vox--2020-12-18--The debate over Joe Biden canceling student debt, explained

Until fairly recently , student debt cancellation was considered to be a fringe idea that , while popular among the Occupy Wall Street crowd and on the left , was a mainstream nonstarter .
That ’ s begun to change .
The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn have pushed the issue even further to the forefront .
The CARES Act and then President Donald Trump put a pause on federal student loan payments during the pandemic that expires at the end of January .
But with the coronavirus crisis worse than ever , there is a growing chorus of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for student debt cancellation as a form of economic stimulus .
That chorus is pushing Democrats and , namely , President-elect Joe Biden to go big on student debt , using federal action to wipe out some or even all of what borrowers owe .
“ What ’ s attractive about student debt cancellation in this moment is that in addition to righting a policy wrong — which is the decision to make the cost of college an individual burden when I would say it ’ s a public good — is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a moment when we need economic stimulus .
And it has significant racial equity implications as well , ” said Suzanne Kahn , director of education , jobs , and power at the Roosevelt Institute and an advocate for complete federal student debt cancellation .
It ’ s also something Biden could try to do independently of Congress , which is attractive since stimulus talks have stalled out .
Biden ’ s campaign backed legislation forgiving the first $ 10,000 in federal student loan debt , but some Democrats and progressives are pushing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through executive action — and not just $ 10,000 , but $ 50,000 or even all of it .
Beyond direct cancellation , there ’ s a lot Biden can do to make preexisting student debt programs work better and help more people .
“ There is a tremendous opportunity through executive action for President-elect Biden to improve the lives of millions of Americans , ” said Seth Frotman , executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center and former student debt ombudsman at the CFPB .
The conversation around student debt in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of education , law , and economics .
It also entails thorny discussions around racial justice , politics , and fairness .
Advocates argue that debt cancellation will carry a range of benefits — stimulating the economy , promoting racial justice , and righting the wrong of pushing millions of Americans into life-hindering debt .
But as the Biden administration plans its first steps , a debate is raging about whether loan forgiveness is really the best way to get the economy moving and get relief to people who need it .
Some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ costly push that doesn ’ t solve the underlying problems with higher education in the US .
Why this , why now Broad-based student debt cancellation isn ’ t a new idea , but it being discussed in establishment political circles is .
Forty-five million Americans now owe a total of about $ 1.6 trillion in student loans , and one in 10 loans are in delinquency or default .
The Federal Reserve estimates the typical monthly payment to be between $ 200 and $ 299 .
Research suggests people are delaying buying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jobs in part because of student loan debt , which means it could become a drag on the overall economy .
The burden is especially heavy on Black borrowers , who generally carry more debt and struggle more to pay it off .
“ This is not some niche problem , ” said Bharat Ramamurti , a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission that oversees the CARES Act funds and former adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren .
“ Student loan debt affects a lot of people — it ’ s basically a fifth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a major theme during Occupy Wall Street , a widespread protest movement that emerged in reaction to the global financial crisis in 2011 .
In the years following Occupy , activists continued to focus on the issue and push it into the conversation : In 2012 , they organized 1T Day to mark student debt surpassing $ 1 trillion , and they subsequently launched Strike Debt and fundraisers to help cancel student debt .
Student debt strikes began to pop up across the country , where borrowers stopped paying their loans in protest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ propel regulations to protect student borrowers against misleading and predatory practices .
As student debt , which is difficult to get discharged in bankruptcy , has become an increasingly prevalent issue , so have proposals regarding how to address it .
In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary , Bernie Sanders ran on canceling all student debt , and Elizabeth Warren proposed canceling debts of up to $ 50,000 .
Many Democrats and progressives are calling for Biden to cancel some or all debt through executive action , namely , a “ settlement and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allow for debt to be canceled through executive authority .
“ The law is pretty clear that the secretary of education has the authority to compromise — that ’ s the term — which means effectively cancel any individual debt of up to $ 1 million , ” said Ramamurti , who helped devise the plan Warren ran on .
Now Warren and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are urging the incoming administration to cancel up to $ 50,000 in student loan debt with a resolution in the Senate .
In the House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Ilhan Omar ( D-MN ) , Alma Adams ( D-NC ) , and Maxine Waters ( D-CA ) have introduced a companion resolution also calling for Biden to cancel debt .
But as the idea has grown more popular , so has the resistance .
On the right , detractors say it ’ s a pointless government give-out .
In the middle , they warn it ’ s not a good way to stimulate the economy .
And on the left , there are concerns it ’ s a regressive policy that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need it .
Some critics have panned the idea as a “ Brahmin bailout ” that would help out the upper class ( those who went to college ) and do little , if anything , for everyone else , and some people have warned that such a bailout could prove a messaging disaster for Democrats .
“ No matter how it ’ s designed , student-debt forgiveness is very poorly targeted , ” Bloomberg ’ s editorial board warned in November .
“ Even if relief could be better focused on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one , the vast majority of Americans who don ’ t have student debt would rightly feel left out .
Many never had the opportunity to get a higher education ; others put off financial goals ( such as saving for retirement ) to pay it down .
Also , it would do little to improve the immediate cash flow of the many debtors who — because they ’ re in default or in income-based repayment plans — are making small or no monthly payments.
” A poll conducted by Vox and Data @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely voters support forgiving student loan debt up to $ 50,000 , especially if it is tied to national or community service or comes with a $ 125,000 income threshold .
Only about one in four likely voters , however , supports forgiving all student debt .
And the idea is much more popular among those with debt than those without it .
Other polls have also found that canceling some student debt is a moderately popular idea , though not the most popular idea in the world .
And it is pretty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ base — Black voters and middle-class professionals — who helped hand Biden the election .
If Democrats do go ahead with student debt forgiveness via executive actions , they could pair it with something that would benefit non-college-educated people , such as requiring federal contractors to pay a $ 15 minimum wage .
That would benefit millions of workers .
How much can Biden do to reduce student debt ?
The Trump administration has extended the federal loan payment pause through January 31 , and Biden could continue to extend it .
Still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month is not ideal .
There are other steps Biden could take short of full debt cancellation , including improving programs to relieve debt for students defrauded by predatory schools or who signed up for programs that let them repay loans based on their income , loan forgiveness for people who go into public service , and debt relief for student veterans and students with disabilities , among others .
But the big conversation has shifted to whether Biden should set students free from their debt — and if so , how much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America isn ’ t equally shared .
In 2019 , households with graduate degrees owed 56 percent of education debt , even though only 14 percent of adults over the age of 25 have graduate degrees , and the 3 percent of households with doctorates or professional degrees held 20 percent of all debt .
Meanwhile , many of those struggling most with student debt are those who never finished their degrees .
Biden has backed legislation that would cancel $ 10,000 in debt , but unless Democrats take control of the Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that through , that ’ s not likely to become law .
In terms of what advocates want Biden himself to do , the more conservative number rests around the $ 10,000 range , which is the number the president-elect had initially thrown his weight behind legislatively .
Capping forgiveness at $ 10,000 could eliminate debt for more than 15 million borrowers and reduce by half the debt of 9 million more .
Adam Looney , a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and executive director of the Marriner S. Eccles Institute at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Washington Post op-ed that it would specifically help “ borrowers with smaller balances , who , paradoxically , tend to struggle most , accounting for 60 percent of all defaults.
” Borrowers who owe the least are often the ones who struggle most to pay their loans , in part because many of them are people who dropped out of school and aren ’ t getting the benefit of a college degree in their careers .
From the $ 10,000 , the scale goes up .
Schumer and Warren are pushing Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most ambitious end of the spectrum , some activists , organizers , and politicians want to cancel all federal student loan debt for everyone .
Ramamurti told me he sees it as “ purely a matter of political will , ” and once the mechanisms are in place , there ’ s room for adjustment on forgiveness amounts and thresholds .
“ The nice thing about this policy is you can tweak it , depending on what your goals are , ” he said .
When reached for comment , the Biden transition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and noted his support for the $ 10,000 forgiveness legislation .
It did not respond when asked whether he was considering the $ 50,000 cancellation the Senate and House resolutions are calling for .
At the heart of the argument for canceling student debt , especially in the midst of the pandemic , is that it would be good for millions of people and , therefore , the economy .
How good is where the disagreement resides — and because mass student debt forgiveness isn ’ t something we ’ ve seen in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could happen is relatively limited .
One 2019 working paper from Harvard Business School looked at what happened when students in default had their debt discharged because of a lawsuit .
