Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on AI and Student Debt Relief

American education has been radically transformed over the last few years by COVID school closures, the AI revolution, and groundbreaking legal rulings on affirmative action and student debt. And as students around the country head into the final stretch of the school year, there’s nobody better to help us understand this changing landscape than U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

As the head of the Department of Education in the Biden administration, Cardona has been at the forefront of implementing the President’s education policy. When Biden came into office, more than half of schools were still closed because of COVID—Secretary Cardona oversaw the reopening of America’s schools and distributed billions of dollars in federal funding for struggling students. He’s also in charge of the administration’s efforts to transform the student loan system, and as of mid-April the Biden administration has authorized $153 billion of student loan forgiveness affecting nearly 4.3 million borrowers around the country.

In this conversation, Secretary Cardona described what he loved most about being an elementary school principal, the challenges facing students and teachers in the aftermath of the pandemic, and how the Biden administration is tackling college affordability.

Tune in every Thursday, and join us as we continue to explore the minds that shape our world. You can listen to the full episode here, and below are a handful of excerpts from our conversation that have been condensed and edited for clarity.

On the issue of chronic student absenteeism post pandemic:

It’s important to remember that absenteeism is a symptom of deeper issues. And the issues could be anything from children that have to translate for their parents at a doctor’s appointment or at an appointment for a younger sibling, to children having housing insecurity who don’t have a way to get to where they’re supposed to go.

We also have a significant mental health crisis in our country that affects our youth. So, that doesn’t mean that the absences won’t hurt those students. We have to thread the needle to make sure that we’re holding folks accountable for what they’re responsible for while also addressing the underlying issues. I think it’s all critical. What we’re trying to do is really support schools, universities address those underlying issues like housing insecurity, mental health needs through the president’s budget.

On incorporating artificial intelligence and new technologies into education:

There is no substitute for in person learning—with a teacher working with students. Technology can help enhance learning. It could facilitate good practice. It doesn’t replace the school experience. It doesn’t replace the community experience. However, the laptop is the new pencil, and we do a disservice to our students when we don’t evolve at the pace that we need to evolve to keep up with the opportunities that our students have.

AI, for example, it’s here. It’s here. So we either help our students with digital citizenry and give them guardrails to understand how it can help, but how it can hurt, how you can get a lot of information, but you could also get biases reinforced, and make them better consumers of the product of AI or whatever tools are out there. Because I think if we deny the fact that this is coming, they’re going to do it without us. And then those guardrails are not there. But everything in moderation. It shouldn’t replace the interaction in schools, the face to face dialogue. I think we have to be careful not to let it replace the things that we know schools are intended for as well.

On student debt relief:

One in ten student loan borrowers in this country—one in ten of them—have had their debt relieved. We’re close to 160 billion dollars [in student loan forgiveness]. Four million people in this country have had debt relief in the last three years. We’re not even done with the first term. Look, not only was it something that the president campaigned on, more importantly, it was something that he believed in because higher education has been out of reach for too many Americans.

And while debt relief gets a lot of the attention, and rightfully so, it’s part of a suite of things that we’re doing to fix a broken higher education system. We’re improving federal aid for students, FAFSA, it hasn’t been touched in 40 years. We’re increasing aid in the Pell Grant every year for students. We’re making the process simpler. Before, the process was so cumbersome that students wouldn’t even fill it out.

We’re holding colleges accountable. We’re introducing gainful employment rules, which mean that you have to show the return on investment that students are getting when they’re paying for this education. We’re going after these for-profit institutions preying on first-generation college kids and putting them in debt. And they don’t even have the income after because those programs are not worth the paper the diploma’s written on.

 

 

 

Contact us at letters@time.com.