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    The Biden administration has a chance to deliver student debt relief. It must act | Astra Taylor and Eleni Schirmer

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    Last week, the Washington Post reported that President Biden recently pressed Jeff Zients, his chief of staff, on the issue of student debt cancellation, telling him “to make sure his team was making the relief as expansive as possible”.That’s good news for tens of millions of borrowers. But expansive relief will not be delivered if the administration fails to learn the lessons from round one of the cancellation battle: speed and conviction matter.When the supreme court struck down President Biden’s attempt to cancel student debt last summer, his administration got to work to make plans for future cancellation. Today, the window for cancellation is open once again. Biden’s Plan B has a fighting chance – but only if the president moves fast.Last month the administration concluded a five-month long regulatory process to hammer out the legal parameters for cancellation using the Higher Education Act – a different legal authority than Biden used the first time around. In the last session of this process, a session which was only undertaken thanks to pressure from activists and progressive elected officials, rulemakers cracked open a critical window for debt cancellation.This session established “economic hardship” as grounds for cancellation. Once again, Biden’s Plan B has a fighting chance – but only if the president seizes the moment and walks through it.Why is the new provision on economic hardship such a game-changer? As we know all too well from our work in the debt abolition movement, the vast majority of student borrowers experience economic hardship, struggling to make basic living expenses. In fact, we consider student loans themselves to be an indicator of economic hardship, a kind of regressive and financially debilitating tax on anyone who isn’t wealthy enough to pay for tuition outright.These new guidelines recognize this. They open space for Biden to deliver on promised relief. Our fear, however, is that the administration will move slowly and cautiously, and, by doing so, enable their Republican adversaries to slam the window shut and claim another victory.Moving slowly – a result of prioritizing means-tested relief, rather than cancellation for all – was one of the reasons that Biden’s prior debt relief plan met a bad end. Consider how the Department of Education took 51 days to put their extremely simple application for relief online. Every day they delayed implementing relief bought time for billionaire-backed lawsuits to move through a court system stacked with conservative judges eager to make partisan rulings.It has now been six months since Biden announced his Plan B and already too much time has been wasted on regulatory machinations that some experts argued weren’t even necessary to begin with. Looking ahead, cancellation must be issued in the boldest, fastest manner possible, to give people relief and to register the results in time for the upcoming elections.If the administration decides, once again, to route cancellation through an application or to otherwise “target” relief, instead of universally applying it, we will find ourselves in a groundhog day scenario: waiting for the administration to ready their process to administer relief while further lawsuits are prepared by