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Campaign for America's Future / Op-Ed
Published: Sunday 29 April 2012
President Obama supports keeping the current Stafford Loan interest rate at a low 3.4% rate. His opponent Mitt Romney just reversed his position and said he agrees.
Don’t Let Congress Kick College Grads in the Teeth
Here’s the real debt crisis: student loan debt. Today, the average student graduates from college with a diploma and an anchor — $25,000 of debt.
And if Congress doesn’t act, student loan interest rates will double on July 1.
President Obama supports keeping the current Stafford Loan interest rate at a low 3.4% rate. His opponent Mitt Romney just reversed his position and said he agrees. This should not be a partisan issue.
Yet the House bill to stop the scheduled rate increase has no Republican sponsors.
The Republican chair of the House education committee says he has “serious concerns” about the bill. And the Republican budget — championed by Paul Ryan and embraced as “marvelous” by Mitt Romney — both calls for deep cuts in Pell grants and assumes that the interest rates on government sponsored student loans will double.
What are the Republican “concerns”? They claim to be opposed to the $6 billion cost of keeping the rate low.
But jacking up the rate simply shifts that $6 billion cost onto the next generation of students who are already crushed by debt.
And House Republicans didn’t have a problem last week passing a bill with yet another tax break for the rich that would add $46 billion to the national debt.
It gets worse, the key Republican subcommittee chair recently revealed her ignorance about today’s high cost of college. Rep. Virginia Foxx declared she had “very little tolerance” for students with major debt because there is “no reason” to take out big student loans.
Why? Because she worked her way through college 50 years ago … when the cost of college was about three times cheaper.
They are playing politics with the futures of our students. It must stop.
Conservatives routinely claim we need severe austerity to save the next generation from massive debt. Yet here they are, about to dump more debt on them right now.
Instead of kicking students when they are down, we should end the student debt crisis. The Federal Reserve lends money to banks at rates near 0%, why not lend to students at similar rates? Unlike banks, graduates won’t use the money to blow up the economy.
We need bold ideas to make college affordable and give every child the tools to thrive in the modern economy.
For example, estimates on what it would cost to give every student free tuition at public colleges are LESS than the cost of Ryan and Romney’s pledge to eliminate the estate tax on multi-million dollar fortunes.
Surely it makes more sense to insure that every qualified student can afford the education that he or she has earned than it does to guarantee that the heirs of the wealthy need never work another day in their lives.
We cannot simply protect the status quo. But the absolute last thing our college graduates need right now is to add to the burden of their school debts.
We need to win this fight against the loan rate increase today, and build momentum to win big progressive reforms tomorrow.
7 comments on "Don’t Let Congress Kick College Grads in the Teeth"
April 29, 2012 7:35pm
Well we are doing it again the bailout for the banks which is where the double interest is going to is another form of the banks hegging their bets if they could not get the credit cards paid off in the bailout as they knew bks would go up then fall back on the student loans. It is up to us to demand that the current interest rates stay the same or are lowered and are due only when students get a job.
When are the schools going to teach the students how to be independent of being a corporate tool. Create something that the chinese cant compete with.
Its just like the two towers in the lord of the rings when Grimma Worm tounge said my lord it would take tens of thousands to storm the keep while the urikai
chanted burning bashing burning bashing. Thats what it will take.
Thank you good night and god bless.
April 29, 2012 6:42pm
"...estimates on what it would cost to give every student free tuition at public colleges are LESS than the cost of Ryan and Romney’s pledge to eliminate the estate tax on multi-million dollar fortunes."
Think opportunity cost.
April 29, 2012 4:08pm
Education loans from the government should be free of profit. If a student wants to borrow from a private lender, then that's his or her business.
I can't understand why any government that benefits from educating its masses would want to profit from students while at the same time allowing them to get so deeply in debt that they are barred from fully participating in the economic structure of the country for years or even a lifetime. It's like a dog eating it's tail becasue it's hungry.
But there is a real economic factor here too. Students get so in debt and cannot pay their way out of it, meaning that they cannot qualify for home loans, car loans, or any other "economic growth behavior" on which our economy depends. Their money is going to loan institutions that have gotten their loans from the government at extremely low interest rates. Why not allow students to get those loans directly from the government less profit? I mean an educated populace gives the country back many times more than an uneducated populace deeply in debt.
Already students are one trillion dollars in debt. How can this be beneficial to the economy? The only thing these students did wrong was to grow up in a situation where they didn't have enough money to pay for school and at the same time having the ability and desire to go to school.
