Jay Urwitz was deputy general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education from 2015 to 2017. Neal Urwitz is a public relations executive in Washington. The opinions expressed in this commentary are their own.

Whether you think Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sanders' calls to forgive student loan debt are thoughtful policy solutions or pandering to Millennial voters, there's no question the senators are speaking to a jarring problem. Americans hold nearly $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, more than they do for credit cards or cars. The average borrower from the Class of 2017 will enter the workforce with $28,650 in loans. It's little wonder that Millennials are delaying everything from buying a home to having children.

Warren wants to offer debt relief based on household income, while Sanders wants to cancel all $1.5 trillion of outstanding student loan debt. But both of these plans miss the mark. The people who really need loan forgiveness aren't the people with expensive degrees. It's the ones without those degrees. While both plans would help those who dropped out, the vast majority of the benefits would go to those who graduated and attained degrees, as they spend more time in school and take out more debt.

That would be a mistake. We should not forgive loans for people who graduated. While their degrees are expensive, they are worth it. College graduates have plenty of earning potential and do not need the help. Rather, we should only forgive the loans of people who took out student loans but never received a degree. They are the people in the deepest financial trouble. This group has all the costs of student loan debt without most of the benefits.

Neither Warren's nor Sanders' plan acknowledges that a college degree is still worth the high cost of tuition. According to one estimate, people with a college degree will, on average, earn nearly a million dollars more over the course of their careers than people without college degrees. The unemployment rate for college graduates is about half that for people with just a high school degree.

College may be more expensive than we'd like, but for individual students, college is worth it. The latest iteration of the Higher Education Act (HEA) offers a buffer for post-college income against debt by capping loan repayment rates at a percentage of the borrower's income. Encouraging income-based repayment won't be free, but it'll be just a fraction of the cost of Warren and Sanders' more comprehensive loan forgiveness plans.