President Joe Biden repeatedly touted his plans for student debt cancellation while campaigning for reelection earlier this year. But it’s an issue that Vice President Kamala Harris has avoided speaking about since replacing Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Her platform briefly mentions it, saying that she will continue “working to end the unreasonable burden of student loan debt” but without outlining a specific plan. And that mention comes after describing in much more detail how she would help create opportunities for workers without college degrees.
Student loan cancellation was once viewed as a reliable way to energize young voters, but it is now seen as a political liability as Biden’s attempts at widespread cancellation have faced repeated legal challenges from Republican opponents.
Vice President Kamala Harris has been silent on student loan forgiveness during her campaign, only briefly mentioning it in her platform.
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty
The Biden administration moved ahead with a third attempt at broad student loan cancellation last week, focused on helping Americans who face medical bills, child care costs and other types of financial hardship that prevent them from repaying their loans. The president’s first plan, to wipe away up to $20,000 in debt for more than 40 million Americans, was blocked by the Supreme Court last year, and his second plan has been put on hold by a federal judge.
Despite the challenges, the Biden administration said earlier this month that it has cleared $175 billion in student loan debt for about 5 million borrowers through various actions.
During his debate against Harris in September, Donald Trump attacked Biden and the vice president for failing to deliver on their promise to cancel student loans. The former president called the administration’s initial plan for widespread student debt cancellation a “total catastrophe” and said it would have been “unfair” to the millions of Americans who did repay their loans.
Harris’ campaigning on the issue could give rise to further attacks from Trump and Republicans and undermine her efforts to appeal to moderate voters ahead of an election that polls indicate will be decided by razor-thin margins in battleground states.
At campaign stops, she has repeatedly touted her plan to get rid of unnecessary degree requirements for thousands of federal jobs at a time when many Americans are questioning the value of higher education.
“I believe that as we think of industries of the future and the future of America’s workforce, we need to get in front of this idea that the only high-skilled jobs require a college degree,” she said in Michigan on Monday. “It’s just not true.”
Newsweek has contacted the Harris campaign via email for comment about her plans for student loan cancellation.
Harris’ silence on student debt comes as a new poll of young voters found that only about a third (37 percent) said the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program makes them more likely to vote for a Democrat. A similar number said it has no impact on their vote, while 20 percent said it made them less likely to vote for a Democrat.
The survey, conducted by the Independent Center and provided exclusively to Newsweek, found that education ranks far lower than the economy, social issues such as abortion, and immigration when respondents think about who to vote for. Only 5 percent said it was most important to their vote, while 46 percent cited the economy and 14 percent cited social issues.
The survey also found that a majority (61 percent) think student loan forgiveness is fair while 22 percent believe it isn’t, despite a majority (67 percent) not having any student loans themselves.
Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek that Harris “is focusing on issues that are much more important for voters in this election cycle.”
“While student loan forgiveness is important for some voters, it is not a top policy priority in the current cycle, even for young voters. Campaigns have to meet the voters where they are,” he said.
Harris’ silence on the issue is unsurprising, Grant Davis Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, told Newsweek.
Talking about student loan cancellation is “not a recipe for appealing to the working and middle classes without students in college, and it introduces basic fairness questions regarding economic class,” Reeher said. “It also irritates many who made sacrifices to pay off their own college student loans. Finally, it comes off as an effort to pander for the votes of young adults.”
Younger adults “do not vote as heavily as older adults, and the Harris campaign obviously knows this,” Reeher added. “Even though they are trying to appeal to younger voters and have captured some genuine enthusiasm among them, they don’t want to alienate older voters, of whatever stripe. And it doesn’t seem like it’s a big vote winner among younger voters anyway.”
Aria Razfar, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Education, said the Harris campaign is likely avoiding the topic because it is aware of the “shortcomings” of the Biden administration’s program.
The program “as currently enacted shifts the burden of the debt from the borrowers to the taxpayers, which puts more financial stress on the middle, upper middle class and those without a college degree,” Razfar told Newsweek.
“This policy has encouraged colleges to raise their tuition and fees, thus rewarding overpriced colleges and further burdening the middle-class families,” he said.
Biden’s policy “sounds like good political rhetoric but in reality does little for enhancing higher education,” Razfar added. “It is a politically expedient Band-Aid solution for a much deeper issue.”
