Speaker 1: The craziest thing that has been happening to me this
Speaker 1: week that is really making me feel like Demi Moore
Speaker 1: and Ghosts is that my phone keeps ringing, but the
Speaker 1: calls are coming from me. I get calls like that
Speaker 1: at least three times a day. Listen. I was waiting
Speaker 1: to get something delivered at my house and I missed
Speaker 1: my delivery when I missed everything because I'm always getting
Speaker 1: spam fixed, you know, And so I said, Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: try to be better. I'll answer and see who it is.
Speaker 1: And I can because people would say, oh, I tried
Speaker 1: calling you, but I didn't get an answer. If I
Speaker 1: don't have your number, say, I don't know who it is,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to answer because last week I
Speaker 1: answered and I said hello, and the person was like,
Speaker 1: do you have diabetes? I'm selling something strips or monitors.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they were saying, but lately it's
Speaker 1: been me. So it makes my contact pop up and
Speaker 1: it's like, you have a call from Zakia and I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 1: So what you're not gonna do is bring this bad
Speaker 1: juju through my phone. Maybe it's future. It's a kid
Speaker 1: calling to tell you like don't eat all that kale.
Speaker 1: No future me would definitely send something that I could
Speaker 1: verify future me, but not call future in me. Send
Speaker 1: like a letter or an email, something that I could
Speaker 1: show like, look it happened, tuchus, A kid I trust
Speaker 1: would send like some type of code word to let
Speaker 1: me know it really is Yes. Currents Akida would do
Speaker 1: that too. Current a Kia does do that. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is how you know it's really me and I'm
Speaker 1: my girl, I know it's you. I'm looking at you.
Speaker 1: I'm TT and I'm Zakiyah and from Spotify Studios. This
Speaker 1: is dope laps. So whether it's spam or robo calling
Speaker 1: or calls from your future self, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: calls you don't want to answer these days. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that I always see on
Speaker 1: the internet people saying they don't answer calls because of
Speaker 1: Sally May. Right, Sally may have been knocking on everybody's
Speaker 1: door since what feels like the beginning of time, and
Speaker 1: everybody is bobbing and weave in to duck those phone
Speaker 1: calls because you'll get your money. When you get your money, Sally,
Speaker 1: you can't even stay in touch with your family. You
Speaker 1: got long lost relatives trying to reach you. You like,
Speaker 1: can't risk it. I don't have a minial. This could
Speaker 1: be Sally. I can't make the payment this month. So
Speaker 1: today we're talking about debt, specifically college debts. That's right,
Speaker 1: it's been the elephant in the room and it's time
Speaker 1: to address it. Let's talk to that elephant. And I
Speaker 1: know y'all might be saying the hell a TT is
Speaker 1: the key at talking about this is not science, But
Speaker 1: let me tell you, yes it is. Yes it is.
Speaker 1: You thought that you could put dope labs into a box,
Speaker 1: No you can't. You're not just talking about physics, chemistry, biology,
Speaker 1: We're talking about everything because all these things are science,
Speaker 1: and there's a scientific method that can be applied to
Speaker 1: all these things. Economics is a social science, right, It's
Speaker 1: the science of money, the flow of money, and it
Speaker 1: has great effects on society as a whole, on each
Speaker 1: and every one of us. No one is excluded from
Speaker 1: the economy. Yep. So this science is actually something that
Speaker 1: all of you all can benefit from. The fact that
Speaker 1: so many people are identifying with this and there's memes
Speaker 1: everywhere I turn about it. It feels like a major problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, cause it's like, you go to school and
Speaker 1: you're just trying to make your life better, right, because
Speaker 1: that's what they tell us is that you got to
Speaker 1: go to school, you got to get these degrees in
Speaker 1: order to have a better life. And then as soon
Speaker 1: as you're done, they're like, Okay, now start paying me back.
Speaker 1: It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I got to establish myself first.
