President Joe Biden’s administration, through a series of initiatives, has canceled about $153 billion in student debt for 4.3 million Americans, as of April.
On May 19, Crockett mentioned President Joe Biden’s commencement speech at Morehouse College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, and"When you start looking at student debt relief, it has disproportionately positively impacted Black folk," Crockett told host Jake Tapper."We're talking about over $137 billion for over 4 million people. That means that there at least 4 million people that now can hopefully start to get at that wealth gap.
The plan’s other parts would cancel student debt for borrowers experiencing hardship in their daily lives that prevents them from paying back their loans, and would provide relief for borrowers who attended institutions or programs that closed or"failed to provide students with sufficient financial value.
Experts in economics and education policy told PolitiFact that data on the demographics of student loan holders in the U.S. isn’t complete and that, so far, it’s unknown how many Black Americans have had their debts lessened or canceled through Biden’s initiatives. President Joe Biden Outlines New Plans to Deliver Student Debt Relief to Over 30 Million Americans Under the Biden-Harris AdministrationEmail interview, Nicholas Hillman professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, May 20, 2024