They found that borrowers reduced their overall indebtedness by a quarter and were also less likely to default on other accounts .
That ’ s good for them and for the entities they owe money to .
“ We actually find that these individuals tend to lower their total liabilities over time by repaying , for instance , credit card debt , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said Marco Di Maggio , an associate professor of business administration at Harvard and one of the paper ’ s authors .
People also demonstrated more mobility — they moved states , changed jobs , and took more risks that often translated to higher incomes .
45 million Americans now owe a total of about $ 1.6 trillion in student loans Di Maggio ’ s research focused on people who were in default and weren ’ t making payments at all .
But if it were broader federal debt forgiveness that includes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the impact could be much greater .
“ If you give the same type of forgiveness to people that are not in that situation , one effect that we don ’ t capture is that your monthly payment is going down , ” he said .
The $ 300 people were putting toward loan payments every month could then be spent elsewhere .
Some critics have argued that student loan forgiveness could be quite regressive , especially at higher amounts , because it would mean canceling debts for high-earning households .
And there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effective stimulus forgiveness would be .
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget , a group that advocates for fiscal responsibility , estimates that student loan forgiveness would have relatively small near-term multiplier effects , meaning the impact on the economy would be limited ( and that ’ s assuming it ’ s tax-free — more on that later ) .
“ We found that it ’ s all really poorly targeted stimulus , ” said Marc Goldwein , senior policy director at CRFB .
“ It would boost the economy , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1 of loan forgiveness ... it would boost the economy by somewhere between 8 and 23 cents , which is a very poor multiplier.
” Other analysts disagree .
Di Maggio estimates the multiplier to be at least $ 1 on every $ 1 — meaning that spending on forgiveness would directly boost the economy .
A 2018 study from the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College projected that debt cancellation could boost GDP by tens of billions of dollars a year and reduce unemployment .
Biden ’ s appetite for loan forgiveness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is to do other stimulus .
“ I would expect that student loan cancellation by executive action is more likely the extent to which the Republicans are blocking progress on a stimulus package through Congress , ” said Bob Shireman , the director of higher education excellence and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation .
“ It is definitely not one of the most effective ways to stimulate the economy , but if it is one of the things available to the administration , then it might be something they do.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argument for wiping out debt .
Black borrowers are disproportionately burdened with debt .
From 2000 to 2018 , the median student debt for young white borrowers with a bachelor ’ s degree about doubled from $ 12,000 to $ 23,000 .
For Black borrowers , it quadrupled , from $ 7,000 to $ 30,000 , even though white families tend to have more cumulative debt than Black families overall .
A study from Brandeis University found that 20 years after starting college , a typical Black borrower still owes 95 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ borrower has paid off 94 percent of their debt .
Across socioeconomic levels , Black borrowers wind up worse off than their white counterparts .
“ Black students borrow more often , they borrow more , and they have a harder time repaying than their peers , ” said Tiffany Jones , senior director of higher education policy at the Education Trust .
“ That ’ s true all the way up the income ladder.
” Forgiveness is a racial justice policy .
A recent Roosevelt Institute working paper found that while white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ absolute dollars from cancellation , “ the relative gains for Black borrowers are much larger and the greater proportion of Black borrowers means that Black wealth overall would experience much more growth as a result.
” They did not , however , find that it would meaningfully address the racial wealth gap .
Darrick Hamilton , a professor of economics and urban policy and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Race , Stratification , and Political Economy at the New School , said the wealth gap isn ’ t entirely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re really trying to close the racial wealth gap , the main component , from an accounting standpoint , is assets , not debt , ” he said .
“ Debt is problematic because it ’ s almost like sharecropping — that ’ s hyperbole — but it puts people in a debt trap where they are not permitted pathways for social mobility because they are constrained by a financier and the efforts of their labor go to pay off the interest on finance.
” “ Any debt relief is better than what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say the racial justice argument applies at the top and bottom of the income spectrum , for Black borrowers who are well-off and those who are not , and that narrow targeting isn ’ t necessary .
“ Folks are feeling like providing relief to a group that are high earners is probably not the right thing to do , forgetting and erasing that among high earners there are Black and brown people who would be impacted , ” Jones said .
But student loan forgiveness could also be a restorative justice issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrongs .
Higher education has long been held up as the gateway to a livable wage , and students have been encouraged to go into debt to go to school , build their résumés , and advance .
Now millions of young Americans are living through their second recession at the outset of their careers , and they ’ re saddled with debt they were told was a good idea .
Forgiveness could be “ stimulus to a generation that ’ s been particularly scarred , ” Hamilton said .
Frederick Wherry , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and director of the Dignity and Debt Network , emphasized that if student debt is canceled , “ it ’ s also a good idea to cancel it in a way that ’ s not denigrating for the debtors ” — making it easy to access instead of making people feel bad about jumping through hoops to reap the benefit .
“ For those who are already drowning and you are saying you want to do a stimulus , do a stimulus , ” Wherry said .
“ No one says anything when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ One major policy and political issue that hangs over the forgiveness discussion is taxes .
Debt cancellation is generally counted as taxable income .
So if someone has $ 50,000 in student loans forgiven , that would mean $ 50,000 would be counted as gross income for the year it was forgiven on top of other income .
Under today ’ s tax rates , that would be taxed likely somewhere between 22 and 37 percent .
In other words , major student debt cancellation could come with an enormous tax bill for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issue say there are workarounds .
John Brooks , a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who has studied student debt taxes , told me that there are a number of legal arguments that would allow the secretary of education , the treasury department , and the IRS to make forgiveness tax-free .
Forgiveness could get a “ general welfare ” exclusion , or qualify as disaster relief , or get a scholarship exclusion , among other options .
“ Student debt is just really , really weird , and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ categories and the ways we think about other kinds of debt , ” he said .
“ It ’ s a form of government funding for higher education , and it ’ s designed to provide as many people as possible with a way to get over some degree of affordability problems that ’ s limiting their ability to enroll in higher education.
” Jessica Thompson , associate vice president at the Institute for College Access & Success ( TICAS ) , said the case that there ’ s a preexisting legal way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more in question ” than forgiveness proponents would like , though there ’ s an argument to be made .
“ You can make your case , but in the end , you ’ ve got to meet every single hurdle that could be thrown at you , ” she said .
“ Treasury and the IRS tend to be conservative and careful about how they interpret their authority to act.
” It ’ s worth emphasizing that the tax issue isn ’ t limited to the current executive action forgiveness question — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ programs that eventually forgive any remaining balance is that they ’ ll owe taxes , too .
So this problem is going to show up whether there ’ s mass cancellation or not .
The moment to cancel debt might be now .
It also doesn ’ t solve the bigger problem .
The conversation the United States is having right now around student debt cancellation isn ’ t a new one — it ’ s the result of years of activism , organizing , and thinking among people who think it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right idea .
But this is also indicative of the moment : Millions of Americans are hurting and in desperate need of help amid the Covid-19 pandemic , especially as much of the federal stimulus already provided has run out or is about to .
Debt forgiveness may be an outlet for the Biden administration to be creative and nimble in addressing the crisis .
“ Any debt relief is better than what ’ s happening right now , ” Jones said .
But wiping out debt is only part of the equation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ higher education in the United States .
Even if you cancel all existing debt , you have students in school or about to go to school who are going to wind up stuck in the same loop .
“ Every breath that you hear someone talking about debt cancellation , we need to be talking about the urgency of people who are in school right now and people who should be in school right now , ” Thompson said .
That translates to issues such as making college more affordable , keeping students @ @ @ @ @ @ @ degrees and training that are worth the money .
The issue on those fronts is that Biden can ’ t do much on his own .
“ We need a Congress that ’ s willing to have that conversation , ” the Century Foundation ’ s Shireman said .
“ We can not address the broader affordability questions , the broader affordability problem , without Congress and the administration working together.
” Is widespread student debt cancellation the optimal path toward stimulus ?
Reasonable minds can disagree , but probably not .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to try it , the moment could be now .

Until fairly recently, student debt cancellation was considered to be a fringe idea that, while popular among the Occupy Wall Street crowd and on the left, was a mainstream nonstarter. That’s begun to change.
The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn have pushed the issue even further to the forefront. The CARES Act and then President Donald Trump put a pause on federal student loan payments during the pandemic that expires at the end of January. But with the coronavirus crisis worse than ever, there is a growing chorus of activists, politicians, and voters calling for student debt cancellation as a form of economic stimulus. That chorus is pushing Democrats and, namely, President-elect Joe Biden to go big on student debt, using federal action to wipe out some or even all of what borrowers owe.