Speaker 1: How am I supposed to establish myself if you keep
Speaker 1: if you taking the money out of my pocket as
Speaker 1: soon as I put it in there, It's like somebody
Speaker 1: training you to walk, and then they're like, I'm about
Speaker 1: to chase you. They don't even give you. They don't
Speaker 1: even give you a head start, right, at least give
Speaker 1: me a head start, right. Oh, these entry positions not
Speaker 1: paying like that for real? It's like, can I get
Speaker 1: a savings and then we could talk about me paying
Speaker 1: you back? It's crazy, and I know it's really real
Speaker 1: because it came up from one of our three two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty seven Democratic candidates, from Elizabeth Warren. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she talked about eliminating student loans for people who have
Speaker 1: what was it fifty thousand? She was saying she would.
Speaker 1: I think it was eliminate fifty thousand dollars of student
Speaker 1: loan debt if you make less than one hundred thousand. Okay,
Speaker 1: I said, I'll see you trying to build up the
Speaker 1: middle class. As soon as everybody said that, they're like
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren for president. But everybody's jumping on the bandwagon.
Speaker 1: But occasionally there was a lot of backlash too. There was,
Speaker 1: and so then I was like, but wait, that sounds
Speaker 1: good to me. So now I'm starting to think I
Speaker 1: don't know enough, and there's so many other things that
Speaker 1: are going on with the student loan process that I
Speaker 1: am not privy to that could mean that this whole
Speaker 1: eliminating student debt is a bad thing. I don't see
Speaker 1: how it could be a bad thing. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people that are crushed by student debt. But
Speaker 1: I do think there are things I want to know.
Speaker 1: It's time for the recitation. I think first we want
Speaker 1: to know do most people have student loans? And like,
Speaker 1: we know what a student loan is. I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: how does it work? And how's it different from other
Speaker 1: standard loans? Right? What's so different about it that so
Speaker 1: many people are defaulting on their student loans. Why does
Speaker 1: it take so long to pay back? The struggle is
Speaker 1: real with paying them back and then what happens if
Speaker 1: you can't pay? And is everyone borrowing equally? My other
Speaker 1: question is what was up with that stuff that Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Warren was saying, Like she introduced something about in her
Speaker 1: platform about student loan forgiveness. I want to know more
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, student loan forgiveness, is it real? Like
Speaker 1: is it? This is a trick, isn't it? And what
Speaker 1: would that look like? So now we want to lay
Speaker 1: the foundation right, what's the history of student loans? The
Speaker 1: first student loans were given out to students at Harvard
Speaker 1: back in like eighteen forty or so. That is a
Speaker 1: long time ago, Yeah, and only to Harvard's students. But
Speaker 1: since then we've gone through various iterations of things that
Speaker 1: are like a student loan or a grant like the
Speaker 1: GI Bill, the Federal Family Education loans, the Peil grant
Speaker 1: which you didn't have to pay back. But then we
Speaker 1: kind of did away with a law of that stuff
Speaker 1: by twenty ten, and then by twenty twelve, the amount
Speaker 1: of student loan debt that we have in the United
Speaker 1: States it got up to one trillion dollars. That's tr
Speaker 1: tr million illy on. We also know there's another problem,
Speaker 1: right aside from overwhelming student debt, the cost of education
Speaker 1: is so drastically different. I'm tired of baby boomer saying
Speaker 1: I went to college. You paid three thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: all four years exactly. That's completely different from what we
Speaker 1: paying these days. Those are the fees for a semester. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to hear it. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: baby boomers were going to college for like a nickel
Speaker 1: and a bag of chips. College is way more expensive now.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen, the average cost of
Speaker 1: attendance was over forty thousand dollars for an out of
Speaker 1: state public school. But even for in state public education
Speaker 1: that's twenty five thousand dollars. And private schools they cost
Speaker 1: over fifty thousand dollars just for one year. So now
Speaker 1: we're talking about let's say you stick to this grip,
Speaker 1: you take all those classes, maybe some summer courses too.
Speaker 1: Four years at a private school two hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: you bought a house, You get about a lot of things.
Speaker 1: So I have questions about that. So to find out
Speaker 1: the answer to some of these questions, we turn to
Speaker 1: our good friend, Colleen Campbell.
Speaker 2: My name is Colleen Campbell, and I'm the director for
Speaker 2: post Secondary Education at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Speaker 2: I do research and advocacy on student debt.
