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

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Welcome to Office Hours with Prophti.

This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, PicTac, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind.

If you'd like to submit a a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehours of propertymedia.com.

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

The first question comes from star Hardgrove on Reddit.

They say

Student loan debt in the U.S.

has ballooned to $1.8 trillion and I personally carry $145,000 of that burden.

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

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?

Okay, I think a lot of people are dealing with this.

The Trump administration resumed collections in May of this year.

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.

Delinquencies are spiking.

As of March 2025, one in four people with student loans were over 90 days late in payments.

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.

I think the president's plan to reduce substantially student debt I think was going to cost $600 to $700 billion.

I thought that was bad policy.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

And the vast majority of people can manage their student loan debt.

I think the average payment is $200,000 or $220.

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: say to our five or 700 biggest public universities, which educate two-thirds of our students, we'll give you a size-adjusted $1 billion.

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.

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.

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

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It is immoral.

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%.

Now, there's some losers here.

There's some people who, in my opinion, were sold a bill of goods around taking on too much student debt.

But look, I'm a bit of a hard 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.

Programs to help you work it down for certain industries, absolutely dischargeable in bankruptcy.

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.

It's a difficult and nuanced problem.

Our second question comes from BitterSample7760 on Reddit.

They ask,

hey, Scott, how do you go about not comparing yourself to others as a young male in your 20s?

Like, I was very

insecure.

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

I struggled with

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.

I was very insecure about my economic background.

I was raised, I was sort of upper, lower, middle class, single mother.

I remember someone, this is probably too much information, someone complimented me on my teeth.

I have nice teeth.

I have probably spent

$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 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 my dad had bad teeth i just didn't even notice and i literally looked i wasn't a freak show but i had bad teeth 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 but from a lower income background and it made me feel very insecure.

And so when I was in graduate school, I got braces.

That's fun to be in grad school and have braces.

That was was a real good wrap.

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

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.

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 drug called Accutane.

And for the first time in my life, it wasn't just my humor that got me social capital.

And that was such an 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.

So when I look in the mirror now, I'm 6190.

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who's emaciated.

I have body dysmorphia.

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.

And how did I deal with it?

I worked on it.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 or not having the professional success of your friends, You're mostly embarrassed.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

And that is 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.

And also just let the other shit just go away because guess what?

Guess what?

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?

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.

Success is a small set of disciplined actions every day.

But for God's sakes, forgive yourself.

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.

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.

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

Forgive yourself.

We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Welcome back onto our final question from Cooking with Fire 2030 on Reddit.

God, I love these titles.

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?

I've tried to get better at this.

If I find,

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, oh, I know, she was a real housewife.

That's a 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, and she and I just have a different view on this.

But

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

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

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.

You've changed my mind or you've influenced the way I look at this.

And I also think it's important

that we do have something resembling a truth that Jim Barksdale, the CEO 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.

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

One of the things that worries me about 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.

The Congressional Budget Office is saying that the big, beautiful bill will add $3.5 trillion to the deficit.

And what happens?

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

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

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.

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.

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

I didn't know that.

That is super interesting.

And, you know,

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.

And the reality is the bottom half of our population in the United States pay almost no federal taxes.

That's just not true.

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.

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

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.

25 wealthiest Americans in America is supposed to pay about a 6% income tax rate.

Anyways, I find comfort and resolution in the data.

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

And two,

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.

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

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

we have this unfortunate

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 it a couple of times in conversations, I'm like, I would draw the comment.

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.

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.

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 propagandmedia.com.

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

This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.

Drew Burrows is our technical director.

Thank you for listening to the props you pop from the Box Media Podcast Network.

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