LI college graduates praise loan forgiveness plan

Kalief Metellus spent much of his youth in New York City’s homeless shelter system. He graduated from SUNY Old Westbury last year as student body president and, with 23 awards, was his class’ most decorated graduate.

As a federal Pell Grant recipient, he will qualify to have $20,000 of his $38,000 in federal loans forgiven under a new policy announced Wednesday by the Biden administration.

His loan is “a big number,” said Metellus, 26, a graduate student in public administration at the University at Albany. “When you have to start repaying the loan six months after graduation, it can really mess up your credit if you can’t afford it. You can’t get a car, you can’t get a house if your credit is bad.”

The mounting costs of tuition, living expenses, and stagnant family incomes over recent decades have left millions of students with mounting debt that may take a lifetime to pay off.

The announcement Wednesday that up to $20,000 in federal loan forgiveness was available to those students with the highest need, and up to $10,000 for those with incomes under $125,000 and family incomes of under $250,000, was praised by graduates, administrators and faculty, and met with disappointment from some students that it wasn't more. 

At SUNY Old Westbury, where more than half of the students receive federal Pell Grants for high-need families and the average student grad debt load in 2020-2021 was $15,250, President Timothy E. Sams said in a statement, “There are many young people and their families around the country who are sighing in relief today. This announcement removes a burden for many who will now have more resources to plan for their futures ... ”

He added that further work was needed to limit tuition increases with improved funding, particularly for public higher education.

Alan Singer, director of Secondary Education Social Studies at Hofstra University's education department, said student debt can make it impossible for students to start families and purchase homes on Long Island.

"It is hardest for first-time college graduates who don't have families that can absorb some of the cost," he said. “The Biden debt relief plan will especially help first-in-the-family college graduates and people who enter lower paying professions like teaching.”

One such education major, Michael Stutts, 23, of Bellmore, graduated from Hofstra in 2021 with $30,000 debt. He was recently hired as a full-time special education teacher in the Great Neck school system earning “a lot less than $125,000,” he laughed.

“It's a great start,” he said about the debt relief, but noted that many “have way more debt than I do. But ten grand is ten grand, it’s a good start.”

For many students, debts accrued in pursuit of undergraduate and graduate degrees can be “overwhelming,” said Chelsea Cirillo, 23, of Johnstown, New York, and a Hofstra School of Law student who thinks the debt relief proposal won’t go far in her case.

"I feel that overwhelming rush of ‘How am I going to pay this back?’" Cirillo said. "I think it's not even a drop in the bucket of how much debt I have."

Fellow Hofstra law student Alyssa Pitchford, 24, of San Jose, California, said the relief wouldn’t cover her living expenses for one semester. “It’s a fraction of what I owe,” she said, noting a student “may never be able to pay it off when you’re $300,000 in debt.”

And Hofstra law student Veronica Harris, 26, of Uniondale, said she already has two rounds of student debt undertaken for her undergraduate and now law degrees.

“Some of the burden is lifted,” she said. “There’s a lot more to go.” She noted that unless debt was canceled, it would hedge her decisions about her career throughout her life.

The new policy is condemned by critics, including voices in the Republican Party, as a potentially inflationary burden on taxpayers, and unfair to those who never went to college or paid off their own loans.

Kalief Metellus said he would tell those who objected to the debt relief that “our society and the upcoming generations are moving to a pivotal point where they are bankrupting themselves to get a college education and there is no guaranteed job afterwards.”

But, to be fair, he said, those who paid off loans should get some relief too.

“I’d be angry if I just paid off my student loan and I just heard about this,” he said.

For some of those lucky enough to avoid student debt, there was some compassion for friends who struggled under the burden of it.

James Bunn, 38, of Merrick, and his wife said they were able to avoid accruing student debt with help from family and scholarships. Now as a sales director, he hopes to avoid student debt for their 13-month-old son. He has friends, saddled with student debt, who were forced to seek cheaper housing out of state as a result.

"The way education is, it's become a necessity in advancing careers, but there's no support for these students. You have to sign up for debt and there's no way to plan a way out,” he said. “The reality hits after you graduate that there's not a lot of support for younger generations and students."