Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Alanna Berger
Zack Blumberg
Emily Considine
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz

Cheryn Hong
Krystal Hur
Ethan Kessler
Magdalena Mihaylova
Mary Rolfes
Michael Russo

Timothy Spurlin
Miles Stephenson
Joel Weiner
Erin White 
Lola Yang

FINNTAN STORER
Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St. 
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

MAYA GOLDMAN
Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 
AND JOEL DANILEWITZ
Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

EVAN STERN | COLUMN

Why forgiving student loan debt is a bad idea

KAYLA CHINITZ | OP-ED

Credit classism at U-M

Let’s find a better way

W

e all know attending 
college in this country 
has gotten expensive. 
In the last three decades, taking 
inflation into account, the average 
cost 
of 
attending 
a 
four-year 
institution in this country has 
doubled, while data indicates the 
price tag of earning a college degree 
rose eight times faster 
than wages in that 
same timespan. 
The result is a 
staggering 
student 
loan crisis that has 
burdened 
millions 
of college graduates 
who regularly find 
themselves trapped 
by tens of thousands 
of dollars in debt. The 
average 
American 
household with student loan debt 
owes almost $50,000, according 
to figures published by personal 
finance website NerdWallet, and a 
total of $1.6 trillion of debt still has 
to be paid back by approximately 43 
million borrowers.
With the growth of tuition 
consistently 
outpacing 
that 
of 
paychecks, Americans are finding 
it increasingly difficult to recover 
and purchase a home, start a family 
and even appreciate the benefits 
of a college degree. And given the 
popularity of higher education, 
this crisis will affect more and 
more Americans if a solution is not 
quickly found.
Here 
at 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan, we are fortunate to 
have great programs that allow 
lower income-earners to receive a 
world-class education, regardless of 
socioeconomic status. With the Go 
Blue Guarantee, in-state students 
admitted to the Ann Arbor campus 
with a family income of $65,000 or 
less can receive free tuition, while 
families with an income of up to 
$180,000 receive some kind of 
financial support. 
But sadly, many students are not 
as fortunate. Across the nation, a 
great number of students are forced 
to take out risky loans in order 
to graduate from college. Even 
here in Ann Arbor, many students 
who don’t qualify for the Go Blue 
Guarantee encounter difficulties. 
After college, graduates are faced 
with the challenging task of paying 
back this debt.
In order to address this crippling 
problem, 
many 
people 
have 
pointed to blanket student-loan 
debt forgiveness, which would 

effectively cancel much (or all) of 
the debt that borrowers are still 
working to pay back. And with the 
2020 presidential election now less 
than a year away, many of the more 
liberal members of the Democratic 
field, 
especially 
Sen. 
Bernie 
Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth 
Warren, D-Mass., have gotten on 
board with this plan in an 
effort to give some relief 
to graduates and make 
college less costly as a 
whole.
While Warren says she 
would aim to cancel or 
significantly reduce the 
debt owed by households 
with 
income 
under 
$250,000, 
according 
to 
her 
“Affordable 
Higher 
Education 
for All” proposal, Sanders says 
he would ambitiously work to 
forgive the entire $1.6 trillion 
owed by Americans, as his public 
education plan states. In order to 
gather enough money to pay for 
student loan debt cancellation, 
both would take revenue from 
their controversial “Wealth Tax” 
proposals. 
On the surface, forgiving student 
loan debt may sound attractive. 
As marketed by Warren, Sanders 
and others, it appears at first as 
a compassionate policy move, a 
proposal that would assist pained 
graduates who are burdened by 
debt. But on the whole, blanket 
student loan forgiveness would 
precipitate a cascade of problems 
in our economic and educational 
systems.
One of the largest issues with 
blanket debt cancellation is the 
staggering cost. Like some of 
Warren and Sanders’ other plans, 
such as “Medicare-for-All,” which 
they have expressed unwavering 
support for, this proposal carries 
a disturbing price tag that will 
have a profound effect on all of 
us. According to a report sent 
to her campaign, Warren’s loan 
forgiveness plan would cost well 
over $600 billion dollars. 
While these candidates and other 
politicians promise that only the 
wealthy will be taxed, it is inevitable 
this cost will spread through 
society and impact everybody in 
some way. One of the most notable 
ways a debt forgiveness program 
could leave its mark on society 
could be by widening the wealth 
gap, especially between white 
and black households. “While 

