Richelle Brooks thought education was her shot at escaping poverty — a chance to stop bouncing between nights in her car and a shelter, an opportunity to secure a different future for her two children.
Education is also, however, what saddled her with $220,000 of debt she said she will never be able to pay off.
“There’s a constant cloud over your head, or a shackle to your ankle,” said Brooks. “And until it’s canceled, that never goes away.”
America’s student debt is now over $1.7 trillion, and many borrowers like Brooks say they are unable to pay it back. Before the Trump administration allowed people to suspend student loan payments without penalty in March 2020, more than 16 percent of student debtors were overdue by 60 or more days. One million defaulted every year. It’s a problem that’s spiraling, experts say: The people who took loans in 2011 now have more collective debt than they did then.
It’s also an issue that disproportionately impacts women, who hold two-thirds of student debt. They take on more from the get-go and then face pay discrimination that makes it harder to pay them off, according to a report by the gender equity advocacy group American Association of University Women. These disparities hit Black women even harder. They owe an average of $41,466 in loans after finishing their undergraduate degree — an insurmountable sum for many, considering that women collectively make an average of $29,203 after taxes when they graduate and that Black women make less than White women.
“Black women did what we told them to do,” said Dominique Baker, an assistant professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University. “They made the rational choice that we put before them as a society, but because they’re Black women, that meant that they were saddled with additional student loan debt, that they attended institutions that were underfunded and were predatory, and that they face a labor market that undervalues their expertise.”
The phenomenon, unprecedented at this scale, is a relatively recent problem. Between 2009 and 2019, student debt ballooned from $772 billion to $1.6 trillion — in part due to a decrease in funding to public universities and the federal government’s choice to use loans rather than grants to make up the difference, according to the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal nonprofit think tank. This transition also meant that many predatory, for-profit institutions sensed an opportunity to capitalize and moved into the higher education space.
Learning this is part of what changed Brooks’s mind about paying off her debt — it wasn’t just that she couldn’t pay, it’s that she wouldn’t. Brooks is one of more than 1,400 student debtors who are on strike and refusing to pay back their student loans. Others say they are prepared to join if Biden doesn’t take action to cancel student debt.
Brooks said her decision was spurred by the book “Can’t Pay Won’t Pay” by the Debt Collective, a debtors’ union she now organizes with that is working to cancel all debts (not just from student loans).
“I realized this is bigger than an individual issue; this is systemic and systematic and it’s intentional and predatory,” Brooks said. “I literally couldn’t pay and then I declared my inability to pay publicly.”
On the campaign trail, Biden made promises to cancel at least $10,000 per student borrower and forgive all debt for those who attended public colleges and universities and are earning under $125,000, as well as cancel debt for those who attended HBCUs. He recently extended the pause on student loan payments until May 1, which some believe is a sign that debtors’ pressure is working.
While debt cancellation was a relatively niche policy position even a few years ago, calls to enact it are increasingly mainstream among Democrats, with Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) being among the lawmakers calling for Biden to use executive authority to cancel up to $50,000 of student loan debt for federal student loan borrowers.
Republican lawmakers, however, largely oppose debt cancellation.
In a joint letter to the Department of Education in September, four Republican members of Congress, including Reps. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), wrote that “mass cancellation of student loan debt would not only be a clear violation of the separation of powers but would also be an affront to the millions of borrowers who responsibly repaid their loan balances.”
Ami Schneider, a member of the Debt Collective, has been striking since she graduated from one of the Art Institutes in 2010, a now collapsed chain of colleges accused of defrauding students.
“I didn’t want to pay because of principles and then couldn’t pay realistically,” Schneider said. “At a certain point you’re like, ‘Am I going to pay my bills and feed myself to survive or am I going to pay for this college that I literally didn’t benefit from?’”
Schneider said her photography degree didn’t prepare her for a job, leaving her to string together temporary contract work in the years after graduation. Her mailbox was inundated with bills, and she said that on some days she would receive 20 robocalls from creditors.
“That period of my life was very dark,” Schneider said.
Striking is a risky tactic: Tanked credit can rob borrowers of the chance to own a car or even rent a home. Some defaulters can have professional licenses suspended and government agencies and debt collectors may garnish wages and even withhold social security. Interest can also continue to accrue: Schneider said she finished school in 2010 with about $80,000 of student debt, and more than 10 years later, that number has ballooned to $120,000.
The Debt Collective is encouraging strikers to use strategies such as loan deferment and income-driven repayment to bring their monthly bills to $0 while protecting their financial future. They also say, however, that debtors’ willingness to take drastic action is a sign of their desperation — with millions defaulting, the collective says that many already are effectively on strike.
“We’re in a world where you’re just supposed to suffer in silence and in shame because being poor is your fault and being in debt is your fault,” said Astra Taylor, co-founder of the Debt Collective. “It’s really powerful for people to come out and say, ‘Hold on, we’re not going to suffer in silence. We’re going to come out and name ourselves as a collective.’”
Some experts say debt cancellation could boost economic growth at a time when the country needs it, and according to a 2018 report by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, it could increase the real GDP by over $86 billion and add more than 1 million new jobs annually.
It could also be a strategy for closing the racial wealth gap, which spiked by 57 percent between 2000 and 2018 for graduates with a bachelor’s degree because of student debt according to a report by the Roosevelt Institute, while also helping women driven out of the workforce by the pandemic.
A growing number of liberal politicians say if Biden, who faces plummeting support among young people, doesn’t take action, it could threaten Democrats in the midterms and hurt his reelection chances. (The Biden administration did not respond to request for comment.)
“I just really want him to evaluate how hard we campaigned for his success, and by that I mean young folks and Black women, and then he turned his back against us,” Brooks said. “We get a lot of words, but we want actual material change.”
Exactly how far to take debt cancellation is up for debate. Taylor said that partial cancellation wouldn’t help those with substantial balances. Some experts point out that over 77 percent of borrowers owe less than $40,000, meaning partial but substantial cancellation would have a dramatic effect. Other researchers say that given the pandemic’s effects, closing the racial wealth gap and boosting the economy would require cancellation up to $75,000 per borrower.
Baker, the professor of education policy, said acting on debt cancellation in isolation would leave in place the systems that trapped people in the first place. She believes that some form of cancellation must happen in tandem with serious education reforms, such as tuition-free colleges or more effective income-based repayment systems.
Brooks’s children are teenagers now, and she says that part of why she’s striking is to prevent another generation from being caught in the web that trapped her.
“I know how necessary education is. It should never be something that costs a dime — it’s a public good,” Brooks said. “When we’re all educated and learned, it’s better for society. Nobody should have to pay to be educated in one of the richest countries in the world.”