the conservative right’s battalion of highly paid lawyers.Last summer, both of us helped launch a first-of-its kind online tool that helps borrowers create and send legal appeals for the Department of Education to cancel their debt. The Student Debt Release Tool builds from the Department of Education’s legal authority to cancel student debt as part of the Higher Education Act of 1965 – a tried and true authority that has been used many times to eliminate people’s federal loans. Within weeks of the launch of the Student Debt Release Tool, tens of thousands of borrowers submitted appeals, flooding the Department of Education, and rumored to have shut down the agency’s email servers at least once.The information in the Release Tool clearly demonstrates how student debt creates hardship, and why cancellation is the urgent and just response. In these appeals, borrowers recount their brushes with homelessness and turns to sex work, their mounting medical bills, their children’s grumbling stomachs when the cupboards yet again fall empty, the anxiety and depression that ensues.The Release Tool also shows that the Department of Education already has the information it needs to act, and should start doing so now.Beyond a canned reply, however, borrowers have received no meaningful response to their appeals from the Department of Education, leading debtors to seek help elsewhere. Over the past three months, groups of student borrowers in New York, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia, Georgia, Indianapolis and Missouri have been virtually marching into their congressional representative’s offices – asking them to send letters to the Department of Education urging the secretary to use the powers vested in him by the Higher Education Act to cancel student debt without delay, or excessive administrative procedures that risk thwarting the actual delivery of relief.Although President Biden insists that he is doing everything he can to cancel student debt, the tens of millions of debtors desperate for relief, and the tens of thousands of unanswered Release Tool appeals, suggest otherwise.Since President Biden’s initial plan to cancel debt was announced, the stakes have only become higher. As part of debt ceiling negotiations, President Biden turned student loan payments back on, leading the interest on over $1.6tn dollars of federal student loan debt to once again pile up. Although Biden has attempted to reform one of the most faulty income-driven repayment programs, too many borrowers have found their payments erroneously increasing, rather than the purported goal of lowering monthly bills.And while the Biden administration proudly struts its efforts to cancel student debt on social media, in reality only 10% of eligible borrowers have received even partial relief. The majority are waiting, desperately, on a promise unfulfilled. A sense of being gas-lit looms.There is, of course, no way for Biden to wholly protect against bad-faith litigation or to avoid anti-democratic decrees issued by Trump-appointed judges. But the Biden administration should show it is willing to fight. Don’t tell voters you are doing everything you can on debt cancellation, President Biden. Show us.
    Astra Taylor is a writer, organizer and documentary maker and a co-founder of the Debt Collective
    Eleni Schirmer, a writer and postdoctoral fellow at the Concordia University Social Justice Centre in Montreal, is part of the Debt Collective More

