Ruling on student debt leaves millions like me hanging
As a homeless student, I was driven by the goal of higher education. I knew it offered both shelter and the chance to build a new future for myself. It was this dream that pushed me, at whatever cost, to complete my homework and college applications — even in often undesirable locations. What I did not realize at that time, however, was the cost of this potential future. I thought as long as I worked hard, a poverty-free future was ahead of me. My passion for education developed through fear in the confines of a hotel room.
Now, eight years later, after attending college, graduate school, and now law school, I have accrued nearly $160,000 in student loan debt. This crushing debt-sentence follows my every action, plaguing me with anxiety and restlessness. If I am to fail in my studies or fail to secure employment, I know I may fall back into poverty, the environment that nearly destroyed me in my youth, with little hope of recovery. My family, who continues to sit on the brink of homelessness and poverty, will be unable to provide me a safety net. The dream that I followed has turned out to have disastrous side effects.
Following the advertised promise of a brighter future, millions of Americans like me each year make the decision to attend college and leave with an overwhelming debt burden. As of this week, the student debt crisis has ballooned to more than $1.7 trillion while the cost of higher education continues to rise. About 43.6 million people hold federal student loan debt, and the average federal student loan balance sits at near $40,000. This debt prevents many student loan borrowers from paying for basic necessities and their bills; in the long term, it prevents borrowers from saving for retirement or buying a home and may irreparably damage their credit scores.
To address the crisis, the Biden administration, in part, answered the demands of activists and borrowers, releasing a plan to cancel $10,000 in debt for all borrowers who earn less than $125,000 per year and to cancel $20,000 in debt for all Pell Grant recipients. While imperfect and means tested, this plan was projected to benefit nearly 43 million Americans and erase the entire student debt burden of 20 million people. The Biden administration executed this plan under authority bestowed by the Higher Education Relief and Opportunities for Students Act, which granted the secretary of education the authority to take steps to mitigate the hardship of the student debt crisis during a national emergency.
From the program’s inception, however, the plan was a victim of countless lawsuits funded by right-wing special interest groups, leaving borrowers in limbo as to the fate of student debt cancellation. On Friday the Supreme
Court put a temporary end to these questions, striking down the cancellation plan as an overextension of executive authority. This disappointing decision is a gross affront to the millions of students who put their faith in an educational system that purported to support them but which, by design, punished them for daring to dream.
Where the court has failed to support student loan borrowers, the rest of our government must take steps to address the student debt crisis.
President Biden announced on Friday that he will initiate rulemaking processes to reinstate his initial debt relief plan on the basis of the Higher Education Act of 1965, and that he will institute a new repayment program that will effectively remove the threat of default. It’s not enough. He must cancel all remaining student debt without means-testing.
Biden has the authority to do so under the “compromise and settlement” powers granted in the Higher Education Act. Canceling student debt under this authority may skirt the court’s ruling, which was based on Biden’s use of the HEROES Act. By making cancelation universal, automatic, and based on this legislation, he would address the pleas of student loan borrowers in crisis. In the meantime, Biden must extend the student loan payment pause beyond October, to protect borrowers in the time it takes to execute a new debt cancellation plan.
Furthermore, to address the underpinnings of the student debt crisis, Congress and state governments should reinvest in colleges to make public higher education free, reversing decades-long funding cuts that have worsened class and racial inequality. Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have already introduced legislation to this end that seeks to eliminate tuition and fees at most public four-year colleges and make community college free.
When I was approved for partial student debt cancellation last year, pending the result of active litigation, for the first time in a long time I felt truly hopeful — not only for me and my family but for the millions of people whose lives would fundamentally change from student debt cancellation.
While the court’s decision may have stifled Biden’s plan, this should not be the end. By canceling all federally held student debt and reinvesting in public college, the government would ensure that future generations could learn to love education, not for the suffering it prevents, but for the future it promises.
My passion for education developed through fear in the confines of a hotel room.