瓦莱丽·布朗斯坦是一位单亲母亲的女儿，她17岁时怀孕，就读于加州萨克拉门托的一所当地社区大学，并申请了学生贷款。“老实说，我甚至不知道贷款是什么，”她笑着回忆说。“在我24岁买车之前，我可能都不知道利率是什么。”她当时只知道她正在签署学生贷款和经济援助表格，这样她就可以去上学了。
1993年布朗斯坦获得英语学士学位后，她申请了更多贷款以获得教学证书，并搬到华盛顿特区，在乔治·华盛顿大学攻读硕士学位。在博物馆工作是她的梦想，但当她发现自己再次怀孕并在1998年生下双胞胎时，她搬回了家乡，做了一名稳定的中学教师。后来，她成了一名大学英语教授，并拼凑了一些兼职工作。
现年52岁的布朗斯坦一直背负着助学贷款。有时她的预期付款是每月300或400美元，这在她20多岁时感觉是一笔财富。在其他时候，它们高得惊人，她说这似乎是一个笑话。“曾经有一段时间，他们的月薪大概是1800美元，”她说。“我想，‘你在开玩笑吗?这比房款还多。“有时她会参加额外的课程，这样她就可以推迟付款，有时她的贷款会出现违约。她在力所能及的时候付款了。”她说:“我想利率一直在上升。
她硕士毕业后最初的债务约为8万美元，到2023年11月变成了23.7万美元。就在那时，她收到了一封她起初认为是骗局的邮件，称她的学生贷款已被免除。布朗斯坦说:“我以为共和党人把这件事提交给了最高法院，他们说‘不，不会有贷款豁免’。“我记得我给女儿打电话说，‘哦，这不是很好吗?‘哈哈哈，有人在骗我。’”她的女儿说服她登录贷款服务机构的网站，但网站已经关闭。那时她开始怀疑这是不是真的。“然后，果然，那个星期一早上当我熬过来的时候，它是真实的。我的意思是，我甚至无法呼吸。”
布朗斯坦是对的:今年6月，美国最高法院做出了判决杀死美国总统乔·拜登(Joe Biden)针对新冠肺炎学生贷款减免的全面计划将为多达3100万借款人免除1万美元或2万美元的贷款。然而，自那以后，政府采取了更有针对性的措施，通过纠正一些行政问题并使其更容易获得资格来免除现有计划下借款人的学生贷款。一些借款人一直在耐心等待他们的贷款被清空，而其他人，如布朗斯坦，则完全措手不及。本周，拜登宣布了一项新计划这可能会免除多达1000万借款人至少5000美元的债务，但这种免除还需要几个月的时间，而且不太可能在选举日之前实现。
像学生贷款减免这样的政府行动是解决选民最大的担忧之一——生活成本不断上升——的一种相对容易的方法，它可以消除借款人每月预算中的一笔大支出。拜登竞选连任面临的问题是，是否有足够多的选民了解他的努力，并愿意为他履行2020年竞选承诺解决美国1.7万亿美元学生债务问题给予信任。“他们提出的被否决的计划非常清楚、非常简单、非常容易理解，我认为很多人都接受了这一点，原因很明显，”大学入学与成功研究所(Institute for College Access and Success)大学负担能力高级主任米歇尔·谢帕德·赞皮尼(Michele Shepard Zampini)说。“然后一旦这一切分崩离析，这个次要过程是如此深奥，如此不可靠，如此令人困惑，时间线如此延长……在此之前似乎有一种动力和清晰的感觉已经失去了。”
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至少二十年来，大学费用以及支付这些费用的学生贷款一直在飙升。随着2011年“占领华尔街”运动的兴起，学生借款人群体开始呼吁大规模救济。巴拉克·奥巴马总统，在时任副总统拜登领导的特别工作组领导下对一些现有项目进行了改革，使一些人更容易偿还贷款和获得减免，增加了佩尔助学金的资金，并增加了税收抵免和一些大学的资金。
