President Joe Biden’s plan to relieve student debt has addressed the concerns of many college students and recent graduates. At Washington State University Vancouver, for example, 43 percent of students in 2020-21 met requirements for federal Pell Grants, creating debt that many of them would carry for years.
But the issue also illuminates questions and concerns surrounding American higher education. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in response to Biden’s debt-reducing order: “We have a lot of problems in the whole system. The president has done what he can do with the tool in front of him. And that is he’s helped relieve the debt burden for millions of Americans. We need to deal directly with the cost of college. Absolutely.”
Many factors contribute to that cost, and the net result has been a sharp increase in the price of tuition at public universities. According to the Education Data Initiative, tuition at an average public university increased 121 percent during the 1980s; that expansion has slowed, but still typically outpaces the inflation rate.
Beginning in the 1980s, legislatures routinely trimmed funding for state universities, leaving schools to rely more heavily on tuition to cover expenses. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that, nationally, inflation-adjusted state funding for public two- and four-year colleges in 2018 was $6.6 billion less than in 2008, before the Great Recession.
As author Heather McGhee writes in “The Sum of Us,” published in 2021: “Fundamentally, we have to ask ourselves, how is it fair and how is it smart to price a degree out of reach for the working class just as that degree became the price of entry into the middle class?”
It is all part of a vicious cycle. Tuition growth — and a perception that a college degree is essential for a spot in the middle class — lead to more students taking out education loans. Adding to that, a 2017 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that more federal aid to students enabled colleges to further increase tuition.
The result has been an estimated $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. In Washington, about 800,000 residents owe a total of more than $27 billion in student debt.
Biden last week took steps to ease that burden, forgiving up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for others who qualify. (As an aside, regardless of the wisdom or fairness of the decision, the issue further highlights the modern imperialist presidency; Biden is not the first to make an executive decision that should be left to Congress, but lawmakers must assert their power as a co-equal branch of government.)
Criticisms of the decision have ranged from the absurd to the valid. On the absurd side, several Republican members of Congress complained about loan forgiveness, only to have White House officials point out that many of them had Paycheck Protection Program loans forgiven under COVID-19 relief plans — including $2.8 million for Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla.
Valid arguments include concerns about loan forgiveness adding to inflationary pressures; if people have more money to spend, prices are likely increase. There also are assertions that debt relief will primarily help wealthy people.
Those are immediate issues that come with an aggressive move from the president. But long-term concerns are equally important. The larger questions involve the cost of secondary education and why this nation is so reluctant to invest in its future.
