Student debt

Recently, President Joe Biden has forgiven roughly $500 billion in student loans debt, which will help students who are still struggling to pay off debts.

Student+debt

Vincent Kills Plenty, Writer

As of August 24th, 2022, President Joe Biden has planned to cancel student debt to individuals who make less than $125,000 per year, and married couples and/or heads of households earning less than $250,000 a year. 

Estimated nearly 8 million borrowers, by the department of education, are planned to receive their relief earlier than others as their income information is already on file. 

As the national cumulative student debt rises, currently at $1.6 trillion for 45 million borrowers, middle to lower class residents are struggling to meet the debts that make life harder for them beyond school. Recent statistics from the Department of Education show that almost one third of borrowers have loan debt but no degree because of the cost of attendance alone. Student debt burden falls on mainly African American borrowers; the common African American borrower who started college in 1995 to 1996 still owe over 90% of their student loan debt.

As of August 24th, 2022, the Biden administration plans to follow through on a three part plan to provide relief from the burden of loan debts to working families as they recuperate, making life much easier during these heavy times as the cost of colleges continues to rise. In this three part plan, Biden hopes to provide this debt relief to people who really need it and address the financial harm the pandemic has caused, which also happens to fulfill Biden’s campaign commitment. Biden also wants to make the student loan system more reasonable and flexible for students to work with. He plans to do something about reducing the cost of college to protect future students and taxpayers when schools bump up prices, also holding them accountable for the price increases.

The Pell Grant program is one of America’s most useful and effective financial aid programs that has not been keeping up with the cost of college attendance alone over the past forty years. Now this may seem like a whole lot of nonsense to some, so let me put this into perspective in a more understandable way. First, we have a single construction worker who makes about $38,000 a year. He would only have to pay $31 a month compared to the $147 monthly payments most people similar to him would pay, for his annual savings would add up to $1,400. That was a COVID relief check a couple years ago. Now let’s use a parent who is a nurse and married with two kids (making $77,000 a year), they would only have to pay $61 compared to the $295 they would have to pay without this relief, with an annual savings of more than $2,800 (all sourced from US Department of Education and whitehouse.gov.)

Now in hindsight, this seems like a good idea. Almost too good to be true, because with every action there is a reaction, that is just the way of life. Time will take its toll on this one, one can only hope it is beneficial for all parties involved.