也是在奥巴马政府期间，根据2007年的一项法律，第一波借款人有资格申请豁免。该法律规定，从事公共服务工作的人——教师、政府雇员、非营利服务提供商——在10年还款或120次还款后，剩余余额将被取消。但是政府问责局2018年的一份报告发现99%申请偿还贷款的人被拒绝了。在一定程度上，这是因为该计划要求借款人参加某种类型的还款计划，提供还款期间的就业证明，并单独注册，借款人经常发现这些规则令人困惑和不清楚。在特朗普政府执政期间，宽恕进一步陷入停顿。教育部长贝琪·德沃斯嘲笑一个宽恕计划，允许被学校欺骗的学生以太容易和“免费”的方式获得宽恕审批速度放缓在她的指导下。法宝支持她否决了可能会改变其政策的立法。
总的来说，学生债务总额持续上升，直到新冠肺炎疫情。
疫情学生贷款暂停支付是一次历史性的重置，到2023年，学生债务总额大幅下降。违约的借款人(意味着他们已经拖欠超过9个月的还款)获得了缓刑，并有机会参加一个项目，该项目将清除逾期金额并使他们的贷款恢复良好信誉。由于付款和利息暂停，一些借款人能够付清余额。
但下降的一部分原因也可以解释为拜登政府纠正了债务减免计划中一些众所周知的问题。根据现行规定，收入驱动型还款计划的借款人如果在20年或25年还款后仍有余额(取决于计划和借款时间)，应该会看到他们的剩余余额被抹去。资格由每月付款的数量决定，拜登政府通过将更多类型的过去付款计入总付款计数使更多的人符合资格。更多的完全或永久残疾的借款人或曾就读于信誉扫地或关闭的学院和大学的借款人也可以寻求救济。
拜登政府在公共服务贷款豁免方面也做了类似的事情:通过放宽严格的文书规定并将更多类型的付款计划纳入总计数，确保更多借款人的付款计入所需的总计数。对许多人来说，这意味着一些付款被追溯贷记。
在10月份恢复还贷之前拜登政府启动了一项名为SAVE(在有价值的教育上存钱)的新还款计划，将每月还款额限制在借款人收入的5%至10%，并允许低收入借款人每月不用还款。它还确保每月应计的利息不会超过每月还款额，这阻止了负分期偿还的过程，即使是每月定期还贷的人也会发现他们的贷款总余额随着时间的推移而增长。在我为这篇文章采访的20位借款人中，几乎所有人都认为以这种方式计息是不公平的，应该停止。政府还设立了一个宽限期，以防止借款人在后冠状病毒肺炎时代还款的第一年违约。
今年2月，拜登宣布，那些原始贷款总额低于12，000美元且已还款10年的人也将被免除债务，只要他们参加了储蓄计划。
许多这样的豁免计划是在10月份恢复还款之前启动的，它们在很大程度上影响了那些参加收入驱动型还款计划的人，或者那些在公共部门工作、收入不如私营部门同行的人。一些人从未想过他们的贷款会被豁免，而另一些人则认为他们离获得资格还有几年时间。
和布朗斯坦一样，我采访过的许多其他借款人表示，他们第一次获得贷款时并不知道自己会遇到什么情况。梅根·谢弗(Megan Shaeffer)说:“它是如何呈现给每个人的，‘这就是你现在支付大学费用的方式。’”她在20世纪90年代首次获得大学贷款。“我父母那一代人上大学没那么贵，所以他们不知道，也没有真正准备为我支付大学教育费用……他们的期望是，大学毕业后，你会找到一份高薪工作，在那里你会支付这些费用。”她说，她觉得人们花了几十年才意识到这些期望对很多人来说没有实现。
对于纽约42岁的教师蒂姆·菲茨莫里斯来说，他的贷款被免除的消息有点令人惊讶。他说，当他刚开始工作时，他的工资很少，几乎不能支付任何费用。当他打电话给他的学生贷款服务机构寻求帮助时，他们让他忍耐，而不是告诉他PSLF计划或其他他可能负担得起的还款计划，这些计划的长期成本可能更低。忍耐给了他一年的时间，在此期间他无需还款，但利息继续增加并被资本化，这意味着他的贷款随着时间的推移而增长。他的母亲在电视上听到参议院多数党领袖查克·舒默(Chuck Schumer)谈论公共服务贷款豁免时，他第一次知道了这一点。他开始阅读有关这一问题的所有资料。这些表格令人困惑，他的一些付款不符合要求。当拜登改变该计划时，他在隐忍期间没有付款的那些年突然得到了认可。他开始在推特上关注宽恕的消息。“有几批原谅，所以有一天我登录了网站，结果(我的余额)为零，”他说。“我经历了每个人都描述的那一刻，这是一种巨大的解脱。”
