01 graduates student debt STOCK

Editor’s Note: Sophia A. Nelson is a journalist and author of the book “Be the One You Need: 21 Life Lessons I Learned Taking Care of Everyone but Me.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN

CNN  — 

Two decades into my professional life, I was a successful writer, lawyer and businesswoman. But while I was well on my way in my career, I was still saddled with onerous college loans. And unfortunately, I had good company: Studies show that just like me, it takes student borrowers on average about 20 years to pay off their debt.

Holders of student loans received the bad news this week that the debt ceiling deal reached between the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will lead to the resumption of student loan payments this summer. That moratorium has been in place since the start of the Covid pandemic.

Sophia A. Nelson

That leaves many borrowers looking more than ever for relief from the Supreme Court, which in a matter of weeks could decide the fate of President Joe Biden’s Student Loan Relief Program.

I can only hope – contrary to what some predict – that the court allows this important financial relief measure to go forward, to help millions of Americans caught in the financial vice of debt – all because they were trying to improve their lives through education.

But if Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan goes through, 43 million people stand to have their payments reduced, and some 20 million would have their debt forgiven altogether. The president’s one time debt-relief would forgive up to $20,000 for people making less than $125,000 a year.

Conservatives reject the plan as a liberal election promise giveaway and say that it is unfair to borrowers who have paid their school loan debt without government relief – as well as to those who never attended college. But supporters of the measure like me understand that the proposed debt relief is a small but important step toward helping correct pernicious social, racial and economic inequalities in our country.

I know a thing or two about the impact of crushing student loan debt – and how it can become a seemingly insurmountable burden that can drag on, year after year.

I grew up in a working class family. Most of my high school peers did not attend four-year colleges. Many went directly into the world of work after graduating high school. Some went into the military. Those who continued their education usually went to junior colleges or trade schools.

I was one of the lucky ones: I was able to pursue my studies at a four-year liberal arts college. But my parents couldn’t afford the tuition at the private colleges and universities I was accepted into. Instead, I attended a state university in California where I qualified for in-state tuition. Even so, by the time I finished my undergraduate education in 1990, I had accumulated around $20,000 in loans  – a small fortune at the time.

I told myself as I walked across the graduation stage to accept my diploma, that my student loans were an investment in my future. I would pay off the debt in no time, I thought. In hindsight, I see how naive I was. The interest from my undergraduate loans compounded daily after getting my bachelor’s degree, even in forbearance while I was in law school.

Of course, in law school I racked up even more debt: Tuition was $25,000 a year – a sum that seemed stratospheric back then. Scholarships helped – but only to a point. I had to take advantage of the only loans available to me at the time, which came with a staggering 9% interest rate. By the time I received my law degree, I had over $94,000 in principal to repay – with interest rapidly adding to my level of indebtedness.

This is the dilemma for borrowers like me, people of color who hope to use higher education to rise from poverty or the working classes to become engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and holders of master’s and doctoral degrees.

For us, college debt is not only a massive investment, but it’s also a huge gamble. Even if you win the bet and get a degree, it might be years before you dig out of the financial hole that you dug in order to be able to obtain it. Worse yet, if you fail to get your degree, you don’t generally benefit from increased earnings to help get you out of arrears. It’s a tightrope walk.

I found a solution in 2010, but it was one that came with risks of its own: I took out a $50,000 home equity loan. The interest was a fraction of the usurious 9% that I paid for years on my student loans. But the risk in the case of non-payment, had I become ill or incapacitated, is that I could have lost my home.

It’s infuriating to consider how middle class and working class kids risk everything to try to get ahead, and how they have to gamble with financial ruin to gain a chance to obtain the financial and professional rewards that come with higher education.

This, while the for-profit industry rakes in billions, and executives earn multi-million dollar salaries. This should be wrong in any society that pretends to value education as the great equalizer.

If  you don’t have family wealth to cover the cost of tuition, you borrow. And when you are a 19-year-old undergraduate or 23 years old and starting a graduate school program, no one explains to you that this debt is just like a home mortgage, and that you could be saddled paying for an education that started in your 20s well into your 60s.

Women and people of color are more likely than others to be burdened by massive college debt. According to the NAACP, Black borrowers are disproportionately affected by student loan debt, holding an average of $25,000 more in student debt than their non-Black counterparts.

The organization launched a campaign to persuade the President to cancel all student debt. According to the NAACP, African American borrowers face default rates 5 times that of White borrowers, largely due to the many systemic and historical inequalities that lead to income inequality.

President Biden’s one time plan to “cancel debt” will not fix our broken student loan system. What it will do is help 40 million borrowers who, like me, were drowning in debt and need immediate relief. What student borrowers really need are long-term solutions – even beyond the measure that the Supreme Court may be poised to do away with.

The first thing that needs to happen is that the federal government needs to zero out student loan interest, making the debt interest-free. The Biden administration should restructure the debt on the books by allowing people like me who were holding loans with predatory 8% to 9% interest rates to refinance those old loans from the 1980s and 1990s.

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And for millennials and members of Gen Z who don’t own homes with equity they can tap like I did, my suggestion is that they think long and hard about their long-term career plans. Is the debt you are incurring worth it?

For me, in hindsight, it was, but that may not be the case for everyone. The loans I took on were stress-inducing and burdensome. Still, I love what I do, and I know that I have my education to thank for much of my professional success.

But college is a lot more expensive than when I was a student. We’ve actually made it harder as a society for young people to pursue their academic and professional dreams. This is not just inexplicable. It’s unforgivable.

If America is to continue to be the best version of itself, it has to make opportunity possible for everyone. That includes making the road easier for students from the cash-strapped working and middle classes who dare to believe, as I did decades ago, that education was achievable, even if it didn’t seem immediately affordable.