Forgiving loans will cause future students to believe their loans will also be forgiven. That will likely lead a higher percentage of students to borrow more money given the expectation that it will be free. That in turn will further encourage schools to continue to raise prices.

As the Biden administration reportedly debates whether and how much to forgive student loans, it is focusing on the wrong objective: how to help individuals afford college instead of making college affordable.

The difference isn’t semantic.

Subsidizing an increasingly costly higher education and forgiving student loans simply encourages the rising costs of higher education and the poor value for far too many students.