我采访的人都听说过获得宽恕的资格有多难，并且不确定他们的贷款是否有资格获得。他们中的一些人，如佛罗里达州50岁的县检察官卡梅伦·克拉克，支付过多并收到了退款支票。但即使是那些没有收到退款的人，现在每个月也有额外的钱为家人做预算，几乎所有人都表示，他们正在将这笔钱用于长期拖延的需求:为退休储蓄更多;更换老旧车辆;照顾年迈的父母;或者最终买房。其他人仍在偿还其他学生贷款，并希望有一天很快获得资格，但不确定他们是否会这样做，因为政府公告的性质是递增的。
然而，除了额外的钱之外，大多数人对他们的贷款被免除做出了情绪反应。他们将贷款余额描述为一个沉重的负担，一旦取消，就会突然减轻。风险可能比许多人意识到的要高。来自芝加哥的38岁城市规划师米卡·伯基(Micah Burkey)的哥哥亚当(Adam)有学习障碍，无法完成大学学业，但仍背负着10万多美元的学生债务。伯基说，亚当在2014年结束了自己的生命。“我相信，如果我们有不同的学生贷款破产法，他今天可能还活着，”他说。“因此，当谈到债务是什么、我脖子上的锚是什么感觉时，我有一点点额外的色彩。”
这是伯基希望看到拜登政府采取更多措施减轻学生贷款债务的部分原因。谢弗和许多其他人表示，作为选民，这个问题对他们来说仍然很重要，他们希望看到高等教育成本上升的问题得到更广泛的解决。“仅仅从我自己的经历中知道我如何能够在没有巨额债务的情况下参与社会是非常不同的，”她说。“如果没有贷款，我将无法获得任何学位，因为教育成本太高了，对许多学生来说仍然如此。”
拜登关于更广泛赦免的新计划将必须通过联邦规则制定程序，包括公众意见征询期。由于应计利息，债务余额高于最初借款额的人、根据现有计划有资格获得债务豁免但尚未申请的人、偿还本科贷款20年的人以及其他人都将获得债务豁免。
学生借款人保护中心是一个为学生借款人救济而组织的倡导组织。该组织的执行主任迈克·皮尔斯说，他的组织发现许多选民仍然不知道提供有针对性救济的较小的增量项目。他说:“他们只是知道，他没有成功地向承诺在2022年提供帮助的数千万人提供债务减免。”
有证据表明，自从最高法院否决了更大规模的学生贷款债务减免计划贷款计划以来，很少有选民听说过这些零敲碎打的举措。84%的登记选民听说了拜登在2008年免除1万美元学生贷款债务的计划来自YouGov/Blueprint的11月调查，只有52%的微弱多数支持它。人们似乎不太熟悉更有针对性的救济。在一个益普索消费者行为调查从2月23日开始，56%的人熟悉最近的一次贷款豁免。55%的受访者2月8日至11日的YouGov民意调查说学生贷款债务对他们来说有点或非常重要，但大多数人(44%)认为借款人应该偿还贷款，只有40%的人认为政府应该原谅他们。不出所料，存在党派分歧:68%的民主党人表示政府应该免除学生贷款，而只有17%的共和党人这么认为。
来自加州的英语教授布朗斯坦不确定更多的人了解有针对性的救济是否是件好事。她说:“我几乎认为乔·拜登必须保密，因为存在嫉妒因素。”
但是，仅仅免除学生贷款对于许多仍然受到高生活成本挤压的人来说是不够的。“我还是住不起，这是事实。“我很难过地说，”住在北卡罗来纳州从事儿童福利工作的布列塔尼·约翰说，他的贷款被免除了。“所以这感觉像是一种巨大的解脱，我为此感到非常高兴，这给了我一些信心，有时正确的事情会成功，有时政府会为小人物做些事情，”她说。“我很感激。而我还在纠结。这就是我的现状。”
编者按:这个故事包括对自杀的讨论。如果你或你认识的人需要帮助，可以拨打988或发短信联系美国国家自杀和危机生命线。还有一个在线聊天网站988lifeline.org.
