For college students, the discussion of student loans and the possibility of them being forgiven is one that carries a lot of importance. Since this topic affects so many, it is no surprise that it garners a lot of attention from voters. From the beginning of 46th U.S. President Joe Biden’s campaign, it seemed that addressing student loan forgiveness would be a central topic. According to Forbes, during the 2020 presidential campaign, President Biden pledged support for the forgiveness of $10,000 of debt per student.
Recently, Biden has continued his plan to alleviate the financial burden of loans by proposing the SAVE plan. As documented by the White House’s briefing room, this initiative takes into account the amount of income a borrower takes in. Instead of payments reflecting a borrower’s loan balance, they will be calculated based on people’s earnings. The Biden-Harris administration has big projections for the impact of this plan. One of the aims of the plan is to reduce a large amount of borrowers’ monthly payments to be paying nothing. The plan outlines that someone whose salary is about $15 per hour will no longer have to contribute monthly payments. People whose earnings are higher than this will still save a considerable amount of money. The administration estimates they will save about $1,000 per year. The Department of Education also put forth some impressive estimates for the success of the program. For instance,85% of student loan holders who attended a community college will have cleared their debts within 10 years. This is due to how the plan includes a goal of providing borrowers who accrued low-balance loans to receive early forgiveness.
The path for President Biden to maintain his campaign trail promises of reducing student loans has not been one that has been met without resistance. Prior to the rollout of the SAVE program, the initial student loan forgiveness plan that President Biden had proposed was struck down by the Supreme Court. Even with the objections that President Biden has encountered with his student loan programs, he recently was able to clear $37 million in student loan debt for people who studied at the University of Phoenix. This achievement comes after President Biden has worked to forgive student loans from a few other universities that he believed “defrauded students.”
The Biden-Harris administration has taken many endeavors to work on lessening the burden of student loans. As a whole, the administration has worked to enact extensive change that allowed for billions of student loan dollars to be canceled for millions of people.