The Obama administration has waged a successful campaign to promote access to IBR plans—estimating in 2010 that $6.6 billion in loans would be repaid through IBR, a number that today has risen to $27 billion. This number is likely to grow even more, thanks to recent changes that have expanded “Pay-As-You-Earn” eligibility, another type of IBR scheme which caps the borrower’s monthly payment at about 10 percent of their discretionary income while forgiving their remaining debt after 20 years of making payments.

This is why IBR misses the mark: because it currently doesn’t do enough to address one of the key ways student debt may negatively affect young adults, by limiting their ability to accumulate assets. Students with outstanding student debt, even very small amounts, are more likely to postpone accumulating assets as young adults, as recent research shows. IBR plans may even exacerbate this problem by extending the period of students’ indebtedness.

Asset accumulation is important, because it positions young adults for significantly improved economic outcomes over their lifetimes—something higher education is supposed to do. The consequences of diverting income to debt repayment instead of asset accumulation may worsen the wealth divide between those who must take on debt to go to college and those who can avoid it.

Rather than a self-soothing mechanism that keeps the current financial aid model alive, it's important to start working towards a truly new direction, one that helps students get to and through college, and prepares them with a solid financial foundation upon joining the workforce. A better future is one that favors asset empowerment over debt dependency.

What might an asset-empowered future look like? Giving every child a Child’s Savings Account would be a good start. These accounts would hold an initial deposit at birth and offer the opportunity for matching funds paid through public funds. Child Savings Accounts would be a critical part of a strategy to foster expectations among very young students that they should receive postsecondary education and equip them early and often with strategies to pay for it. Researchers refer to this as helping kids develop a college-saver identity. All families would be able to save into the accounts, but public investments, like Pell Grants, could be delivered strategically to a kid’s account early enough in her academic trajectory to shape achievement and grow into larger balances.

These are admittedly long-term solutions that don’t address our increasingly urgent short-term need to help those already saddled with student debt. But, we should not invest in IBR plans with the expectation that they are a “cure”; at best, they are a costly stopgap measure that mask the underlying problem we face, over reliance on student debt. Let it be clear, IBR plans are necessary only because of a growing recognition that student debt places a destructive burden on some young adults that is counter to our view of education as the “great equalizer.” The country's financial-aid system should strengthen the return on a post-secondary degree not weaken it.