Should We Forgive Student Loans? How to Stop Comparing Yourself, and When to Change Your Mind

Speaker 1 Support for this show comes from Nordstrom.

Speaker 1 Cooler temps are here, so it's time to level up your wardrobe at Nordstrom. You'll find the best cold weather must-haves, including thousands of styles under $100.

Speaker 1 Shop hand-to-toe cozy from faves like UG, All Saints, Nordstrom, Skims, The North Face, and more. Plus, free shipping, free returns, and quick order pickup make it easy.

Speaker 1 In stores or online, it's time to go shopping at Nordstrom.

Speaker 2 Support for PropG comes from Aura Frames. Aura Frames makes it easy to stay connected with friends and family no matter where they are.

Speaker 2 Now you can send photos straight from your phone right to an Aura frame. Just plug it in, download the free Aura app, and connect to Wi-Fi.

Speaker 2 For a limited time, you can visit auraframes.com and get $45 off Aura's best-selling Carver matte frames, named number one by Wirecutter, by using promo code PropG at checkout.

Speaker 2 That's A-U-R-A frames.com, promo code PropG. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is the best of the year.
So order now before it ends.

Speaker 2 And you can support the show by mentioning us at checkout.

Speaker 3 Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new. Show me all the things PDFs can do.
Do your work with ease and speed. PDF spaces is all you need.
Do hours of research in an instant.

Speaker 3 Key insights from an AI assistant. Pick a template with a click.
Now your prezzo looks super slick. Close that deal, yeah, you won.
Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Speaker 3 Now you can do that, do that with Acrobat. Now you can do that, do that with the all-new Acrobat.
It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio.

Speaker 4 Welcome to Office Hours with Prof G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, spectacular entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind.

Speaker 4 If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehours at profitmedia.com.

Speaker 4 Again, that's officehours of propagandia.com or post your question on on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we just might feature it in our next episode.

Speaker 4 The first question comes from Star Hardgrove on Reddit. They say

Speaker 4 student loan debt in the U.S. has ballooned to $1.8 trillion and I personally carry $145,000 of that burden.

Speaker 4 Estimates suggest that it would take anywhere from $50 billion to $680 billion a year to make public college free for all.

Speaker 4 What's your honest prediction for the future of student loan debt in this country For those of us earning a moderate salary, is there a smart, realistic way out of this hole?

Speaker 4 Okay, I think a lot of people are dealing with this. The Trump administration resumed collections in May of this year.

Speaker 4 According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in the first three months of 2025, 2.2 million student loan recipients saw their credit scores drop by 100 points, and an additional 1 million had drops of 150 points or more.

Speaker 4 Delinquencies are spiking. As of March 2025, one in four people with student loans were over 90 days late in payments.

Speaker 4 Okay, so I may not have the answer you want here, and I find there's a lot of populism around student debt and let's cancel it or a lot of empathy, which I understand.

Speaker 4 I think the president's plan to reduce substantially student debt, I think it was going to cost $600 to $700 billion. I thought that was bad policy.

Speaker 4 I don't think you can offer that kind of unilateral executive action that's going to cost that much money without it being an investment, not a bailout. This was a bailout.

Speaker 4 And it was a bailout of the third of America that was fortunate enough to go to college being paid for by not only them, but the two-thirds that didn't have the opportunity to go to college.

Speaker 4 So I think it creates a situation where there's moral hazard. And that is right now, young people don't feel as if they need to pay back their student loan debts.

Speaker 4 And I wonder if it means they think they might not have to pay back their credit card debt because they signed this paperwork.

Speaker 4 And basically for three or four years now, they haven't had to pay it back. So what to do? In some, I think that student loan collection should begin again.

Speaker 4 And I think the real culprit here is universities where some nice woman in a pan suit with a big university logo over her head saying, you should always invest in yourself is willing to issue paperwork on cheap credit and student loans such that she can cash your $72,000 tuition check to NYU and give you a philosophy degree at the end of four years that you can't get a job that helps pay back your student loans.

Speaker 4 And NYU is actually one of the better places because the majority of people come out of NYU can find a job where they can manage their student loan debt.

Speaker 4 And the vast majority of people can manage their student loan debt. I think the average payment is $200 or $220.

