Many Student Loan Borrowers Will Continue to Struggle After Supreme Court Ruling

The Supreme Court has blocked the Biden administration from implementing a plan to extinguish up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt, leaving millions of borrowers to continue to suffer under the weight of the loans.

These students are tempted by aggressive for-profit organizations, but lofty promises of higher incomes never materialize. They are borrowers seeking advanced degrees required for low-paying but essential jobs such as social work, classrooms, and courtrooms.

These women take time off work to care for their families and cannot find a way back to their previous paychecks.

Here are some quick sketches of people in this other situation who have struggled and will continue to struggle.

No degree but full debt

Gina McDavitt, 36, is one of millions of borrowers with no degree but with student loans, a group more likely to fall. Make it default.

While working as a bra fitter at Macy’s, she chose the most realistic path in her early 20s to go to college. She enrolled at the University of San Mateo, a community college, and she planned to transfer to San Francisco State University.

However, she had to wait until the classes she needed to complete her associate degree were not always offered. Meanwhile, her attendance costs rose, but her Pell grant and loan eligibility did not, and she soon struggled to make ends meet.

“We’re effectively out of money,” McDavit said. She left school with a loan of about $3,000, but after several deferments the amount ballooned. “So I have $8,500 worth of student loans for my degree, and now it’s free,” she added. program that makes a community college free for Eligible students. “On top of that, I live alone, I’ve been in the same position for a while, and I’m in the Bay Area, and the prices here are very high. I struggle.”

McDavitt, who lives in Vallejo, Calif., said he works in customer relationship management for a shipping company but has been rejected several times for promotions because he didn’t have the required degree. She recently trained someone who was promoted before her.

“Right now, the money I’m making won’t be enough to cover my living expenses,” said McDavit, whose loan defaulted just before the pandemic hit. “I’m single with no degree and an income of less than $55,000 a year. The weight of the world is on my shoulders.”

McDavitt wants to reopen school, but can’t afford it.

When Monica Schmidt, 44, gave birth to her son in 2008, she was in her hospital room finishing up her final paper. Five months later, she received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Phoenix.

Next, she set out to pursue a master’s degree. Completing her master’s degree will give her the option of being promoted to nursing and teaching. Her husband, a sales manager for a food company, worked during the day and took care of their children, who were then 1 and 4 years old. At night, she worked full time as a supervisor in a skilled nursing home while she attended classes at Northern Illinois University.

“I couldn’t afford daycare, so I worked the opposite shift,” said Schmidt, who lives in Genoa, Illinois. She is currently working as a school nurse at a day school for therapy.

However, after starting and restarting for three years, making ends meet often became a struggle with young children, and in 2013 she stopped working on the course. But her debt she had to keep. She currently owes $64,000, more than half of which is for her graduate studies.

Once payments resume, she’ll be paying about $450 a month for the next 25 years or until she retires. She paid 52 of the 120 payments she was eligible for in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, but still needs to pay about $900 a month, especially to prepare for retirement and the college education of her two children. It is not an amount that the family can afford while saving for

“I don’t want them to be in the same situation as me,” Schmidt said.

Another kind of black tax

For recent college graduates with student-loan debt like Dorien Rogers, 23, questions are constantly swirling in their minds. “Should I pay off additional debt or start a savings plan?” Can you afford a house in the area where I grew up? (He lives in Montgomery County, Maryland.) Someday. What about money for a family?

As a black man, Mr. Rogers recognizes that: Black people are more likely to have to borrow money and that black woman Student loan debt is often the hardest.

Asha Anthony, 20, an up-and-coming senior at Howard University, has a bachelor’s degree in legal communications and plans to leave college with about $30,000 in debt. But she’s already figuring out how to finance her dream of becoming a civil rights attorney. That usually means she needs more than her six-figure student loan.

Anthony, who already has help from his mother, raised three daughters with the help of his parents when he was single, and plans to have at least $30,000 in parental loans by the time Anthony graduates. But her mother still continues to pay off her own student loans.

“Like many black young people, I am determined to attend law school because going to graduate school and achieving the goals I have set for myself is a top priority for me,” Anthony said. rice field. I grew up in Mesa, Arizona. “It’s depressing to think about the potential expense because my family can offer so much more than I can.”

Mr. Rogers is also ambitious. He received an additional loan last year and began completing his master’s degree in public administration online. At the same time, he worked as a substitute teacher and DoorDash driver, and was president of the NAACP’s Maryland Youth and College Division. He wants to enter politics and sees education as a kind of national duty, especially for those who: he.

“Education is a tool for the betterment of our communities, and higher education institutions are vital to our country’s progress,” he said.

With a BA in Political Science from Salisbury University in Maryland, he can’t help but wonder. If lawmakers chose to help the nation’s banks during the 2008 financial crisis, why don’t they believe people like him deserve similar investments?

“If we can forgive the debt, we will see reinvestment in the economy,” he said. “Home ownership. Build trust. Build more families.”

parent’s trap

Federal PLUS loans for parents are a product made for trouble, and there’s no sign of that changing anytime soon.

That’s because parents can borrow the entire cost of their child’s education, regardless of how much they earn. Additionally, many schools with high fees but low resources are sending financial aid letters to students telling them to make up the shortfall with tens of thousands of dollars in loans.

Now imagine you have three children, are separated from your spouse, spent years raising them, and are earning only $11.50 an hour. This was the predicament Joanna and her Miss Reiserson, who lived in Spokane, Washington, faced in 2000 when her older child was about to enter college.

A PLUS loan was the only way to get her to the school that best suited her child’s needs. She became an Anglican priest in 2005, but after years of being unable to pay and in debt, she finally took advantage of her income-based repayment program and was able to enroll in the civil service. Consolidated $157,000 in debt. loan forgiveness program. If she works another nine years, her debt will be gone. Otherwise she could stay with her until her death.

“It’s a burden for me,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I feel like society will pay the price if I don’t.”

But any subsidy to taxpayers is a well-established public policy based on longstanding legislation passed by both Democrats and Republicans. And there is also the question of higher powers who may have an opinion on this matter.

“God does not consider the details of our debts, but rather that as a community we consider our national policies and underlying principles and values ​​and ask ourselves whether they are in line with God’s values. I believe they want it,” said the pastor. Riserson said. “It’s a community where everyone can live sustainably with dignity and respect.”