Granted, some made bad decisions. So what? Are we now living in a "one strike" you're practically out of the economic game forever?
But this doesn't fix the problem of education expense. If you qualify for college and you want to better yourself, shouldn't free education be a top priority of any great nation?
April 29, 2012 1:31pm
The bill passed - with an attack on women's healthcare rights.....the money will be taken out of the healthcare bill's preventive healthcare section WOMEN'S health -
Conservatives routinely claim we need severe austerity to save the next generation from massive debt.
BUT GOLLY GEE MISS MOLLY THERE WAS NO TALK ABOUT GEORGE BUSH'S TWO WARS - THE 878 BILLION DOLLAR BAILOUT THEY WANT TO LIE ABOUT AND SAY HAS BEEN REPAID - ALL LIES - JUST LIKE WMD's
YELLOWCAKE URANIUM
- THE OUTING OF C.I.A. OPERATIVE VALARIE PLAME " BY SCOOTER LIBBY
- VICE-PRESIDENT's DICK CHENEY's CHIEF OF STAFF - OH GEE, GOLLY NO PRISON TIME -.-
FOUND GUILTY let me repeat myself no prison time ?.?.?.?.?
DEBT -.- YES DEBT
----ALL THOSE FINE REPUBLICANS OWE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES-----INSIDER TRADING ---- HOW MUCH IN THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX????
P R E T E N D.... ALL YOU WANT.......T R U T H
April 29, 2012 12:55pm
I am sure glad I'm not a young adult coming up today. They are getting screwed at every turn. First by the "institutions of higher learning" they NEED to attend in order to get a decent job, second by the government that should be helping them attain their goals, not screwing them over with debt for the rest of their lives - these kids won't be able to afford to buy a house. THAT is criminal. Education should be free - vocational-type training as well as college.
Make the rich pay what they should pay in taxes, make the mega corporations pay what they should be paying, stop giving subsidies to the rich corporations. THEN we would have the money to have free higher education for all!
April 29, 2012 11:19am
(Note, please, that the comment below aimed originally at reply to "Teabagged2death," but the Nation of Change "reply" function apparently does not do that -- only creates "new" comments.)
Please, let's not say merely "caveat emptor," but, more, public beware.
The "shills" you mention, who "place" for the for-profit flim-flams, all only exist because the nice, genteel, already-tenured have made their bargain with the whole sleaze industry. The nice, genteel, already-tenured (and their wannabees) have agreed to stay in departmental ostrich holes -- ostrich security for life -- simply for agreeing never to see or otherwise pay any attention ever to anything outside their ostriched silos.
It started some years back when, agreeing that continued comfort of the nicely-tenured depended on outsourcing teaching costs, corporate admin began upping the proportion of instruction by low-paid temps, adjuncts, and TAs.
The principle having been set, and the bar lowered, whole for-profit biz colleges could play the same game. Shills all, backed by spouses of the most prominent Dems and Republican "leaders" of the land, who have made millions from the flim-flam.
What a bed America has made for itself.
April 29, 2012 8:51am
Attention Potential Students of Trade Schools:
Don't learn the hard way like I had to that these are private businesses "offering" everything, including job placement programs, but "delivering" nothing.
In 2000, JTTI offered new careers in Medical Transcription with brochures that were packaged along with unemployment checks, adding to their credibility. The cost was 4K over a 10 year period, with the promise of a new career paying 45K/annum, with a placement program at $12/hour for 90 day trial period. The final cost after default was 6K with added interest from collection agencies.
After graduation, the jobs offered were on production only, since nobody paid an hourly wage. After a 2 month job search and finally being hired at production against minumum wage, I was told that it would have been better to hire on as an intern 8 months previously and skip school completely, since companies have their own certification programs.
By the time a lawsuit could be filed for false advertising, the school folded, but my loan ended up being shifted to a loan collector who never responded whenever I tried to pay them back, causing default and ruining my 35 year credit history. It took more than 8 years to pay them back, and 1 year at minimum wage before earning 45K promised.
Every commercial for these privatized Alleged Schools have attractive model/shills promising "18 million jobs in the service industry over the next 10 years", so please remember that these Alleged New Careers, will be at Minimum Wage, if there are actually any jobs!
Please do the math and research: that's a measly 1.8 million jobs for 40 plus currently million unemployed, as well as those duped into these fraudulent programs, per annum. Their "placement" shills are paid very well to lie for them.
Caveat emptor!