Students and borrowers can benefit from President-elect Joe Biden’s plans for student loan debt, the Pell Grant and tuition-free college.
TRAPPED, HOPELESS AND frustrated with the system that got them there, millions of student loan borrowers feel their futures hinge on President-elect Joe Biden’s plans for loan forgiveness.
“I feel like I’ll be making payments my entire life,” says Mitchell Geis, a California resident with about $250,000 in student loan debt from his undergraduate and graduate education. Geis signed a petition urging Biden to cancel such debt on day one of his presidency.
“I could earn a good living if I didn’t have these loans hanging over me,” he says. “That’d mean being able to be a first-time home owner, to contribute more to my local community and to provide a better life for my daughter.”
Though he makes monthly payments and works three jobs, Geis says his debt’s balance has only continued to grow. As a father and Asian American, he says his experience and the role race plays in these challenges reflect a system that’s failing him and millions of others who thought higher education would lead to a better life.
But change may be on the horizon. Biden has acknowledged the challenges borrowers are facing, saying at a Nov. 16 press conference, “They’re in real trouble. They’re having to make choices between paying their student loan and paying the rent, those kinds of decisions,” adding that efforts to address this “should be done immediately.”