Student describes student loan forgiveness attempts

 The issue on student debt has always been a concern for many Americans today. In response this being that President Biden mentioned giving out a $20,000 loan-forgiveness in student debt relief around the time of his campaign. But afterwards the supreme court struck down this policy in late 2022. But so far, the administration’s officials are coming up with a new plan under the higher education act hopefully canceling student debt by 2024.  And if this does happen, many former students would find it very beneficial, and we would all most likely enjoy an improvement in the economy.

This policy would be life changing for many that are still stuck paying off student debt that should’ve been taken care of. As for those in support, Senators Cory Booker and Bob Menendez were among 87 lawmakers who, in August of 2023 wrote “We are extremely disappointed and concerned that the Supreme Court substituted politics for the rule of law to deny as many as 43 million hard-working Americans life-changing relief from crushing student loan debt…”.  Also, on May 12, 2023, in Washington, DC there was also a group of loan-borrowers that showed up to the white house, ordering that Biden should urgently cancel student debt. All this showed that there were many that were looking forward to this plan succeeding. Not only this, but also allowing the student debt relief plan to take place would allow for borrowers to spend money on other areas. Following debt forgiveness, statistics on wealth and spending would allow us to see what groups benefitted from this plan. The policy would also allow for narrowing the racial wealth gap among people.

As for the criticisms that may cause some to oppose this plan: it could be unfair to those that don’t have debt or already paid off their debt. This is understandable because the main target audience for this plan is for the loan-borrowers. And it makes you wonder about where this helps the other percent of Americans that don’t have anything to do with this plan. For example, some people may have saved money every month for many years to prepare for when their children would be ready to go to college, while other households with even higher incomes may not have saved anything at all, and then just taken out loans when their children went to college. Paying off everyone’s loans would penalize the households that had cut their consumption so they could afford college with little or no debt for their children, and would reward households that failed to prepare for the expense.  

Speaking of not including everything, this plan does not address the crippling costs of college which could be added. That is, if students can get loans, then schools can raise the costs of attending, certain that their students will be able to get loans and grants to pay whatever fees and tuition they decide to charge.  Another reason why this could possibly be an issue is that it could cause people to take advantage of the system and influence those to take on more loans in the future.  But some of these issues can be fixed with a bit of modifications to this plan. One thing that is a bit concerning is the cost and inflation concern of this action. Because what everyone is seeing is how it will cause many of Americans to be loan free, but what those don’t see is how much spending is going on here for this program, and excessive government spending could contribute to inflation. 

This plan originally applies to federal student loan borrowers, The White House site stated “income-driven repayment (IDR) plan that calculates payments based on a borrower’s income and family size – not their loan balance – and forgives remaining balances after a certain number of years. The SAVE plan will cut many borrowers’ monthly payments to zero, will save other borrowers around $1,000 per year, will prevent balances from growing because of unpaid interest, and will get more borrowers closer to forgiveness faster.”. Making it more efficient for those with student loans and providing breathing room for families.  As for when it comes to income, the student aid site stated “To smooth the transition back to repayment and help borrowers at highest risk of delinquencies or default once payments resume, the U.S. Department of Education will provide up to $20,000 in debt relief to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education and up to $10,000 in debt relief to non-Pell Grant recipients. Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 or $250,000 for households.”  Also the website mentioned that individuals working for nonprofit, military, government, federal, state, tribal, or local level may qualify for complete loan forgiveness through the public service loan forgiveness program (PSLF).  Seeing what it takes to qualify shows that there is room for a variety of individuals to receive this plan. 

Altogether, this policy is very complex and is not an easy one to have solutions for. There still needs to be some final adjustments overall for there to be improvements in not just the loan-borrower but the economy altogether. Student loan forgiveness is beneficial for students that have been stuck paying loans off instead of using money for other things.  It would have a major influence on those that want to go to college but can’t. However, it also raises questions about what the outcome would be from this. How would this affect the economy, and would it do harm or do good things?

Reference

https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief-announcement

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/08/22/fact-sheet-the-biden-harris-administration-launches-the-save-plan-the-most-affordable-student-loan-repayment-plan-ever-to-lower-monthly-payments-for-millions-of-borrowers/

https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-tell-biden-to-deliver-on-your-promise-of-20000-student-debt-relief/

I realize that you are coming back to academic writing after some years out of college, so I'll work with you more on writing style, but this is really fairly good.  You had a lot to cover in this paper.  You might have organized the paper along these lines:

Opening paragraph about how Biden promised to bring debt relief to persons burdened with debt on student loans, but his methods for doing this were thwarted by a lawsuit brought by the State of Missouri, which gave the Supreme Court an opportunity to say that the White House didn't have the authority to cancel student debt.  But, since the Supreme Court's decision, Biden has found other ways to give some debt relief.

Then, you would have a paragraph (or two or three) about the problem.  People go to universities that are expensive, and they either have never had the financial resources to afford their costs of study, or they have simply not actively saved and planned for college.  You might say something about the human right to an education, and whether it applies to some persons who would like to attend a university. You could comment on the costs of study in a university, and discussions of how to keep costs low. The people who go to college and incur the loan debt were not responsible for deciding whether or not to save up for college because they were children without significant income before going to college. Perhaps half of the benefit of people gaining a college education is enjoyed by the wider public, and not merely a benefit to the individual who becomes educated. Student loans are not erased when a person goes through a bankruptcy. Student load debt may have high interest rates. Many people have this debt, and many of them have very high debt where their payments on student loans prevent them from purchasing homes, cars, or starting businesses.  

