The nationwide movement against student debt and rising college tuition costs is rising. Nearly one million people have signed onto a petition calling for full cancellation of student debt by executive order. The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), the student and campus section of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), has launched a national campaign to pressure Joe Biden to cancel all student debt as part of a broad set of demands for working-class relief during the pandemic.

Cancelling all student debt would be a transformative change for the forty-six million people in the United States who currently hold $1.6 trillion in debt — and could lay the groundwork for further movements demanding robust COVID-19 economic relief and the demand for free public college for all advanced by Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign.

Students at Columbia University are taking this movement a step further: 3,300 students have pledged a tuition strike for next semester unless a broad set of demands around tuition costs, financial aid, labor rights, divestment, housing justice, anti-racism, and police abolition are met.