“What’s attractive about student debt cancellation in this moment is that in addition to righting a policy wrong — which is the decision to make the cost of college an individual burden when I would say it’s a public good — is that it can help stimulate the economy at a moment when we need economic stimulus. And it has significant racial equity implications as well,” said Suzanne Kahn, director of education, jobs, and power at the Roosevelt Institute and an advocate for complete federal student debt cancellation. It’s also something Biden could try to do independently of Congress, which is attractive since stimulus talks have stalled out.
Biden’s campaign backed legislation forgiving the first $10,000 in federal student loan debt, but some Democrats and progressives are pushing for him to cancel more student debt through executive action — and not just $10,000, but $50,000 or even all of it. Biden cast doubt on the idea of canceling student debt unilaterally.
Beyond direct cancellation, there’s a lot Biden can do to make preexisting student debt programs work better and help more people.
“There is a tremendous opportunity through executive action for President-elect Biden to improve the lives of millions of Americans,” said Seth Frotman, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center and former student debt ombudsman at the CFPB.
The conversation around student debt in the United States stretches far beyond questions of education, law, and economics. It also entails thorny discussions around racial justice, politics, and fairness. Advocates argue that debt cancellation will carry a range of benefits — stimulating the economy, promoting racial justice, and righting the wrong of pushing millions of Americans into life-hindering debt.
But as the Biden administration plans its first steps, a debate is raging about whether loan forgiveness is really the best way to get the economy moving and get relief to people who need it. Some critics warn it could be a politically costly push that doesn’t solve the underlying problems with higher education in the US.
Why this, why now
Broad-based student debt cancellation isn’t a new idea, but it being discussed in establishment political circles is.
Forty-five million Americans now owe a total of about $1.6 trillion in student loans, and one in 10 loans are in delinquency or default. The Federal Reserve estimates the typical monthly payment to be between $200 and $299. Research suggests people are delaying buying homes, having kids, and changing jobs in part because of student loan debt, which means it could become a drag on the overall economy. The burden is especially heavy on Black borrowers, who generally carry more debt and struggle more to pay it off.
“This is not some niche problem,” said Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission that oversees the CARES Act funds and former adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “Student loan debt affects a lot of people — it’s basically a fifth of all adults.”
Student debt was a major theme during Occupy Wall Street, a widespread protest movement that emerged in reaction to the global financial crisis in 2011. In the years following Occupy, activists continued to focus on the issue and push it into the conversation: In 2012, they organized 1T Day to mark student debt surpassing $1 trillion, and they subsequently launched Strike Debt and fundraisers to help cancel student debt. Student debt strikes began to pop up across the country, where borrowers stopped paying their loans in protest of the situation, and organizers helped propel regulations to protect student borrowers against misleading and predatory practices.
As student debt, which is difficult to get discharged in bankruptcy, has become an increasingly prevalent issue, so have proposals regarding how to address it. In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders ran on canceling all student debt, and Elizabeth Warren proposed canceling debts of up to $50,000.
Many Democrats and progressives are calling for Biden to cancel some or all debt through executive action, namely, a “settlement and compromise” provision that they argue would allow for debt to be canceled through executive authority.
“The law is pretty clear that the secretary of education has the authority to compromise — that’s the term — which means effectively cancel any individual debt of up to $1 million,” said Ramamurti, who helped devise the plan Warren ran on.
Now Warren and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are urging the incoming administration to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt with a resolution in the Senate. In the House, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alma Adams (D-NC), and Maxine Waters (D-CA) have introduced a companion resolution also calling for Biden to cancel debt.
But as the idea has grown more popular, so has the resistance. On the right, detractors say it’s a pointless government give-out. In the middle, they warn it’s not a good way to stimulate the economy. And on the left, there are concerns it’s a regressive policy that will help people who don’t need it. Some critics have panned the idea as a “Brahmin bailout” that would help out the upper class (those who went to college) and do little, if anything, for everyone else, and some people have warned that such a bailout could prove a messaging disaster for Democrats.
“No matter how it’s designed, student-debt forgiveness is very poorly targeted,” Bloomberg’s editorial board warned in November. “Even if relief could be better focused on the poor, severe drawbacks remain. For one, the vast majority of Americans who don’t have student debt would rightly feel left out. Many never had the opportunity to get a higher education; others put off financial goals (such as saving for retirement) to pay it down. Also, it would do little to improve the immediate cash flow of the many debtors who — because they’re in default or in income-based repayment plans — are making small or no monthly payments.”
A poll conducted by Vox and Data for Progress found that 51 percent of likely voters support forgiving student loan debt up to $50,000, especially if it is tied to national or community service or comes with a $125,000 income threshold.
Only about one in four likely voters, however, supports forgiving all student debt. And the idea is much more popular among those with debt than those without it.
Other polls have also found that canceling some student debt is a moderately popular idea, though not the most popular idea in the world.
And it is pretty well liked among members of the Democratic base — Black voters and middle-class professionals — who helped hand Biden the election.
If Democrats do go ahead with student debt forgiveness via executive actions, they could pair it with something that would benefit non-college-educated people, such as requiring federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage. That would benefit millions of workers.
How much can Biden do to reduce student debt?
The Trump administration has extended the federal loan payment pause through January 31, and Biden could continue to extend it. Still, leaving people in limbo month to month is not ideal.
There are other steps Biden could take short of full debt cancellation, including improving programs to relieve debt for students defrauded by predatory schools or who signed up for programs that let them repay loans based on their income, loan forgiveness for people who go into public service, and debt relief for student veterans and students with disabilities, among others.
But the big conversation has shifted to whether Biden should set students free from their debt — and if so, how much.
The burden of student debt in America isn’t equally shared. In 2019, households with graduate degrees owed 56 percent of education debt, even though only 14 percent of adults over the age of 25 have graduate degrees, and the 3 percent of households with doctorates or professional degrees held 20 percent of all debt. Meanwhile, many of those struggling most with student debt are those who never finished their degrees.
Biden has backed legislation that would cancel $10,000 in debt, but unless Democrats take control of the Senate and make a big effort to push that through, that’s not likely to become law.
In terms of what advocates want Biden himself to do, the more conservative number rests around the $10,000 range, which is the number the president-elect had initially thrown his weight behind legislatively. Capping forgiveness at $10,000 could eliminate debt for more than 15 million borrowers and reduce by half the debt of 9 million more.
Adam Looney, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and executive director of the Marriner S. Eccles Institute at the University of Utah, noted in a Washington Post op-ed that it would specifically help “borrowers with smaller balances, who, paradoxically, tend to struggle most, accounting for 60 percent of all defaults.”
Borrowers who owe the least are often the ones who struggle most to pay their loans, in part because many of them are people who dropped out of school and aren’t getting the benefit of a college degree in their careers.
From the $10,000, the scale goes up. Schumer and Warren are pushing Biden to forgive $50,000. At the most ambitious end of the spectrum, some activists, organizers, and politicians want to cancel all federal student loan debt for everyone.
Ramamurti told me he sees it as “purely a matter of political will,” and once the mechanisms are in place, there’s room for adjustment on forgiveness amounts and thresholds.
“The nice thing about this policy is you can tweak it, depending on what your goals are,” he said.
When reached for comment, the Biden transition team pointed to his campaign education plan and noted his support for the $10,000 forgiveness legislation. In December, Biden told a group of newspaper columnists that he is “unlikely” to pursue student debt cancellation on his own. “It’s arguable that the president may have the executive power to forgive up to $50,000 in student debt,” Biden said in remarks first reported by the Washington Post. “Well, I think that’s pretty questionable. I’m unsure of that. I’d be unlikely to do that.”
The economic argument for canceling student debt
At the heart of the argument for canceling student debt, especially in the midst of the pandemic, is that it would be good for millions of people and, therefore, the economy. How good is where the disagreement resides — and because mass student debt forgiveness isn’t something we’ve seen in the past, the data on what could happen is relatively limited.
One 2019 working paper from Harvard Business School looked at what happened when students in default had their debt discharged because of a lawsuit. They found that borrowers reduced their overall indebtedness by a quarter and were also less likely to default on other accounts. That’s good for them and for the entities they owe money to.
“We actually find that these individuals tend to lower their total liabilities over time by repaying, for instance, credit card debt, so their overall financial health improves,” said Marco Di Maggio, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard and one of the paper’s authors.