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      The supreme court just threw millions of American student debtors under the bus | Eleni Schirmer

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      Last August, President Biden did something no president has done before. He announced a plan to mass cancel student debt, offering $10,000 to $20,000 of relief for borrowers who earn under $125,000 annually.The triumph of this policy was more than the sliver of debt that it potentially sliced off the second-largest type of household debt in the US. More fundamentally, Biden’s policy proposal put an ideological dent in the American doctrinal belief that a creditor’s right to repayment is the first-order business of any economy.On Friday, in a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, the US supreme court undid all that. The court ruled against Biden’s student-loan forgiveness policy and put millions of Americans’ financial futures in peril.Debt intensifies existing inequalities in society: those who have the least rely on debt the most, for everything from housing to healthcare to higher education. Debtors end up paying higher costs for the same goods than those who can pay cash upfront. Black people and women bear the highest student debt burdens; over time, they pay a higher sticker price for the same degrees as white people and men. For these reasons, Biden’s proposed plan was also a major attempt to chip away at the racial wealth gap.It was no wonder, then, that within weeks of Biden’s policy announcement, half a dozen rightwing lawsuits sued to stop the president’s program. Although most of the suits were thrown out, two stuck, and temporarily halted the program. Late last fall, Biden requested that the US supreme court intervene. Although there has been much handwringing about the student debt case in front of the court – its role as a bargaining chip in debt-ceiling negotiations, its prospects to drive voters to polls in 2024 – most of the discussion misses the point.That’s because the supreme court case in question was not actually about whether the president can cancel debt. It was about whether the plaintiffs in the case – six Republican attorneys general – could reasonably prove that cancelling millions of people’s student debt harms their state, and whether judges would believe their lies.The state of Missouri contended that it will be harmed because a quasi-public loan servicing company there, Mohela, may lose revenue from cancellation, making it more difficult for Mohela to repay an old debt owed to the state of Missouri. But that violates a basic legal principle: you can’t sue on behalf of somebody else. My roommate can’t sue my employer for laying me off and making it harder for me to pay my half of the rent, yet this case would set such a precedent.In fact, internal emails between Mohela employees revealed utter confusion about the case. One employee bluntly pointed out that Missouri has no standing; another worried: “Are we the bad guys?” Even conservative legal experts ideologically opposed to the concept of student debt cancellation acknowledged that the plaintiffs weren’t bringing a legitimate claim.But putting aside the fact that Missouri has no standing to sue, the state’s claim that Mohela’s revenue loss from cancellation would endanger its ability to repay a $105m debt owed from 2008 is patently wrong, as research I recently co-authored reveals. Even with Biden’s pledged cancellation, Mohela is poised to have a gangbuster year, raking in more revenue than at any other point in its history.Yet Trump-appointed judges in the eighth circuit, yielding to dubious conservative claims, issued a nationwide injunction on Biden’s relief policy. Within weeks, the case was whisked to the highest court in the land, skirting over basic fact-finding and discovery processes. In oral arguments, the plaintiffs offered little more than the phrase “it stands to reason” to justify their claim that Mohela would lose money.The plaintiffs rigged up such a convoluted suit in an attempt to avoid a legal reality: the president and the Department of Education have full authority to cancel debt under a provision, the Heroes Act, to cancel debt in national emergencies such as a pandemic. This is just one of many legal authorities that Biden has at his disposal to cancel student loans.Now that the court has struck down Biden’s first policy stab, Biden can, and must, swiftly exercise other legal authorities to automatically cancel debt. The court’s ruling is not the death of debt cancellation – it’s merely a blockade on one channel to get there.But the fact that we have found ourselves in this position – with a couple of frivolous lawsuits delaying relief for millions of struggling Americans – should not be misread as merely yet another failure of our increasingly conservative and out-of-touch court.Debt relief is on the precipice in part because Biden failed in his execution. Despite warnings and pleas from experts and advocates, Biden insisted on routing cancellation through an application, rather than automatically and universally discharging debt. This choice was costly, in more ways than one. It took the Biden administration 52 days between announcing the policy to ready the application program. Rightwing groups seized the opportunity and sued to block the whole program.When Biden takes another crack at his generation-defining policy, he should have a strategy that reflects the ambition of the goal, rather than wavers and offers half measures. The fate of the 2024 elections doesn’t just rest on the bold policies Biden announces, but the boldness of his strategy to actually get them done.
      Eleni Schirmer, a writer and postdoctoral fellow at the Concordia University Social Justice Centre in Montreal, is part of the Debt Collective More