Speaker 4 So what do we do moving forward? One, if you were going to spend that kind of money, it would need to be an investment. And I think the investment should have been something along the following.

Speaker 4 Say to our five or 700 biggest public universities, which educate two-thirds of our students, we'll give you a a size adjusted a billion dollars.

Speaker 4 So UCLA gets $5 billion, Cal State Northridge gets $200 million, and say, all right, in exchange for this grant, you're going to do three things.

Speaker 4 One, you're going to reduce tuition 2% a year through scale. You're going to expand your freshman class 3% a year through use of technology.

Speaker 4 And you're going to offer 20% of your certificates are going to be in

Speaker 4 non-traditional degrees, nursing, specialty construction, cybersecurity, because there's a lot of jobs in the real economy that don't require a four-year liberal arts degree.

Speaker 4 And there's a lot of people, young people, especially young men, who don't have the inclination, the money, or the desire to go get a traditional liberal arts college education for four years.

Speaker 4 Where does that get us? That means on an inflation-adjusted basis in 10 years, we double the number of freshman seats at colleges, still think it's a fantastic on-ramp to the middle class.

Speaker 4 We reduce costs on an inflation-adjusted basis, we cut them in half, and we have more formal on-ramps into the middle class using the infrastructure of our great public universities.

Speaker 4 This is a forward-leaning investment that helps all youth and takes us back to where we were in the 90s in terms of cost and admission rates.

Speaker 4 My colleagues have become drunk on the self-aggrandizement and exclusivity and rejectionist culture of artificially creating scarcity around freshman seats. It is immoral.

Speaker 4 It's tantamount to the head of a homeless shelter bragging that he or she turned away 90% of the people last night by saying we have an admissions rate of 10%.

Speaker 4 Now, there's some losers here. There's some people who, in my opinion, were sold

Speaker 4 a bill of goods around taking on too much student debt. But look, I'm a bit of a hard ass ass here.
I think it sucks to be a grown-up. You took on the debt, you owe it, you need to pay it back.

Speaker 4 Programs to help you work it down for certain industries, absolutely dischargeable and bankruptcy.

Speaker 4 And schools need to be on the hook such that they stop loaning money to people who they know will have a difficult time paying it back. Very much appreciate the question.

Speaker 4 It's a difficult and nuanced problem.

Speaker 4 Our second question comes from BitterSample7760 on Reddit. They ask:

Speaker 4 hey, Scott, how do you go about not comparing yourself to others as a young male in your 20s? Like, I was very

Speaker 4 insecure.

Speaker 4 I think I was more secure than most 20-something-year-old males, and I was highly insecure.

Speaker 4 I struggled with

Speaker 4 my professional success, even though I had registered more than most people. I really wanted to be perceived as professionally successful and was constantly insecure about that.

Speaker 4 I was very insecure about my economic background. I was raised, I was sort of upper, lower, middle class, single mother.

Speaker 4 I remember someone, this is probably too much information, someone complimented me on my teeth. I have nice teeth.
I have probably spent

Speaker 4 $100,000 or $150,000 on my teeth. I grew up with really bad teeth.
My parents are British. Dental care was not a big priority.

Speaker 4 While my friends were getting braces, it wasn't even a conversation in my household. We just, my mom couldn't afford braces and my mom had bad teeth and my dad had bad teeth.

Speaker 4 I just didn't even notice. And I literally looked, I wasn't a freak show, but I had bad teeth.

Speaker 4 And it was always for me a constant reminder when I looked in the mirror and then I smiled that I wasn't worthy, that I came from a lower income background. And it made me feel very insecure.

Speaker 4 And so when I was in graduate school, I got braces. That's fun to be in grad school and have braces.
That was a real good wrap.

Speaker 4 And then I still didn't like my teeth, so I got veneers. I have spent so much time and money on my teeth because I'm very insecure

Speaker 4 about my teeth and what it says about my economic status. I also had body dysmorphia when I was in my 20s.
I grew up very skinny, painfully skinny. I had bad acne.

Speaker 4 And when I joined crew at UCLA and I put on a bunch of weight, all of a sudden I started getting attention from women. My skin cleared up thanks to this wonder drug called Accutane.

Speaker 4 And for the first time in my life,

Speaker 4 It wasn't just my humor that got me social capital.