eliminating student debt for all 
households regardless of income 
increases median net worth for 
young white and Black households, 
white families see a greater benefit 
likely due to a higher likelihood of 
completing college and graduate 
degree programs,” according to 
research released by Demos and 
the Institute on Assets and Social 
Policy in 2015. Since people who 
have taken out student loans are 
likely already better off financially 
and likely have a college degree 
and good-paying job, student loan 
forgiveness could actually make 
them even better off relative to 
those who never attended college.
Yet another issue with student 
loan 
debt 
forgiveness 
is 
the 
possibility that it could erode the 
high quality of college education 
that is so common in American 
institutions. According to Forbes 
in June, debt cancellation would 
ensure that “nobody (would be) 
on the hook for the growing costs 
of higher education. …” Why 
would a college care as much 
about maintaining the level of its 
programs in a responsible manner 
if it knew many of its students were 
essentially coming there for free? 
Blanket loan forgiveness creates a 
broad accountability problem in the 
end.
Finally, setting everything else 
aside, debt cancellation truly sets 
a strikingly bad precedent. If all 
graduates with student loans can 
suddenly wake up one day with all 
of their debt completely gone, what 
kind of model does that set for the 
future? In a nation with blanket 
student loan forgiveness, we may 
soon see others who are burdened 
by debt from different sources 
trying to convince the government 
to forgive their loans as well.
Ultimately, 
a 
student 
loan 
forgiveness 
program 
would 
systematically 
undermine 
the 
unparalleled 
nature 
of 
our 
respected educational system while 
directly harming our economy. It 
is simple common sense to realize 
that instead of working to mitigate 
the problems stemming from our 
broken student loan system, we 
must truly work to revamp this 
failing system itself. In the end, that 
will revolutionize our system of 
higher education here in the United 
States much more than blanket 
debt forgiveness ever could.

ISABELLE SCHINDLER | COLUMN

Evan Stern can be reached at 

erstern@umich.edu.

I

t’s time to change how we 
nominate our presidential 
candidates.
The path to becoming a 
presidential nominee of a major 
party is long and convoluted. 
The main events of this process 
are the individual primaries 
and caucuses held by each state. 
The most well-known are the 
Iowa caucuses and the New 
Hampshire 
primary, 
which 
always come first and second, 
respectively. 
This gives these states an 
outsized share in choosing who 
will be the nominee. Is it fair 
for them to have this power? 
Should different, more diverse 
states take their place? Or should 
we change the whole system? 
Though the answers to these 
questions are not clear, this is 
an important conversation we 
should be having.
Julián 
Castro, 
Democratic 
presidential 
candidate 
and 
former secretary of Housing and 
Urban Development, contributed 
to 
the 
public 
conversation 
around changing the nominating 
system this week when he called 
for a reshuffling of the order of 
the Democratic primaries.
Castro 
singled 
out 
Iowa 
and New Hampshire, saying 
they should no longer be the 
first two states to vote since 
they are not representative of 
Democratic voters nationwide. 
Castro indirectly pointed to the 
fact that both of these states are 
overwhelmingly 
white, 
Iowa 
being 91 percent white and New 
Hampshire 94 percent white. 
The diversity in these states 
falls far behind the U.S. as a 
whole, which is estimated to 
be only about 60 percent white. 
Castro argued that this lack of 
diversity devalues the voices that 
are integral to the success of the 
Democratic Party. 
Critics of Castro point to the 
fact that South Carolina and 

