Forgiving student loans -- more than $160 million so far -- and lowering monthly payments doesn't seem to be helping Biden very much with young voters, report Maddie Aiken and Megan Tomasic in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“It’s clearly a tactic to court young voters, but young voters aren't coming out in droves anyway,” says Ashley Koning, a Rutgers pollster.
In a Harvard poll, "student debt ranked last when 18-to-29-year-olds were asked what issues mattered most to them," they write. "Inflation, health care and housing topped young adults’ concerns."
Donald Trump and running mate J.D. Vance oppose forgiving student loans, reports Annie Nova for CNBC. “Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America,” Sen. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, wrote on X in April 2022.
As president, "Trump called for the elimination of the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness initiative, and his administration halted a regulation aimed at providing loan forgiveness to those defrauded by their schools," Nova writes.
Young voters are moving right, reports Olivia Reingold on The Free Press. "New polls show that the Gen Z vote, which Biden won by about 20 points in 2020, is now in play."
For example, Trump is ahead of Biden by eight points among voters 18-29 in a post-debate New York Times/Siena College survey. Pew polls also show the GOP is leading among those under 30.
Reingold talked to Lauren Elise, a 20-year-old Christian influencer in North Carolina who says she’s part of the “silent majority.”
Elise is living at home and working two jobs while going to college to avoid taking out student loans.
“I don’t live on campus. I don’t live with friends. I don’t go to this amazing Ivy League school and have all these amazing, life-changing professors. . . . Because at the end of the day, this is my responsibility, and the idea of making someone else foot the bill makes me sick. You’re supposed to take care of yourself.”
Only a third Americans aged 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree.
“Most people don’t have student debt," says Ruy Teixeira, co-author of Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes. "Some people have debt, they just don’t have very much of it, and others had debt but they paid it off." Like other voters, Gen Z cares more about economic stability than progressive causes, he argues.
Nearly half of borrowers aren't paying off their student loans, according to Education Department data, reports Stacy Cowley in the New York Times. Some claim they can't figure out which repayment plan to use or say they're snarled in the paperwork.
“For some time, we’re going to have this group of borrowers who will see, ‘I went delinquent and nothing happened,’ so they think, ‘Why am I making a payment?’” says Scott Buchanan, the executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance.
The Biden-Harris higher education policy is every bit as much of a disaster as the rest of their education policy; on the other hand, because of the draft published in Project 2025, the vast majority of us may have something better to look forward to from the next Congress.
It's difficult to sympathize with students who pile up debt to finance a hipsterville apartment next to campus so they don't have to take the bus from their house 4 miles away. I'm looking at you, San Antonio College and UTSA.
Let's just be honest "Biden" is not "forgiving" student loans, he is merely using our tax money to pay off individual debt, no different than the government paying off someone's mortgage or car payment, in an attempt to buy votes The tax payer picks up the tab, this is not forgiveness, this is just a transfer