Mountains of Student Debt, and the Political Will for Solutions Are at Hand

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



The Progress Report

Mountains of Student Debt, and the Political Will for Solutions Are at Hand
It's time to kick profit-seeking private student lenders out of the loaning process.

March 10, 2010 |
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, and Alex Seitz-Wald


One of the great hardships facing American college students today is student debt.

According to a recent report from The Project on Student Debt, the average student in the class of 2008 graduated with $23,000 of debt, "a figure 25 percent higher than what their older brothers and sisters owed when they graduated from college in 2004"; two out of every three college students now graduate with debt, and the Great Recession is requiring students to take out more loans than ever before. In the 2008-09 academic year, federal student loan borrowing "grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion." A major reason for the ever-growing debt load America's students are taking on is the broken student lending system, a big part of which involves the government paying student loan companies to originate and service loans. The companies are the inefficient middle men that drive up costs for students without adding any value. To rectify this problem, progressives in Congress introduced the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which expands and improves successful student aid programs like the Pell Grant and the Perkins Loan program, and eliminates billions of dollars in subsidies to wasteful private lenders. Last September, by a 253-171 vote, the House of Representatives passed this landmark student lending legislation. Now, SAFRA is a Senate vote away from the President's desk, and a group of Republicans and conservative Democrats, buoyed by "an aggressive lobbying campaign by the nation's biggest student lenders," is all that stands in the way of creating a more just and cost-efficient federal student lending system. Additionally, there are reports circulating that Senate Democrats may pair their "overhaul of federal student lending with healthcare reform" in one reconciliation package, which would allow SAFRA to pass with a simple majority vote in the Senate and avoid a filibuster by lender-friendly conservatives. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/145986/mountains_of_student_debt%2C_and_the_political_will_for_solutions_are_at_hand

[dkf]

1. Are you kidding?

The major problem is the cost of college! That is where the inflation is. Geez

[WCGreen]

3. The inflation in costs to College go hand in hand with eacy access to

student loans...

[dkf]

4. Same reason health costs go up.

[depakid]

2. 6 corrupt Dems this time around- the usual suspects with a couple of new additions

Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, Mark Warner of Virginia and Jim Webb of Virginia.