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Democratic presidential candidate former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg delivers remarks during a campaign rally on February 12, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo: Brett Carlsen/Getty Images) Billionaire Michael Bloomberg launched his campaign for president by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertisements to boost his poll numbers. Yesterday, he released a policy proposal to address the cost of higher education.

Unsurprisingly, Bloomberg would not cancel all student debt or make all public colleges free for everyone (as Bernie Sanders proposes). An earlier, leaked version of Bloomberg’s education plan published by The Intercept on February 17 suggested that all undergraduate borrowers would be automatically enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan (IDR) that in which student loan payments would be withheld from paychecks. The leaked plan says borrowers could “opt out,” but it is unclear what options would remain. The version of the plan later published on Bloomberg’s website omits this language about the paycheck withholding system entirely.

He suggests making two-year public colleges free for all and making both two-year and four-year college tuition-free and debt-free for the lowest-income students-and although some are touting this as a “progressive” plan, this is simply not good enough. Today, there are 45 million people are carrying $1.6 trillion in loans. What’s worse, student debt has a disproportionate impact on people of color and women, precisely those groups for whom education was supposed to provide a path to a better life. It turns out that a college degree alone can’t address racial, gender or economic inequality, particularly when education has been turned into a consumer product instead of what it ought to be: a public good.

“We are closer than ever to liberating tens of millions from the burden of student loans and to assuring that future generations have a right to a quality education without going into debt.”

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While everyone knows that servicers like Navient make a bundle collecting on student loans, what a lot of people don’t realize is that millions of us are already not making payments. In 2015 I helped organize the first student debt strike in U.S. history as part of the Debt Collective , an organization for debtors that I co-founded. That strike helped win more than $1 billion in debt relief for people who had attended predatory for-profit colleges.

The Department of Education reported that, as of March 2019, 20% of student debts were in default, meaning borrowers have not made a payment in 270 days. This trend shows no sign of slowing down. According to the Center for American Progress, about a million new borrowers go into default every year. As the number of people who are forced to debt finance their college degrees has risen, so has the number of those who can’t-or won’t-pay.

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But defaults are only part of the story. The federal government has reported that only 36% of people with student debt are making progress repaying their loans.

This Piece Originally Appeared in www.commondreams.org

Change will never come without political participation - SHARE THIS ARTICLE!