Student debt has hit record levels in the United States, with 45 million people carrying an average $38,000 in debt: That’s a total of $1.6 trillion of debt, a figure that is not only limiting the lives of the borrowers—preventing them from moving forward and, in many cases, from continuing their education — but also dragging down our economy. Easing student debt is one of the AFT’s four core campaigns for 2019, and we are attacking it in multiple ways.
Student debt clinics
We’ve led hundreds of members through the paperwork necessary to reduce their personal student debt at clinics across the country, often helping them reduce their monthly payments by hundreds of dollars. The clinics demystify various debt management programs such as Income-Based Repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and AFT staff and trained affiliates guide members through the process of applying for them. The clinics have been a great way to engage members who really need this help, and they’ve been effective in fighting the impact of student debt where it hurts the most: at home. One woman, who attended a clinic in Miami, cut her monthly student loan payment from about $2,000 to $700; after she enrolled in the payback plan, she told organizers it was the first time she’d slept well in three years. Another participant dropped $600 from her monthly payment, declaring it was the biggest raise she’d ever gotten. “Go to this workshop,” says Mary Dunn, who attended another clinic in Florida. “It reduced my son-in-law’s payments from $500 a month to $50, and he will be paid off in seven years (or 10). None of us had any information on this — thank you for saving us all financially.”
Online debt relief
The AFT rolled out a new debt relief tool in July 2019. “Summer,” an online program, is to student debt what TurboTax is to your taxes: a user-friendly interface that automates much of what we teach in the student debt clinics, leading AFT members through steps that will ease their student debt by enrolling in Income-Based Repayment Plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Summer will vastly increase the number of people we can reach with relief information. It is available only to AFT members, through the AFT membership benefits website.
Loan forgiveness for public service workers
The AFT’s Forgivemystudentdebt.org website provides public service worker like teachers, school support staff, public college and university faculty and staff, corrections officers, social workers and others who work in public service jobs with information about the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. People who work in public service and make regular payments on their federal student loans for 10 years can have the remainder of their student debt forgiven if they follow the steps to apply for PSLF. Details count: Chris Boardman, who learned about the PSLF process at an AFT student debt clinic in Massachusetts, was not aware that he needed to have an income-driven repayment plan in order to qualify. “Because of this clinic, not only did my monthly payment become reduced, I am on track to have a big chunk of my loan forgiven,” he says. Chris’ story is a common one: Because the Department of Education deliberately obscures PSLF relief, failing to monitor loan servicing companies that don’t tell borrowers how they can qualify, many people wind up with towering interest on loans they could have had forgiven. The AFT has sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her department to force them to do better.
Policy change
In addition to helping individuals struggling to pay off their student loans, the AFT works closely with education advocates, policy-makers, lawmakers, researchers, academics and, of course, our members, to change a system that has burdened our entire country with student debt. That work has helped put the issue on the campaign platforms of nearly every Democratic presidential candidate, including Bernie Sanders, who wants to cancel all student debt, and Elizabeth Warren, who would cancel $50,000 in student debt for people with an annual income of less than $100,000. We’ve conducted surveys and educated the public and our government about this issue, testifying at the Department of Education to protest abusive debt policies and working with state legislatures to create change. By sharing our members’ stories about the impact student debt has on our lives — how it saddles us with financial instability that prevents us from purchasing homes, starting families and creating new businesses; how it creates stress and chaos in our lives — we are advocating for change at every level.
Lawsuits for justice
The Department of Education has failed to safeguard student loan borrowers who have been promised public service loan forgiveness, instead denying this relief to PSFL applicants on arbitrary and capricious grounds and failing to hold loan servicers, who are tasked with helping borrowers pay back their debt, accountable. In fact, the department has forgiven the loans of less than 1 percent of the approximately 32 million people who are eligible for the program. For this reason AFT President Randi Weingarten, the AFT itself and eight AFT members filed a lawsuit in July 2019, seeking to hold DeVos and the Education Department accountable for its mismanagement of the PSLF program. “Instead of helping the millions of Americans owed debt relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, DeVos has hurt and pauperized them,” says Weingarten. “Instead of working with lawmakers to improve the program that millions of teachers, firefighters, nurses and first responders deserve, DeVos has vandalized it.” The AFT also supports a class-action suit brought by nine AFT members against Navient in 2018. Navient is one of the worst offenders among loan servicers that have misled borrowers in public service professions, preventing them from accessing PSLF to boost their own profits. “Navient never notified me of changes in my loan, made errors in my paperwork, and delayed processing,” says AFT member Saundra Mobley. “The interest on my debt has skyrocketed.”
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