Fine Dining, Dead Poets, and Student Loan Debt: An Open Letter to the Incoming Secretary of Education

January 21, 2025

Dear Madam or Mr. Secretary of Education-to-be:

I hope you are acclimating to your new position in the White House. It must be bittersweet to be called on to dismantle the Department of Education at this time when education needs thoughtful and informed leadership more than ever. As you know, the first Secretary of Education in 1867 had a couple of part-time assistants and a small office in a DC basement. They started at the beginning, taking inventory of the status of public schooling. Since then, your Department has not only become responsible for increasingly more significant tasks, but also has played a pivotal role in sustaining and improving public education.

Lamar Alexander (1991-1993) made significant contributions through his America 2000 education strategy, which laid groundwork for standards-based education reform. Make no mistake: This secretary could conceive of no role for the federal government in public schools. In 1981 Alexander proposed to Reagan that a “grand swap” should be made, whereby the federal government would carry the Medicaid burden while giving K–12 education to the states. His experience as a governor brought valuable state-level perspective to federal education policy. True, the implementation of standards-based change laid the groundwork for NCLB and the Common Core. Lamar Alexander wanted to strengthen public schools, but not on the federal dime.

Richard Riley (1993-2001) served a long tenure during the Clinton administration, overseeing major initiatives including the Improving America's Schools Act. He spearheaded significant expansions of federal student aid programs. During his tenure, the Department of Education actually took the lead on initiatives of value to every state. Creating the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education was designed to bring schools and families together, reducing class sizes for children in grades one to three was a humanizing policy move that was replicated in many states, and retrofitting old school buildings and constructing new ones became possible.

Margaret Spellings (2005-2009)—to be frank, believe me, Madam Secretary, you do not want to be remembered as Margaret Spellings in the minds of university professors— played a crucial role in implementing No Child Left Behind and intensifying accountability measures in K-12 education reaching new heights of absurdity you will notice when you study her tenure. To be fair, Spellings did not foresee this outcome. Her passion derived from her commitment to equity; she believed measuring inequity would solve the problem. Even after NCLB began to corrode the professionalism teachers had been craving for decades, Spellings dug in her heels:

“I famously said that the tenets of No Child Left Behind were like Ivory soap. They are 99 percent pure. That’s still true in the sense that these are tried and true management principles that are good for any organization. They stand the test of time..”

Oddly, as she set about deskilling K12 principals in terms of local authority to lead instructionally, putting schools in standardized test mode that effectively eclipsed teacher judgment, she also focused on making higher education more accessible and affordable through various reforms. In fact, Spellings was accused of trying to bring higher education under the public education tent to create a national public university system. However:

“On the contrary, one of the greatest assets to our [university] system is its diversity – something we must protect and preserve,” Spellings said. “Our aim is simply to make sure the countless opportunities a college education provides is a reality for every American who chooses to pursue it.”

Arne Duncan from Chicago (2009-2016) introduced significant reforms through Race to the Top, and he pushed for a federal hub of Common Core Standards adopted in every state. Implementing performance-based teacher and principal evaluations tied to student test scores was a bit of an overreach, an insane idea if you ask me, Madam Secretary, but his Race to the Top, represented a $4.35 billion competitive grant program that incentivized states to compete with one another instead of collaborate in a coherent professional network. Though a bit hyper and technocratic and not a deep thinker, Duncan did not want to do a “grand swap,” Medicare for public schools, as Lamar Alexander did.

If Donald Trump insists that you follow through and dissolve even the semblance of coherence in educational policy between the separate States and the Federal Government, you can secure a place in history for yourself if you do one thing: Stand up for Student Debt Relief. Student Debt Relief is not only fair and just, it can help prevent a future with an even greater disparity in quality of life between the haves and the have-nots. Regardless of political party, reducing this dehumanizing gap has always been seen as a way to make a more perfect union.

I urge you to argue for federal assistance in reducing, ultimately eliminating, student debt. I know this is a big ask. Here is what your boss said about the issue after the Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration proposal to roll back student debt:

“[It] would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who have paid their debt through hard work and diligence.”

This perspective on the problem reverses a centuries’ long understanding of the value of university education for humanity. First, it is indeed fair to help the poor—it’s Christian, in fact—and unfair to hold against them the fact that they are poor and lack wealth. One could argue that it’s grossly unfair to all of us to deprive the collective of human potential for greatness hidden in poverty. There but for the grace of God go those wealthy citizens who can easily afford university tuition.

Second, university study is notoriously demanding. Not everyone wants to do it, and not everyone needs to do it—at least not yet. For a number of years university students put their personal and economic lives on hold to cloister themselves in an ivory tower, eating Ramen, burning the midnight oil. Discipline and dedication produces doctors, engineers, architects, musicians, historians, teachers, nurses, and on and on. Does the country have enough wealthy students to fill these roles so important for society to function?