Nevada, whose primaries come 
after Iowa and New Hampshire, 
are much more diverse. South 
Carolina has a large African-
American population and Nevada 
a large Latino population.
However, 
Castro 
argued 
Iowa and New Hampshire are 
bellwether 
states; 
campaigns 
that do not do well in either will 
not be able to make it to South 
Carolina or Nevada. He is not 
wrong in this regard as the only 
time a Democratic nominee 
won neither Iowa nor New 
Hampshire was 1976.
For Castro, these comments 
are 
largely 
political. 
His 
campaign has been struggling, 
as he has had to cut back on 
staff and did not qualify for the 
November 
debate. 
However, 
his comments have merit. The 
system that we use to nominate 
a 
presidential 
candidate 
is 
extremely complicated and not 
very democratic. The question: 
How can we fix it? 
The fact that Iowa and New 
Hampshire have so much power 
is unfair. As Castro pointed out, 
if a candidate does not do well 
in those states, they will usually 
have to close up shop. That 
means states that come later 
in the primary schedule do not 
have as many options or as big of 
a say in choosing who represents 
the Democrats. 
However, all Castro is calling 
for is having a more diverse 
state go first the primaries. This 
will not address the problem 
of certain states having more 
power than others, since it will 
simply substitute one inequality 
for another. 
One of the most obvious 
answers would be to have every 
state vote on the same day in 
a national primary. Like any 
system, this has its own set of 
pros and cons. A national primary 
could significantly reduce the 
duration of the election and 

would equally distribute voting 
power among the states.
However, this process would 
come with its own drawbacks. 
State by state primaries allow 
politicians with little money or 
name recognition to gain voter 
support 
through 
intensive, 
on-the-ground 
campaigning, 
such as town halls, canvassing 
and other grassroots actions. 
This was true in 2008 when 
Barack Obama was able to 
beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa, 
despite 
her 
greater 
name 
recognition. If there were a 
national primary, it is likely 
that people with the most name 
recognition would win or that 
a large number of candidates 
would split the field, allowing 
a 
candidate 
lacking 
broad 
popular support to win. 
There are a few other 
solutions 
that 
could 
be 
implemented. 
One 
possible 
option would be to divide the 
country up into five sets of 
ten states and do a rotating 
primary 
schedule 
so 
that 
every U.S. state could be part 
of the first block at least once 
every 20 years. 
However, this would be 
complicated 
to 
implement 
and still runs into the issue 
of 
discriminating 
against 
small campaigns that may be 
unable to compete in 10 states 
at once. Such a process might 
also be confusing to voters. 
Democracy is often messy, 
and the nominee selection 
process is no exception. I don’t 
know what the right answer is, 
and I’m not sure anyone else 
does either. However, this is 
a conversation we should be 
having. Maybe, from those 
conversations, we can come up 
with a better way to pick our 
presidential nominees. 

Isabelle Schindler can be reached 

at ischind@umich.edu.

W

e’ve all been there. 
Watching 
the 
number of available 
seats drop for a course you 
desperately want to take crushes 
your soul a little. But for some 
students this stress eases as 
they advance in class rank; for 
others, it is ongoing. Currently, 
the University of Michigan’s 
policy on assigning enrollment 
appointment gives students from 
better-resourced high schools 
preferential treatment at an 
institutional level.
U-M 
assigns 
enrollment 
appointments 
based 
on 
Credits Toward Program. The 
more credits you have, the 
earlier you can secure your 
spot in a course. Therefore, 
students who come to college 
having 
already 
received 
Advanced 
Placement 
or 
International 
Baccalaureate 
scores set by U-M will enroll 
first 
among 
their 
class 
throughout 
their 
college 
career, while those at the back 
of the line will continue to be 
pushed out of their desired 
courses. The repercussions 
of this issue impact computer 
science students particularly 
strongly, 
where 
lower 
registration priority means 
ending up on long waitlists 
for courses they want to take 
or even need to complete 
their degrees.
If every high school student 
had equal access to AP and 
IB 
courses, 
then 
perhaps 
a 
system 
of 
credit-based 
enrollment times would grant 
equality of opportunity to all 
U-M students. In U.S. public 
schools, however, that is not 
the case; resource inequality 
manifests 
along 
racial, 
economic 
and 
geographic 
lines.
Let’s back up. AP courses 
cost money — a lot of money. 
The College Board estimates 
it 
costs 
schools 
between 
$1,900 and $11,650 to start 
one new AP course. On top 
of these expenses, running 
a new class means paying 
another teacher. In cities like 
Detroit, where money is in 
“short supply in city schools 
that have spent much of the 
recent decades fending off 
one crisis after another,” such 
cumulative costs frequently 
diminish the feasibility of 
offering AP and IB courses. 
Since the amount of money 
a school receives depends 
substantially 
on 
property 
taxes 
from 
its 
district, 

