This isn't a college essay question -- but it's one that may end up being very important to millions of American students.
It is also often the key issue in the US Supreme Court, especially in the age of an unassailable conservative majority that takes a dim view of government interventions on health, social and regulatory policy at the best of times.
On Tuesday, the court took up two cases brought by challengers to President Joe Biden's plan to alleviate some of the crushing student loan debt held by American borrowers.
In one case, Biden v. Nebraska, a group of Republican-led states argued the president exceeded his authority by using the pandemic as a pretext to make good a campaign pledge to erase student loan debt. In the second, two individuals who didn't qualify for loan relief argued that the government didn't follow its own rules when drawing it up.
As always, paying too much attention to the questions justices ask in a hearing can lead us astray. But several appeared open to seeing these cases as a way to again constrain what the government can do without the agreement of Congress. And since Congress is hopelessly divided and finds it hard to do anything much, that could be bad news for debt-laden graduates.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked the lawyers in the case to explain how the student debt relief issue related to other cases dealing with the powers wielded by the White House during the pandemic, since there doesn't seem to be a clear doctrine of what is permissible in such cases.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, tried to bring across the humanity of the situation. "There's 50 million students … who will benefit from this. Who today will struggle. Many of them don't have assets sufficient to bail them out after the pandemic. They don't have friends or families or others who can help them make these payments," she said.
At the same time, however, there are millions of other Americans who never attended college due to academic or financial reasons. They also have a right to ask why the government is willing to write off thousands of dollars for those who did, and not them. But that is more a political question for Biden to answer than a legal dilemma for the justices.
A final ruling in the case is expected by the summer.
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