As Biden pushes debt forgiveness, Oklahoma young professionals share mixed emotions

Bailey Bussell, 24, was stunned when she found herself in a battle to prove her U.S. citizenship in 2016 to Rose State College. Chinese, adopted and from a lower middle-class background, she said it took little more than a visit with a passport to the enrollment office, but what she discovered afterward was what really changed her life for the next several years.

She had attended Life Christian Academy, a private school, through high school and had signed up for the Oklahoma Promise scholarship program so that her first four years of college could be paid for by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. But she found out her first semester of college she did not qualify for the program after all.

“So (my mother and I) called them, and they got back to us, and they said, ‘Oh, well, because you didn’t take this one math class in high school, that immediately disqualifies you from the program,’” Bussell said. “And I was like, ‘It was just the one course? There’s nothing you can do to help me?’ And they were like, ‘Nope, sorry.’”

Thanks to a combination of tuition waivers and scholarships, completing two years at Rose State wasn’t especially difficult, Bussell said, but when she continued her bachelor’s degree at the University of Central Oklahoma, affordability became much more challenging. She ended up taking out a small federal loan of $3,500 to finish her degree in professional media.

Related:Do I qualify for student loan forgiveness? What to know about Biden's debt plan.

“It was really only one semester I struggled to pay for, which wasn’t awful compared to what most people have to deal with, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to do,” Bussell said. “But since I graduated in December 2020, I hadn’t even had to start paying off my student loan because of the pause on student loans during COVID.”

Bussell counts herself among hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans who could benefit from President Biden’s executive order to forgive some student loan debt for every qualifying college graduate. An attempt to fulfill one of his campaign promises, Biden’s plan has ignited a firestorm of controversy nationwide, with many people, supporters and detractors alike, unsure of its specifics.

But while the White House released an estimate Tuesday that nearly 454,300 Oklahomans stand to benefit from the proposed loan forgiveness, opinions among the state's young, college-educated professionals differ on Biden's actions, and remain critical of America's higher education system at large.

Debt forgiveness would be a weight off the shoulders for some

Carlos Chavez, 26, originally attended Oklahoma City Community College as a physics major in 2014 before transferring and changing his concentration to math at the University of Oklahoma in 2016. Graduating with a bachelor's degree in 2018 and a master's degree in 2020, he is currently pursuing a Ph.D.

Chavez said his current student loan debt is roughly $25,000. If Biden's forgiveness plan goes through, Chavez could see up to $20,000 of his loans forgiven — 80% of his current debt.

"It would feel good to have that weight off my shoulders after I graduate," Chavez said. "But, at least for me, I wouldn't call it life-changing or anything like that. The way I see it is like a car payment, you know? But after having so many grants and scholarships and still be needing to take out three to four grand every semester, it feels like it was wrong to be charged that much even to begin with."

Officials say that loans awarded to current students, like Chavez, and graduates with undergraduate, graduate and Parent PLUS loans are eligible for debt forgiveness, so long as the loans were disbursed on or before June 30, 2022. Consolidated loans must contain only underlying loans disbursed on or before June 30, 2022, to qualify.

Some Oklahomans still feel the 'soul-crushing burden' of student debt

A sizable portion of the former student population won't be benefiting much, if at all, from Biden's program. Monica Weedn, 40, fits this category.

She's a lawyer with student debt. A lot of it. As a first-generation Latina college student, she took out loans because there was simply no other way she could afford law school. A graduate of Oklahoma City University Law, she has been paying back hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans for nearly a decade — and will be, she estimates, for the next 20 years or more.

"I was really lucky to get a pretty good paying job after graduating law school, and I think, 'Oh yeah, I'm going to be able to buy a house now!' But my student loan payments are just ridiculously high," Weedn said. "These last 8 years, I think I was paying at lowest maybe $900 a month to the highest $1,200 a month, which is what I pay now."

The newest updates in student debt forgiveness frustrate her, because she makes slightly above the $125,000 threshold to qualify for Biden's program.

Weedn described in detail the "soul-crushing burden" of the debt she's been paying for years. When looking up the initial amount she owed on one loan and then calculating the interest, she had to hold back tears. For eight years, she'd paid nothing but interest, and the principal loan amount hadn't budged.

More:White House pegs student loan plan's cost at $240 billion. Experts say it will be twice that.

"I've done everything you're supposed to do, everything they tell you you're supposed to do," Weedn said. "I've been single most of this time. I don't have children. I've been renting an apartment. I give back to my community. And yet, I still feel like I'm struggling, and the administration is saying I don't need help. There's just a lot of things wrong with the student loan repayment system."

Weedn said she did benefit from the White House's newly announced extension of a moratorium on her loan payments.

This moratorium not only meant borrowers weren't required to make payments toward loans during the past three years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also paused interest accrual on loans during that time.

Because of this, Weedn will be able to make a major payment in December (during the final month of the extension) towards the principal of her combined loans, which will reduce what she owes from a six-figure amount to less than $100,000.

Despite her frustration, Weedn said she does know the forgiveness program will help the largest group of people, but also argues "there has to be a better way" than what's being offered.

Some who avoided college debt applaud efforts to reduce it for others

Benjamin Canizales, 30, is an outlier; he avoided student debt in his pursuit of a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree by working multiple part-time jobs, taking as many scholarships as possible, and living with his mother and father, who made slightly too much as a Tinker Air Force Base employee for Canizales to be eligible for FAFSA.

"I made college work for me," said Canizales, who now works as health promoter for the Latino Community Development Agency in southwest Oklahoma City. "I'm very grateful I made it through college debt-free, and I know I'm speaking from a place of privilege."

Even though he has no college debt and would not qualify for the forgiveness program, Canizales said he wholeheartedly supports the new policy because it grants some relief to the most economically disadvantaged.

"I think it's a step in the right direction," Canizales said. "Sometimes you have to do a short-term Band-Aid until you can figure out a long-term solution. Anything that frees up money for people and helps them is something I can support."

Biden's plan 'well-intentioned,' but Oklahomans feel there are flaws

Borrowers looking forward to the forgiveness program might want to delay making any sudden decisions until the end of the year. Experts foresee potential lawsuits attempting to block Biden's policy, and a large coalition of state leaders have announced resistance to the plan, including Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt.

Each individual interviewed by The Oklahoman agreed Biden's student debt forgiveness program is "well-intentioned," but felt it doesn't address the root cause of the issue: the exorbitant cost of higher education in the United States.

"The high cost is totally unfair," Chavez said. "I don't feel like college is going to be made affordable any time soon. And I could see why some people are upset that they paid their student loans and other people are getting theirs forgiven. Or, some people decided not to go into college because they didn't want to go into debt, so I could understand that sentiment, too, but my opinion is that, if it's helping people, it's a net positive."

More:Debt relief will change the lives of some with student loans, but fall short for others.

Canizales said a huge help for communities in Oklahoma City would be programs improving resources and access to information on colleges and universities. A major selling point for military recruitment is the exchange for free tuition, Canizales said, and young adults might be better served pursuing other opportunities for education and employment, like attending trade schools.

For Weedn, there was no other way of securing her dream of becoming a lawyer except through further schooling. She said she laughs at people who went to law school 20 years ago but complain about modern-day students considering loan forgiveness.

"You look at the cost of law school 20 years ago and you compare it to the costs now," Weedn said. "Even in Oklahoma, there is no way even a well-off family could pay for somebody's law school now, unless they sold off some type of asset. The economic conditions, the cost of education, nothing is the same as it was 20 years ago."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Student loan forgiveness plan met with skepticism in Oklahoma