People also demonstrated more mobility — they moved states, changed jobs, and took more risks that often translated to higher incomes.
45 million Americans now owe a total of about $1.6 trillion in student loans
Di Maggio’s research focused on people who were in default and weren’t making payments at all. But if it were broader federal debt forgiveness that includes borrowers who are paying, he thinks the impact could be much greater.
“If you give the same type of forgiveness to people that are not in that situation, one effect that we don’t capture is that your monthly payment is going down,” he said. The $300 people were putting toward loan payments every month could then be spent elsewhere.
Some critics have argued that student loan forgiveness could be quite regressive, especially at higher amounts, because it would mean canceling debts for high-earning households. And there is disagreement among economists about just how effective stimulus forgiveness would be. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that advocates for fiscal responsibility, estimates that student loan forgiveness would have relatively small near-term multiplier effects, meaning the impact on the economy would be limited (and that’s assuming it’s tax-free — more on that later).
“We found that it’s all really poorly targeted stimulus,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at CRFB. “It would boost the economy, but by our estimates, for every $1 of loan forgiveness ... it would boost the economy by somewhere between 8 and 23 cents, which is a very poor multiplier.”
Other analysts disagree. Di Maggio estimates the multiplier to be at least $1 on every $1 — meaning that spending on forgiveness would directly boost the economy. A 2018 study from the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College projected that debt cancellation could boost GDP by tens of billions of dollars a year and reduce unemployment.
Biden’s appetite for loan forgiveness might even depend on how willing Congress is to do other stimulus.
“I would expect that student loan cancellation by executive action is more likely the extent to which the Republicans are blocking progress on a stimulus package through Congress,” said Bob Shireman, the director of higher education excellence and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. “It is definitely not one of the most effective ways to stimulate the economy, but if it is one of the things available to the administration, then it might be something they do.”
But economic stimulus is not the only argument for wiping out debt.
The justice argument for canceling student debt
Black borrowers are disproportionately burdened with debt. From 2000 to 2018, the median student debt for young white borrowers with a bachelor’s degree about doubled from $12,000 to $23,000. For Black borrowers, it quadrupled, from $7,000 to $30,000, even though white families tend to have more cumulative debt than Black families overall.
A study from Brandeis University found that 20 years after starting college, a typical Black borrower still owes 95 percent of their debt, while the typical white borrower has paid off 94 percent of their debt. Across socioeconomic levels, Black borrowers wind up worse off than their white counterparts.
“Black students borrow more often, they borrow more, and they have a harder time repaying than their peers,” said Tiffany Jones, senior director of higher education policy at the Education Trust. “That’s true all the way up the income ladder.”
Forgiveness is a racial justice policy. A recent Roosevelt Institute working paper found that while white borrowers stand to gain the most in absolute dollars from cancellation, “the relative gains for Black borrowers are much larger and the greater proportion of Black borrowers means that Black wealth overall would experience much more growth as a result.” They did not, however, find that it would meaningfully address the racial wealth gap.
Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and urban policy and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification, and Political Economy at the New School, said the wealth gap isn’t entirely the point.
“If you’re really trying to close the racial wealth gap, the main component, from an accounting standpoint, is assets, not debt,” he said. “Debt is problematic because it’s almost like sharecropping — that’s hyperbole — but it puts people in a debt trap where they are not permitted pathways for social mobility because they are constrained by a financier and the efforts of their labor go to pay off the interest on finance.”
“Any debt relief is better than what’s happening right now”
Advocates say the racial justice argument applies at the top and bottom of the income spectrum, for Black borrowers who are well-off and those who are not, and that narrow targeting isn’t necessary. “Folks are feeling like providing relief to a group that are high earners is probably not the right thing to do, forgetting and erasing that among high earners there are Black and brown people who would be impacted,” Jones said.
But student loan forgiveness could also be a restorative justice issue in that it would help right past wrongs. Higher education has long been held up as the gateway to a livable wage, and students have been encouraged to go into debt to go to school, build their résumés, and advance.
Now millions of young Americans are living through their second recession at the outset of their careers, and they’re saddled with debt they were told was a good idea. Forgiveness could be “stimulus to a generation that’s been particularly scarred,” Hamilton said.
Frederick Wherry, a professor of sociology at Princeton University and director of the Dignity and Debt Network, emphasized that if student debt is canceled, “it’s also a good idea to cancel it in a way that’s not denigrating for the debtors” — making it easy to access instead of making people feel bad about jumping through hoops to reap the benefit.
“For those who are already drowning and you are saying you want to do a stimulus, do a stimulus,” Wherry said. “No one says anything when rich people get a tax break.”
One looming question: Taxes
One major policy and political issue that hangs over the forgiveness discussion is taxes. Debt cancellation is generally counted as taxable income. So if someone has $50,000 in student loans forgiven, that would mean $50,000 would be counted as gross income for the year it was forgiven on top of other income.
Under today’s tax rates, that would be taxed likely somewhere between 22 and 37 percent. In other words, major student debt cancellation could come with an enormous tax bill for borrowers.
Those who have studied the issue say there are workarounds. John Brooks, a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who has studied student debt taxes, told me that there are a number of legal arguments that would allow the secretary of education, the treasury department, and the IRS to make forgiveness tax-free. Forgiveness could get a “general welfare” exclusion, or qualify as disaster relief, or get a scholarship exclusion, among other options.
“Student debt is just really, really weird, and it just doesn’t fit into the categories and the ways we think about other kinds of debt,” he said. “It’s a form of government funding for higher education, and it’s designed to provide as many people as possible with a way to get over some degree of affordability problems that’s limiting their ability to enroll in higher education.”
Jessica Thompson, associate vice president at the Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS), said the case that there’s a preexisting legal way around taxes on cancellation is “definitely more in question” than forgiveness proponents would like, though there’s an argument to be made. “You can make your case, but in the end, you’ve got to meet every single hurdle that could be thrown at you,” she said. “Treasury and the IRS tend to be conservative and careful about how they interpret their authority to act.”
It’s worth emphasizing that the tax issue isn’t limited to the current executive action forgiveness question — the assumption for people repaying loans through programs that eventually forgive any remaining balance is that they’ll owe taxes, too. So this problem is going to show up whether there’s mass cancellation or not.
The moment to cancel debt might be now. It also doesn’t solve the bigger problem.
The conversation the United States is having right now around student debt cancellation isn’t a new one — it’s the result of years of activism, organizing, and thinking among people who think it’s a good, just, and right idea.
But this is also indicative of the moment: Millions of Americans are hurting and in desperate need of help amid the Covid-19 pandemic, especially as much of the federal stimulus already provided has run out or is about to. Debt forgiveness may be an outlet for the Biden administration to be creative and nimble in addressing the crisis.
“Any debt relief is better than what’s happening right now,” Jones said.
But wiping out debt is only part of the equation when it comes to the cost of higher education in the United States. Even if you cancel all existing debt, you have students in school or about to go to school who are going to wind up stuck in the same loop.
“Every breath that you hear someone talking about debt cancellation, we need to be talking about the urgency of people who are in school right now and people who should be in school right now,” Thompson said.
That translates to issues such as making college more affordable, keeping students away from predatory institutions, and fostering degrees and training that are worth the money. The issue on those fronts is that Biden can’t do much on his own.
“We need a Congress that’s willing to have that conversation,” the Century Foundation’s Shireman said. “We cannot address the broader affordability questions, the broader affordability problem, without Congress and the administration working together.”
Is widespread student debt cancellation the optimal path toward stimulus? Reasonable minds can disagree, but probably not. But if there’s ever a time to try it, the moment could be now.


vox--2020-12-18--One Good Thing: A magically soothing cartoon that lets friendship last forever

On the first day of summer camp , Oscar already wants to leave .
In his own words , the 11-year-old elephant feels “ kinda nervous when there ’ s a lot of things happening at the same time.
” There is a lot to adjust to once his parents drop off Oscar and his best friend , Hedgehog ( who is , unsurprisingly , a hedgehog ) , at the campground .
Oscar was excited about the many “ organized activities ” promised to him in the camp ’ s pamphlet ; he expected to spend the summer adventuring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crafts with his best friend .
But that ’ s not the full picture — the camp counselors turn out to be witches , magic apparently is real , and Oscar ’ s summer is about to look much more otherworldly than what he originally planned for .
Oscar tries not to get overwhelmed despite these major revelations and his related anxiety , but when he embarrasses himself at a pajama party in front of new acquaintances , he ’ s done giving this camp a shot .