Speaker 1: And for the purposes of today's lab we're going to
Speaker 1: focus mainly on federal student loans, which make up the
Speaker 1: majority of the student loan pie. Some people do choose
Speaker 1: to take out loans from private institutions, but those are
Speaker 1: harder to get in a lot less flexible. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's just rip off the band aid. I want to
Speaker 1: know what the current state of the federal student loan
Speaker 1: debt is today. How bad is it?
Speaker 2: So there's about one point five trillion dollars outstanding of
Speaker 2: federal student loan debt. That's about forty three million people
Speaker 2: who have student loans, so it's about a fifth of adults.
Speaker 2: For context, it's pretty comparable to auto debt. Actually, so
Speaker 2: there's about one point one trillion outstanding in auto loans.
Speaker 1: But the number of adults in the US who have
Speaker 1: a car loan that's more than double the number of
Speaker 1: adults who have student loan debt. Yeah, about forty four
Speaker 1: percent of American adults are paying off car loans compared
Speaker 1: to twenty percent of adults who are paying off student loans.
Speaker 1: So that's more debt but fewer people. That's not a
Speaker 1: good look. So who are these people that are taking
Speaker 1: on this combined one point five trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1: Before we dive into the policy and economics around student loans,
Speaker 1: let's kind of survey the landscape of higher ed in
Speaker 1: the United States. So let's start with who's going to
Speaker 1: college in the first place.
Speaker 2: Most college students are adults, they're over twenty four, they're married,
Speaker 2: they have children. Most people are not enrolling in a
Speaker 2: public four year college or a private four year college.
Speaker 2: And you better be damn sure that most people are
Speaker 2: not getting.
Speaker 1: A graduate degree. This is so important to hear, right,
Speaker 1: because the image of a college student in the media
Speaker 1: is this bright eyed, bushy tail, button up polo shirt,
Speaker 1: pop collar, boat shoes, lay your pot in the ear, right,
Speaker 1: But really it is all the cost, no vineyard vines,
Speaker 1: vineyard vines. But it's really like a mom who's nursing
Speaker 1: her newborn and reading introduction to sociology and trying to
Speaker 1: make sure that the spaghetti don't burn.
Speaker 2: One of the things with student debt that I think,
Speaker 2: really I like to do this level setting before we
Speaker 2: dig into these issues, is to frame for people that
Speaker 2: we are very much biased by the people around us
Speaker 2: and our own experiences.
Speaker 1: All Right, so it's time to talk to the woman
Speaker 1: in the mirror. Our understanding of student loans is probably
Speaker 1: based on our own experiences and the experiences of our
Speaker 1: friends and the people that we know. Yeah, people in
Speaker 1: our bubble. But in order to really understand the whole
Speaker 1: complicated mess that's associated with student loans, you really have
Speaker 1: to burst that bubble.
Speaker 2: If most of the people you know have degrees, you
Speaker 2: actually are like your bubble is relatively small, especially if
Speaker 2: you only know people with graduate degrees. Yeah, twelve percent
Speaker 2: of adults have graduate degrees.
Speaker 1: And Colleen says that the number of people without a
Speaker 1: high school diploma is almost equal to the number of
Speaker 1: people with a graduate degree. That's crazy. This really helps
Speaker 1: put our bubbles in perspective. Right, how many people do
Speaker 1: you know without a high school diploma versus people with
Speaker 1: a graduate degree. The chances are that you know more
Speaker 1: in one group or the other.
Speaker 2: So we really have to think through kind of like
Speaker 2: what the landscape of the American population looks like, particularly
Speaker 2: when we break these things down by race, so that
Speaker 2: we can have a better understanding of who we're going
Speaker 2: to be affecting and like where we might want to
Speaker 2: be prioritizing those dollars.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that later in the show, but first
Speaker 1: let's start off with the basics of student loans. How
Speaker 1: do they actually work.
Speaker 2: When people take out a loan, that's what we call
Speaker 2: their principal balance, and then there's an interest rate attached
Speaker 2: to that loan. Right now, for undergraduates, interest rates are
Speaker 2: between usually about three and a half percent, like five
Speaker 2: or six percent.