Biden has forgiven billions in student loans. Voters may not have noticed.
Valerie Bronstein, the daughter of a single mother, was 17 and pregnant when she enrolled in a local community college in Sacramento, California, and took out student loans. "To be honest, I didn't even know what a loan was," she said, laughing at the memory. "I probably didn't even know what an interest rate was until I bought a car when I was 24 years old." All she knew at the time was that she was signing student loan and financial aid forms so that she could go to school.
After Bronstein received her bachelor's degree in English in 1993, she took out more loans for a teaching certificate and moved to Washington, D.C., for a master's degree from George Washington University. It was her dream to work in museums, but when she found herself pregnant again and gave birth to twins in 1998, she moved back to her hometown for a stable job as a middle school teacher. Later, she'd become a college English professor and piece together part-time adjunct jobs.
Bronstein, who is now 52, had student loans following her the entire way. Sometimes her expected payments were $300 or $400 a month, which felt like a fortune when she was in her 20s. At other points, they were so astronomically high, she said it seemed like a joke. "There was a time when they were going to be like, $1,800 a month," she said. "I'm like, 'Are you kidding? That's more than a house payment.'" There were times she took extra classes so that she could defer payments, and there were times when her loans went into default. She paid when she could. "I guess the interest rate just kept piling on and piling on," she said.
What started out as a roughly $80,000 debt after her master's degree turned into $237,000 by November 2023. That's when she got a letter in the mail she thought was a scam at first, stating that her student loans had been forgiven. "I thought that the Republicans took it to the Supreme Court, and they said 'No, there's not going to be loan forgiveness,'" Bronstein said. "I remember calling my daughter saying, 'Oh, wouldn't this be great? Ha-ha-ha, someone is tricking me.'" Her daughter convinced her to log into the loan servicer's website, but it was down. That's when she started to wonder if it was real. "And then, sure enough, that Monday morning when I got through it, it was real. I mean, I couldn't even breathe."
Bronstein was right: In June, the U.S. Supreme Court didstrike downPresident Joe Biden's sweeping plan for COVID-19 student loan forgiveness, which would have erased $10,000 or $20,000 for as many as 31 million borrowers across the board. Since then, however, the administration has undergone more targeted efforts to forgive student loans for borrowers under existing programs by correcting some administrative problems and making it easier to qualify. Some borrowers had been waiting patiently for their loans to be wiped out, while others, like Bronstein, were caught totally by surprise. And this week,Biden announced a new planthat could forgive at least $5,000 for as many as 10 million borrowers, but that forgiveness is months away and unlikely to take place before Election Day.
Government action like student loan relief is a relatively easy way to address one of voters' biggest concerns — the increasing cost of living — by erasing a big expense in borrowers' monthly budgets. The question for Biden's reelection campaign is whether enough voters know about his efforts and are willing to give him credit for fulfilling his 2020 campaign promise to deal with the country's $1.7 trillion student debt problem. "The plan that they proposed that was struck down was very clear, very simple, very easy to understand, and I think a lot of people bought into that, for obvious reasons," said Michele Shepard Zampini, the senior director of college affordability at The Institute for College Access and Success. "And then once that all fell apart, this secondary process is so esoteric, it's so wonky, it's so confusing, the timeline is so extended … there was like a momentum and a sense of clarity before that has been lost."