wealthy schools in wealthy 
neighborhoods 
often 
have 
more money to spend on AP 
and IB courses. Accordingly, 
students from higher-income 
communities are more likely 
to take AP courses than 
students from lower-income 
communities. 
These disparities are also 
prominent along racial lines. 
According to a ProPublica 
report, white students are 1.8 
times more likely to take AP 
classes than Black students 
nationwide. 
In 
Michigan 
specifically, 
that 
number 
jumps to 2.6 percent. U.S. 
Department 
of 
Education 
research 
backs 
up 
trends 
demonstrated by this data. 
In 2014, Black and Latino 
students made up 37 percent 
of high school students, but 
only 18 percent of students 
who pass AP exams with a 
qualifying score of 3 or above.
There is also geographic 
inequity in AP test completion. 
A 2017 report explains rural 
schools also face challenges 
of overcrowding and limited 
resources, and these resource 
constraints are reflected in 
accessibility of AP courses 
nationwide. 
In 
2015, 
73 
percent of seniors in rural 

high 
schools 
had 
access 
to at least one AP course, 
compared to 95 percent of 
seniors 
in 
suburban 
high 
schools. Rural schools are 
often 
overlooked 
because 
they are more isolated than 
urban and suburban schools, 
but one-fifth of public school 
students in the U.S. attend a 
rural school. That’s a sizable 
accessibility 
issue. 
While 
access to higher-level courses 
in rural schools has increased 
over 
recent 
years, 
that 
22-percent gap is still very 
real and very wide. 
In putting forth these stats, 
I do not intend to paint over 
any community with a wide 
brush — each community has 

its own complexities that 
influence how its schools 
operate. But I do want to draw 
attention to inequalities that 
reverberate in our enrollment 
time assignments. I want to 
highlight those connections 
because, through its CTP-
based system of enrollment 
appointment 
assignment, 
U-M 
is 
perpetuating 
socioeconomic 
inequities 
in 
the 
education 
system. 
A 
system 
that 
privileges 
students with access to AP 
and IB courses is a system 
that privileges students from 
affluent schools.
For 
a 
university 
that 
invests heavily in Diversity, 
Equity 
and 
Inclusion 
initiatives 
and 
seems 
determined to portray itself 
as equitable, it is shocking 
that 
this 
structural 
bias 
against 
students 
from 
lower-income 
and 
rural 
communities 
is 
built 
into its system of course 
registration. 
In 
renewing 
patterns of privilege, U-M 
is sending a message about 
which students it values. 
But let’s be clear, it’s not 
just U-M. If you research the 
registration 
time 
systems 
of large universities, you’ll 
find 
that 
many 
of 
them 
have similar structures. So 
if our system is inherently 
unfair, 
what’s 
a 
better 
alternative? Let’s look at 
Boston 
University. 
Each 
semester, BU randomizes a 
list of numbers 0 through 9, 
and registration start times 
are assigned (within each 
class year) based where the 
last digit of a student’s ID 
number falls on that list. The 
key idea here is that BU’s 
system of enrollment time 
assignment is randomized. 
It isn’t systematically biased 
toward any one student over 
another. If a student gets an 
early enrollment slot two 
semesters in a row, it’s by 
chance.
AP and IB courses provide 
fruitful, valuable learning 
experiences for high school 
students; however, we should 
not be basing our system 
of course enrollment on a 
system that is inherently 
unequal, 
classist 
and 
continuously puts students 
from affluent communities 
at the front of the line. 

Kayla Chinitz is a junior in LSA 

and the School of Education.

Students from 
higher-income 
communities are 
more likely to take 
AP courses

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. 
Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 
to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to 
tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

EVAN
STERN

The Opinion section has created a space in The Michigan 
Daily for first-person accounts of sexual assault and 
its corresponding personal, academic and legal 
implications. Submission information can be found at 
https://tinyurl.com/survivespeak.

SUBMIT TO SURVIVORS SPEAK

