Claire Pham | News Editor
February 22, 2024
43.4 million Americans have federal loan student debt, with the average student loan debt being about $37,090. On Wednesday, February 21st, the Biden Administration announced that they are set to cancel $1.2 billion in student loan debt. This translates to about 153,000 borrowers who have been paying off their loans for the last decade or more.
In order for a borrower to qualify for their forgiveness they have to be saving on a Valuable Education repayment plan, been paying off their student debts for at least 10 years, and have originally taken out $12,000 or less for college. The SAVE repayment plan reduces monthly payments and shortens the life of loans. This now means that Biden has canceled $138 billion of student debt for almost 3.9 million borrowers since he has been in office. Due to the Supreme Court blocking Biden’s initial plan to cancel $400 billion in student debt for 43 million borrowers, the White House has resorted to an assortment of smaller programs to forgive debt.
Compared to past presidents, Biden has canceled more student debt than any other administration. Past student loan relief programs have been limited to only helping certain categories of people such as public sector workers, whereas Biden has worked to expand these relief programs to benefit the most amount of people.
This plan intends to free student debt faster for community college students, and those with smaller amount of debt while wiping the debt away from those who have been paying it off for ten plus years. Senior Stella Thomas claimed, “Saddleback is such a good option for the price compared to attending a 4 year college.”
Both college and student debt is higher than it ever has been before, in the past year the cost of college has increased by 36% and is growing. The thought of student debt leaves students distressed about going to college: Senior Addie Flynn is hopeful that “by the time [she] graduates college these student debt relief programs are still continuing.”
Leave a Reply