The Quad: Delving into Joe Biden’s track record with educational policy

Among President-elect Joe Biden’s long list of future presidential duties, a particular matter of interest to the Bruin community is how he will reform the American education system.

The Quad is traveling through time to review Biden’s previous and current stances on certain issues surrounding higher education — and what Bruins can expect so far for the next four years.

Biden made headlines when he opposed race-integration busing during his time in the Senate 40 years ago. Many schools at the time were either segregated by law in the South or by housing patterns in the North. Busing strived to resolve this issue by assigning students to schools outside of their local school districts.

The late Delaware senator William V. Roth Jr. proposed a resolution in 1975 opposing race-integration busing. Biden was a cosponsor of this bill.

Biden said race-integration busing was the least effective remedy for the diversity issue in schools during a 1981 interview with CNN, and instead suggested that restructuring school districts and desegregating neighborhoods were more effective solutions.

Biden’s previous support for anti-busing efforts sparked controversy during the 2020 Democratic primary debates. Critics, including Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, were quick to call out Biden’s Senate record on busing, with Harris pointing out Biden’s alliance with the segregationist senators on the bill.

On the campaign trail in 2019, Biden said he still believes students shouldn’t have to be bused to a better school, but rather, high-quality schools should be in every neighborhood.

Nearly four decades after his part in the busing bill, Biden, as vice president, proposed America’s College Promise plan in 2015 alongside then-President Barack Obama. This proposal would have made the first two years of all community colleges tuition-free for responsible students had it been passed by Congress. According to White House officials under the Obama administration, the proposal could have benefited 9 million students and built up the community college system.

Ex-officio board member of Bruin Political Union Brandon Broukhim said community colleges play a vital role in promoting equity in education access, especially for certain demographics.

“What we have control over within our country, that people have the opportunities they need to get ahead … community colleges are a really important fundamental tool toward that,” Broukhim said.

The president-elect is not giving up on funding higher education when it comes to his future administration.

According to Forbes, Biden’s current free college plan includes student loan forgiveness, which is part of a $750 billion student loan plan — though it is now estimated by experts to exceed $2 trillion.

He also plans to invest $70 billion in historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions.

Angela Gutierrez, a graduate student in political science, said she believes the Biden administration’s plans for education will provide an equal playing field for low-income students.

“You shouldn’t be limited in resources because you live in a zip code where the tax base is smaller,” Gutierrez said. “The way we fund education in the United States is just really bizarre. It leads to a lot of inequity that we frankly have a very hard time overcoming in poor communities.”

These plans, especially loan forgiveness, could potentially help the current student loan debt crisis. According to a June 2020 report by the Federal Reserve, the national student loan debt currently sits at $1.6 trillion.

A source of trouble for alleviating the student debt crisis is the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, passed in 2005 under the Bush administration. The act lists student loans as one of the 10 loans that cannot be forgiven. Biden was initially a proponent of the act in 2005, but is now supportive of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to modify portions of it.

To Academic Advancement Program director Charles Alexander, loan forgiveness is crucial in the current climate where there are limited job opportunities.

“(Loan forgiveness) is certainly going to benefit students from low-income families who have high loans, for example, and who need relief in order to make a decent salary,” Alexander said.

The proposal would have hit a wall if pushed during the Trump administration, as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a staunch opponent of student loan forgiveness. With her departure and the arrival of Biden’s unannounced pick for Secretary of Education, progress may be possible.

DeVos’ exit is also an opportunity for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ free college plan to find stronger backing – DeVos criticized his proposal to make public universities tuition-free for families whose incomes fall below $125,000 during her Senate confirmation hearing in 2017, and has opposed it since.

According to Biden’s campaign website, the President-elect plans to adopt Sanders’ proposal.

Nevertheless, the president does not have full jurisdiction in implementing higher education policies and funding. If Democrats lose the Georgia Senate runoff elections Jan. 5, components of Biden’s free college plan may not pass in a split Congress.

Biden might have evolved from his earlier days as senator, but only time will tell if his new role as president will create improvements in the higher education system.