- John B. King Jr. is the former US secretary of education under President Obama.
- He says he was still paying off his student loans while serving as a Cabinet member.
- King says Biden should use his executive authority to cancel student debt.
Like many other advocates for protecting students’ interests and advancing education equity, I am very encouraged by the Biden Education Department’s recent decision to cancel $415 million in student debt for victims of predatory for-profit college fraud.
This action builds on the Biden Administration’s important work to clear a backlog of debt forgiveness claims ignored by the Trump Administration, whose Secretary of Education Betsy Devos actually put former executives of predatory for-profit colleges in charge of the nation’s higher education policy.
President Biden faces another critical crossroads in higher education policy this spring that will define our economic future and his legacy.
While delaying the restart of federal student loan payments until May 1 provided important temporary relief, a dark cloud still hangs over millions of borrowers.
Today, 42 million Americans hold over $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt.
All too often, the crushing weight of student debt prevents people from even considering buying a home, beginning a family, or starting a new business. This is indisputably a crisis.
Thankfully, it is one that has a realistic solution that can transform millions of lives.
President Biden should use his executive authority to unilaterally cancel student debt for each borrower.
And to ensure this crisis doesn’t happen again, Congress must join President Biden in making college debt-free.
Canceling student loan debt and ensuring access to higher education for all Americans is more than simply a winning political issue — it’s about our values.
My family’s entire trajectory was changed by higher education. Just three generations ago, my great-grandfather was enslaved in a cabin in Gaithersburg, Maryland — only 25 miles from where my family lives today.
A generation later, my grandmother became one of the first Black women to graduate from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and I went on to serve as US secretary of education under our nation’s first Black president.
I was still paying off my own student loans while serving as US Secretary of Education for President Obama.
It made me extremely proud when, during my tenure, the Department of Education forgave loans held by students whose colleges deceived them or shut down abruptly.
We launched a special unit charged with cracking down on the predatory for-profit colleges that so often take advantage of students of color, low-income students, and veterans. We created a process for debt cancelation — as federal law allows — so student loan borrowers could restart their lives. It is this process the Biden Administration has used to cancel $2 billion of student debt for nearly 110,000 student borrowers so far. We also launched initiatives during the Obama Administration to make it easier for borrowers to repay loans within their monthly budgets.
While…
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