Students incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans under the assumption that their loans will be forgiven after a set number of payments are just now realizing that they may be sorely mistaken.
In 2007, former President George W. Bush signed a law stating that those who worked public service jobs and made 120 timely student-loan payments, or the equivalent of 10 years worth of payments, would have the rest of their debt excused. However, fewer than one percent of the 30,000 people who applied for loan forgiveness from the first group of borrowers were actually compensated.
Bush signed this program into law encouraging people to do public service under the guise that they would be compensated later on, and then ripped the rug out from underneath them when they looked for the reward they had essentially been promised. This is, in itself, an unbelievable disservice to the teachers, government workers and countless other public servants who work for our communities. Degrees in public service jobs are expensive, and they rarely pay off.
But beyond the 30,000 deserving people who were promised their debt would be erased based on career are 6.5 million regular people who are currently relying on an income-based debt forgiveness program. Their debt totals $352 billion.
The income-driven repayment program for federal student loans, which Obama expanded during his time in office to make paying back student loans widely affordable, allows all borrowers to limit their monthly payments to 10 percent of their discretionary income. After 20 to 25 years (or 10 for those who are using public service loan forgiveness), the rest of their debt is forgiven.
This program is at risk with Republicans considering cutbacks based on cost worries. Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said it has become “standard” for students to anticipate loan forgiveness.
Of course it’s standard for students to expect that, if that’s what they’ve been promised and they haven’t been informed that the promise might actually be empty.
Recent college grads and those with high debt and low-paying careers face crippling student loan payments. It’s easy for someone with a high-paying career in public office to look down from their pedestal and tell them that they should simply work harder.
Loan providers seem to be intentionally making this process complicated — not to exclude people who don’t want to go through with the complicated paperwork to apply for loan forgiveness, but to exclude people who don’t have the resources to understand how to navigate the paperwork.
Issues with irresponsible loan providers will disproportionately affect low-income students. From the get-go, these students are disadvantaged — they were told they could overcome their family circumstance and be on the same playing field as a privileged student by taking loans, and they might not have as easy access to bank services and sources of information that could help them remedy situations with loan providers.
With college tuition increasing rapidly, student loans are only going to increase. If loans are not being forgiven, students are going to live well into their lives setting aside a significant portion of their income every month — that could otherwise go toward food or rent — to pay for the four years of college they attended a long time ago. We’re all going to college because we see it as a prerequisite for a successful future, but 25 years into the future, we might be bogged down with an increasing burden.
The number of borrowers who receive loan forgiveness will hopefully increase as eligibility requirements become more transparent and borrowers understand what is required of them in the application process. But why should loan providers want to be transparent? They don’t have any incentive to help students understand how to exempt themselves from paying loans. We must hold loan providers responsible in the face of bureaucratic red tape allowing them to turn their backs on students.
