Debt Relief and the Modern Student

I have been fascinated by the social media "conversation" swirling around President Biden's student debt relief plan and even more intrigued by how often the conversation veers to Christianity and the views of debt and grace.  I do realize that my social media may be having a vastly different discourse than that of others.  As I said to a colleague long ago, I tend to follow lefty Christian thinkers and creative writers and fiber artists which makes my Twitter feed much stranger than that of many people.

It's worth reading the plan itself (which you can do here) rather than what everyone thinks about the plan.  It is income based, which gets lost in the national yelling.  The very wealthy aren't getting debt relief.  The wealthy aren't getting debt relief.  If you make over $125,000 a year as a single person or $250,000 as a household, you're not eligible.  We can argue over whether $125,000 in income as a single person makes one wealthy or middle class, but the fact remains--not everyone is eligible. 

The most important plan isn't the amount of money forgiven, but the changes covered in point #3 that make debt more manageable.  To me, that's a Biblical concept, not a Capitalist one--but I rarely see that aspect covered in all the discourse about whether or not it's Christian to forgive debt and what does the Lord's Prayer mean anyway?

Another aspect rarely discussed is the structural nature of this debt.  Why are so many students in such debt?  Because over the past 40 years, state and federal support of higher education has shrunk to almost nothing, and students have picked up the remainder.  Tuition has skyrocketed for a variety of reasons, but the root of it all remains in the fact that state support of public education has shrunk so radically.  

In this conversation, Astra Taylor makes a powerful point:  "There are 45 million student debtors in the United States. Did each one of those 45 million people just make a terrible mistake? They just somehow failed to really comprehend compound interest? No. When something is that massive, when you have 45 million people all in the same boat, it’s because of the structural issue, because that’s actually the way the economy is set up."

I know that I am fortunate in having no student loans.  I got lots of scholarships, but I had the advantage of when I went to school, especially grad school, from 1987-1992.  For grad school, I paid less than $1000 in tuition each year because I had a teaching assistantship.  It was very affordable.  It is no longer affordable in that way.

Now the system is structured so that most students, from undergrad on up, have to take on debt, and that debt can be unregulated, so that interest rates are obscenely high.  Most students don't have lots of options when it comes to who offers them the loan and the terms of the loan.  There aren't as many predatory lenders now as there once were, but those loans still exist. 

I have loved the concept of a Jubilee year since I first stumbled across the concept decades ago.  I love the idea that toil will end, that at a certain point, debts are wiped out and everyone starts with a clean slate.  I associate the concept with pre-Christian ideals, not with Christ.  But readers of this blog will know that I have deep reservations about atonement theory, so they won't be surprised.

This new policy may not be as radical a debt forgiveness as a Jubilee year; it may not be what many activists hoped for.  But it will improve the lives of many, and for that we can give thanks.