BTW, Student Loan Overhaul
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In case you missed it during a week that saw the passage of the biggest health care reform since my grandparents were children, Obama and Congressional Democrats made a real investment in America’s educational future:
“This reform of the federal student loan programs will save taxpayers $68 billion over the next decade. And with this legislation, we’re putting that money to use achieving a goal I set for America: by the end of this decade, we will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
To make college more affordable for millions of middle-class Americans for whom the cost of higher education has become an unbearable burden, we’re expanding federal Pell Grants for students: increasing them to keep pace with inflation in the coming years and putting the program on a stronger financial footing. In total, we’re doubling funding for the federal Pell Grant program to help the students who depend on it.”
2 Comments
March 27th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
The nice thing about this is that they smuggled it in along with the health care bill. Why don’t they do more of that?
I can think of all kinds of… metaphor needed here… the opposite of a poison pill…
I can think of all kinds of “antidote pills” that progressive-minded legislators could sneak into bills. Why not? The Goofuses do it, why not the Gallants? What, are the other side going to complain about how sneakily the Dems get some good deed done? All the voters will care about is the deed itself.
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March 27th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Thank goodness, someone is finally talking about student loans – although I don’t really see this as doing as much as I’d like it to.
With all of the other bailouts, I’m not sure how it hasn’t come up yet that folks are going to have to one day soon seriously consider and grapple with the effect of starting off entire generations of kids with 10′s of 1000′s of $$ of direct debt straight into the work force.
If you think you can do much with a GED or Diploma these days you’re nuts, and even with a BA you’re often fooling yourself that you’ll be able to find the positions necessary to ever pay off your student loans. Education is awesome and fully necessary for an engaged civil society – but the inflation of need for higher and more specialized forms of education coupled with the exuberant costs of continuing the formality of receiving a degree makes for a potentially perilous situation.
All I can say is that I am worried for my peers and myself in the Millennial generation between the collapse of Social Security looming ahead and the cruxes of student loans holding us down like quick sand as we attempt to advance ourselves and society.
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