SEATTLE — Sally Peyou just finished paying off her student loans last year at the age of 60. Between her undergraduate and master’s degrees, she accumulated more than $20,000 in debt, she said.
“I worked in social work so I didn’t have a huge income,” said Peyou, who lives in Anacortes. “It was difficult to pay them off. Sometimes I would question — ‘Why did I choose such a low-paying field?’”
Peyou is among the 55% of Washington adults in a new statewide poll who support President Joe Biden’s plan — announced in August but now tied up in a court challenge — that would cancel up to $20,000 in student debt per borrower. About 34% of those surveyed are opposed to this student loan forgiveness, according to the latest WA Poll sponsored by The Seattle Times and partners.
Biden’s student loan forgiveness program is popular among Washington liberals , but it’s being met with skepticism among conservative voters, especially those between the ages of 50 and 64, the poll shows.
The poll included responses from 875 Washington adults contacted by SurveyUSA between Oct. 14 and 19. It has a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Under the student loan forgiveness program, most borrowers would be eligible to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt if they earn less than $125,000 a year; families would be eligible if they earned less than $250,000. Pell Grant recipients, who often have the most significant student debt, will be eligible to cancel up to $20,000.
If a program like this was available when Peyou was paying off her loans, she said she would have struggled a lot less to meet her basic needs, like paying rent.
“It’s just a constant nagging sense that there’s never enough — or just barely enough,” Peyou said. “The loan forgiveness won’t help me but for other people I know, it’s going to help their kids.”
White House officials have said Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan would help close the racial wealth gap and help the nation’s poorest students. But Carol Kujawa, who responded to the poll, is not convinced the people who need the most economic relief will benefit. She does not support loan forgiveness.
“I don’t believe in taking something and then not paying for it — it’s like theft,” said Kujawa, 73, who lives in Everett. “This is putting a massive burden on taxpayers, many of them who paid off student loans or got through college without loans.”
About 22 million people have already applied for student debt forgiveness, but last week a federal appeals court issued an administrative stay temporarily blocking Biden’s plan. A motion was filed by six Republican-led states to halt the program. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued the stay, which ordered the Biden administration not to act on the program as the court case proceeds.
Men were more likely than women to oppose the student forgiveness program, WA Poll results showed. The age group most opposed to loan forgiveness was people between the ages of 50 and 64; about 31% of respondents in that age group did not agree with Biden’s policy.
Justin Maberry, 45, said it took him about 17 years to pay off his student loans, and he felt a sense of relief afterward. But, the money to sustain Biden’s plan has to come from somewhere, and Maberry doesn’t support loan forgiveness. “We’re just going to magically erase money? I spent nearly 20 years paying off student loans and now we can wipe out student debt? I don’t get anything out of it.”
Maberry, who responded to the poll, said he doesn’t necessarily want anything in return, but it “just seems silly to me.”
About 700,000 people in the state are eligible for the program, the majority of them Pell Grant recipients. Nearly 783,000 residents hold $28.2 billion in outstanding federal student loans. Nearly half are people with federal loans of more than $20,000, and more than 77% are under the age of 50. Only federal loans are eligible for forgiveness under Biden’s plan.
Around 47% of 2020 graduates of Washington colleges and universities had student loan debt, according to the Institute for College Access and Success, an advocacy organization. The organization also found that on average, 2020 Washington graduates have more than $23,900 in debt, making Washington the sixth lowest state in terms of average college student debt.
The loan forgiveness program application can be found at studentaid.gov.
The WA Poll is sponsored by The Seattle Times, KING 5, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and Washington State University’s Murrow College of Communication. Future poll stories will focus on whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump should run for president again and what respondents think about efforts to ban gas powered cars.
