February 22, 2022
It’s Time for Young People to Demand a Solution to the Student Debt Crisis
By Lisa Herforth-Hebbert
Student body leaders representing over 1 million people recently urged President Biden to cancel student debt. Now is the moment to join them.
By Brendan Rooks and Orlando Cabalo
A common phrase said to the millions of young people that seek higher education is that “college is a ladder of upward mobility.” Unfortunately, from trade school to college, this ladder is sinking in a swamp of $1.7 trillion of student loan debt.
But college students are pushing back against the growing weight of this crisis. Students at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) recently joined the Student Debt Crisis Center (SDCC) in a burgeoning “Free the Degree” college outreach coalition. The student government unanimously passed legislation calling on President Biden to cancel all federal student loan debt. The Associated Students of UC Riverside (ASUCR), which represents over 24,000 students, joined the Free the Degree coalition because of the economic benefits and the moral imperative of debt cancellation.
From the 2008 Great Recession to the Covid pandemic, college students’ political perspectives have been shaped by major economic and health crises. In both of these major events, the wealthy and well-connected got bailouts while working people were left out to dry. Throughout the pandemic, students have seen the federal government rush to pump over $1 trillion into Wall Street, while President Biden has still not fulfilled his promise to broadly cancel student debt. Many current students, seeing the looming crisis, have thrown in their lot with supporting federal loan forgiveness.