In truth , Oscar has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he ’ s arrived ( and the shark-cum-therapist living in the pool behind his cabin is quick to tell him as much ) .
What he ’ s really anxious about is the newness of being away from home for the first time , not the strangeness of everything else .
( Although that part certainly doesn ’ t help matters . )
At the end of the first episode , Oscar ( by way of a magic tunnel ) leaves for home and arrives just outside his front door .
When he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward discomfort , he ’ s reminded that if he lets himself adjust to something new , he ’ ll eventually start to love it .
He decides to stay , and thus his magical summer begins .
Summer Camp Island — and Summer Camp Island , where all of this takes place — is full of these types of small , revelatory wisdoms .
Each life lesson is nestled into a colorful place inhabited by various magical creatures : There are aliens that look like cutesy gremlins , friendly monsters , music-loving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talking moon ( voiced by Cedric the Entertainer ! )
.
The result is a lovely slice-of-life cartoon that offers the perfect jolt of happiness in a difficult world .
Originally airing its first season on Cartoon Network between 2018 and 2019 , Summer Camp Island moved to HBO Max for its second season this past June ; its upcoming third season premieres December 10 .
On the surface , this cute , magical cartoon might seem cut from the exact same cloth as other Cartoon Network shows , namely the beloved Steven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combine unconventional characters with fantasy elements and coming-of-age storytelling , with a dash of surreal humor to boot .
However , creator Julia Pott ( who previously worked on Adventure Time ) has imbued Summer Camp Island with its own , singular vision that stands out among many shows within its genre .
This is a show that tells beautiful tales of friendship and adolescence , always focusing on the importance of togetherness and the whimsy , even sadness , of growing up .
If PEN15 is restorative for adults , Summer Camp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in all of us .
I discovered Summer Camp Island after its move to streaming , and it became one of my first pandemic-summer TV obsessions .
I was immediately drawn-in by Oscar , his sensitivity , his fear of the new — it felt like I was watching myself as a young kid , similarly wracked with anxiety .
I also felt like I was watching myself now , though , refracted through this frightened 11-year-old .
I , too , struggle to adjust to change while yearning for fun and frolicking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how Oscar not only adjusts but thrives in a novel setting .
I wanted this for myself ; I couldn ’ t get enough .
After finishing all 60 episodes in short order , I still find myself returning to the series often , its jeweled colors and insistence on platonic friendship as a balm to everything , a comforting escape from the news .
Most of the show ’ s conflicts — which run the gamut from returning an overdue VHS tape to helping two aliens wed despite planetary laws against their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s bite-sized , 12-minute runtime , and the people involved always come away as better friends in the end .
Someone develops a new skill or learns a new lesson , and the campers will go on to return to their personal cabins each night , Oscar ’ s and Hedgehog ’ s right next to one another .
This may sound formulaic , but I always find it to be a pleasure to watch these friends make up and reaffirm their affection for each other .
Another pleasure of the show @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is as wonderful to just look at as it is to watch .
Our animal campers dress in hipster human clothes : cropped pants , sweatshirts and layers , clean collars and tube socks , cute shoes .
The campers and counselors all exhibit a range of expressions , the whites of their round eyes like huge crescent moons waxing and waning against their enlarged pupils .
The looks on these characters ’ faces alone help contribute to the series ’ pervasive sense of wonder .
Many episodes showcase new , beautifully designed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , doubling as an evolution in storytelling and an exhibition of the creative team ’ s imaginations .
( In one episode , a counselor-witch turns a daddy long legs into a “ cutie long legs , ” the spider gaining a top hat and cane , jigging on the bookshelf . )
As much as the show is about the fun shenanigans the kids get into at camp and watching them come to beautifully designed life , Summer Camp Island is at its best when it is literally putting its central friendship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Hedgehog have been friends since they were in diapers , and even now , at age 11 , each one considers the other “ the coolest person in the world.
” But in the season one episode “ Fuzzy Pink Time Babies , ” Hedgehog ’ s dad wants her to leave early in order to attend “ business camp , ” so the two use magical moon rocks to freeze time to turn one night into a whole summer .
The show literally manipulates time to portray the strength of friendship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Several other episodes play with time and space in this way : In “ Cosmic Bupkiss , ” Oscar and Hedgehog pledge to see a comet together that only passes by once every 50 years , and the surprisingly emotional “ Midnight Quittance ” bends time and affirms that our two protagonists ’ best friendship will last until their old age .
Whatever may have happened between now and then , they discover , Oscar and Hedgehog are fated to find a way back to each other .
At one point during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from a book called the “ Tome of Time.
” “ Time is lonely , that ’ s why it never leaves us , ” Hedgehog reads .
“ That ’ s why it shows up on our faces and in our trees.
” It ’ s a moment of clarity that betrays the youth of its characters , showcasing wisdom well beyond their apparent years — a common , poignant theme of the show .
Despite these philosophers being preteen , anthropomorphized animal campers , they manage to connect with the show @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and moving .
At summer camp , Oscar isn ’ t only spending time with friends , old and new .
He ’ s growing with them .
Just as his adventures push him beyond his initial expectations , the series has a few tricks up its sleeve for the audience , too .
On Summer Camp Island , the threads of magic and friendship bear out in touching ways that are never too saccharine .
Instead , the show is always perfectly sweet , and I ’ m so excited to find @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this whimsical island .
Summer Camp Island is streaming on HBO Max .
Its first two seasons consist of sixty 12-minute episodes .
Season three is now available .

On the first day of summer camp, Oscar already wants to leave. In his own words, the 11-year-old elephant feels “kinda nervous when there’s a lot of things happening at the same time.” There is a lot to adjust to once his parents drop off Oscar and his best friend, Hedgehog (who is, unsurprisingly, a hedgehog), at the campground.
Oscar was excited about the many “organized activities” promised to him in the camp’s pamphlet; he expected to spend the summer adventuring in nature, canoeing, or making crafts with his best friend. But that’s not the full picture — the camp counselors turn out to be witches, magic apparently is real, and Oscar’s summer is about to look much more otherworldly than what he originally planned for.
Oscar tries not to get overwhelmed despite these major revelations and his related anxiety, but when he embarrasses himself at a pajama party in front of new acquaintances, he’s done giving this camp a shot. In truth, Oscar has been looking for an out even before he’s arrived (and the shark-cum-therapist living in the pool behind his cabin is quick to tell him as much). What he’s really anxious about is the newness of being away from home for the first time, not the strangeness of everything else. (Although that part certainly doesn’t help matters.)
At the end of the first episode, Oscar (by way of a magic tunnel) leaves for home and arrives just outside his front door. When he overhears his parents inside discussing his tendency toward discomfort, he’s reminded that if he lets himself adjust to something new, he’ll eventually start to love it. He decides to stay, and thus his magical summer begins.
Summer Camp Island — and Summer Camp Island, where all of this takes place — is full of these types of small, revelatory wisdoms. Each life lesson is nestled into a colorful place inhabited by various magical creatures: There are aliens that look like cutesy gremlins, friendly monsters, music-loving elves and werewolves, and even a talking moon (voiced by Cedric the Entertainer!). The result is a lovely slice-of-life cartoon that offers the perfect jolt of happiness in a difficult world.
Originally airing its first season on Cartoon Network between 2018 and 2019, Summer Camp Island moved to HBO Max for its second season this past June; its upcoming third season premieres December 10. On the surface, this cute, magical cartoon might seem cut from the exact same cloth as other Cartoon Network shows, namely the beloved Steven Universe and Adventure Time.
All three combine unconventional characters with fantasy elements and coming-of-age storytelling, with a dash of surreal humor to boot. However, creator Julia Pott (who previously worked on Adventure Time) has imbued Summer Camp Island with its own, singular vision that stands out among many shows within its genre. This is a show that tells beautiful tales of friendship and adolescence, always focusing on the importance of togetherness and the whimsy, even sadness, of growing up. If PEN15 is restorative for adults, Summer Camp Island is restorative for the kids still in all of us.
I discovered Summer Camp Island after its move to streaming, and it became one of my first pandemic-summer TV obsessions. I was immediately drawn-in by Oscar, his sensitivity, his fear of the new — it felt like I was watching myself as a young kid, similarly wracked with anxiety. I also felt like I was watching myself now, though, refracted through this frightened 11-year-old. I, too, struggle to adjust to change while yearning for fun and frolicking outside. I found myself delighting in how Oscar not only adjusts but thrives in a novel setting. I wanted this for myself; I couldn’t get enough.