Speaker 1: There are also subsidized and unsubsidized loans. With subsidized loans,
Speaker 1: while you're in school, your loan won't accrue interests. So
Speaker 1: if you borrow three thousand dollars in your first year
Speaker 1: of college and you graduate four you years later, your
Speaker 1: DEA's three thousand dollars. Unsubsidized loans begin accruing interests right away.
Speaker 2: So in this way, your balance will increase over time
Speaker 2: and is.
Speaker 1: Actually shockingly easy to get a loan and that's how
Speaker 1: I was designed. Federal student loans were created for anyone
Speaker 1: who wanted to pursue higher education. Yeah, did you know
Speaker 1: you don't even have to have a credit check to
Speaker 1: get a federal loan. You got to get a credit
Speaker 1: check to get like a washing machine. These days, if
Speaker 1: I want to open a five hundred dollars store car,
Speaker 1: that's a credit check. But if I want to take
Speaker 1: out ten thousand dollars in loans at age eighteen, no
Speaker 1: problem nothing.
Speaker 2: There is kind of this tenant of federal law that
Speaker 2: says we should loans are an entitlement. We should give
Speaker 2: loans to anybody who wants to borrow a loan to
Speaker 2: enroll in higher education. And that's kind of like a
Speaker 2: great thing about student loans, right, Like I would not
Speaker 2: have been able to go to the college I went
Speaker 2: to without student debt. I was able to take on
Speaker 2: student debt, and I'm very successful now, like I'm a
Speaker 2: success story of student loans. But for a lot of
Speaker 2: people that is not the case.
Speaker 1: Right people are drowning in debt and unable to pay
Speaker 1: their loans back. It's a mess out there. Student loan
Speaker 1: reform has become a major part of a lot of
Speaker 1: the presidential candidates platforms. Yeah, the presidential candidates for twenty
Speaker 1: twenty are popping up, and a lot of the conversation
Speaker 1: has shifted to student loans and student loan debt. But
Speaker 1: why are student loans becoming a problem for so many people? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like there are many reasons why
Speaker 1: the current system isn't working, and one of them is
Speaker 1: that some colleges haven't been playing fair.
Speaker 2: A lot of schools have really taken advantage of these
Speaker 2: programs and taken advantage of students. So if you think
Speaker 2: of things like for profit colleges that have been like
Speaker 2: predatory trying to get people to enroll so that they
Speaker 2: can make all, you know, tons and tons of money
Speaker 2: off of these students and not offer them a high
Speaker 2: quality education, then really those are the people who are
Speaker 2: in really bad shape.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like how UNO's trying to change the rules,
Speaker 1: how they're saying that you can't put a draw to
Speaker 1: on top of a draw four, because that's exactly what
Speaker 1: the government is doing, right, And I absolutely draw six.
Speaker 1: You need to draw six cards. I think student loans
Speaker 1: are worth to fly and is like draw eight loans
Speaker 1: like draw eight and also never buy a house, You'll
Speaker 1: never be able to afford it. Another reason is that
Speaker 1: a lot of people who take out loans to go
Speaker 1: to college don't end up finishing, making it more difficult
Speaker 1: for them to find a job that allow them to
Speaker 1: pay off their student debt.
Speaker 2: Typically, what we end up seeing is that people will
Speaker 2: enroll in either for profit colleges or community colleges, be
Speaker 2: enrolled for a semester or a year, and just be like,
Speaker 2: I can't do this. Life is getting in the way.
Speaker 2: I'm taking care of children, I'm taking care of my family.
Speaker 2: I need to work. And they drop out of school
Speaker 2: and then they have these smaller loan balances and they
Speaker 2: just can't repay them.
Speaker 1: And for some people, it's like they're running on a treadmill, right.
Speaker 1: So even though they're making monthly payments, their interest rate
Speaker 1: is too high for them to make a dint in
Speaker 1: their overall loan a miilt, and even if they make
Speaker 1: a dent, those interest rates just pop those dents back out. Yep.
Speaker 2: There are instances where people go into what's called negative amortization,
Speaker 2: which basically means that their balance is increasing even though
Speaker 2: they're making pays on that debt.
