Need Help with Student Debt?

At the Higher Education Labor United Summit in February, Debt Collective, a union of debtors that organizes to abolish debt in the United States, made an ask of the unions in attendance at the summit to pass a resolution calling for President Biden to cancel student debt before the expiration of the federal student loan repayment moratorium on May 1. This resolution was brought to the Local 328 executive board at our March meeting and endorsed unanimously. The text of the resolution can be found at the end of this blog post.

As of 2020, Americans owe more than $1.7 trillion in student debt. This massive amount of debt has serious effects for younger generations, whose members have to put off important financial goals like buying a home or saving for retirement. Compounding that, the effects of debt are felt harder by female and Black borrowers, who earn less than male and white counterparts.

The student-debt crisis is a long time coming. Last year, U.S. News & World Report reported that the average in-state tuition and fees at public universities has grown 211% since 2002. Without some kind of massive reform to the way we pay for higher education in this country, these numbers will continue to increase. 

Despite rising tuition costs, wages for most Americans have remained stagnant since the 1970s. There are a lot of factors at play in this, including the decline of unions, but “financialization” plays a big part. If you’re interested in learning moe, here’s a link to a short YouTube video summarizing the findings from Les Leopold’s book Runaway Inequality. 

If you are looking for help with student debt, public-service workers (which includes almost all AFSCME members) have until October 31 to get retroactive credit for loan payments that were made in ANY type of repayment plan, partial payments and late payments. Oregon AFSCME Council 75 is holding two trainings on this debt-relief program for all members on Tuesday, April 12:

This estimate of tuition and fees shows how much debt nursing students at OHSU might take on. An undergraduate nursing degree for Oregon residents at the OHSU’s Marquam Hill campus costs almost $57,000. Graduate degrees for Oregon residents can run up to $90,000 with the nursing anesthesia program topping the list at almost $131,500. 

Throughout the pandemic, while OHSU balked at offering incentive pay to our members, failed to address long-standing staffing and retention issues issues on the hill and at OHSU Hillsboro and had to be convinced that our members deserved frontline-recognition payments, it was simultaneously putting the squeeze on students. In 2020, OHSU reneged on a promise to not raise tuition on a group of nursing students who finished their bachelor’s degrees and chose to continue their graduate degrees at OHSU; OHSU argued that these students were “new” and thus not entitled to the tuition freeze. The same thing happened to incoming medical students that year —they were told they would come in under a tuition freeze and instead were surprised with increased tuition after they had been accepted. In that same decision, OHSU also rescinded its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals full-ride scholarship to a student who had been accepted. 

It’s clear that when universities only care about the bottom line, it’s their students and workers who bear the burden of those decisions. 

RESOLUTION FOR STUDENT DEBT CANCELLATION

WHEREAS, the student debt crisis is an economic crisis;

WHEREAS, over half of today’s students took out student loans to pay for college; 

WHEREAS, Americans owe nearly $1.75 trillion in student loan debt, spread out among about 46 million borrowers; at an average of nearly $30,000;

WHEREAS, 11.1% of student loans were 90 days or more delinquent or were in default before the coronavirus pandemic;

WHEREAS, Black workers carry far more debt than white workers. In a nation committed to education as a means of racial justice, workers themselves are trapped in a system of racialized debt;

WHEREAS, women carry nearly two-thirds of student debt in comparison to men. And take longer to pay off the same amount of debt due to the gender pay gap;

WHEREAS student loan debt is an often-overlooked barrier to diversifying the U.S. workforce; 

WHEREAS student debt cancellation increases the take-home pay of millions of indebted workers, at no cost to their employing colleges or universities, because the federal government bears financial responsibility of federal student loans; 

WHEREAS, cancelling student loan debt represents an enormous economic opportunity for Portland to increase spending in our local community, support individuals in gaining upward social mobility; and provide a deeply needed stimulus during the pandemic; 

WHEREAS, cancelling student debt is a policy that has broad political and public support, especially here in Portland; 

WHEREAS, student debt cancellation is only one step towards improving public education, and must also be accompanied by free higher education for all, among other measures;

WHEREAS, President Joe Biden has full executive authority to cancel all federal student debt using his powers of executive order;  

NOW THEREFORE IT BE RESOLVED by AFSCME Local 328 calls for President Biden to sign the executive order to cancel all federal student debt before the expiration of the federal student loan payment moratorium on May 1, 2022.

Introduced and approved on 3/16/22

TJ Acena1 Comment