Last August, President Joe Biden announced his student loan forgiveness plan, which sparked a debate amongst Democrats and Republicans. The plan, which would forgive up to $20,000 for eligible borrowers, would cost an average of $30 billion per year, according to the Department of Education. While the plan would provide relief to over 43 million borrowers, there has been significant debate over whether the program would help people who have the means to pay off their debt, if it should go further or whether the funds should be used in different ways.
“In my opinion, this makes the federal student loan system better, but it won’t fix the rising cost of education and the predatory habits of private student loan lenders,” said sophomore Michael Mitchell, advocacy and outreach director of the Drake Democrats. “We’ve gotta make community colleges and public colleges free for students to attend.”
Mitchell said that the government also needs to focus on lowering tuition for private colleges by providing grants and that private colleges should provide more grants to students in financial need.
Hilary Braaksma was one of those students. An editor at Dotdash Meredith, Braaksma attended community college before transferring to Drake in 2012. She graduated with a magazine journalism degree in 2014. And while she saved money by only spending five semesters at Drake rather than the traditional eight, she had to pay her tuition with student loans. While she believes the loan forgiveness plan is a good one, she doesn’t think it is enough.
“Making it more affordable and acceptable is what would actually help college students,” she said. “Because it is somewhat hopeful to know your loans could be forgiven, but I just don’t think that’s enough.”
Braaksma says that the government should be offering college education the same way it offers the accessibility of public high schools. A higher education is necessary for many people, but not everyone can afford it.
“If private universities are forced to be more competitive with state schools that are more affordable, I think that could be good overall,” Braaksma said.
Another Drake student said that although he has borrowed student loans from the government, he does not agree that student debt should be placed in the hands of others.
“I don’t think anything is free in life. Especially when it comes to private or public college,” said Dylan Engelbrecht, chair of the Drake College Republicans. “I don’t think it’s right.”
Engelbrecht said that although he believes education should be accessible, it is not fair to put the burden onto people who chose not to go to college, or have paid off their student loans by working throughout high school and college.
“One thing I think the state of Iowa does really well is the Reynolds administration doing tuition assistance for at-need programs,” Engelbrecht said. “You see a lot of teaching programs and nursing programs in the state of Iowa. There’s a lot of publicly funded scholarships for those programs because those are in need. We need more teachers and nurses.”
One thing that Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on is that education should be accessible to the public, especially for those who want to pursue an education after high school. The question is, how accessible should college be? Is it necessary to make college tuition free, or would that only backfire? Biden’s plan has sparked quite the debate over access to public education.
