An Administrative Path to Student Debt Cancellation
December 1, 2019
By Luke Herrine
The Great Democracy Initiative (GDI) was a project of the Roosevelt Institute from 2018–2020 that produced actionable policy blueprints for addressing the structural problems facing our nation.
An Administrative Path to Student Debt Cancellation argues that Congress has already given the Department of Education the tools to respond to the $1.6 trillion student debt crisis by cancelling a substantial portion of this debt.
The $1.6 trillion student debt crisis has spurred a number of recent proposals to cancel student debt, but each of these proposals requires Congress to pass legislation. In this paper, Luke Herrine argues that Congress has already given the Department of Education the ability to cancel the vast majority of student debt and explores how the executive branch could implement a student debt jubilee through administrative action.