Since 1980 when Ronald Reagan took office, each year has seen a steady rebalancing in the formula that funds higher education. The rule of thumb prior to 1980 was this: Public university funding should be 50% public taxes, 50% private tuition, so that the public and the private value of higher education balances out fairly. Instead, we have a severe imbalance with private funding on the rise, leaving our poorer families looking for loans to make up the difference.

“The turn of the twenty-first century introduced a period of fundamental change to the sources of revenues at public research universities. Traditionally, public research universities received the largest portion of their funding for operations (including education) from state and local appropriations. But between 2000 and 2012, state appropriations to public research universities declined by 34 percent per full-time equivalent (fte) student; meanwhile, public research universities increased the number of students they educate by approximately 23 percent. The causes of these shifts… include increasing enrollment; rising costs of health care, prisons, and k–12 education; increasing numbers of mandated requirements; and the economic recession.”

This unprecedented rise in levels of student debt has catalyzed a moment where too many university educated students who have prepared themselves for contributing to society and raising families are living in a stagnant and strange form of poverty. Households with student loan debt tend to have significantly lower net worth compared to those without such debt. Young college-educated households with student debt have approximately seven times less wealth than those without student debt ($8,700 vs. $64,700) despite similar incomes.

Think about two employees who start at the same company with identical $60,000 salaries. One begins with a clean financial slate, perhaps a car loan, but the other must allocate $500 monthly to student loan payments for years to come. A runner starting the race at the starting line, the debt-free employee is truly a very nice person who by the grace of God was born into a family of means and now has disposable income to afford the occasional fine dining experience and still save and invest, swing a down payment for a house with some belt tightening, pay a mortgage, and contribute to retirement accounts.

The debt-holding employee, equal in education and a good fit for the company and its needs—everybody loves the new hire—begins the race 50 meters behind. Despite equal training and pay, the gap persists or widens throughout the race unless extraordinary measures are taken to close it. If the individual in question isn’t seeking employment, student debt suppresses entrepreneurship, reduces consumer spending, and delays family formation—factors that concern conservatives and progressives alike.

Student loan debt has an insidious impact on workers' economic mobility, on the labor market, and on wealth inequality that has become painful, burdensome, and economically the wrong call. The absence of debt relief policy leaves the most vulnerable workers, who happen to be the most highly educated, unfairly targeted and burdened. In this pivotal moment, as the Department of Education faces unprecedented challenges, you have a unique opportunity to secure its most enduring legacy, i.e., preventing America from perpetuating generational inequity.

At least three recent bipartisan proposals in Congress have been articulated not as ways to provide blanket forgiveness to all students with loan debt, but as tools to help students manage their debt without going under water. IDR (Income-Driven Repayment plans) in existence have already helped some borrowers. (see this post for in-depth discussion): The SAVE for Students Act (S. 1971), sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), would “streamline repayment options for borrowers by creating a single IDR plan based on the REPAYE Plan. Borrowers who are delinquent on their payments would be automatically enrolled and the plan would offer expedited forgiveness for undergraduate borrowers with a low initial loan balance.”

The LOAN Act (H.R. 1731), sponsored by Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and several House Democrats, would “generally not modify the terms of IDR plans but would provide automatic enrollment for delinquent borrowers into the most affordable plan for them. This proposal further eliminates interest capitalization for student loans, including those in an IDR plan.”

The FAIR Act (H.R. 4144), sponsored by Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) and several House Republicans, would “simplify the repayment system by creating a single IDR plan. This plan would require borrowers to pay 10% of their discretionary income and provide repayment assistance for distressed borrowers. Specifically, unpaid interest would not accrue for borrowers with an adjusted gross income of less than 300% of the federal poverty line, and half their monthly payment would go toward paying down their principal balance. Higher-income borrowers would also be eligible for these provisions if they agree to a repayment rate of 15% of discretionary income.”

While the institutional structure of your Department may change according to the whims of the current President, the mission of expanding educational opportunity to lift up learners in under-resourced circumstances need not be abandoned. By championing meaningful student debt relief, you can demonstrate that even in times of institutional transition, our nation's commitment to educational equity and economic mobility remains unshakeable. Whether conservative or liberal, Christian or atheist, we are not a country that robs the poor and gives to the rich. America's global leadership depends on developing all available talent, regardless of economic background. From your position you can temper the ideology of unbridled meritocracy with patriotism, common sense, and a reverence for democracy.

This action would honor both the Department's 158-year history of advancing educational opportunity and our moral obligation to ensure that higher education serves as a pathway to prosperity rather than to a burden of indebtedness. amounting to a life-long sentence to debt. The choice before you is clear: Will your tenure be remembered as overseeing the Department's dissolution and the complete privatization of schools at the behest of a President who seems devoted to the wealthy at the expense of the middle and working classes, or as the moment when America finally addressed one of its most pressing educational and economic challenges, maximizing to the fullest our richest resource of all, human talent from coast to coast and everywhere in between.

Respectfully submitted,

Terry L. Underwood, PhD

Professor Emeritus: California State University, Sacramento