What just happened? President Biden campaigned on canceling student debt. Last summer, he announced a policy proposal to cancel $10-20K of student debt. Before Biden actually got around to cancelling the debt, several Republican lawsuits took aim at the program, and blocked the relief. Those cases made their way to the Supreme Court, which just ruled in their favor. The plaintiffs' extravagant, baseless claims were seen as valid by the Supreme Court. 

Let's be clear on ONE THING. The Supreme Court DID NOT strike down student debt cancellation. They simply chucked out Biden's first draft attempt at the policy. 

With this new ruling, we reaffirm: the ability to cancel debt does not rest with the Supreme Court. That  power belongs to President Biden.

President Biden can still legally cancel student debt. And he MUST. Numerous other legal pathways exist for Biden to take this action. For these efforts to be successful, Biden must immediately, automatically, and instantly discharge student debt. He must ditch the application required by his previous plan.

Can you sign here to make sure he hears us? 

DITCH THE APP, CANCEL THE DEBT ASAP.

WE CALL ON PRESIDENT BIDEN 

TO AUTOMATICALLY AND UNIVERSALLY DISCHARGE STUDENT DEBT.

Today, more than 45 million student debtors are burdened by nearly $1.8 trillion in student debt. Student loans disproportionately weigh on the most marginalized communities. Four years after graduating, the average loan balances of Black student debtors are more than double that of their white counterparts, due to discrepancies that can be traced to employment discrimination, racial wage gaps, and differentials in intergenerational wealth.

Rising student debt causes instructional harm, by forcing students to choose programs of study that will best service their debt rather than fulfill social and personal needs (i.e would-be public interest attorneys enter corporate law instead in order to pay back their student loans). Many higher education workers – including faculty, staff, university healthcare and facilities workers, undergraduate and graduate student workers, and many others – are ourselves student debtors. The adjunctification and casualization of college and university work – and low wages resulting from decades of budget cuts – have made it more difficult for workers to pay back their loans. The student debt crisis is part and parcel of the higher education labor crisis.

Since March 2020, federal student loan interest and payments have been paused — proving that the federal government doesn't actually need our student loan payments to function. Interest accrual on student loan payments will resume on September 1, and payments are set to resume in October.

Through executive action, President Biden has the complete legal authority to eliminate student loan debt on his own – without Congress – and it is a step supported by a majority of Americans. In fact, the Debt Collective has already written an executive order President Biden could sign today to end this financial burden. 

We see universal debt cancellation as a powerful first step in the process of reinvestment in quality public higher education as a truly public good. To achieve this goal, we will need to fight for  state reinvestment that fully-fund higher ed, ensure high quality and diverse curricula, commit to robust research support, and the de-adjunctification of our workforce. Quality, fully-funded public higher education should be available to all potential students, who should not be forced to pay for a public good, just as they aren't asked to pay for public K-12 schooling. The workers who make higher education happen (by teaching, grading, advising, cleaning and maintaining facilities, feeding students, and so much more) should be paid well and given reasonable workloads. Public colleges and universities should not be stranded  in the situation they are now: underfunded, heavily indebted, without the resources that would enable them to achieve their missions. The first step towards this vision is the universal cancellation of student loan debt.

Research from the Levy Institute and the Roosevelt Institute shows that a full jubilee—an erasure of all student loans currently on the books—would not only be a substantial boost to GDP but also a significant narrowing of the racial wealth gap, and therefore a means to begin addressing the need for reparations in and through higher education. Far from a boon to the already-wealthy, the vast majority of the benefits of universal debt discharge would go to the bottom 20% of households. The largest impact, in proportion to household wealth, would be on Black and Latinx families and communities, and women in those communities in particular, who hold the disproportionate share of the debt load. In addition, a significant percentage of student debtors were defrauded by for-profit colleges (which intentionally target and exploit marginalized communities) and these students routinely carry high debt burdens, often without ever having graduated.

A demand for universal student debt relief, along with continued pressure for quality, fully-funded public higher education, unites tens of millions of people around a commonly shared idea. In other industrialized countries, higher education, like healthcare, is regarded as a public good and as a right, but in the U.S., it has been turned into an expensive commodity. Now is the time to reclaim the institutions to  which we have devoted our careers. 

Universal debt cancellation would be the first serious step toward the goal of College for All that we have seen in our lifetime.

We, the undersigned, stand in firm support of  universal debt cancellation as a pathway to tuition-free higher education at public colleges and universities.   

We pledge to form, or support, worker-student-community pressure groups on our own campuses to actively promote these twin goals.

We pledge to actively support efforts by national political, educational or labor groups willing to fight for these goals.

We demand that President Biden eliminate student loan debt immediately, automatically, and instantly, as he is legally able to do.