Speaker 1: And so then what happens when you can't pay. When
Speaker 1: you can't pay, you run the risk of defaulting on
Speaker 1: your loans, which can have really serious consequences. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have default on the loan, that's a ding on
Speaker 1: your credit score. But also defaulting on your student loan
Speaker 1: means that the government might try to get that money
Speaker 1: in other ways. So they might take your tax return,
Speaker 1: or they might garnish your wages. So they're going to
Speaker 1: be going into your check that you're getting from your
Speaker 1: job and saying, I'll take a little bit of that,
Speaker 1: thank you, that's mine. Did you know they can even
Speaker 1: sue your employer? Oh my gosh. Of the forty three
Speaker 1: million people currently struggling with student loan debt, nine million
Speaker 1: are in default. But they're not who you think.
Speaker 2: And so what we actually end up seeing is that
Speaker 2: the people who default on their federal student loans are
Speaker 2: people largely who didn't finish college, and they have much
Speaker 2: much lower balances than the people who are actually paying
Speaker 2: down their loans.
Speaker 1: So when Colleen says much lower balances, she means like
Speaker 1: less than ten thousand dollars. That is crazy, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you would think that people default on their loans. There
Speaker 1: are people that have li seven hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in student loan debt right and they just can't
Speaker 1: sustain those payments.
Speaker 2: You'll hear news stories about people has like six figures
Speaker 2: in debt and like, how are they paying it? We
Speaker 2: actually have options to help those people, and those people
Speaker 2: tend to use those options a whole lot more than
Speaker 2: people who are taking on smaller amounts of debt, dropping
Speaker 2: out of school and then defaulting on their debt.
Speaker 1: When we come back from the break, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about how people are paying off their debts and
Speaker 1: who's benefiting from the current programs in place and who's not.
Speaker 1: We're back, So in the first half of the show
Speaker 1: we really focused on the ins and outs of student
Speaker 1: loan debt. How much is there, how does it work,
Speaker 1: you know all that stuff. Now we want to turn
Speaker 1: to diagnosing the problem. And one thing I'm really curious
Speaker 1: about is how long has this been a problem. It
Speaker 1: definitely feels like the amount of overall student loan debt
Speaker 1: has exploded recently. Is that true?
Speaker 2: What we've seen is really a big jump in indebtedness
Speaker 2: over the last decade In particular. So when we think
Speaker 2: about the recession that happened, what typically happens during recessions
Speaker 2: is lots of people in roll in college. What that
Speaker 2: also means if we're not investing grant aid, is a
Speaker 2: lot of indebtedness.
Speaker 1: And when you're in a recession, you don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of money and there's not a lot of jobs available,
Speaker 1: so you go to college and you take on some debt.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the price tag for college education
Speaker 1: has also gone up, and programs like the pilgrimt they
Speaker 1: don't cover as much as they.
Speaker 2: Used to As time has gone on, what people, basically
Speaker 2: legislators have said is we're going to instead put all
Speaker 2: of our kind of eggs in the student loan basket.
Speaker 1: So student loans used to be a tool just for
Speaker 1: the middle class and upper middle income people, but now
Speaker 1: it's a tool for college access for everyone.
Speaker 2: And we're seeing that it's having real disperate affects, particularly
Speaker 2: for borrowers of color.
Speaker 1: So even though it feels like the expansion of student
Speaker 1: loan debt would make college more accessible to everyone, is
Speaker 1: not that simple, right. It's a little more smoke and
Speaker 1: mirrors than it might initially see. So what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: So imagine we have this pot of money that's focused
Speaker 1: on people with high financial need. It covers seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of their expenses and they don't have to pay
Speaker 1: it back after college. That's the pail grant. Then legislators decided, nah,
Speaker 1: we won't spend so much money on the pelgrant program. Instead,
Speaker 1: we'll encourage student loans for everyone. Now more people can
Speaker 1: go to college. But there's an unintended or maybe intended
Speaker 1: who knows side effect of this. Now you have people
Speaker 1: with great financial need using a pel grant, But now
Speaker 1: since legislators have disinvested, the pil grant will only cover
Speaker 1: about thirty percent of their expenses and they're taking student
Speaker 1: loans for the other seventy percent of their costs. And remember,
Speaker 1: student loans, unlike peil grants, have to be paid back.