After finishing all 60 episodes in short order, I still find myself returning to the series often, its jeweled colors and insistence on platonic friendship as a balm to everything, a comforting escape from the news.
Most of the show’s conflicts — which run the gamut from returning an overdue VHS tape to helping two aliens wed despite planetary laws against their union — are solved within each episode’s bite-sized, 12-minute runtime, and the people involved always come away as better friends in the end. Someone develops a new skill or learns a new lesson, and the campers will go on to return to their personal cabins each night, Oscar’s and Hedgehog’s right next to one another. This may sound formulaic, but I always find it to be a pleasure to watch these friends make up and reaffirm their affection for each other.
Another pleasure of the show is the art; Summer Camp Island is as wonderful to just look at as it is to watch. Our animal campers dress in hipster human clothes: cropped pants, sweatshirts and layers, clean collars and tube socks, cute shoes. The campers and counselors all exhibit a range of expressions, the whites of their round eyes like huge crescent moons waxing and waning against their enlarged pupils.
The looks on these characters’ faces alone help contribute to the series’ pervasive sense of wonder. Many episodes showcase new, beautifully designed parts of the island or magical possibilities, doubling as an evolution in storytelling and an exhibition of the creative team’s imaginations. (In one episode, a counselor-witch turns a daddy long legs into a “cutie long legs,” the spider gaining a top hat and cane, jigging on the bookshelf.)
As much as the show is about the fun shenanigans the kids get into at camp and watching them come to beautifully designed life, Summer Camp Island is at its best when it is literally putting its central friendship against the test of time. Oscar and Hedgehog have been friends since they were in diapers, and even now, at age 11, each one considers the other “the coolest person in the world.”
But in the season one episode “Fuzzy Pink Time Babies,” Hedgehog’s dad wants her to leave early in order to attend “business camp,” so the two use magical moon rocks to freeze time to turn one night into a whole summer. The show literally manipulates time to portray the strength of friendship, a playful and always moving trick.
Several other episodes play with time and space in this way: In “Cosmic Bupkiss,” Oscar and Hedgehog pledge to see a comet together that only passes by once every 50 years, and the surprisingly emotional “Midnight Quittance” bends time and affirms that our two protagonists’ best friendship will last until their old age. Whatever may have happened between now and then, they discover, Oscar and Hedgehog are fated to find a way back to each other. At one point during the episode, Hedgehog reads aloud pages from a book called the “Tome of Time.”
“Time is lonely, that’s why it never leaves us,” Hedgehog reads. “That’s why it shows up on our faces and in our trees.” It’s a moment of clarity that betrays the youth of its characters, showcasing wisdom well beyond their apparent years — a common, poignant theme of the show. Despite these philosophers being preteen, anthropomorphized animal campers, they manage to connect with the show’s human viewers in ways profound and moving.
At summer camp, Oscar isn’t only spending time with friends, old and new. He’s growing with them. Just as his adventures push him beyond his initial expectations, the series has a few tricks up its sleeve for the audience, too. On Summer Camp Island, the threads of magic and friendship bear out in touching ways that are never too saccharine. Instead, the show is always perfectly sweet, and I’m so excited to find what more there is to discover on this whimsical island.
Summer Camp Island is streaming on HBO Max. Its first two seasons consist of sixty 12-minute episodes. Season three is now available. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.


vox--2020-12-18--Teachers are sacrificing student privacy to stop cheating

As the fall semester began at the University of Nevada , Reno , psychology professor Mark Lescroart faced an increasingly common dilemma for teachers : How to prevent his newly remote students from cheating on the quizzes and exams he ’ d designed to be taken in class with supervision .
“ I have been uncomfortable with the idea that cheating is pretty easy when you ’ re online , ” Lescroart told Recode in October .
One possible solution his university provided was Proctorio , an online proctoring service that uses machine learning .
But Lescroart didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and analyzing his students in their homes .
Ultimately , he decided that violating their privacy was worse than leaving a potential cheater uncaught .
But many teachers around the country have come to a different conclusion .
As online education has become the norm in the Covid-19 pandemic , they ’ ve opted to use services like Proctorio .
The services have ignited controversy , too .
Privacy advocates hate them , and students have protested , starting petitions and accusing the services of being invasive , discriminatory , and inaccurate .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center ( EPIC ) accused five online test proctoring services , including Proctorio , of unfair and deceptive trade practices in a complaint filed with the Office of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia .
EPIC also informed the five companies that it is preparing to file a lawsuit unless they change their practices .
Several US senators have also recently written to the companies producing these tools to request more information about privacy , bias , and accessibility concerns raised by their tools .
Some educators have spoken out against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have opted not to use it .
But for the most part , the schools that use the software haven ’ t budged , citing the importance of maintaining academic integrity .
“ All these things are kind of predicated on a relationship where academic dishonesty is rampant , ” notes Bill Fitzgerald , a privacy expert who focuses on education technologies , “ and the only thing stopping more academic dishonesty is more surveillance via for-profit tech.
” Even though the end of the pandemic may be on the horizon , online @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and students have realized that educational institutions are happy to collect ever-more data about their homes and bodies if those institutions think the ends justify the means .
Their teachers , meanwhile , are left somewhere in the middle .
They can either make their students adjust to online proctoring software , or they can adjust their lesson plans and assessments so that the software isn ’ t needed .
At the beginning of the pandemic , schools needed ways to bring their classes online quickly in the middle of the semester .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ small companies , like ProctorU , ExamSoft , Honorlock , and Proctortrack , which typically served the burgeoning remote learning industry .
The idea behind these companies ’ software , generally , is to recreate the security of an in-classroom exam by using remote human proctors to watch the test-taking students through their computers ’ cameras .
Proctorio doesn ’ t use human proctors at all ; it relies on software to detect and flag suspicious behavior .
The company ’ s software can , among other things , use a simple web @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through students ’ webcams and laptop microphones , to record their computer screens and collect a list of the websites a student visits while taking the test .
Proctorio software also uses facial detection to see if a student is looking away from their screen , leaves the room , or if there ’ s another person in the frame — any of which could indicate cheating .
Like other remote learning services , Proctorio has grown immensely during the pandemic .
The company told Recode that in 2020 , it was used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proctored nearly 20 million exams — more than three times the 6 million it administered in 2019 .
But many students revile the service .
Some say there ’ s not enough transparency about how recordings are managed or how data about their homes and bodies is being used or stored .
Proctorio ’ s competitors have reported data breaches that exposed the information of hundreds of thousands of students .
One student told Recode that Proctorio ’ s algorithm seemed to struggle to recognize them , a sign that its software could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particularly controversial among online proctoring services .
The company , led by CEO Mike Olsen , has a history of lashing out at detractors .
Over the course of the pandemic , Olsen and Proctorio have posted student chat transcripts , beat back criticism aired by students in campus newspapers and on social media , demanded retractions of negative articles , and even filed a lawsuit against a school staff member .
“ Like most companies , when we believe facts have been misrepresented in an article , we have the right to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Proctorio told Recode .
“ Similarly , like most technology companies , we will take steps to protect our intellectual property when it is improperly shared.
” Now there are slews of online petitions from students calling for the service to be discontinued , and other students have brought the issue to their student governments .
For instance , some in the student senate at Miami University called for school legislation that would require teachers to undergo training before using Proctorio , and the student government at Cal Poly Pomona has advocated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the software .
Some have even publicly called out specific classes for using the software .
“ You don ’ t need to be a tech policy expert to see that these are evil , ” said Gennie Gebhart , acting activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation .
Defenders of online proctoring say it ’ s simply recreating remotely what exam-takers would experience in person .
Preventing cheating ensures that students learn the material , rewards honest students , and maintains the value of their degrees , according to Proctorio .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make sure your degree is worth something , ” Olsen told Recode .
Olsen also says his software preserves students ’ privacy by limiting what data third parties , and Proctorio itself , can access .
Because the proctoring is completely automated and the data is encrypted , Proctorio says , only the test administrators have access to such things as video footage .
Although Proctorio says it has never had a data breach , a first-year computer science student at Miami University told Recode that he was able to find a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encryption protocols .
While it ’ s not unusual for outside parties to find vulnerabilities in companies ’ software or code — and Proctorio improved its encryption within weeks to fix the issue — it ’ s not a great look .
Akash Satheesan , the student who flagged the issue , told Recode he was able to convince one of his professors not to use the software by the end of the semester .