Speaker 4 And that was such an unlock unlock for me that for the rest of my life, I've always conflated being bigger or having some muscle with really good things happening to me.

Speaker 4 So when I look in the mirror, now I'm 62, 190. When I look in the mirror, I see someone who's emaciated.
I have body dysmorphia.

Speaker 4 So, and by the way, I talk about this transparently because I don't think I'm that fucked up. I think all of us have this shit that we deal with.

Speaker 4 And how did I deal with it? I worked on it.

Speaker 4 One, I talked about it. I understood it.
I understood there is something called body dysmorphia. I understood the link between feeling bad about my teeth and economic insecurity.

Speaker 4 And the moment you sort of understand something and feel like you can address it, either by getting braces or understanding it's normal or developing other skills or feeling bad about your body.

Speaker 4 So you start working out. You know, my means of trying not to compare myself to people was.
Yeah, I think over time, maturity and people who love you will help you get past that.

Speaker 4 But my way of addressing it was to just try and be a better version of of me, to work out, to be more economically successful.

Speaker 4 One of my unlocks as I've gotten older, and I think this is hard for people in their 20s, but one of my biggest unlocks around

Speaker 4 comparing myself to others and being disappointed, I'm worried about being shamed by people. I hate being wrong or saying something stupid and being called out.
or not being liked.

Speaker 4 And as I've gotten older, I'm much less sensitive to it for the following reason. I'm going to be dead soon, and so are you.

Speaker 4 And that, when you're in your 20s, for good reason, you can't wrap your head around your mortality. You literally don't believe you or anyone in your life is going to die.

Speaker 4 And the first time that you start to believe that that, in fact, is a reality is when you lose a parent. That was sort of an awakening for me, the brutality and finality of that.

Speaker 4 And also, as I've gotten older and have lost a couple of close friends, I am now squarely in touch with the finite nature of life. I'm an atheist.

Speaker 4 I believe at some point I'll look into my kid's eyes and know, you know, our relationship is coming to an end.

Speaker 4 But it's a huge unlock because if you can establish a sense of the finite nature of life in your 20s, what you realize is that as embarrassed as you are about your teeth or not being a size two

Speaker 4 or not having the professional success of your friends, you're mostly embarrassed.

Speaker 4 You might be disappointed a little bit in yourself because you need to make a certain amount of money, but most of the shame comes from your perception of other people's perception of you.

Speaker 4 And what has really helped me, I went to dinner last night with a bunch of impressive people.

Speaker 4 And I remember thinking the guy next to me, I really wanted to like me and I could just tell he just didn't like me. And that would have rattled my world 20 years ago.

Speaker 4 And now it's sort of like, he's going to be dead soon and so am I. And it just doesn't, I mean, it's meaningful, but it's not profound.

Speaker 4 And if there's anything I would want to give someone in their 20s is a sense of their mortality and just how fast it's going to go.

Speaker 4 And you're going to realize, like, do your best, work hard, work out, try and look good.

Speaker 4 I think it's important to be mindful of your dress and your aesthetics and feeling strong and wanting to look good naked and wanting to dress well and wanting to be smart and wanting to make money.

Speaker 4 I think those are wonderful things to aspire to. But also a recognition that the people you're doing this for are going to be dead soon.
And it really does.

Speaker 4 In 30, 40 years, none of them are going to be around or three generations. No one's going to remember them.
No one's going to remember you. So this is how you win.

Speaker 4 The best means of achieving self-esteem, the best means of revenge if you feel people have wronged you, is to just live a fucking amazing life.

Speaker 4 And that is to try to try and express your emotions with abandon, to try and be nice to yourself, to forgive yourself, to appreciate the good things you have going for you, to tell people how much they mean to you, to embrace shit, to say yes, to go out, to laugh out loud, to enjoy friendship, to tell your friends how much you're enjoying their friendship, to tell your parents how much you love them.

Speaker 4 And also just let the other shit just go away. Because guess what? Guess what?

Speaker 4 Anyone you're worried about, what they think of you, anyone who doesn't return your affection, your romantic interest, any business that fires you, any investment that goes wrong, guess what?

Speaker 4 They're all going to be dead or meaningless. So why not just enjoy it? Why not just look at the glasses half full? Do your best.
Wake up every morning, create a list, make progress.

