Student debt cancellation is supported by more than half of Americans, surveys find

When 23-year-old high school art teacher Annah Jane Paschall found out that her $90,000 pile of student loans were being paid off, she was stunned.

“There's been very few times in my life where I have felt physical — like emotional weight — physically lifted,” Paschall, who was chosen by skincare brand First Aid Beauty’s campaign to pay off $1.3 million in student loans, told Yahoo Finance. “Going into marriage, thinking wow, I hate that I'm bringing in so much debt... a lot of dreams and ideas either felt like just a little bit tarnished because of the debt that I had.”

Stories like Paschall’s are why Democrats in Congress are intensifying their push for student debt cancellation by urging President-elect Joe Biden to instruct the Education Department to forgive up to $50,000 in federally-held student debt for roughly 43 million American borrowers after he’s sworn in.

And a new pair of national surveys, provided exclusively to Yahoo Finance, show that more than half of Americans across the political spectrum support government action to address the student loan crisis, which includes $1.55 trillion in federally-held student debt as of Q3 2020.

Survey by group shows support for cancellation

A national survey by Data for Progress and the Justice Collaborative (DPJC), which polled 1,104 likely voters between September 18 and 19 across age, gender, education, and voting history, found that 55% of voters support cancellation of all student loan debt.

The support was strongest among Democrats, with 68% in support of cancelling all student debt that people have. Recently, four House Democrats joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in calling for a $50,000 cut per borrower.

And even 52% of Republicans said they either “strongly support” or “somewhat support” cancelling all debt currently held by American borrowers.

(Data for Progress and The Justice Collaborative Institute)
(Data for Progress and The Justice Collaborative Institute)

Cancellation “has moved from the far-out fringe of higher education policy reforms to the center of the policy debate, and it could become actual executive branch policy in the very near future,” Marshall Steinbaum, author of a report highlighting the survey findings, told Yahoo Finance. And based on the data, Steinbaum added, “public opinion research consistently shows broad popular support for student debt cancellation, including among non-borrowers.”

Other surveys had similar findings: 60% of 1,873 registered voters who responded to a Hill-HarrisX poll in mid-November said they would support Biden cancelling up to $50,000 in student loan debt. That poll also revealed a generational divide: 73% of voters between 18 to 34 years old supported the measure, while 54% of voters above 65 opposed it.