“ Miami University has this thing on their website about academic integrity , right ?
” he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ integrity is about learning , responsibility , accountability , fairness , respect , honesty , and trust.
’ So all I ’ m asking for is universities to extend that respect and trust to their students.
” “ We ’ re thankful for researchers who disclose vulnerabilities to us ; the security technology space needs more ethical hackers , ” Olsen said .
“ We look forward to formalizing a program in the future around security disclosures , such as a bug bounty program.
” Beyond that , Olsen says it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which of Proctorio ’ s monitoring services to use and to review any suspicious actions flagged by it to determine for themselves if a student is cheating .
“ We really try as hard as we can to coach the universities and the faculty into using the products in the best , most ethical way possible , ” Olsen told Recode .
“ And that ’ s why we give them those various settings .
Maybe you don ’ t need the webcam recording on every single exam , maybe it only needs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some sort of comprehensive exam.
” Proctorio and schools often put student privacy in instructors ’ hands But students have very little control over how their schools use online proctoring services , and their complaints aren ’ t always sufficiently addressed by their institutions .
Erik Johnson , another first-year student at Miami University , has been an active critic of Proctorio .
He started a petition to end the use of the software at his school , and earlier this year posted tweets criticizing the site .
Proctorio didn ’ t respond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Johnson ’ s tweets removed by Twitter under a copyright complaint , and the service blocked Johnson ’ s IP address so he could no longer use the software to take his exams .
Johnson says that his instructors set up separate tests for Johnson over Zoom ( and screen-sharing ) , but teachers at the university seem to have continued to use Proctorio for their other students .
At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga , a petition calling to ban the use of Proctorio had amassed more than 2,000 signatures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about backlash from students , a UT spokesperson said in an email , “ Our faculty and provost is happy with the product and we will continue to use it , ” and didn ’ t provide further comment .
Administrators at the University of Colorado Boulder told Recode that the software did not pass an accessibility audit , but the school is still using it .
Students , instructors , and the school ’ s disability service are supposed to make other arrangements if Proctorio can ’ t be used .
Schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaving it up to instructors to ultimately decide whether to use something like Proctorio .
Some professors see the software as the best option .
Nena Kabranski , who teaches math at Tarrant County College in Texas , has used the software for several years , and even more so during the pandemic .
She says that Proctorio is the best option available , given the circumstances , though adds the software is mandatory at her school .
Still , Kabranski says that students are frequently wrongly flagged for suspicious behavior .
Carliss @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Sam Houston State University , told Recode she used Proctorio for the first time last spring .
She restricted Proctorio ’ s settings to detect when students went to other websites or recorded the exams to possibly share with a classmate , and said she found the service to be “ very helpful.
” While Miller didn ’ t catch any students cheating , she thinks that just knowing that they ’ re being watched might have been enough to stop students from trying to .
And when she didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she noticed that one student who “ wasn ’ t necessarily a good performer ” got a perfect score on an exam — an indication that the student may have cheated .
Now , she is planning on using Proctorio next semester .
Miller is aware of privacy concerns about the software and said some of her students weren ’ t happy that they had to use it .
But she doesn ’ t think it ’ s worse than some of the data-collecting tools her students voluntarily use , like mobile phones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t see it being any different than if you ’ re face to face and I have a grad assistant helping me monitor to make sure no one is cheating , ” Miller said .
But others are changing how they teach and assess students to avoid the need for proctoring services entirely .
When Matthew Anderson , an Ohio State University assistant professor of microbiology , unexpectedly found himself teaching a hybrid in-person and remote class when the fall semester began , he took it as an opportunity to rethink his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ students to demonstrate that they are understanding things beyond simply being able to look for the answer in their lecture notes and then just write on a piece of paper , ” Anderson told Recode in October .
“ That , I think , is a good investment in people ’ s future and their education.
” The US Education Department hasn ’ t issued guidance for online proctoring , but students ’ complaints have been taken up by lawmakers .
On December 3 , Sen. Richard Blumenthal , along with other senators @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asking specifically about how the companies handle privacy in their software , and also about accessibility and racial bias issues in the products .
“ Virtual exam proctoring companies must swiftly remedy alarming equity , accessibility , and privacy issues students have reported , ” Blumenthal told Recode .
“ I will work on every fix necessary to ensure students are protected.
” Online learning won ’ t go away whenever the pandemic does , but schools ’ unsympathetic response to students ’ concerns could leave a lasting impression .
“ It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ normal , ” Ian Linkletter , an education technology specialist at the University of British Columbia , told Recode , noting that many online proctoring companies have signed contracts with schools that will be renewed .
Linkletter emphasizes that a lot of harm has already been done .
He spoke out against Proctorio earlier this year , and the company responded by suing him for copyright infringement .
Linkletter is crowdfunding his own defense , and the University of British Columbia is not publicly commenting on the company ’ s suit against its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the service , the school has released a letter to students defending Proctorio , and also directed Recode to a statement emphasizing that faculty members ultimately choose whether or not to use Proctorio .
“ There ’ s a much bigger narrative about why we think surveillance is an answer to questions that are fundamentally pedagogical , ” said Shea Swauger , a researcher at University of Colorado Denver who has criticized Proctorio , “ and why we think that student punishment and surveillance are the answer [ or ] why we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to solve an educational problem.
” But until a mass reimagining of online education arrives , schools are continuing to leave the choice to use such software up to individual instructors , many of whom are already saddled with the additional stress of teaching through a pandemic and may not be or feel qualified to make that decision .
Looking back on his semester , Lescroart , the University of Nevada , Reno , professor , told Recode in December that he was happy with his decision not to use Proctorio .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think it was the right choice , and many of my students have expressed gratitude for it , ” Lescroart said .
“ We ’ re all just getting by.
” Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network .
All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists .

As the fall semester began at the University of Nevada Reno, psychology professor Mark Lescroart faced an increasingly common dilemma for teachers: how to prevent his newly remote students from cheating on the quizzes and exams he’d designed to be taken in class with supervision.
“I have been uncomfortable with the idea that cheating is pretty easy when you’re online,” Lescroart told Recode in October.
One possible solution his university provided was Proctorio, an online proctoring service that uses machine learning. But Lescroart didn’t like the prospect of third-party software recording and analyzing his students in their homes. Ultimately, he decided that violating their privacy was worse than leaving a potential cheater uncaught.
But many teachers around the country have come to a different conclusion. As online education has become the norm in the Covid-19 pandemic, they’ve opted to use services like Proctorio. The services have ignited controversy, too. Privacy advocates hate them, and students have protested, starting petitions and accusing the services of being invasive, discriminatory, and inaccurate.
In December, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) accused five online test proctoring services, including Proctorio, of unfair and deceptive trade practices in a complaint filed with the Office of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia. EPIC also informed the five companies that it is preparing to file a lawsuit unless they change their practices. Several US senators have also recently written to the companies producing these tools to request more information about privacy, bias, and accessibility concerns raised by their tools.
Some educators have spoken out against this tech or, like Lescroart, have opted not to use it. But for the most part, the schools that use the software haven’t budged, citing the importance of maintaining academic integrity.
“All these things are kind of predicated on a relationship where academic dishonesty is rampant,” notes Bill Fitzgerald, a privacy expert who focuses on education technologies, “and the only thing stopping more academic dishonesty is more surveillance via for-profit tech.”
Even though the end of the pandemic may be on the horizon, online learning is likely here to stay, and students have realized that educational institutions are happy to collect ever more data about their homes and bodies if those institutions think the ends justify the means. Their teachers, meanwhile, are left somewhere in the middle. They can either make their students adjust to online proctoring software, or they can adjust their lesson plans and assessments so that the software isn’t needed.
Proctorio and its problems, explained
At the beginning of the pandemic, schools needed ways to bring their classes online quickly in the middle of the semester. So they turned to a slew of small companies, like ProctorU, ExamSoft, Honorlock, and Proctortrack, which typically served the burgeoning remote learning industry. The idea behind these companies’ software, generally, is to recreate the security of an in-classroom exam by using remote human proctors to watch the test-taking students through their computers’ cameras.
Proctorio doesn’t use human proctors at all; it relies on software to detect and flag suspicious behavior. The company’s software can, among other things, use a simple web browser extension to record video and audio through students’ webcams and laptop microphones, to record their computer screens and collect a list of the websites a student visits while taking the test. Proctorio software also uses facial detection to see if a student is looking away from their screen, leaves the room, or if there’s another person in the frame — any of which could indicate cheating.
