Data Analysis: Tracking the Millennium Development Goals

An estimated one-third of all adults ages 25 to 34 have a student loan. Effectively targeting key stress points when it comes to the student debt crisis requires understanding the different ways student loans can and do create challenges for borrowers. For example, two-thirds of those who default on their student loans are borrowers who either did not finish college or earned only a certificate.

By contrast, borrowers who completed a degree, especially at the graduate level, are less likely to default but may still face struggles related to repayment. For instance, the U. Department of Education projects that just 6 percent of the dollars lent to graduate students ultimately go into default, compared with 13 percent of funds lent to college juniors and seniors or a quarter of loans for students in their first or second year at a four-year institution.

This could take a few forms, one of which is causing borrowers who use these plans to accumulate large amounts of additional interest that they must repay if they fail to stay on the plan or if their payments do not fully satisfy outstanding interest. Broad breakdowns of borrowers by debt level and attainment status can also mask particular challenges related to equity.

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This report considers different options for addressing issues for current borrowers of federal student loans. These solutions are meant to be independent of broader loan reforms, such as giving relief to borrowers whose schools took advantage of them. Intentionally, this report does not endorse or recommend a specific policy. Rather, it assesses the benefits and potential considerations around a range of ideas, going from the most aggressive—forgiving all student debt—to more technical changes involving interest rates or repayment plans.

By examining the trade-offs and the targeting of each policy, the hope is that policymakers and the public can make the most informed decision when it comes to selecting which policy best supports their goals and values. This report focuses only on options for federal student loans, which are the largest single source of college debt, representing more than 92 percent of outstanding student loan balances. That said, it is important to acknowledge that there are other types of student debt that need future solutions. These items merit further discussion and their own set of solutions, which at the very least should start with making private student loans easily dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Overall, the purpose of any policy proposal for current student loan borrowers has to be about reducing the negative effects of these debts. That said, each policy idea may attempt to address a different negative effect. For example, policies focused on interest rates target negative effects related to the size of monthly payments, which can help with faster repayment over time. Meanwhile, policies focused on immediate forgiveness are about reduction in the amount owed right away, while those with longer-term forgiveness may be about creating a safety net for those with perpetual struggles.

Regardless of which problem a given policy tries to solve, it is important that it consider four factors: equity, simplicity, striving for broad impact, and providing a sense of meaningful relief. Understanding how a given policy idea lines up against each of these goals can help policymakers ensure they optimize their solutions for the problems they want to address and in a manner that would be effective. More on each of these goals follows below.

The worries and challenges facing student loan borrowers are not uniform. For some, a student loan represents a significant risk of delinquency and default.

Student loan debt may also deter family formation, as couples may be concerned about covering the additional expense of having a child. This can be due to other factors such as the presence or absence of familial wealth or discrimination in housing or employment. It is crucial, therefore, that any policy aimed at current student loan borrowers include an equity lens to acknowledge and tackle these differences. The continued unaffordability of higher education has forced too many students into debt that a rational financing system would support only with grant aid.

These students then experience significant challenges repaying their loans, which can, in turn, affect their ability to build wealth and access a middle- class lifestyle. More specifically, an equity lens should consider the following groups of borrowers and how well a given proposal would serve them. These are individuals who are traditionally not well served by the higher education system or who data show are highly likely to struggle with student loans.

While the exact reason why they struggle is unknown, it may because of factors such as an absence of generational wealth or the economic safety nets from their family that their peers have. There is significant overlap among these populations. For example, nearly 60 percent of black or African American students also received a Pell Grant, as did almost half of Hispanic or Latino students. Too often, public policy may seem effective in the abstract but suffers from overly complex execution. Public Service Loan Forgiveness is a prime example.

The basic idea of forgiving federal student loans for individuals who work a decade in a public service job is easy to communicate. But when overlaid with four gating criteria—qualifying loans, employment, repayment plans, and payments—the policy in practice becomes a complex nightmare, which leads to borrower frustration and delayed or lost benefits. Therefore, a successful policy for current borrowers should be clear and simple, both in its message and in its execution.

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That means striving wherever possible for approaches—such as automatic enrollment or reenrollment—that ensure that government employees and contractors, not borrowers, bear any complexity that might exist in the policy. While it is crucial that every policy option for current student loan borrowers contain a focus on equity, striving for broad impact is also important.