Speaker 4 Success is a small set. of disciplined actions every day.
But for God's sakes, forgive yourself.

Speaker 4 At the end of your life, at the end of your life, you're going to look back and think in your 20s, you know, I was better looking than I gave myself credit for.

Speaker 4 I was trying harder than I give myself credit for. I was more successful than I give myself credit for.
And you're not going to be upset about the things that happened to you in your 20s.

Speaker 4 You're going to be upset at how hard you were on yourself. Forgive yourself.

Speaker 4 We'll be right back after a quick break.

Speaker 2 Support for the show comes from Upwork. You're the CEO of your business.
You're also the CFO and the IT department and customer service. It's time to find some support.

Speaker 2 Upwork Business Plus helps you bring in top quality freelancers fast. It gives you instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in fields such as marketing, design, AI, and more.

Speaker 2 All ready to jump in and take work off your plate. Upwork Business Plus takes the hassle out of hiring by dropping trusted freelancers right in your lap.

Speaker 2 Instead of spending weeks sorting through random resumes, Upwork Business Plus sources and vets candidates for skills and reliability.

Speaker 2 It then sends a curated shortlist of proven expert talent to your inbox in just hours so you can delegate with confidence.

Speaker 2 That way, you're never stuck spinning your wheels when you need a skilled pro and your projects don't stall. Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you'll get $500 in credit.

Speaker 2 Go to upwork.com/slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025. Again, that's upwork.com/slash S-A-V-E.
Scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 6 With the Spark Cash Plus Card from Capital One, you can earn unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power.
So your business can spend more and earn more.

Speaker 6 Stephen, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2% cash back to help build their retail presence.

Speaker 5 Now, that's serious serious business.

Speaker 6 What could the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One do for your business?

Speaker 7 Capital One, what's in your wallet?

Speaker 6 Find out more at capital1.com/slash sparkcash plus. Terms apply.

Speaker 8 Sometimes, the difference between success and failure comes down to one chance encounter. or following a counterintuitive instinct or ignoring conventional wisdom to make a bold decision.

Speaker 8 Like when the founders at Palo Alto Networks wanted to redefine cybersecurity for the modern age.

Speaker 5 Everybody thought we were crazy. Nobody would use the cloud for cybersecurity.

Speaker 8 Or when mobile gaming giant Supercell could only rewrite the rules of the industry after failure in the company's formative stages.

Speaker 5 Many of the best things we've learned have actually come through failures.

Speaker 8 These are all examples of Crucible Moments, turning points in a company's journey that made them what they are today.

Speaker 8 Hosted by Sequoia Capital's Rolof Bota, Crucible Moments is back for a new season with stories from Zipline, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks, Supercell, and more. Subscribe to Season 3 of Crucible Moments.

Speaker 8 New episodes are out now, and you can catch up on seasons one and two at cruciblemoments.com on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Crucible Moments today.

Speaker 4 Welcome back on to our final question from Cooking with Fire 2030 on Reddit. God, I love these titles.

Speaker 4 What would it take to change your mind on a fundamental idea you have when presented with information that contradicts the old data? How do you balance between recency bias and traditionalism?

Speaker 4 I've tried to get better at this. If I find,

Speaker 4 when I go into conversations with people, I just did a podcast called Lost Boys with Anthony Scaramucci, and he had a friend of his, I forget her name. She was all I know, she was a real housewife.

Speaker 4 That's our recruiting pool now for podcasts as we bring on real housewives. Anyways, we were talking about men and women, and she was saying the patriarchy has hurt everybody.

Speaker 4 And she and I just have a different view on this. But

Speaker 4 when I do go into these situations, I do try and listen, and I find that

Speaker 4 the key, one of the keys or things or

Speaker 4 zeitgeist or themes I want to promote moving forward in my life is the restoration and refurbishment of alliances.

Speaker 4 And I think a good way to establish common ground is to acknowledge good points on the other side. And even, I'll even say sometimes in a podcast, like, your take's better than mine.

Speaker 4 You've changed my mind or you've influenced the way I look at this. And I also think it's important

Speaker 4 that we do have something resembling a truth that Jim Barksdale, the CO of AT ⁇ T, and then went on to be the CEO of Netscape, said, if we're going with opinions, let's go with mine.