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      ‘Who should pay?’: student debt relief in limbo as supreme court decides fate of millions

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      ‘Who should pay?’: student debt relief in limbo as supreme court decides fate of millions Over 26m student loan borrowers are waiting for the country’s highest court to decide if they can receive debt reliefDebt-laden borrowers will be nervously watching the US supreme court come February when the justices hear arguments for two cases that will ultimately decide the fate of over 26 million student loan borrowers who have applied for loan forgiveness.US student debt relief: borrowers in limbo as lawsuits halt cancellation programRead moreThough the future of student loan forgiveness is uncertain in the hands of a deeply conservative court, two researchers who have studied public opinion on student debt and college accessibility see room for optimism, even amid uncertainty around the issue.The millions of Americans who applied were set to get at least $10,000 (£8,320) in relief for their loans under a plan that Joe Biden released over the summer. But the plan’s rollout was halted in November by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas, putting the possibility of forgiveness into question.“[Student loan forgiveness] is something that five years or 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have seen. It shows that there’s movement for politicians and the public to do something about student debt that has meaningful effects for a lot of people,” said Natasha Quadlin, a professor at University of California, Los Angeles who co-wrote a book this year, Who Should Pay?: Higher Education, Responsibility and the Public that documents the change in public opinion on how much the government should pay for higher education.Quadlin, along with her co-author Brian Powell, a professor at Indiana University, started administering surveys in 2010 asking people who should pay for college: parents, students or the government.In 2010, nearly 70% of respondents believed that only parents and students should be funding higher education. In 2019, the number dropped to 39%. Meanwhile, the percentage of people who believe the government, both federal and state, should primarily fund college rose from 9% in 2010 to 25% in 2019. All other respondents indicated that the government should help parents or students pay for college.When Quadlin and Powell set off to do this decades-long research in 2010, they did not realize how dramatically people’s perspectives on who should pay for college would change.“When we started working on the book and collecting data, the idea of loan forgiveness was not even really part of the American consciousness,” Powell said.The researchers note a few factors that went into this rapid shift. First, student debt nearly doubled in size between 2010 and 2015, reaching $1.3tn (£1tn) by the end of 2015. The cost of college was also rising, especially since states were slashing higher education budgets during the Great Recession.Fight against inflation raises spectre of global recessionRead more“It became apparent that the current generation that was going through higher education just wasn’t getting a very good deal in terms of the returns they were seeing,” Quadlin said.Some respondents also noted that the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, showed them that government can offer broad support for certain areas of life.“Several people said: ‘If we can do this for something as important as healthcare, and ensure health insurance, then we should be able to do that for education as well,’” Powell said.Sentiment had changed so much that some states were discussing the possibility of free college, a policy that Quadlin and Powell did not even consider putting on their survey in 2010. By 2019, over 20 states offered programs that either reduced or eliminated the cost of public college. Nearly 40% of respondents on the survey strongly and 32% somewhat agreed that public college should be free for those who are qualified to attend.Loan forgiveness and free college, while similarly addressing accessibility to higher education, are ultimately two different issues. While the researchers note that both should be pursued simultaneously, it appears that much of the current focus is on addressing debt forgiveness as the immediate problem.How quickly either will be addressed is unclear, but “the costs and burden [of student debt] is so high and so widespread”, Quadlin said.“There is a recognition that college is necessary for such a large percentage of the problem … and [its] not getting fixed,” she said.Throughout the book, Quadlin and Powell note how quickly public opinion had changed on same-sex marriage in a short amount of time. Powell, who has studied this change in opinion, noted that Congress just recently passed a bill protecting same-sex marriage with bipartisan support. In 2010, Gallup reported 28% of Republican support same-sex marriage. In 2021, the percentage rose to 55%.While Republicans have largely been against Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, there is some evidence that there could be Republican support one day. In 2014, Tennessee, under a Republican governor, created a scholarship program for free community college – an initiative that is still thought to be too radical at the federal level.“We’ve had examples of bipartisan support. Education is one of those areas that people believe in – the American Dream, that people can be able to have the education they need to have a fulfilling life and successful career,” Powell said. “It’s hard to envision the changes in the past year without the dramatic change in public opinion that occurred in a really short period of time.”TopicsUS student debtHigher educationUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsBiden administrationDebt relieffeaturesReuse this content More

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      Biden says his student loan relief is ‘life-changing’. Will it fix the system’s inequities?

