Biden's executive order to make HBCUs more equitable and affordable doesn't include student-debt cancellation

• Biden unveiled an executive order to advance educational and economic equity for HBCUs.
• The order addressed college affordability, but it didn't include student-debt cancellation.
• Biden campaigned on canceling debt for HBCU students, which disproportionately impacts Black borrowers.

President Joe Biden unveiled an executive order last week to advance educational and economic opportunities for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), but his campaign promise to cancel those students' debt - which disproportionately impacts Black borrowers - didn't make the cut.

HBCUs typically have smaller endowments than other colleges and they have a larger percentage of lower-income students, which is why Biden's executive order aims to address those disparities by implementing new strategies to advance "educational equity, excellence, and opportunity at HBCUs," according to the order. Specifically, Biden plans to expand their access to federal funds and establish a board comprised of HBCU leaders to promote the schools' best interests.

"It is the policy of my Administration to advance educational equity, excellence, and economic opportunity in partnership with HBCUs, and to ensure that these vital institutions of higher learning have the resources and support to continue to thrive for generations to come," the executive order said.

And among the measures to support HBCUs, the order said it would "address college affordability," but Biden's campaign promise of addressing that issue by canceling student debt for HBCU students was missing.

Insider reported on the promises Biden made to address the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis, which included canceling $10,000 in student debt per borrower, reforming student-loan programs, and forgiving all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt for borrowers from public colleges and universities earning up to $125,000 per year, including HBCUs.

So far, the only promise Biden's administration has started acting on is reforming student-loan programs, and while targeted student-debt cancellation has occurred for defrauded borrowers and borrowers with disabilities, there's no word on where the broader debt forgiveness stands.

The type of debt Biden promised to cancel for HBCUs - institutional student debt - is different from the federal loan forgiveness conversation, which urges forgiveness for debt collected by loan companies that can make profits from doing so. Institutional student debt is owed to schools by students and can be used as collateral until the debt is paid off, posing significant barriers to education, which is why a growing number of HBCUs are taking matters into their own hands and using federal stimulus money to wipe out that debt for their students.

But beyond that, the federal student loan burden disproportionately falls on Black borrowers and hinders the educational equity Biden is seeking to address.

In April, 36 civil rights organizations released civil-rights principles detailing the benefits that student-debt cancellation would have on Black borrowers. The organizations, including the NAACP, wrote that Black borrowers typically owe 50% more student debt than white borrowers, and four years later, Black borrowers owe 100% more.

HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge even acknowledged this, telling Axios in June that poor people and people of color hold the most student debt, requiring reform.

"Who has student debt? Poor people, Black people, brown people," Fudge said. "We're the people who carry most debt. And so the system's already skewed toward us not being creditworthy."

Leading lawmakers who are pushing for $50,000 in student-debt cancellation per borrower, like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, believe that type of widescale debt forgiveness is the best and easiest way to advance educational and economic equity.

"$50,000 would help close the racial wealth gap for those with student loan debt," Warren told Insider in June. "And it would wipe out all outstanding debt for about 38 million Americans, which would provide an enormous boost to our economy."