Well, Biden Finally Did Something About Student Loans

It’s something, and I’m glad he did it.

So Biden finally canceled some student loan debt. If you make under $125,000 a year (that’s $250,000 for married couples), you are getting $10,000 in student loan debt canceled. If you got Pell grants, it’s bumped up to $20,000 canceled.

Probably, anyway.

There will probably be a bunch of lawsuits that challenge Biden’s ability to do this unilaterally since Congress never explicitly gave the president the ability to do that. I think it’s dumb to challenge something that is fairly popular — 55% of people approve of forgiving up to $10,000 in student loans, compared to 35% who oppose it.

Unsurprisingly, it’s particularly popular among those with student loans, i.e. a lot of Millennials and Gen Z. However, there is also an increase in stories of Gen Xers and Boomers who have been crushed under student loan debt that are clamoring for relief. Generally speaking, the people who oppose student debt relief tend to be the people who take the term “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” seriously and not as the impossibility it was meant to portray.

I have been in favor of student loan debt cancellation for a long time, to the point where the last time I wrote about it was last year around this time. I simply don’t understand why people are opposed to helping those with student loans get out from under the crippling debt that they cause. Do they think it’s unfair to those who paid off their student loans?

Well, I have news for them — times have changed, college is hugely expensive now, and the degrees they give are worth much less than they were thirty years ago. When I went to college, the common knowledge was that you take out whatever loans you have to in order to get a degree. Any degree will be fine, as long as it’s not a fine arts degree or something like that. All the companies care about is that you have a degree, it doesn’t really matter what it is.

So, they pressured a bunch of 18-year-olds to sign their lives away and go into debt with borrowed money in amounts so large they seem imaginary. They had us sign papers that we couldn’t understand without the college degree that we were applying for, encouraged by our parents and a system that thrives on the debt of anyone who isn’t rich.

Then, when we graduated, it turned out that the degree we got wasn’t really worth much unless it was one of a handful of very particular ones, so we all went tens of thousands of dollars into debt for more-or-less worthless pieces of paper. Oh yeah, and most of my friends graduated between 2008 and 2011 when the stock market and job market were both in the toilet.

These are not the days when you could work a part-time job and pay for all of your classes and books while still holding down an apartment. That hasn’t been the case for decades at most universities. You either went into debt up to your eyeballs or you had rich parents (or parents who otherwise saved wisely). Having had parents who were well-off but still didn’t save for our education, I can tell you that a lot of parents relied on student loans for their kids regardless.

I’m sure a lot of you have figured that I have a ton of student loan debt and just want a free ride. That is not the case. I paid off my loans before I turned 30, and as someone who is rapidly approaching 40, they’ve been behind me for a long time now.

No, it’s more that I’ve watched my friends struggle with their loans for over a decade now, trying to refinance them and figure out how to cover both loans and rent, drowning by degrees while their balances went up instead of down. I had friends with degrees from for-profit schools watch those schools go bankrupt, leaving them with broken promises, massive debt, and worthless diplomas.

In short, I have some goddamn empathy for people who aren’t me.

Look, college costs are out of control and have been for decades. Part of the reason we have such a student loan crisis is that colleges and universities have spent twenty years jacking up their costs by leaps and bounds and foisting the cost onto their students. And the students, most lacking other means, took on debt to cover those increased costs.

I absolutely believe, as most people who took that poll I linked above do, that we should rein in college costs and do something to make universities and colleges charge reasonable amounts for their classes. We can’t begin to address student debt until we address the root cause, which is the absurd costs of getting a degree. However, $10,000 in debt forgiveness is a good place to start.

Heck, why not cancel $50,000? Why not cancel it all? Millions of people would suddenly find that they have a bunch of money available every month and would likely spend it on all sorts of things. The economy would probably get a big ol’ boost that would help keep things moving along and a lot of people would be happy.

Most people who took on student loans and have outstanding debt have been lied to and misled to keep the system greased. They were misled about the value of their degrees and misled about how student loans work in general so more people would enroll and keep a lot of colleges and universities rolling in money.

In a perfect world, there would be designated staff at every university that would legitimately sit down with students and explain in common terms exactly what taking out a student loan entails. They would answer whatever questions the students had honestly and clearly and spend as much time as necessary to ensure that the students left satisfied with their decisions. That will likely never happen, though, since most higher ed establishments have a vested financial interest in their students being ignorant of what they’re getting themselves into until it’s too late.

So, for now, we will settle for $10,000 in student loan forgiveness. Let’s see if we can get a better federal minimum wage next.

If you appreciate my work, why not join Medium as a paying member, which allows you access to unlimited stories (not just three free stories per month), using my referral link. You could also hit me up on KoFi if you’re feeling nice, or send a tip using the button below.

If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!

Here’s some more of my thoughts about student loans: