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Biden Again Tries To Link Student Loan Cancellation To The Ivy League — Ignoring Key Facts [1]
['Adam S. Minsky', 'Kelly Anne Smith', 'Forbes Staff', 'Forbes Advisor Staff', 'Senior Contributor']
Date: 2021-05-21
WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 12: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the COVID-19 response and the ... [+] ongoing vaccination program at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on May 12, 2021 in Washington, DC. Biden spoke on the approval of the Pfizer vaccine for children 12 and over and the country wide efforts to increase vaccination rates. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Images
President Biden this week criticized student loan forgiveness proposals, painting the push to cancel student debt as unfairly benefiting wealthy students who attended expensive Ivy League schools.
“The idea that you go to Penn and you’re paying a total of 70,000 bucks a year and the public should pay for that? I don’t agree,” Biden said in an interview with The New York Times NYT .
Biden has previously suggested that mass student loan cancellation would primarily benefit Ivy League students. Students and borrower advocates have pushed back. In February, after Biden made similar comments at a CNN Town Hall event, students at the Harvard Crimson — Harvard’s independent student newspaper — published an editorial criticizing Biden’s comments and noting that they were not rooted in facts.
“We often see the Ivy League used as a political tool, usually in incorrect or misleading ways,” said the editorial staff. “Student loan forgiveness offers the rare opportunity to level the socioeconomic playing field, providing social mobility to those saddled with debt for no other reason than that their parents — like the average American citizen — could not afford tens of thousands of dollars in out of pocket expenses.”
According to statistics published by the U.S. Department of Education, a fraction of one percent of students who received federal students loans attended Ivy League colleges.
“Among the 45 million Americans with student loan debt, very, very few went to Harvard, Yale or Penn,” wrote Persis Yu, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center, in an op-ed for CNN in February. “Quite simply put, student loan debt is not a problem of the elite. The vast majority of student loan borrowers are low- and middle-class Americans who had to go into debt to access postsecondary education, and who are paying dearly for it.”
In addition, student loan borrower advocates have pointed out the significant racial inequities in higher education financing, noting that Black students are significantly more likely to rely on student loans than their white counterparts, and stand to benefit more from broad debt relief. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 77.7% of Black students borrow federal student loans to pay for a higher education, which is significantly higher than the national average for all students (60%) and for White students (57.5%). Black students are also more likely to attend for-profit institutions, which are often accused of deceptive and predatory conduct, and have higher drop-out rates than most public and nonprofit schools.
Biden has consistently expressed support for cancelling student debt, and famously promised during his presidential campaign, “I’m going to eliminate your student debt.” But he has opposed calls for upwards of $50,000 or more in student loan forgiveness, an amount pushed by Democrats in Congress and a broad coalition of advocacy organizations, teachers unions, and civil rights groups. He has indicated that he would support $10,000 in student loan forgiveness, targeted to lower income borrowers.
Biden has directed Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and attorneys at the Department of Justice to conduct a legal review of his options to cancel student debt. That legal review is ongoing, and it is unclear what the conclusions will be, although we may know soon.
Further Reading
Will Biden Cancel Student Loan Debt? We May Know Soon
Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Review: Should You Take Steps Now To Get Student Debt Cancelled Later?
College Cancels Student Loan Debt Using Money From Biden’s Stimulus Bill
If You’ve Been Paying Your Student Loans, You May Be Entitled To A Refund
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[1] Url:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2021/05/21/biden-again-tries-to-link-student-loan-cancellation-to-the-ivy-league---ignoring-key-facts/?sh=3a62316624e6
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