On Aug. 24, President Joe Biden announced that Americans who made less than $125,000 annually would receive $10,000 in student debt forgiveness; the deadline to apply for the debt forgiveness is Dec. 31, 2023.

The debt forgiveness is a step in the right direction, it enables people who want to go to college to be able to, college overall is extremely expensive as well as an investment, and it will reduce the money families have to spend on furthering education. 

College is extremely expensive. The average tuition for an in-state college is $20,770. The median household income was $70,784 in 2021. Not every family can afford to send their kids to college, and if you have multiple children that price just multiplies. Even families that do make a substantial amount of money can’t afford to take that much money out for their children’s education.

 In our economy, it is extremely beneficial to have a college degree. Student loan forgiveness enables people to go to college because it makes paying off the cost more affordable. The average highschool graduate’s salary is $36,600 and the average person with a bachelor’s degree makes $59,600. That is a $23,000 difference; a college degree makes a huge difference in people’s lives financially. 

 A lot of people will fully pay their way through college, they won’t have their families to help pay. The loan forgiveness makes the burden of debt slightly more bearable for the people supporting themselves while in school. Most college students are too busy to work and therefore have to go deep into debt to pay for their education. There is the argument that someone will ultimately pay for the loan forgiveness. It comes from taxpayers, whether they went to college or not. Some are upset that they have to pay for others to go to college when they didn’t because they didn’t want to pay to go in the first place. Given this issue, the positives outweigh the problems heavily.

Ultimately the solution is to have public universities create a cap on how much they can charge for tuition, but for now this loan forgiveness is the best path to take.

Loan forgiveness will encourage more people to go to college and further their education. Talk to your representatives and tell them to stand for student debt forgiveness.