Secretary Miguel Cardona, Department of Education
(Photo/UNCF)
By Karen Stokes
A federal appeals court recently upheld the dismissal of a challenge to a key Biden administration student loan forgiveness initiative. This decision supports the Biden-Harris administration, maintaining over $51 billion in debt relief already granted and enabling further loan forgiveness.
“We recognize that there’s going to be some who are going to stop us at every turn,” said Secretary Miguel Cardona, Department of Education. “We’ve worked closely with the White House legal team and we’ve taken into account the perspective of the Supreme Court. We feel very strongly in the Higher Education Act as I have the authority to provide waivers and debt relief.”
“I think it’s important to remember we are at a point in our country that if we don’t look at education as an investment and address some of the barriers not only to college completion but making sure people aren’t in debt for the rest of their lives, it’s going to be hard for our country to continue to grow,” he said.
The Department of Education anticipates that up to 30 million people could benefit from future student debt cancellation.
“We’re trying to fix a broken system and provide affordability and accessibility to higher education,” Cardona said. “We have tremendous potential in our country to continue to grow. We recognize that debt relief is only a part of that but it’s an important part.”
The Department of Education is addressing negative consequences that may be a barrier to making higher education affordable and accessible.
“We’ve been very clear about our efforts to not only provide debt relief but also to ensure college is a good return on your investment. We’ve been aggressive going after institutions taking advantage of students. They’ll sell an education with fancy commercials and shiny brochures but students are left in debt with very little income potential,” Cardona said.
The Department of Education is introducing Gainful Employment (GE) rules, which will increase transparency for parents and students regarding the income-to-debt ratio of colleges.
Parents and students make decisions on colleges without understanding after graduation how much they’re going to owe and what the income potential is for students in those degrees.
“We’re making that transparent through our GE rules. We recognize debt relief is a solution to fix the problem but we have to get to the root issue as well,” he said.
“I’ve talked to loan relief recipients and every person has talked about how their plans are to invest back into the local economy, either buying a home, investing in education for their children, or starting a small business. We’re seeing impacts in the local economy,” said Cardona. “There are critics of loan forgiveness that say that’s not fair but these same critics weren’t complaining when we were bailing out the airline industry, or bailing out the bank industry. Hard working Americans need some support as we fix a broken system and we’re unapologetic in the Biden-Harris Administration to get it done.”