Are Student Loans forgiven? Well sort of, it's still bad for students

Last Wednesday, the Biden administration announced their student loan forgiveness plan. The plan had been speculated about in the months leading up to its formal reveal, with conservative factions proclaiming this burden will somehow be passed onto "working people" (which assumes that no working-class people have student loan debt) and members of the broad left vacillating between skeptical hope and doubting that it would reach fruition. After examining the full release, it's clear that it provides some real material relief for those struggling under the weight of student loan debt. Highlights of the announcement include up to $20,000 forgiven for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for those who didn't receive that aid in college (both for borrowers making under $125,000 a year), cutting monthly payments in half for borrowers and delaying the restart of loan payments at the top of 2023.

While this should provide a tangible improvement in the lives of many, the Biden plan fails to address the systemic root of the general problem with federal student loans. As the press release mentioned, there is almost $1.6 trillion worth of student loans weighing down on over 45 million college graduates. Assuming that every borrower will get $20,000 in relief, which they won't, that still leaves hundreds of billions of dollars in debt straddling graduates. It's also necessary to interrogate why college costs so much and trillions of dollars were thrown onto students pursuing the "path of success" that was sold to them. It feels a bit simplistic at first, but we must ask why debt was a necessary part of getting an education for millions and why finance capital is still allowed to loan out billions, preying on people trying to improve their conditions through education.

So, there is relief worth celebrating. And we should use these brief moments of small policy victories to highlight the exploitation baked into our socio-economic systems, remind ourselves that many are struggling to survive and work can be done with our communities to leverage more from our state. We should be critical of how we got to the point that a government beholden to the whims of finance capital must do something about student loan debt. The popular masses in the United States can change this failed social contract, along with so many others, for the betterment of our society through the construction of communities that have the interest and ability to steer state power. For profit student loans won't last forever.