Student Loan Debt Forgiveness An Argument in Favor

Abstract
Student loan debt forgiveness has become an increasingly controversial hot-button topic in American higher education today. On one hand, the American system of higher education has grown increasingly expensive. More students have been forced to take out loans to support their education as a result. On the other hand, many people oppose debt forgiveness on financial and ethical grounds. This paper argues in favor of debt forgiveness on principle, and offers a practical solution about how to achieve it.
Student Loan Debt Forgiveness: An Argument in Favor
Student loan debt is crippling young—and many older—Americans. More people are in debt for their educations than at any time in the nation’s history. As a democracy, having an educated populace is considered necessary for government to function, so people are able to vote in an educated fashion. Our society is growing increasingly technologically complex, and greater and more specialized knowledge is needed for it to be competitive and generate new ideas. Yet because of the high cost of education, a new generation of college students is being penalized rather than supported for pursing knowledge and a college degree.
According to Nichols, Bullington, & Gregory (2020), federal student loan debt has grown by 60% in the past 10 years, supporting the notion that education more financially burdensome for the current generation of college graduates. The United States is relatively unusual in this, even compared with other industrialized nations, where tuition and higher education is heavily subsidized. According to The Atlantic, “higher education has become impossibly expensive, saddling 44 million Americans with $1.6 trillion in debt. The cost of a year at a private college is now $37,650, on average, and $10,560 at public institutions” (Lowrey, 2020, par.4). For the average middle-class family, this means that students must take out loans, or their parents (or both).
The economic costs are significant. College graduates report delaying home buying because of having significant debt, even forgoing having children (Lowrey, 2020). Debt-ridden graduates report experiencing significant depression and anxiety, which can add to the strain to the healthcare system in the long term (Lowrey, 2020). There is a social justice impact upon high levels of debt as well. This may be the first generation in American history to be in worse rather than improved financial circumstances than their parents (Lowrey, 2020). There is also a racial social justice component to this issue. More Black students take out loans than white students. Black students have less financially affluent parents as a group, which means they are less likely to have parents who can offer financial assistance during and after graduation (Lowrey, 2020). “The economist Thomas Shapiro notes that, two decades after they enter school, the median white borrower has paid off 94 percent of debt, whereas the median Black borrower has paid off just 5 percent” (Lowrey, 2020, par.6). For society to be more racially equal, it is thus particularly important to cancel student loan debt for Black students.
The federal government has taken steps in the past to offer assistance to current and previous generations of college students. The GI Bill enabled returning soldiers to go to college and was a profound leveler in postwar society, and the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) made student grants and loans accessible to an even wider population of students (Nuckols, et al., 2020). But those days are long past. During the Reagan era, based upon an increased emphasis on personal responsibility in government, including in education, the shift in funding went from emphasizing grants (which did not have to be repaid) to loans. Simultaneously, there was an increase in college tuition. Even at public colleges, tuition increased 200% between 1988 and 2018, at four-year public colleges (Fields, 2019). This not even taking into consideration housing and the cost of living, including books. More students have also been forced to take out private loans, which have even higher interest rates than federal private loans.
Not only is undergraduate education more expensive, but more and more students are being forced to return to college for retraining or additional schooling, to ensure that they are able to capitalize upon their degrees. In the liberal arts in particular, graduates often find themselves only able to obtain lower-paying degrees, particularly if they only have a bachelor’s degree (Weiner, 2014). As women are less likely to get degrees in STEM and more apt to get degrees in the liberal arts, this again raises a question about social justice, since women are being disproportionately penalized for their choice of major, even when they obtain degrees in social work, psychology, or library science which can make a significant contribution to society. For example, 75% of all psychology graduates are women (Weiner, 2014).
Opponents to debt forgiveness argue that it would disproportionately favor upper middle-class individuals who take out money for graduate schools and private institution (Chinos, 2017). But the data suggests this is not true, and it could substantially free up the lives and scope of choice of many borrowers, particularly Black and female students, to live more fulfilling lives without being burdened by debt. With debt forgiveness, students could take jobs without the pressure solely of paying student loans, and take into consideration the potential value those jobs could provide for society.
The current proposal of President-elect Joe Biden to forgive debt is relatively modest, up to $10,000 per person for undergraduate debt which would not substantially benefit upper income borrowers (Lowrey, 2020). Even though this would not necessarily be live-changing for all borrowers, it is an important and compassionate first step for freeing a generation suffering from debt as a result of social forces they did not create.References
Chingos, M. M. (2017). The rich get richer. Education Next, 17(4). Retrieved from: https://www.proquest.com
Fields, S. (2019). 70% of college students graduate with debt. How did we get here? Marketplace. Retrieved from: https://www.marketplace.org/2019/09/30/70-of-college-students-graduate-with-debt-how-did-we-get-here/
Lowrey, A. (2020). Go ahead, forgive student debt. The Atlantic. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/why-biden-should-forgive-student-loan-debt/617171/
Nuckols, W., Bullington, K. E., & Gregory, D. E. (2020). Was it worth it? using student loans to finance a college degree. Higher Education Politics & Economics, 6(1), 1-19. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.32674/hepe.v6i1.1358. Retrieved from ProQuest.com:
Weiner, J. (2014). Why sally can't get a good job with her college degree: College-educated women find it hard to get a job because the market doesn't value their bachelor's degree. The Washington Post. Retrieved from: https://www.proquest.com