President Barack Obama is many things, and now he can add student newspaper columnist to his resume.
The president touted his new student loan savings plan in a op-ed published in the student newspapers at the University of Texas, California State University-Fresno, Texas Tech University and Harvard.
In a candid address to America's youth, Obama wrote that facing the future "can be scary" and addressed his own experience with student debt:
This is a tough time for a lot of Americans, especially young people. You’ve come of age at a time of profound change. The world has gotten more connected, but it’s also gotten more competitive. And for decades, too many of our institutions — from Washington to Wall Street — failed to adapt, culminating in the worst financial crisis and recession since the Great Depression.
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Michelle and I know what it feels like to leave school with a mountain of debt. We didn’t come from wealthy families. By the time we both graduated from law school, we had about $120,000 worth of debt between us. And even though we were lucky enough to land good jobs with steady incomes, it still took us almost 10 years to finally pay it all off. It wasn’t easy.
The president announced the loan plan, called "Know Before You Owe," at the University of Colorado-Denver last week. The plan allows students who graduate with debt to cap their repayments to 10 percent of their income.
In his piece, Obama said the changes would affect 1.6 million students, and that the government would provide students with a fact sheet to better inform them about how to pay for college. "That’s something Michelle and I wish we had," the president wrote.
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