Then, you would summarize the arguments in favor of eliminating some or all of the student loan debt.

Then you would offer a paragraph summarizing the arguments opposing forgiveness of most student loan debt.

Then, you would use a paragraph to describe some loan forgiveness programs that have existed for a while. For example, in many cases social workers who pay their student loan debt every billing period without fail for ten years while working as social workers in non-profit or public entities will have remaining student loan debt remaining after 120 payment periods (ten years) wiped away.  

Then, you would have a paragraph about what the Biden administration tried to do.

Then, you would have a paragraph about the Supreme Court that blocked it.

Then, you would have paragraph about what the Biden administration has been doing to forgive some loans since the Supreme Court case.

Your eleventh paragraph could be a summary of where things stand now.  Maybe look at some polling data to see what attitudes are toward debt forgiveness.  Is Biden gaining credit among persons who've had their debts decreased or wiped out?  Are Republicans suffering a loss of support for thwarting the loan forgiveness policy?  

Student urges someone to support public service loan forgiveness in a specific county

 Dear whomever it concerns, 

It’s better when you figure out the name of the person to whom your letter ought to be addressed if you were to actually send it.

My name is _____________ and I wanted to talk to you about the Student Loan Forgiveness for Social Workers. Specifically I would like to talk about the PSLF, which helps public service workers by giving them college loan forgiveness. I want you to push for getting this policy approved for Macon County Students. I believe it is important that social workers and public service workers can get help with their school, as they have gotten their degree to help their community. As we all know, public service workers do not get paid much; teachers, social workers, and anyone who works for the community they are in does not get paid as much as they deserve. 

Why is that? They work overtime, that most of the time they are not even paid extra for their long hours? On top of everything that they work for, they also have to get the money together for their student loans, but students pay the same  This is going to make people not want to go into being a social worker or a public service worker and then we will not have any. We need to help the ones who are helping our community and our society’s future. 

I believe that if we make this policy a reality in Macon County, we will help the Public service workers, and have more help in school, DCFS and all of that. So please, consider this and help with our society’s future. 

Thank You,

_____________

You are suggesting that Macon County provide scholarships for students who, after graduating from local high schools, earn degrees in social work and other forms of public service (teacher education, I suppose), and these scholarships would be modeled on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) policy, which forgives remaining balances on federal direct loans for education if a person who has debt from such loans has made 120 payments on their direct loan while earning an income from a qualified employer (qualified employers are mostly in government, which is why this is a “public service” policy). 

As a federal policy, PSLF is available to all students, including those who reside in Macon County. Is it your intention that the County Board in Macon County (or perhaps the City Government in Decatur) should offer college loans to students from Macon County, and then forgive the balance on those loans if a recipient of such a loan has resided in Macon County and worked for a public entity in Macon County for a total of ten years? 

It’s a very interesting idea: that a body of local government might get into the college lending business, supporting high school graduates and residents in the jurisdiction of the local government to earn university degrees and then stay in the jurisdiction after earning those degrees. Presumably the local government body would work with some sort of coalition of local banks and credit unions, who would set up the lending process and maintain the record-tracking. I could see this being an interesting policy that might help retain talent and innovation in localities that suffer from brain-drain as educated young adults flee the area and move to Chicago or out-of-state. This policy might also help recruit nurses, social workers, school teachers, law enforcement workers, emergency medical services workers, and so forth, if any of those types of occupation were having difficulties recruiting and retaining employees. 

You would certainly want to write a letter with a little more clarity and detail, to help your audience understand what exactly you are suggesting. What you have done well in the letter is convey a sense that many professionals in public service are offering their diligent effort and expertise in the workplace, but they are not enjoying the respect or compensation that would encourage them to continue doing so, and in fact, such work is becoming less attractive.  That point does help persuade your audience that something should be done. You might have explored why offering locally-sourced education loans that are paid back by the county or city governments after a loan recipient has paid back a certain number of times might be a better way of handling the problem compared to something more direct, such as increasing the wages of workers in these areas, or reducing their working hours or caseloads.  I imagine the loans off the opportunity for the local government and local lending institutions to earn some profits from the interest payments as loans are repaid.  It also may improve the opportunities for local households, whereas raising salaries or improving working conditions directly may benefit persons who are not local, who take local jobs and move into the area. 

As you write letters for decision-makers, you must try to be very clear about what you are asking them to do, and explain why they should do what you want them to do. You need to be able to clearly tell them why a particular course of action is the best thing to do. Telling them that a situation needs fixing and giving them a general idea about the problem and types of solutions is fine, as that gets them thinking about a problem, but will probably find it more satisfying to push for very specific things when you do advocacy in the public policy sphere. 

This assignment allows students to write about any sort of policy connected in any way with social welfare services or policies. I want people to write about things that matter to them—I want students to care about the topics the address in these papers.  Do you care about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness policy?  Do you think 120 payments should be made before the remainder of the debt is wiped out? You can write about actual policies or made-up policies or policies that are being proposed but haven't been passed or implemented yet.  I think in this case you could be writing about the actual existing PSLF program, in which case it is unnecessary to ask a local politician to make it apply in a specific area, because it already is a federal program.  If you are using the same name, but imagining some other policy, or if you pretending that the PSLF program hasn't been enacted yet, then you would need to explain more about what it is and what it does. A single sentence that explains that some loans (those coming directly from the federal government) are forgiven eventually if someone had made payments on those loans 120 times.