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      Biden says his student loan relief is ‘life-changing’. Will it fix the system’s inequities?The initiative’s income cap and unclear bureaucratic process could fail to address the racial disparities that already exist01:15As Joe Biden announced the details of his plan to help those with student loan debt, Kat Welbeck wrestled with the idea. For millions of Americans, the unprecedented relief would be “life-changing”, especially for low-income and Black and Latino Americans, who are disproportionately saddled with decades-long debt, she said.But the plans’ income cap on who can receive cancellation, and its unclear bureaucratic process for Americans seeking debt relief could perpetuate the inequities that underpin the nation’s student loan system, Welbeck, director of advocacy and civil rights counsel for the Student Borrower Protection Center, said.Student loan forgiveness: what you need to know about Biden’s planRead more“While a $10,000 cancellation is so meaningful for millions of student loan borrowers, there’s a lot that’s still to be done to fix this student debt crisis,” Welbeck says.On Wednesday, the White House released its long-anticipated plan on how to tackle the nation’s mounting $1.6tn student loan debt, accounting for more than 43 million people, with almost a third owing less than $10,000, according to federal data.The initiative would cancel up to $10,000 in debt for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year ($250,000 for married couples). Borrowers whose low income level qualified them for a Pell Grant will receive up to $20,000 in relief. The White House also extended a pause for “one final time” on student loan payments through January.The White House has projected that the plan would eliminate full debt balances for 20 million Americans and that 90% of debt relief dollars would go toward people with incomes less than $75,000. The White House also touted it as an effort to “advance racial equity”, pointing to its targeted relief for those who received Pell Grants. Officials noted that Black Americans were twice as likely to receive such grants as white Americans.Senator Elizabeth Warren, who, like others, have advocated for cancelling at least $50,000 in student debt, praised the administration’s plan as “transformative for the lives of working people all across the country” and would “help narrow the racial wealth gap among borrowers”.Still, some argue that the cancellation of just $10,000 for most borrowers would fail to substantially affect the racial disparities within the student loan system. Black and Latino borrowers disproportionately come from poorer households and, as a result, take on more debt than white Americans. At the same time, white American households have, on average, 10 times the wealth of Black households.Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, which had been advocating for cancellation of $50,000, wrote in an op-ed that Biden’s plan would “do little to help” Black Americans who, on average, hold nearly twice as much student debt as white borrowers. “Canceling just $10,000 of debt is like pouring a bucket of ice water on a forest fire,” he said. Canceling $10,000 in student debt when the average white borrower is $12,000 in debt, while Black women hold on average over $52,000 isn’t just unacceptable, it’s structural racism.— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) August 23, 2022
      The emphasis on income in the White House’s cap represents a possible barrier that could exclude borrowers of color who meet the income threshold yet their families lack the wealth to tackle the debt, Welbeck says. A June 2020 report from the Student Borrower Protection Center found that 90% of Black Americans and 72% of Latino Americans took out student loans, a far cry from the 66% of white Americans.And 20 years after graduating college, the median Black borrower still owed 95% of their original debt while the median white borrower paid down the same amount. For Latinos, after 12 years, they owed 83% of their original debt, more than the white borrower over the same time.Given that Black and Latino Americans typically earn less than white Americans, borrowers of color will start from behind without the intergenerational wealth available to reduce the debt they already hold.“So if you’re already coming from a lower-wealth household, you now have more debt, and then that cuts into opportunities for you to build wealth for the next generation,” Welback says. “You might see higher-income households that are Black or Latino, but that does not take away the fact that you still have those wealth disparities.”Student loan forgiveness: what does it mean for the US debt crisis?Read moreHistorically, the education department has complicated access to loan forgiveness through the programs it creates, such as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for non-profit and public service workers seeking relief and the borrower defense program for those who were defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges.The White House initiative does nothing to address private student loan debt, which accounts for more than $140bn in debt. Although Latino borrowers were more than twice as likely to report struggling with private student loan debt as white borrowers, Black borrowers were a staggering four times as likely to fall behind on private debt payments, according to the Student Borrower Protection Center.An application process could make it harder for people to access relief, Welbeck says. But recent decisions by the education department to automatically discharge debts for hundreds of thousands of students who attended ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges, two for-profit college chains that imploded, show that a widespread relief without bureaucratic hurdles is possible. The two debt cancellations at the for-profit institutions amounted to roughly $10bn affecting more than 700,000 students.“The student debt crisis is a result of the longstanding history of racial discrimination that we have in our country, and it continues to perpetuate them,” Welback says. “So until we address student debt as a civil rights crisis, we’re not going to be able to make meaningful gains toward equity.”TopicsUS student debtBiden administrationUS student financeRaceJoe BidenUS politicsUS educationnewsReuse this content More

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      I’m 65 and have $300,000 in student debt. I and other older debtors are going on strike | Lystra Small-Clouden

