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As the world’s shortest and baldest rock star, Phil Collins has long been the butt of jokes. In the 2016 film Sing Street, a charming coming-of-age story of an Irish musician, the protagonist’s older brother imparts this timeless advice: “Trust me. No woman can truly love a man who listens to Phil Collins.” South Park portrays Collins as a cross-eyed villain who plays horrible music and flaunts his Tarzan Oscar at every opportunity; at the 2000 Academy Awards, Tarzan beat South Park for Best Original Song, prompting the show’s caustic creators to remark that although they were prepared to lose, they weren’t prepared to lose to Phil Collins. And when the diminutive drummer announced he had changed his mind about retiring, a Change.org petition garnered thousands of supporters for this proposition: “Phil Collins must be stopped. There is far too much suffering in the world as it is.”
But the best Phil Collins joke was one played on him by his idol. Collins was a huge Beatles fan. As a 13-year-old, he was in the audience for the filming of the concert sequence at the end of A Hard Day’s Night. So in early 1970, the 18-year-old drummer couldn’t have been more excited to receive an invitation to play congas on a track for George Harrison’s first solo album, All Things Must Pass. Collins showed up, met George, and played hard enough to raise blisters on both hands. But when the album appeared, Collins heard no congas, saw no credit, and received no explanation.
Collins and Harrison met a few times over the years but never discussed the session. Then in 2000, as Harrison was re-mixing All Things Must Pass, Collins bought the house of Harrison’s friend, Formula One driver Jackie Stewart. Collins and Stewart got to talking about the upcoming re-release and Collins shared he was at the recording session but didn’t show up on the album. A few days later, Collins received a package from Harrison with a master tape and note that read “Could this be you?” Collins pressed play and recognized the track. Then, Collins recollected, “suddenly the congas come in – too loud and just awful.” Collins was mortified; the conga player was rubbish. Then at the end of the take, Harrison says audibly, “Can we try another without the conga player?”
George Harrison had a wonderful sense of humor. When Monty Python lost funding for the controversial Life of Brian, George stepped up because he wanted to see the film (as Eric Idle described, “the world’s most expensive theater ticket”). He released a single where he’s laughing through several verses, recorded the song Dark Horse while hoarse, and was an avid participant in the first great mockumentary, The Rutles, and subsequently annoyed Paul McCartney by repeating Rutles jokes throughout The Beatles Anthology. So as Stewart and Harrison subsequently disclosed, it’s not surprising that the tape sent to Collins was a joke. After hearing Collins’ story from Stewart, Harrison re-recorded the song and instructed the percussion player: “Play bad, I’m going to record it and send it to Phil.” When it came to jokes, the Quiet Beatle was loudest of all.
In addition to being a good sport, Phil Collins deserves credit for a hit that accurately describes how tens of millions of Americans are thinking about their student loans. No, I’m not talking about Against All Odds or Sussudio. The song is Genesis’ .
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Now did you read the news today?
They say the danger's gone away
- Land of Confusion
With $1.59 trillion outstanding – nearly $40,000 per borrower – student loan debt has become a danger to economic mobility. But in the last 3 and ½ years, through dozens of executive decisions involving various Federal Student Aid programs, the federal government has canceled over 10% of that balance: $168.5 billion. Nearly 5 million borrowers – also about 10% – have benefited from loan beneficence. President Biden’s Department of Education (ED) has made fools of those of us who never thought federal bureaucracy could be so forgiving.
But that’s not the only thing that’s gone on in student loan land over the past 3 and ½ years. Starting on March 13, 2020, ED paused all repayments and reset rates to zero. The Covid student loan moratorium was extended twice by the Trump administration, then seven successive times by the Biden administration. Mid-moratorium, President Biden’s chief of staff bragged that “Joe Biden right now is the only president in history where no one’s paid on their student loans for the entirety of his presidency.”
Loan forgiveness and the repayment moratorium weren’t wholly independent; the connection was made by ED itself. The explanation provided for the final extension to October 2023 – long past the Covid emergency’s sell-by date – was “it would be deeply unfair to ask borrowers to pay a debt that they wouldn’t have to pay [when loan forgiveness is effected].” So that’s 3 and ½ years of no repayments entwined with 3 and ½ years of forgiveness.
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We're not just making promises
That we know we'll never keep
- Land of Confusion
Enter the increasingly Javert-like federal courts. Last year, in a widely expected decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration’s single biggest swing at loan forgiveness – $10,000 for borrowers making less than $125K, another $10,000 for borrowers who received Pell Grants, adding up to a number ($430 billion) with serious fiscal implications – required clearer congressional authorization by dint of being a major question. While the 9/11 HEROES Act did give ED the ability to “modify” student loan program rules, Chief Justice Roberts noted the proposed plan “modified” student loans “in the same way that the French Revolution ‘modified’ the status of the French nobility” i.e., abolishing it.
Hard upon last year’s Supreme Court decision, ED indicated it would try blanket loan forgiveness again – this time based on the Higher Education Act. Meanwhile it had already established a second front: a new income-driven repayment program, the heroically named SAVE (saving on a valuable education). SAVE’s terms are much more generous than any prior program at a cost the Congressional Budget Office pegged at $230 billion, or as the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Brickman called it, “loan forgiveness disguised as loan repayment.”