Like other remote learning services, Proctorio has grown immensely during the pandemic. The company told Recode that in 2020, it was used by more than 1,200 institutions and had proctored nearly 20 million exams — more than three times the 6 million it administered in 2019.
But many students revile the service. Some say there’s not enough transparency about how recordings are managed or how data about their homes and bodies is being used or stored. Proctorio’s competitors have reported data breaches that exposed the information of hundreds of thousands of students. One student told Recode that Proctorio’s algorithm seemed to struggle to recognize them, a sign that its software could be racially biased.
Proctorio has become particularly controversial among online proctoring services. The company, led by CEO Mike Olsen, has a history of lashing out at detractors. Over the course of the pandemic, Olsen and Proctorio have posted student chat transcripts, beat back criticism aired by students in campus newspapers and on social media, demanded retractions of negative articles, and even filed a lawsuit against a school staff member.
“Like most companies, when we believe facts have been misrepresented in an article, we have the right to open a dialogue with the reporter,” Proctorio told Recode. “Similarly, like most technology companies, we will take steps to protect our intellectual property when it is improperly shared.”
Now there are slews of online petitions from students calling for the service to be discontinued, and other students have brought the issue to their student governments. For instance, some in the student senate at Miami University called for school legislation that would require teachers to undergo training before using Proctorio, and the student government at Cal Poly Pomona has advocated for policies for regulating teachers’ use of the software. Some have even publicly called out specific classes for using the software.
“You don’t need to be a tech policy expert to see that these are evil,” said Gennie Gebhart, acting activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Defenders of online proctoring say it’s simply recreating remotely what exam-takers would experience in person. Preventing cheating ensures that students learn the material, rewards honest students, and maintains the value of their degrees, according to Proctorio. “When you graduate, you want to make sure your degree is worth something,” Olsen told Recode.
Olsen also says his software preserves students’ privacy by limiting what data third parties, and Proctorio itself, can access. Because the proctoring is completely automated and the data is encrypted, Proctorio says, only the test administrators have access to such things as video footage. Although Proctorio says it has never had a data breach, a first-year computer science student at Miami University told Recode that she was able to find a potential vulnerability in Proctorio’s much-touted encryption protocols. While it’s not unusual for outside parties to find vulnerabilities in companies’ software or code — and Proctorio improved its encryption within weeks to fix the issue — it’s not a great look.
Lucy Satheesan, the student who flagged the issue, told Recode she was able to convince one of her professors not to use the software by the end of the semester. “Miami University has this thing on their website about academic integrity, right?” she said. “It says, ‘academic integrity is about learning, responsibility, accountability, fairness, respect, honesty, and trust.’ So all I’m asking for is universities to extend that respect and trust to their students.”
“We’re thankful for researchers who disclose vulnerabilities to us; the security technology space needs more ethical hackers,” Olsen said. “We look forward to formalizing a program in the future around security disclosures, such as a bug bounty program.”
Beyond that, Olsen says it’s up to institutions and educators to select which of Proctorio’s monitoring services to use and to review any suspicious actions flagged by it to determine for themselves if a student is cheating.
“We really try as hard as we can to coach the universities and the faculty into using the products in the best, most ethical way possible,” Olsen told Recode. “And that’s why we give them those various settings. Maybe you don’t need the webcam recording on every single exam, maybe it only needs to be on in a final or some sort of comprehensive exam.”
Proctorio and schools often put student privacy in instructors’ hands
But students have very little control over how their schools use online proctoring services, and their complaints aren’t always sufficiently addressed by their institutions.
Erik Johnson, another first-year student at Miami University, has been an active critic of Proctorio. He started a petition to end the use of the software at his school, and earlier this year posted tweets criticizing the site. Proctorio didn’t respond positively: It succeeded in getting some of Johnson’s tweets removed by Twitter under a copyright complaint, and the service blocked Johnson’s IP address so he could no longer use the software to take his exams. Johnson says that his instructors set up separate tests for Johnson over Zoom (and screen-sharing), but teachers at the university seem to have continued to use Proctorio for their other students.
At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, a petition calling to ban the use of Proctorio had amassed more than 2,000 signatures as of December 16. When asked about backlash from students, a UT spokesperson said in an email, “Our faculty and provost is happy with the product and we will continue to use it,” and didn’t provide further comment.
Administrators at the University of Colorado Boulder told Recode that the software did not pass an accessibility audit, but the school is still using it. Students, instructors, and the school’s disability service are supposed to make other arrangements if Proctorio can’t be used.
Schools generally purchase proctoring software for teachers, leaving it up to instructors to ultimately decide whether to use something like Proctorio. Some professors see the software as the best option.
Nena Kabranski, who teaches math at Tarrant County College in Texas, has used the software for several years, and even more so during the pandemic. She says that Proctorio is the best option available, given the circumstances, though adds the software is mandatory at her school. Still, Kabranski says that students are frequently wrongly flagged for suspicious behavior.
Carliss Miller, an assistant professor of management at Sam Houston State University, told Recode she used Proctorio for the first time last spring. She restricted Proctorio’s settings to detect when students went to other websites or recorded the exams to possibly share with a classmate, and said she found the service to be “very helpful.”
While Miller didn’t catch any students cheating, she thinks that just knowing that they’re being watched might have been enough to stop students from trying to. And when she didn’t use Proctorio for her summer classes, she noticed that one student who “wasn’t necessarily a good performer” got a perfect score on an exam — an indication that the student may have cheated. Now, she is planning on using Proctorio next semester.
Miller is aware of privacy concerns about the software and said some of her students weren’t happy that they had to use it. But she doesn’t think it’s worse than some of the data-collecting tools her students voluntarily use, like mobile phones and smart devices.
“I don’t see it being any different than if you’re face to face and I have a grad assistant helping me monitor to make sure no one is cheating,” Miller said.
But others are changing how they teach and assess students to avoid the need for proctoring services entirely. When Matthew Anderson, an Ohio State University assistant professor of microbiology, unexpectedly found himself teaching a hybrid in-person and remote class when the fall semester began, he took it as an opportunity to rethink his assessments.
The revamped tests “required students to demonstrate that they are understanding things beyond simply being able to look for the answer in their lecture notes and then just write on a piece of paper,” Anderson told Recode in October. “That, I think, is a good investment in people’s future and their education.”
Proctorio signals a concerning future for students’ technology rights
The US Education Department hasn’t issued guidance for online proctoring, but students’ complaints have been taken up by lawmakers. On December 3, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), along with other senators, wrote to several online proctoring services asking specifically about how the companies handle privacy in their software, and also about accessibility and racial bias issues in the products.
“Virtual exam proctoring companies must swiftly remedy alarming equity, accessibility, and privacy issues students have reported,” Blumenthal told Recode. “I will work on every fix necessary to ensure students are protected.”
Online learning won’t go away whenever the pandemic does, but schools’ unsympathetic response to students’ concerns could leave a lasting impression.
“It’s not going to be back to normal,” Ian Linkletter, an education technology specialist at the University of British Columbia, told Recode, noting that many online proctoring companies have signed contracts with schools that will be renewed.
Linkletter emphasizes that a lot of harm has already been done. He spoke out against Proctorio earlier this year, and the company responded by suing him for copyright infringement. Linkletter is crowdfunding his own defense, and the University of British Columbia is not publicly commenting on the company’s suit against its employee. In response to student objections to the service, the school has released a letter to students defending Proctorio, and also directed Recode to a statement emphasizing that faculty members ultimately choose whether or not to use Proctorio.
“There’s a much bigger narrative about why we think surveillance is an answer to questions that are fundamentally pedagogical,” said Shea Swauger, a researcher at University of Colorado Denver who has criticized Proctorio, “and why we think that student punishment and surveillance are the answer [or] why we would trust a software company to try to solve an educational problem.”
But until a mass reimagining of online education arrives, schools are continuing to leave the choice to use such software up to individual instructors, many of whom are already saddled with the additional stress of teaching through a pandemic and may not be or feel qualified to make that decision.
Looking back on his semester, Lescroart, the University of Nevada, Reno, professor, told Recode in December that he was happy with his decision not to use Proctorio.
“My views haven’t changed, I think it was the right choice, and many of my students have expressed gratitude for it,” Lescroart said. “We’re all just getting by.”
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
Update, September 12, 2022: This article was originally published on December 18, 2020, and has been updated to include Lucy Satheesan’s current name.