The SBPC and Demos joined together to produce a report featuring contributions from leading student loan experts and advocates offering a roadmap for the Biden administration to take immediate action to cancel student debt for millions of Americans. For decades, borrowers have had the right to have their student debt wiped clean as a safeguard against economic hardship. However, this debt relief has been denied to millions due to systemic mismanagement and abuse across the student loan system. The report details how to deliver relief to servicemembers, public service workers, defrauded borrowers, and other vulnerable groups who have been forced to shoulder debts that should have been canceled under the law. The recommendations build on calls by advocates and elected officials for President Biden to immediately deliver broad-based debt cancellation for all student loan borrowers.
Read the Report: Delivering on Debt Relief: Proposals, Ideas, and Actions to Cancel Student Debt on Day One and Beyond
Read the Press Release: Advocates Release Roadmap for the Biden Administration to Fix Broken Programs for Servicemembers, Teachers, Defrauded Students, & Other Vulnerable Borrowers Denied Promised Student Debt Relief
- Relief for Public Service Workers
- Mike Pierce, Policy Director at the SBPC & Rebecca Maurer, Counsel and Program Manager at the SBPC
- Relief for Borrowers with a Defense to Repayment
- Toby Merrill & Eileen Connor, Co-Founders of Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending
- Relief for Borrowers in Income-Driven Repayment
- Persis Yu, Director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center
- Relief for Borrowers with Disabilities
- John Whitelaw, Advocacy Director at Community Legal Aid Society, Inc. (Delaware) & Bethany Lilly, Director of Income Policy at The Arc
- Relief for Borrowers Whose Schools Closed
- Robyn Smith, Of Counsel at the National Consumer Law Center
- Relief for Borrowers with a Disqualifying Status
- Rye Salerno & Erik Manukyan, students at Harvard Law School in Harvard’s Project on Predatory Student Lending
- Relief for Servicemembers and Veterans
- Mike Saunders, Director of Military and Consumer Protection at Veterans Education Success and Military Affairs Fellow at the SBPC
- The Tax Treatment of Student Loan Discharge and Cancellation
- John R. Brooks, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center
This new report features a foreword co-authored by UC Irvine Law Professor Dalié Jiménez, UCLA Law Professor Jonathan Glater, and SBPC Executive Director Seth Frotman. It also includes an introduction by Ashley Harrington, Federal Advocacy Director and Senior Policy Counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending and Mark Huelsman, Associate Director for Policy and Research at Demos.
The SBPC and Demos also hosted a virtual conference on student debt cancellation on December 11, 2020. See here: Delivering on Debt Relief Virtual Conference.
This paper series and conference are part of the Student Loan Law Initiative, a partnership between the Student Borrower Protection Center and the University of California, Irvine School of Law to develop a body of rigorous research around how to address the student loan crisis.