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The costs of college, and the student loans to pay them, have been soaring for at least two decades. As the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged in 2011, groups of student borrowersbegan calling for mass relief. President Barack Obama,under a task force chaired by then-Vice President Biden, made changes to some existing programs that made loan repayments and forgiveness easier for some, increased Pell Grant funding, and increased tax credits and funding for some colleges.
Also during the Obama administration, the first wave of borrowers became eligible to apply for forgiveness under a 2007 law that erased the remaining balances for people working in public service jobs — teachers, government employees, nonprofit service providers — after 10 years of repayment, or 120 payments. Buta Government Accountability Office report in 2018found that 99 percent of those who applied to have their loans discharged were denied. In part, it's because the program required borrowers to be on a certain type of repayment plan, provide proof of their employment during the repayment period and enroll separately, and borrowers often found the rules confusing and unclear. Forgiveness further ground to a halt under the Trump administration. Education Secretary Betsy DeVosderideda forgiveness program that allowed students defrauded by their schools to obtain forgiveness as too easy and "free money," andapprovals slowedunder her direction. Trumpbacked her, vetoing legislation that would have reversed her policy.
Overall, total student debt continued to rise until the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic student loan payment pause was a historic reset, and in 2023, the total amount of student debt dipped substantially. Borrowers who were in default (meaning they had fallen behind on more than nine months of payments) got a reprieve, with the opportunity to enroll in a program that would erase past due amounts and return their loans to good standing. With payments and interest paused, some borrowers were able to pay down balances.
But a portion of the dip can also be explained by the Biden administration correcting some of the well-known problems with debt relief programs. Under existing rules, borrowers on income-driven repayment plans who still have a balance after 20 or 25 years of repayment, depending on the plan and when they borrowed, should see their remaining balances wiped out. Eligibility was determined by the number of monthly payments made, and the Biden administration made more people eligible by crediting more types of past payments toward total payment counts. More borrowers with total and permanent disability or who had attended discredited or shuttered colleges and universities could seek relief as well.
The Biden administration did something similar with public service loan forgiveness: making sure more borrowers' payments counted toward the total required by relaxing rigid paperwork rules and including more types of payment plans into the total count. For many, that meant some payments were retroactively credited.
Before loan repayment resumed in October, the Biden administration started a new repayment plan called SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education) that capped monthly payments at 5 to 10 percent of borrowers' incomes and allowed borrowers with low incomes to pay nothing each month. It also ensured that the interest accrued every month would not exceed monthly payments, which stopped the process of negative amortization, where even people who were making regular monthly payments saw their total loan balances grow over time. Of the 20 borrowers I spoke to for this article, almost all felt that interest accruing in this way was unfair and should be stopped. The administration also created a grace period that would prevent borrowers from going into default during the first year of post-COVID repayment.
In February, Biden announced that those whose original loans totaled less than $12,000 and who had been in repayment for 10 years would also have their debts erased as long as they were enrolled in the SAVE plan.
Many of these forgiveness programs kicked in before payments resumed in October, and they've largely affected people who were in income-driven repayment plans or who worked in the public sector and haven't made as much money as their private sector counterparts. Some never expected their loans to be forgiven, while others thought they were years away from qualifying.
Like Bronstein, many other borrowers I spoke to said they'd had no idea what they were getting into when they first took out the loans. "How it was presented to everyone is that, 'This is how you pay for college now,'" said Megan Shaeffer, who took out her first loans for college in the 1990s. "My parents were from a generation where college wasn't that expensive, so they had no idea and hadn't really prepared to pay for a college education for me … The expectation was that after college, you would get a good-paying job where you would make these payments." She said she feels like it's taken decades for people to realize those expectations failed to materialize for so many.
For Tim Fitzmaurice, a 42-year-old teacher in New York, the news that his loans were forgiven was something of a surprise. When he'd first started to work, his paychecks were so small they barely covered anything, he said. When he called his student loan servicer for help, they funneled him into forbearance instead of telling him about the PSLF program, or other repayment programs he might have been able to afford and might have cost less long-term. Forbearance gave him a year at a time during which he wasn't required to make repayments, but interest continued to accrue and was capitalized, which meant his loans grew over time. He first learned about public service loan forgiveness when his mom heard Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer talking about it on TV, and he started to read everything he could about it. The forms were confusing and some of his payments didn't qualify. When Biden changed the program, the years he spent not making payments while on forbearance were suddenly credited. He started following the forgiveness news on Twitter. "There were batches of forgiveness, and so I logged in one day, and [my balance] was zero," he said. "I had that moment that everybody describes, which was an immense relief."