Speaker 4 If we have data, let's look at the data.

Speaker 4 One of the things that worries me about our our society is the intersection between our perceptions and information, and that is none of us are willing to acknowledge when actual data comes in.

Speaker 4 The Congressional Budget Office is saying that the big, beautiful bill will add $3.5 trillion to the deficit. And what happens?

Speaker 4 The Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bassett, comes out and says, oh no, that's traditional Washington insider scoring.

Speaker 4 So let's shitpost the experts and diminish the government of which we're a part of and say that the scoring is wrong.

Speaker 4 It used to be that when the CBO weighed in, both sides would acknowledge those are the numbers. That's it.
We got to acknowledge those are the numbers.

Speaker 4 And now we've decided we don't even want to try and develop something resembling a truth between our perceptions and the data. So when I hear really compelling data, I think it's the right thing.

Speaker 4 And I think it means you're evolving as a human to say,

Speaker 4 I didn't know that. That is super interesting.
And, you know,

Speaker 4 my general sort of view was, oh, the poor pay too much in taxes. I was very much a you know, I believe I'm an income inequality guy.

Speaker 4 And the reality is the bottom half of our population in the United States pay almost no federal taxes. That's just not true.

Speaker 4 And I saw the data on the near wealthy or the kind of workhorses that is people who make between, say, $200,000 and $2 million a year.

Speaker 4 They pay more than their fair share of taxes because it's all current income.

Speaker 4 It's the people that are the super owners that make the majority of their income from buying and selling assets that pay the lowest taxes.

Speaker 4 25 wealthiest Americans in America is supposed to pay about a 6% income tax rate. Anyways, I find comfort and resolution in the data.

Speaker 4 And I think at some point, one, we need to restore trust in institutions. And two,

Speaker 4 our role in that is to acknowledge when we see data that contradicts our own beliefs, to acknowledge the point and even acknowledge that that data or that individual has influenced you.

Speaker 4 And what I find is that's an effective way to restore alliances because they're willing to give a little bit too.

Speaker 4 The fastest way to diffuse an argument, I find, is to acknowledge the other's points to some degree and see if there's some middle ground. I find that

Speaker 4 we have this unfortunate

Speaker 4 zeitgeist in our society where you say something stupid and you feel like you have to double down and keep going as opposed to saying, you know, I've said a couple of times in conversations, I'm like, I would draw the comment.

Speaker 4 I don't know where I was going with that. And you're right.
Your data is better than mine. And what you're saying makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 4 And I find when you say that, it disarms them and they're much more likely to agree with you and come together. Anyways, appreciate the question.

Speaker 4 That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at propagandmedia.com.
That's officehours at profitmedia.com.

Speaker 4 Or if you'd prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.

Speaker 4 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
Thanks for listening listening to the Props G Pop from the Box Media Podcast Network.

Speaker 9 This message comes from AT ⁇ T. America's first network is also its fastest and most reliable.
Based on Rootmetrics United States Root Score Report, first half 2025.

Speaker 9 Tested with best commercially available smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types. Your experiences may vary.

Speaker 9 Rootmetrics rankings are not an endorsement of AT ⁇ T. When you compare, there's no comparison.
AT ⁇ T

Speaker 7 What do walking 10,000 steps every day, eating five servings of fruits and veggies, and getting eight hours of sleep have in common? They're all healthy choices.

Speaker 7 But do all healthier choices really pay off? With prescription plans from CVS CareMark, they do.

Speaker 7 Their plan designs give your members more choice, which gives your members more ways to get on, stay on, and manage their meds.

Speaker 7 And that helps your business control your costs, because healthier members are better for business. Go to cmk.co slash access to learn more about helping your members stay adherent.

Speaker 7 That's cmk.co slash access.

Speaker 5 If your team is spending more time chasing paperwork than actually closing, then it's time to consider using Smartsheet.

Speaker 5 Smartsheet is the intelligent work management platform that embeds AI-powered execution to drive the velocity of work.

Speaker 5 With AI-first capabilities, you can make work management your superpower, getting personalized insights, automatically creating tailored solutions, and streamlining workflows to elevate your work.

Speaker 5 Plus, this intelligence layer unites people, processes, and data, helping you tackle any work management challenge. Visit smartsheet.com/slash Vox.