrees are right on the money; we should lift up plumbers and electricians who build real prosperity rather than subsidize diploma mills.

Don’t fall for the left’s framing that student debt forgiveness is some noble redistribution; it’s a policy that shifts private risk onto public shoulders and rewards political insiders while the middle class pays the bill. Recent rounds of executive cancellations and tweaks to repayment regimes have real fiscal consequences, and responsible conservatives must demand transparency about who benefits and who ultimately pays. This is not compassion — it’s a transfer that corrodes work ethics and penalizes Americans who saved, sacrificed, and did the right thing.

The solution is simple and patriotic: stop rewarding fraud, restore market discipline, and expand real pathways to upward mobility that do not require crushing debt. Congress should rewrite the rules so bad actors in higher education face real penalties, allow bankruptcy relief in truly catastrophic cases, and double down on apprenticeships and trade schools that return value for dollars spent. Hardworking Americans want fairness, accountability, and opportunity — not another bailout for an education cartel that profited off the backs of our kids.