Speaker 1: So when people say, oh, my granddad went to college
Speaker 1: on the pel grant in nineteen sixty five, yeah, brah,
Speaker 1: that pel grant cover most of his costs. You didn't
Speaker 1: have to pay a bet. So my cousin who went
Speaker 1: to public institution is drowning in student loans and entering
Speaker 1: into a much more competitive job market and earning less
Speaker 1: with her college degree and paying back way more coins
Speaker 1: than your granddad could ever see how that works. With
Speaker 1: all these people in debt, there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: government assistance programs set up to help with repayment. Right.
Speaker 1: There's income based repayment, where a portion of your income
Speaker 1: is exempt before you start paying off your loan. There's
Speaker 1: also a program called Public Service Loan Forgiveness for people
Speaker 1: who work at nonprofits, where the remainder of their debt
Speaker 1: is forgiven after ten years. And then there are specialized
Speaker 1: forgiveness programs for specific careers like teachers, nurses, and people
Speaker 1: in the military. But with nine million people defaulting on
Speaker 1: loans that are under ten thousand dollars, something isn't working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's keeping those folks from getting the help that they need.
Speaker 2: So there's a little bit of a mix, right, So,
Speaker 2: some people leave school not knowing that they have student
Speaker 2: loan debt. Some students also believe that if they don't
Speaker 2: finish their education that they aren't going to oh the
Speaker 2: loan back, which is not true. But again it's kind
Speaker 2: of there's an information gap going on.
Speaker 1: Another barrier is that you can go a really long
Speaker 1: period of time without paying your loans. So unlike with
Speaker 1: a private loan, you can just let a federal loan
Speaker 1: sit up to a year actually, and if there aren't
Speaker 1: any consequences for that long period of time, it just
Speaker 1: gets easier and easier to get complacent about paying off
Speaker 1: your loans, and then all of a sudden, here comes
Speaker 1: the government knocking at your dough. Well, why are people
Speaker 1: waiting until the government is knocking on your door? Like,
Speaker 1: why aren't people taking advantage of some of the programs
Speaker 1: that are available.
Speaker 2: These plans can be really administratively difficult to get into
Speaker 2: because you got to call your loan service you're up,
Speaker 2: You got to do a form online, you have to
Speaker 2: verify with the IRS what your income is. It's kind
Speaker 2: of a pain in the butt, right, But also the
Speaker 2: other thing with income driven repayment, you got to certify
Speaker 2: your income every single year.
Speaker 1: Every year until you're done paying your loan off. I
Speaker 1: don't remember to do anything. I would totally forget that.
Speaker 1: There was one time I walked out of my apartment
Speaker 1: with no shoes on and got in the car and
Speaker 1: started driving and then almost made it to work with
Speaker 1: no shoes on. You can't ask me to do things
Speaker 1: like that. Every year, I will not remember where's Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: If my iPad can talk to my Apple Watch, that
Speaker 1: can talk to my computer, and my Apple Watch can
Speaker 1: unlock my laptop, and truly, we can figure out a
Speaker 1: better system for the IRS to talk to the Department
Speaker 1: of Education. So it's pretty obvious at this point that
Speaker 1: the policies and programs that we currently have in place
Speaker 1: aren't for everybody. In fact, sometimes instead of helping like
Speaker 1: the programs designed to do, it's actually damaging for people.
Speaker 1: So naturally, the people who are most affected by this
Speaker 1: are the people who are borrowing more not more money,
Speaker 1: but more often. Colleen says, we see stark differences in
Speaker 1: borrowing rates by race.
Speaker 2: For white students, it's about fifty four percent of them borrow.
Speaker 2: Black students about seventy one percent of them borrow Latin
Speaker 2: next students it's about forty four percent, and Asian students
Speaker 2: it's about thirty percent.
Speaker 1: From all that you should know is that the outlier
Speaker 1: of all of these groups are African Americans. Seventy one
Speaker 1: percent of them are getting student loans. That's twenty percentage
Speaker 1: points higher than the average student. That's significant.
