The selfish and extreme reactions in response to Biden’s student debt relief

When news broke Tuesday that the Biden administration was going to relax the rules of certain student loan repayment plans, thereby forgiving federal loans for 40,000 borrowers and offering 3.6 million people credit toward paying off their balances, I thought of my close friends and students who’ve been knee-deep in education-related debt for almost their entire adult lives. Several of them have had to choose between buying a home and paying off their student loans (the loans have always won out). In more extreme cases, I’ve known people who chose to default on their loans because it meant being able to eat; their full-time jobs had barely paid enough for them to live off of, and something had to give. 

What I did not think was how unfair it was that my husband and I, who once owed a combined $180,000 in student debt, wouldn’t be partaking in the loan forgiveness bounty. Like millions of others across time, I’m paying back the large sum of money I borrowed to fund my education by myself. But that doesn’t preclude me from hoping that our administration does all it can to relieve as many other borrowers as possible.