(The Hill) – Forty-seven percent of people who did not finish their postsecondary degree say they would “very likely” go back to school if they got some student debt relief.
The State of Higher Education 2023 report released early Wednesday morning by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found 31 percent of all students who left school with debt would “somewhat likely” go back, while 22 percent say they are “not very likely” or “not likely at all” to return to higher education.
The poll comes as student borrowers are set to find out soon if they will receive the up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness President Biden proposed last year. Biden’s plan could receive a ruling any day now from the conservative-leaning Supreme Court.
On average, students in the survey who did not finish their degree said they would need 70 percent of their loans forgiven in order to re-enroll in school.
For a person to get 70 percent of their student debts forgiven under Biden’s plan, they would need to have around $29,000 in student loans or less, provided they qualified for the maximum amount of forgiveness.
The Chamber of Commerce says the average student loan debt is around $37,172 for U.S. borrowers.
While students may be considering going back, the poll also found 41 percent said they had a “very difficult” or “difficult” time remaining in their programs, with Black and Hispanic students more likely than white students to report the difficulty.
The report surveyed 6,008 students, ages 18 to 59, currently enrolled in a postsecondary education program and 3,004 adults in the same age range who had some college experience but do not have a degree and are not currently enrolled in a postsecondary education program. It did not list a margin of error.