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Reaching as many people as possible can help build support for an idea. It also interrelates with simplicity; broader eligibility definitions that reach more people could result in less work to figure out who should be eligible for relief. Finally, aiming for broader impact also increases the chances of capturing additional people who desperately need relief but whose situation may not be as clear from just a look at their income, educational attainment, or other easily measurable characteristics.

Student debt is not just an abstract thing that lives on a spreadsheet. For borrowers in debt, a loan can feel like an unending, stressful obligation with no relief in sight. For this reason, it is important for borrowers to see and feel actual relief under any program solution for current student debt. In some cases, this might entail addressing potential unintended consequences. However, because interest keeps accumulating, borrowers who make smaller payments on these plans may watch their balances grow—leaving the borrowers with the sense of digging a deeper hole, even if forgiveness is an option.

In other cases, meaningful relief might require the reform to be sufficiently substantive so the borrower notices. This report attempts to consider the cost of various options where possible. Unfortunately, it is impossible to model many of these proposals due to data limitations. For example, the authors cannot model changes to IDR, because the Education Department does not release data on incomes paired with debt levels of borrowers who use these plans.

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Similarly, the cost of changes to interest rates are unknown, because they are affected by assumptions about broader economic situations. The costs associated with these proposals are also different from many other policy ideas, because they are not intended to be ongoing expenses. These ideas are meant to be course corrections that will be addressed going forward by large new investments in college affordability that lessen if not eliminate the presence of debt.

That means they have a high upfront cost but should not require ongoing expenses. The one exception to this is student loans stemming from graduate education, because existing affordability proposals currently focus only on undergraduate education. A one-time policy also has the benefit of heading off concerns about moral hazard for individuals as well as institutions.

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By contrast, making forgiveness a one-time benefit based on circumstances at the time of its announcement makes the program much less likely to be exploited. Regardless of specifics, the relative costs of these proposals are relevant in considering which approach to take and how these options should be assessed in the context of other progressive goals—within and beyond higher education policy—that require new investments. Rather than recommending a specific proposed option, this report offers a combination of both commonly proposed ideas and new ones generated by the Center for American Progress and Generation Progress staff.

Combining a prospective affordability plan with this relief should cut down on the number of future loan borrowers and lessen the need for subsequent large-scale relief policies. Under this proposal, the federal government would forgive all outstanding federal student loans. This option would also require waiving taxation of any forgiven amounts. There would also be costs associated with not taxing forgiven amounts, which also must be part of the policy.

Estimated effects: It would eliminate debt for all 43 million federal student loan borrowers. Does it address equity? Forgiving all debt would get rid of loans for all the populations identified in the equity goal outlined above. That said, by helping every student loan borrower, it will also end up providing relief to some individuals who are otherwise not struggling or constrained by their loans.

In other words, while helping eliminate loans for all single parents, it will also provide a windfall for borrowers with higher balances who are having no trouble with repayment. How simple is it from a borrower standpoint? This policy should be easy to implement for borrowers, since it should not require any opting in or paperwork. How broad is its impact? This policy would help all 43 million federal student loan borrowers. Will it feel like relief?

Yes—borrowers will not have to make any payments, so they will feel the change. Who are the greatest beneficiaries? From a dollar standpoint, the highest-balance borrowers have the most to gain from this proposal—especially those who also have higher salaries. They would experience the greatest relief in terms of reduction of monthly payments while also having the wages to otherwise pay back the debt.

Therefore, those with debt from graduate education, especially for high-paying professions such as doctors, lawyers, and business, would significantly benefit. That said, this proposal would help anyone who is particularly worrying about or struggling with their student loans—whether they are in or nearing default. In addition, research suggests loan cancellation would help stimulate national gross domestic product, which has broad-based societal benefits.

What is the biggest advantage? The policy is universal, and it could be implemented without the need of action on the part of borrowers as long as there are no tax implications for forgiveness. What is the biggest challenge? This option carries the largest price tag by far. It also would result in forgiving a substantial amount of loan debt of individuals who have the means to repay their debt.

This includes borrowers with graduate degrees and potentially high salaries in law, medicine, or business. How could this option be made more targeted? It would also require waiving any required taxes on the forgiven amounts.