If you follow the machinations of the United States Congress and the Executive Branch with any regularity, you will begin to notice that most of what actually ends up being enacted falls along the lines of corporate tax cuts, subsidies for already absurdly profitable entities, continually expanding military budgets with no end in sight, and other priorities that have no relation to democratic popularity or will. However, in the past couple of months, the Biden administration has addressed the concerns of average Americans in the form of concrete policy, something that is sadly rare in Washington, D.C. Most notably, President Biden announced a student loan debt relief plan that that should genuinely help a substantial amount of people. Biden’s decision is a relatively simple, effective and helpful policy, and the reactions in various factions have also been informative.
Biden announced he would cancel $10,000 from every student loan balance owned by the federal government (about 80% of the outstanding total), subject to an income cap of $125,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families. In addition, Pell Grant recipients (often a proxy for low-income debtors) are eligible for up to $20,000 of relief. In total, nearly half of all student loan debtors will receive full cancellation, and it is estimated that 90% of relief will go to people earning less than $75,000. The Biden administration has also announced it will begin taking student debtors out of default, which will help them restore access to other credit.
These policy decisions are a good start in solving what has become a massive problem. The student loan debt crisis has had cascading effects in recent years, preventing multitudes of young people from robustly participating in the economy and discouraging students from pursuing higher education. According to a Penn Wharton study of the policy, about 60% of the benefits would accrue to people in the bottom 60% of income. Overall, the relief is largely targeted toward lower-income debt holders, which cuts against the argument that many college graduates from wealthy families will largely benefit from debt relief. The vast majority of students from wealthy families have their college paid for by their parents, which is fine, but these aren’t the students incurring massive amounts of debt. The discussion of wealthy students benefitting from student loan debt relief is simply a red herring by people who don’t want any relief at all.
This decision from the Biden administration is a small step in what, unfortunately, needs to be a thorough rehabilitation of both America’s public education system and, more importantly, how Americans view education on the whole. It’s fairly easy to see how the accelerating costs of higher education and the subsequent debt it leaves many students have made more Americans suspicious of its efficacy. When a college education leaves a student with shaky job prospects and a mountain of debt, it’s difficult to argue its inherent worth. Therefore, it becomes much easier to cast doubt on the very concept of higher education itself.
In an ideal world, education should be viewed as a noble pursuit by its very nature, but, in America, education has taken on an extraordinarily mutated form, and the most obvious reason is the ballooning costs attached to it. Many parents are under tremendous financial strain while sending their children to college, so students often feel pressure to major in subjects that, in their minds, will lead to greater financial reward.
Higher education in America has turned into a knock-down, drag-out attempt to get out of financial destitution for many students. Any notion of pursuing higher education to simply improve one’s intellect, critical thinking skills, and understanding of the world is completely out the window for all but the most fortunate students. In the framework of this country, pursuing higher education to better one’s intellect is viewed as a frivolous pursuit undertaken by unserious individuals. This is a byproduct of the financial structure of the college experience in America. When a society starts fully treating education as a commodity rather than a right and a necessity, it doesn’t bode well for the future of its population. We are at that point in the United States.
A recent piece in Slate details the increasing absurdity of higher education in America, highlighting how truly captured it has become by financial demands. As one section of the article states,
“…many colleges hire expensive consulting firms to help them manage a complex process of marketing, admissions, and pricing. The firms design social media campaigns and produce the flood of glossy brochures that pour through the U.S. postal system every year. They take the wealth of detailed financial information that parents are required to disclose on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and feed it into the same kinds of complex algorithms that airlines use to constantly change the price of seats in the months, weeks, and days before a flight. They also use a probabilistic strategy for deciding whom to admit, based on a combination of how much they think parents are willing to pay and how likely students are to enroll. Because of online systems like the Common App, it’s easy for students to apply to many colleges. At less desired colleges – the safety schools and fourth choices – yield rates, meaning the percentage of admitted students who enroll, are often below 20 percent. So they admit 3,000 students to fill a freshman class of 600 and hope that past statistical patterns hold. If too many students enroll, there’s no room in the dorms. Too few, and the college goes broke. The whole process is called ‘enrollment management.’”
The Slate article further details how a sense of an imagined scarcity of college admissions slots influences students to make rushed decisions, sometimes putting themselves in an even more precarious position financially when it may not have been necessary.
“Understanding the true nature of the college market should reduce some kinds of student stress. If you’re a high school graduate in reasonable academic standing, there are scores of good colleges ready to admit you. The real market tuition price in the big middle of the higher education sector is probably about $25,000, not the $50,000 or $60,000 you might have heard. Applying to college there isn’t like being vetted to join an exclusive social club. Nobody is really judging your worthiness for financial aid. College is just another service with a price.”
High school students – when attempting to select the right college – are left to weigh a complex web of pros and cons, many of which involve financial decisions. At 17 or 18 years old, it is easy to be guided by an imagined sense of what you should do or what will be financially beneficial years in the future. At such a young age, it is often difficult to balance financial concerns with concerns for personal welfare, which can lead to poor decisions. It’s fairly unfathomable that people could be opposed to this debt relief, as it is largely debt held by the federal government. Any argument for a continuation of the status quo is simply an argument for continual economic and educational deterioration simply for the sake of keeping the status quo. The more inaccessible and expensive higher education becomes, the less educated our society will become. Nobody, in good faith, can argue that a less educated society is positive.
Education has been so divorced from its original intent in America that there are actually politicians and members of the media arguing that even Biden’s modest student loan debt proposal is way overboard, effectively equating it to a government handout. Most notably, Americans for Prosperity, the organization founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, immediately came out against the move with this statement: “This shameless handout will only push education costs even higher, cause people to take out even bigger loans, and set a dangerous precedent that the government will just come along and erase their debt in the future.”
Since the announcement of student loan debt cancellation, many powerful interests have claimed that the Biden administration’s legal justification is faulty, while the White House has cited the 2003 HEROES Act as the basis for its decision. The almost uniform condemnation of student loan debt relief by powerful interests has been extremely telling and is instructive of a larger trend. Any policy decision that uses the government to ameliorate some of the struggles of average people is met with widespread condemnation by most media, politicians, corporations, and business leaders. The fact that we have so many people in America living in poverty is a conscious policy decision, as is having millions of young people buried under mountains of debt. These aren’t laws of nature but conscious decisions made by people in positions of power. Decisions like canceling student loan debt let people know that the federal government actually has the ability to ameliorate, not just immiserate.
