Parents and students enter into an often complicated and opaque process when trying to secure financial aid, making some kind of financial discussion essentially a requirement for anyone hoping to successfully pay for college, said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.
Critics — and even some supporters — of the program say its designations are arbitrary, and raise questions about whether the benefit should be rethought, expanded, or even eliminated.
Adding farming to the list could introduce further complexity, since farmers in the U.S. work mainly for for-profit business.
“Student debt has become a kitchen-table issue at this point,” says Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos. “Because borrowing is now a prerequisite to college, it’s now embedded in traditional issues of economic fairness and things that students tend to be active about.”
Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, compared the movement to the one seen with universal health care, which had been an issue for quite awhile until “a moment of consensus” came in 2008.
The IWPR study also offers a window into the way race affects a borrower’s’ experience with student debt. Studies show that black students are more likely to borrow for school and tend to borrow more than their white counterparts, likely because the gap in wealth between black and white Americans means black students have fewer resources to draw from to pay for college.
In addition, federal student loans — which usually cap at $27,000 over four years — don’t always cover the full cost of a higher education, and many students are forced to secure private loans or work jobs to pay for their degree.
“Student debt is not the same to every borrower,” Mark Huelsman, a senior analyst at public policy nonprofit Demos, said in a statement. “It can look a lot different to a first-generation student from a very modest economic background than to someone going to graduate school getting a law degree.”
Eliminating student debt for low- to middle-income families could dramatically narrow the racial wealth gap between black and white households, according to a joint study by liberal think tank Demos and the Institute for Assets & Social Policy at Brandeis University.
Though 43 million Americans across the racial and socioeconomic spectrum have nearly $1.3 trillion in college loans, black households are far more likely to have student debt at all income levels.
Attaining a higher education in the U.S. has long been seen as the great equalizer. "We see education as a way to level the playing field among low-income families, low-income communities and communities of color," Mark Huelsman, the report's lead author, told NBC News.
But the current education system is rife with racial and class disparities contributing to an expanding wealth gap between whites and people of color, according to the "Less Debt, More Equity" report.