The people I interviewed had all heard about how hard it was to qualify for forgiveness, and had been uncertain whether their loans would ever be eligible. Some of them, like Cameron Clark, a 50-year-old county attorney in Florida, had overpaid and received refund checks. But even those who didn't receive a refund now have extra money every month to budget for their families, and nearly all of them said they were devoting it to long-delayed needs: saving more for retirement; replacing old, worn-out vehicles; caring for aging parents; or finally buying a home. Others are still paying down other student loans and hoping to qualify someday soon, but are uncertain whether they will because of the incremental nature of the announcements from the administration.
More than the extra money, though, most had an emotional response to their loans being forgiven. They described the loan balances as a heavy weight that was suddenly relieved once it was canceled. The stakes can be higher than many people are aware. Micah Burkey, a 38-year-old urban planner from Chicago, had an older brother, Adam, who had a learning disability and had been unable to finish college, but still had more than $100,000 in student debt. Adam took his own life in 2014, Burkey said. "It is my belief that if we had different bankruptcy laws around student loans, that he'd still be alive today," he said. "So, there's a little bit of extra tinge for me when it comes to what the debt was, what [an] anchor around my neck it felt like."
That's part of the reason Burkey would like to see the Biden administration do more to relieve student loan debt. Shaeffer, and many others, said the issue remained important to them as voters, too, and they'd like to see the rising cost of higher education addressed more broadly. "Just knowing from my own experience how I'm able to kind of participate in society without this huge debt hanging over me is very different," she said. "I would not have been able to get any degrees without loans because the cost of education was too much, and it's still the case for a lot of students."
Biden's new plan for broader forgiveness will have to go through the federal rulemaking process, including a public comment period. Forgiveness would extend to those whose balances are higher than what they originally borrowed because of accrued interest, those who qualify for forgiveness under existing programs but haven't applied, and those who've been in repayment for undergraduate loans for 20 years, among others.
Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group that organizes for student borrower relief, said his organization has found that many voters remain unaware of the smaller, incremental programs that have provided targeted relief. "They just know that he hasn't successfully delivered debt relief to the tens of millions of people that were promised help back in 2022," he said.
There is some evidence that few voters have heard about these piecemeal efforts since the Supreme Court scuttled the larger loan forgiveness plan. Eighty-four percent of registered voters had heard about Biden's plan to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt ina November survey from YouGov/Blueprint, and only a narrow majority, 52 percent, supported it. People seem less familiar with more targeted relief. In anIpsos Poll on Consumer Behaviorfrom Feb. 23, 56 percent were familiar with a recent instance of loan forgiveness. Fifty-five percent of respondents in aFeb. 8-11 YouGov pollsaid that student loan debt was somewhat or very important to them, but a plurality, 44 percent, thought borrowers should have to repay them while only 40 percent said the government should forgive them. There's unsurprisingly a partisan gap: 68 percent of Democrats said the government should forgive student loans, while only 17 percent of Republicans thought so.
Bronstein, the English professor from California, is uncertain whether more people learning about the targeted relief would be a good thing. "I almost think Joe Biden has to keep it a secret, because there's that jealousy factor out there," she said.
But just forgiving student loans won't be enough for many people who are still squeezed by high costs of living. "I still can't afford to live, that's the truth. I'm saying that, sadly," said Brittany John, who lives in North Carolina and works in child welfare, and whose loans were forgiven. "So it feels like a great relief, and I was very happy for it, and it gives me some faith that sometimes the right thing can work out, or sometimes the government will do things for the little people," she said. "I'm grateful. And I'm still struggling. That's where I'm at."
EDITOR’S NOTE:This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at988lifeline.org.