Speaker 2: So What we have also seen is that default rates
Speaker 2: are higher for people of color, particularly African Americans, and
Speaker 2: even African Americans with bachelor's degrees are much more likely
Speaker 2: to default on their loans than white folks.
Speaker 1: That's just the tip of the iceberg, right, because if
Speaker 1: you look below the water, there's something. There's another elephant
Speaker 1: in the room that we're not talking about. There's another
Speaker 1: polar bear hanging on to the iceberg, okay, and that's
Speaker 1: pay inequality and wage discrimination. And when you put those
Speaker 1: things in on top of trying to pay a student loan.
Speaker 2: It becomes even more difficult because people of color end
Speaker 2: up having higher borrowing rates. Overall, they are being disproportionately
Speaker 2: hampered by their student loan dead And so we really
Speaker 2: need to think through equity focused policies that are not
Speaker 2: compounding things like labor market discrimination and wage discrimination and
Speaker 2: putting people in a worse off position than they are
Speaker 2: from the get go.
Speaker 1: So Colleen says, we need to refocus the policies to
Speaker 1: help students in the most need, not necessarily the students
Speaker 1: with the most debt, because often the people who have
Speaker 1: the most debt also have the highest income. They're going
Speaker 1: to undergrad grad school to getting a doctorate. Their doctor
Speaker 1: is doctorate, and they're the ones benefiting the most from
Speaker 1: these debt relief programs that are currently in place.
Speaker 2: So this is where like some criticism of Elizabeth Warren's
Speaker 2: plan has come in.
Speaker 1: Remember, Elizabeth Warren's plan would forgive up to fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a student debt for families that make up to
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars, and then there's even some form
Speaker 1: of relief for families who earn up to two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars. That's a lot of money in
Speaker 1: my book, So you know, you.
Speaker 2: Could be still be getting forty thousand dollars of loan
Speaker 2: forgiveness if you're making one hundred and fifty two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I follow a lot of people on higher education on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and the Internet was rumbling. Okay, Hire was saying like,
Speaker 1: oh no, this is impossible. I had to pay stodo loans.
Speaker 1: Other people should have to pay student loans, and that
Speaker 1: is backwards, do me.
Speaker 2: There are lots of folks in kind of like the
Speaker 2: DC policy space who have been frustrated that we are
Speaker 2: going to be spending a lot of money on people
Speaker 2: who have good salaries or making a good amount of money.
Speaker 2: Then you have other people coming at this from well,
Speaker 2: people shouldn't be taking on debt for college in the
Speaker 2: first place. This should never have been a thing. And
Speaker 2: so you know, and to make this politically feasible, we
Speaker 2: need to offer something to high income people, because we'll
Speaker 2: only give something to low income people if we give
Speaker 2: it to high income people.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you the high income people got the
Speaker 1: gift is the high income I am so glad we
Speaker 1: did this episode. We learned so much about student debt
Speaker 1: and the current situation with higher ed I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just happy that student loans now that I know, is
Speaker 1: one point by trillion dollars where we need to talk
Speaker 1: about it. We need to talk. So I'm glad it's
Speaker 1: on the table, absolutely, and I'm hoping that a lot
Speaker 1: more of the candidates will respond to that. And her
Speaker 1: talking about it in this way is forcing all of
Speaker 1: them to talk about it, which is another reason why
Speaker 1: I think it was a good thing for her to
Speaker 1: put out because now all of the other candidates have
Speaker 1: to include that in their platform because she's going to
Speaker 1: talk about it, so they have to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and this is something that is affecting all of us.
Speaker 1: Even if you didn't take out a student loan, it
Speaker 1: is affecting you because it's affecting our economy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: while that proposal may not be perfect, is getting the
Speaker 1: ball rolling right because the one thing that this has
Speaker 1: really hit home for me is that students are making
Speaker 1: these decisions at age seventeen, eighteen, twenty two, twenty five.
