Photo: Kent Nishimura

Millions of student loan borrowers have been waiting to find out whether the Biden Administration’s plan to forgive some federal student debt will provide them with financial relief. Last week, they got an answer.

On the final day of this year’s session, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the plan unconstitutional, throwing a key Biden campaign promise into doubt and denying debt forgiveness for 26 million people who had applied. The vote was 6-3, with the liberal justices dissenting.

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a fatal blow last week to President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel student debt for tens of millions of Americans. But Biden student debt relief isn’t dead yet.

Just hours after the court’s conservative majority rejected his loan forgiveness program as a drastic overreach of executive authority, Biden moved swiftly to resuscitate his efforts to cancel debt by invoking a different legal authority.

The teenagers seeking shade as their tour groups crisscrossed leafy Harvard Yard last week knew that they would be among the first students to feel the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions when they applied to colleges.

What they didn’t know was exactly how it would affect their chances. But many high school students, visiting Harvard University and beyond, say they are concerned to see long-established admissions practices giving way to something new and unfamiliar.