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      I’m 65 and have $300,000 in student debt. I and other older debtors are going on strikeLystra Small-CloudenWe know that this debt won’t go away – for us or Americans of any age – unless we stand up and fight it On Wednesday, the White House announced its long-awaited debt cancellation plan. Joe Biden will erase $10,000 for borrowers who make under $125,000 a year, and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. The federal student loan payment moratorium will also be extended until December 31.Sadly, this news does almost nothing for me and millions of others. It falls far short of what economic and racial justice demands. That’s why I have joined over 250 people, all over age 50, who are pledging to strike our student loans when payments resume. Our numbers are growing every day.Most people think of the student loan crisis as a problem affecting young people. As a 65-year-old woman, however, I am actually among the fastest-growing demographic of student debtors. We know that this debt won’t go away – for us or Americans of any age – unless we stand up and fight it. That’s why we’re prepared to strike.I have over $300,000 in student debt. The burden is negatively affecting my emotional and physical existence. You may wonder how it is possible to accumulate such a large amount of student debt, so let me explain.As a single, Black, immigrant woman, I always told my four kids that education was the most important part of their upbringing. But it didn’t take me long to realize that I was hardly following my own advice: I was not comfortable advising my children to achieve the highest level of education when I myself didn’t. I am a mentor, educator and adviser to my kids. I wanted my mentorship and advice to be built on a strong educational and intellectual foundation.In January 2010 I began a doctoral degree program in human resources management. My biggest mistake was enrolling in a for-profit school. I did achieve my academic goals in August 2016. That feeling of success was short-lived, however. After graduation, I had to begin repaying student loans.My school didn’t play fairly with me while I pursued my doctoral degree. The administrators changed the length of my program from three to six years. They actively steered me away from my research interest in the effects of slavery and globalization, adding more time to my program of study. Meanwhile, I continued to pay. From an initial loan payoff of $75,000 per year, my debt rose to $300,000.Then my children started college. Because of my own debt, I was unable to qualify for parent loans to help my younger two children pay for their undergraduate studies. I was also unable to plan for the future. I exhausted my retirement funds trying to repay these loans and have not been able to replenish them because, as a good citizen, I prioritized repaying my student loans above all else.Biden must cancel all student loan debt, including for those with graduate degrees | Derecka PurnellRead moreMy debt is an economic drain but it’s also an emotional one. I have been stressing over it for 12 years now, and the stress has taken a very real toll on my physical health. I suffer from hypertension and high cholesterol and recently had emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder due to digestive issues caused by unnecessary stress. I spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that I am 65 years old, with projected loan repayments for the next 21 years of my life – meaning I will be 86 when I pay them off. When you are burdened by student debt, there is no quality of personal or work life. You are stuck at home – foregoing vacations, visiting family and friends, professional conferences, everything.Like so many debtors, I’ve found it hard to see a way out. As an older person, I’ve often felt particularly alone as a student debtor. When I learned of the Debt Collective, the nation’s first debtors’ union, I realized I was not alone. I found others with similar stories and experiences, including many other older people. As a group, we understand that we’re stronger together. And we are taking action. If Biden won’t cancel our debt, we will go on strike.I joined the 50-over-50 debt strike to make sure that the world knows that older debtors exist, and that we are growing in number. Because student loans are structured as a debt trap, there are more and more older debtors every day. My fellow strikers and I can’t pay – and won’t. We shouldn’t have to take money from our retirement to pay for college. I accumulated this massive student debt because of the inhumane policies of lending institutions and for-profit schools, and the lack of support and intervention from government agencies. Biden has the power to cancel student debt for all of us, automatically and immediately. Why isn’t he using it?I am pleading with Joe Biden: please make things right – by cancelling all student debt.TopicsUS politicsOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationDebt reliefUS student debtHigher educationHigher education policycommentReuse this content More

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      Cancelling student debt was always the right thing to do. Now it's imperative | Astra Taylor

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      Cancelling student debt was always the right thing to do. Now it’s imperative Astra Taylor With a global pandemic and economic depression looming, we can’t settle for half-measures. Cancel all student debt Coronavirus – latest US updates Coronavirus – latest global updates See all our coronavirus coverage ‘The economy is entering freefall and millions are […] More