Speaker 1: And it is like one of those story books where
Speaker 1: it's like, turn page twenty two for this adventure. And
Speaker 1: if you accidentally take the wrong combination of student loans,
Speaker 1: or you don't pay something really early, you turn to
Speaker 1: page forty and you missing an miss you drowning a debt,
Speaker 1: you drown it, and you swimming in the sally Made
Speaker 1: River with cement feet. Okay, and so now what how
Speaker 1: do you recover from that? And it's a lot for
Speaker 1: somebody to recover from what you're so young and just
Speaker 1: trying to make it in this life. We know that
Speaker 1: education is the catalyst for the American dream basically right,
Speaker 1: and access to education is so important, but how you
Speaker 1: access that education can derail or propel your life by
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds and it's so early on and it
Speaker 1: touches so many. It's bigger than it's it's deeper than
Speaker 1: rap is bigger than just college loan debt is equity
Speaker 1: in hiring, pay housing? Right is it extends to So
Speaker 1: if you're saddled with student loan debt, what does that
Speaker 1: mean for your credit and your ability to buy a house,
Speaker 1: or your ability to buy a car, your ability to
Speaker 1: pick up and move and even get some jobs. Some
Speaker 1: they run your credit and if you have a lot
Speaker 1: of debt or you're not making those payments, you will
Speaker 1: be blocked out of certain jobs, in certain positions. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know that now's the time to really look
Speaker 1: and say, like, are we saying that we value education
Speaker 1: and are we saying that this is something that increases
Speaker 1: quality of life? And if it is, why are we
Speaker 1: making the barriers so high to obtain it? Exactly? It's like,
Speaker 1: who are you trying to keep out with that barrier? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: as the conversation starts to ramp up around student loans,
Speaker 1: the student loan forgiveness, we really want to ask Colleen,
Speaker 1: what are some things we should be considering.
Speaker 2: I think that having conversations with friends who are progressive.
Speaker 2: That really trying to get people to understand that just
Speaker 2: because it benefits them doesn't mean it's progressive, and that
Speaker 2: they need to do a lot more thinking about like
Speaker 2: what this country looks like as a whole and getting
Speaker 2: a much better sense of, like, you know, the fact
Speaker 2: that their experience is not other people's experience.
Speaker 1: That's it for Lab seven. Don't forget to check out
Speaker 1: our website for a cheat sheet and the show notes
Speaker 1: from today's episode. You can find that and sign up
Speaker 1: for our newsletter at Dope Labs podcast dot com. And
Speaker 1: we had a really long conversation with Colleen, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that we just didn't have time
Speaker 1: to put into this episode. So what we're planning on
Speaker 1: doing is Instagram Live with Colleen where she can answer
Speaker 1: more of your questions about student loan, student loan debt, repayment, forgiveness,
Speaker 1: all of that. And so make sure you follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Dope Labs podcast so that you can
Speaker 1: know when that's going to be happening, and keep calling.
Speaker 1: We love hearing from you. What did you think about
Speaker 1: today's episode? What other questions do you have? Share your
Speaker 1: story with us. Our number is two o two five
Speaker 1: six seven seven zero two eight. You can find Zakiya
Speaker 1: at Z Said So on Instagram and Twitter, and you
Speaker 1: can find tt at Doctor Underscore t Sho and if
Speaker 1: you love the show, don't forget to follow us on
Speaker 1: Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Special Thanks today
Speaker 1: our guests Colleen Campbell follow her on Twitter at Colle
Speaker 1: camp That's co O L L e C. A m
Speaker 1: p Our producer is Jenny Rattle at MASTS. Mixing in
Speaker 1: sound design by Hannis Brown, original theme music by Taka
Speaker 1: Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Additional music by Elijah Lex Harvey.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is brought to you by three M and
Speaker 1: is a production of Spotify Studios and Mega Own Media
Speaker 1: Group and is executive produced by us T. T Shidia
Speaker 1: and Zakiah Wattley. And folks are drowning in debt, and
Speaker 1: that worries me because I know you can't swim. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna learn. I'm gonna learn this summer. This summer, it's on,
Speaker 1: it's in the cards. I'm gonna learn this summer. Somebody
Speaker 1: needs to throw a life rap. Do we have enough
Speaker 1: life raps? This is the governmental life, rap bankruptcy. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I know, declare bankrupt