But like a bad sequel, these borrower-friendly changes were blocked after a lawsuit filed by Missouri and six other red states resulted in same-day rulings from federal judges in Kansas and Missouri followed by an even broader injunction by the 8th Circuit barring changes to income-driven repayment and suggesting a lack of authority for any loan forgiveness under income-driven repayment. Now, in something of a fit of spite, ED is not allowing new enrollment in SAVE and has launched a brand-new moratorium for income-driven repayment participants.
Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts wouldn’t have made a French Revolution joke about student loans if he realized millions of borrowers are as angry as their forerunners who stormed the Bastille. (As Phil Collins sang in Land of Confusion: “I can hear the marching feet. They're moving into the street.) But they’re not only angry; they’re also really confused. Borrowers are telling media and advocacy organizations how confusing this all is and newspapers are running headlines like “ All so confusing” and “ Loan forgiveness fighting is giving debtors whiplash.” But don’t take my word for it. Just look at how the New York Times answers whether borrowers who can no longer enroll in SAVE or other income-driven repayment programs can stop interest from accruing. Better yet, don’t – I assure you it’s baffling (and also moot given the new moratorium).
Since no one knows how much they’ll owe once this all shakes out, it shouldn’t be surprising that nearly half of all borrowers are not making payments; Preston Cooper calculates the rate of non-repayment at nearly 60%. In the great tradition of setting a fire then pulling the alarm, Persis Yu, of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a progressive group that advocated for both loan forgiveness and the lengthy repayment moratorium, was quoted in the Times saying “the nonpayment rate really is emblematic of a system that’s not doing its job.”
This month’s new lawsuit from Missouri + conservative confrères to prospectively block Big Swing II (pre-election blanket loan forgiveness premised on the Higher Education Act) aimed to keep the din to a dull roar. In their complaint, the states provided evidence that before publishing the final rule, ED instructed loan servicers to forgive loans and draft emails notifying borrowers. The point, apparently, was to spread the word quickly; even ED knows that forgiveness isn’t forgiveness if it’s done in secret. Missouri et al. argued that confusion would be compounded if millions of borrowers hear from servicers that their loans are forgiven only to learn that another federal court has countermanded that decision. A Georgia judge agreed and issued yet another injunction.
Speaking of injunctions, one of the few semi-coherent statements made by former President Trump in last week’s presidential debate involved student loans. Although the context (abortion) was inappropriate and the analogy inapposite (inability to get congressional votes vs. winning in court), he wasn’t wrong about this: “they said they’re going to get student loans terminated and it ended up being a total catastrophe… all these students got taunted… they taunted young people.” He should know; if anyone’s an expert on taunting, it’s former President Trump.
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There's too many men, too many people
Making too many problems
- Land of Confusion
Our current approach to costly college tempered by loan forgiveness is a confusing combination of control and lenience: control in that – unless you’re inordinately wealthy – you must take on debt to earn a degree and launch your career; lenience in that maybe you won’t have to pay the debt. As such, financing higher education has caught up with the college experience itself. As UNC’s Rita Koganzon noted in the New York Times, universities attempt to micro-manage campus life but don’t hold students accountable for violating policies or laws. What’s the result of this heighted control and lenience? “A kind of simulacrum of adult independence that in reality infantilizes students and protects them from responsibility.”
With both the student experience and now its financing, higher education has followed in the footsteps of helicopter and snowplow parents who indulge their children through to adulthood then complain they’re not independent. The answer must be greater independence. But the current cost of college is simply way too high.
There’s only one way out: dramatically expand the supply of less expensive pathways to career launch. Pathways like industry certifications, bootcamps, and earn-and-learn options like work-integrated learning, internships, degree-apprenticeships, and apprenticeships. Then give students the freedom to choose. In this future state with a multitude of cheaper alternatives, if they take on debt to attend an expensive college, that’s a choice they’ll have to live with as independent adults. But as the current limited options – College or Chipotle – don’t present a serious choice, we’re only giving them a simulacrum of independence.
There’s a second benefit as well. Loan forgiveness has been criticized by many as backward-looking policy. So much time and energy directed into trying to right past college wrongs – “going back,” as Vice President Harris might say, instead of turning the page and moving forward. If even a small percentage of these resources had been directed towards establishing and strengthening new pathways to career launch, the Democratic Party would have plausible deniability to the charge that it’s the party of college elites. Particularly since, according to Brookings, “the beneficiaries of student loan forgiveness would be higher income, better educated, and whiter than beneficiaries of [any] other transfer program.”
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This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in
- Land of Confusion
Are we about to start trying? Here’s one positive sign. Last Friday Vice President Harris said this at a Pennsylvania rally: “For far too long, our nation has encouraged only one path to success: a four-year college degree. Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths, additional paths, such as apprenticeships and technical programs.” If the next administration spends as much effort on new pathways to economic opportunity as this one has on new pathways to student loan forgiveness, we won’t need to try another without the conga player.
The most confusing part of our Land of Confusion is why we’re not moving faster. Perhaps it’s all a big joke. If so, it’s a confusing one – and not nearly as good as the joke the Quiet Beatle played on the conga player.