A recent piece by columnist Bill Cotterell (“Wiping out student loan debt is unfair”) leaves out many facts about federal student loans that people really need to know to understand the problem.
It is a common misconception, for example, that student loan borrowers are generally younger, liberal and successful, and that cancelling student loans would be an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer for the benefit of entitled “snowflakes” who don’t need or deserve it.
This is completely wrong.
Recent Department of Education data shows most student loan borrowers are over the age of 35 — and that people over 50 with student loans outnumber people under 25, and they owe 300% more, on average, despite having borrowed far less decades ago.
They also are not mostly liberal. Pew Research from 2014 and more recent Gallup data show that a slight majority of people who have been to college identify, politically, as either Republican or independent.
Also, the claim that cancelling loans will mostly benefit wealthy people who don’t need it is simply wrong. Seventy-five percent of all borrowers were “underwater” on their loans before the pandemic, according to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in 2019.
All borrowers were determined to be “financially needy” as a condition for getting the loans. More than 40% never graduated. Millions went to trade schools. The bottom 80% of earners hold 70% of this debt, whereas most Paycheck Protection Program loans (75%) went to the highest 20%…
