For a college student, excitement about President Joe Biden’s recent student debt forgiveness executive order almost seems like an expectation. On the one hand, if you’ve borrowed money for school, it’s undeniably convenient to not have to pay it back. On the other, if you haven’t taken out loans, it seems only fair that everyone else receive a similar benefit – right? 
Don’t be so sure. Although it may appear to be a much-needed win for those burdened with inescapable debt, Biden’s plan is costly for just about everyone involved. 
The most obvious negative to this policy is its enormous cost: It’s the most expensive executive order in history, coming in at just over $400 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It’s set to forgive $10,000 in student loans to individuals who didn’t receive a Pell Grant, a form of federal aid for low-income undergraduate students, and $20,000 for those who did.
The cost for the general population is almost equally obvious, given the U.S.’s current economic situation. Inflation is currently at an all-time high, sitting at an astounding 8.52%, while the current recession, despite the president’s protests, only grows, bolstered by the huge amounts of money being sent to fight a foreign war in the East. $400 billion dollars added to the federal deficit is sure to do little to help.
The executive order also has consequences for soon-to-be college students. It will cause tuition inflation, hiking up prices for future students, student loans or not.
In an interview with Forbes Magazine, University of New Haven associate professor of economics Patrick Gourley said that student debt forgiveness will set a dangerous precedent for universities going forward.
“If you think the price of tuition has gone up in the past 10 years, just wait for the next 10,” Gourley said.
There’s a certain reality whispered behind the closed doors of college administrative meetings: All American institutions of higher education, even the public ones, are for-profit companies and are ran as such, despite the half-hearted denials of university higher-ups.
With more money suddenly flowing into their bank accounts from “free” money given by the government, universities will only increase tuition costs and do what they have been doing for the last 30 years: overinvesting in their inflated bureaucracies and neglecting their teaching faculty. The cost of this extra spending will force schools to raise their tuition, and college will soon be as expensive as it was before any debt forgiveness, even when students may have $20,000 taken off the top of their loans.
The main losers in this scenario are the students of the future who will have to shoulder this burden.   
For those college students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels who didn’t take out loans, too, Biden’s plan is frustrating. Not for the ones who were fortunate enough to have their parents pay their way (not that there is anything wrong with that), but rather those who chose to attend schools they could afford.
Many college students chose to be educated at either close-to-home, small, regional state schools, or their second choice in-state universities in order to avoid out-of-state tuition jumps.
I was one of these students. I attended LSU-Shreveport for my undergraduate education, because it was there that I could pay for my school through scholarships instead of loans. This was a conscious choice I made; to forgo attending a higher-ranked university in order to avoid borrowing money, even though it could’ve hurt my chances for graduate school.
Years later, I came to Baton Rouge because it was at LSU that I received a scholarship, even though I had been accepted at higher-ranked programs.
And though I certainly don’t begrudge anyone whose student debt is being forgiven – in fact, I have family members who will see their debt forgiven – it does leave me wondering what my educational options could’ve been knowing I could’ve received up to $20,000 off my tuition.
But there are other, less personal reasons to not embrace the White House’s plan: It’s almost certainly a pragmatic, not principled, attempt to garner support from young members of the middle and lower classes ahead of midterm elections.
At the heart of this cynicism is the dubious legality of the executive order.
Take, for example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, D-Calif., flip-flop on the presidential authority to forgive student loans.
Shortly after it was announced, Pelosi praised Biden’s order as a “strong step in Democrats’ fight to expand access to higher education and empower each American to reach fulfillment.”
In July 2021, however, Pelosi denied that Biden has the authority to forgive student loans. Student loan forgiveness, she said, “has to be an act of Congress.” The president “can postpone. He can delay” student loans, but “he does not have the power for debt forgiveness,” she said.
Any explanation for the speaker’s flip-flop, outside of pure political expediency, is flimsy at best.
Similarly flimsy is the White House’s legal precedent for the debt forgiveness. In an August memo, Lis Brown, the general counsel for the Department of Education, cited the COVID-19 pandemic and the HEROES ACT, a 2003 bill that gives broad power to the executive branch to adjust student loan policy in the wake of a national emergency, as the legislative backbone to the president’s order. Brown insisted that forgiving loans would help alleviate the financial burdens of the pandemic.
But now that, according to Biden, the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the executive power necessary to enforce the massive debt forgiveness should be gone, too.
None of this is to say this executive order is the worst thing in the world. It’s most certainly not, and it will relieve many people in the short-term.
But politics and policy aren’t just about satisfying immediate political ends. They aren’t about winning the next election or about keeping power no matter the practical or economic burden.
Politics should instead be about doing what’s best for the nation, and about sacrificing the immediate needs of party for the good of the whole – especially the next generation, who will desperately need a strong civic education if we are to overcome the troubles quickly approaching.
Politics and policy aren’t all about principle, of course. There’s always a level of pragmatism that is embedded within them. But that doesn’t require a Machiavellianism that will sacrifice the most important thing – the maintenance of the rule of law and the good of the nation as a whole – for the conservation of power, no matter how desperate the cause seems, and even if the other side isn’t playing by the same rules.
It’s easy for college students, regardless of their financial situation, to celebrate Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan – regardless of one’s financial situation – and there are many reasons to. Equally, though, there are many reasons to be skeptical and worried about its long-term costs.
College students shouldn’t feel pigeonholed into supporting the executive order just because they feel that their educational or debt status demands it. Principles and the common good are equally worth fighting for, even if there’s an explicit cost.
Benjamin Haines is a 24-year-old history graduate student from Shreveport.