- Over 1,000 professors signed a letter urging Biden to cancel all student debt.
- Led by the Debt Collective, they wrote debt relief would be the "first serious step" toward college for all.
- Pressure is mounting on Biden to cancel student debt before payments are set to resume on May 1.
Canceling student debt won't solve all the inequities in higher education — but it's a vital first step, professors say.
Over 1,000 faculty members from universities across the country, including Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to deliver on full student debt cancellation for federal borrowers. The letter, which was organized by the Debt Collective — the nation's first debtor's union — and obtained by Insider, said that the growing $1.7 trillion student debt crisis is causing "instructional harm," forcing borrowers to assume studies that would best help them pay off their debt. They say it has also exacerbated the labor shortage for faculty, because many of them are student debtors themselves.
"We see universal debt cancellation as a powerful first step in the process of reinvestment in quality public education. We know that subsequent steps will require the fight for state reinvestment, high quality and diverse curricula, robust research support, and the de-adjunctification of our workforce," the faculty wrote.
"Universal debt cancellation would be the first serious step toward the goal of College for All that we have seen in our lifetime," they added.
After extending the pause on student-loan payments three times during his presidency, Biden is set to resume federal debt payments on May 1 — and it has some advocates and lawmakers worried that borrowers are not financially prepared. A number of Democrats have urged the president to continue extending the pause on payments until he cancels student debt and permanently fixes flaws in the student-loan industry, like broken loan forgiveness programs, and the faculty letter is the latest to build on the mounting pressure for broad debt relief.
As the professors noted, canceling student debt would be a significant step toward tuition-free higher education, which is a notion that's been expressed by a number of lawmakers advocating for debt relief. For example, Michigan Rep. Andy Levin — the original House sponsor of the free community college proposal — previously told Insider the student debt crisis will "absolutely be exacerbated" if free college is never implemented, which is why debt cancellation and and free higher education should go hand in hand.
"They're both fixing the current problem and trying to prevent it from being such a problem in the future," Levin said.
Federal borrowers are still waiting to hear from Biden on when, or if, further student debt relief will be coming, but the professors made clear the government "doesn't actually need our student loan payments to function," and now is the time to deliver relief. Read their full letter here: