Back to School
School is back in session -- and so is the United States Senate.
In July, I wrote to you about our impressive Senate victory for America's college students. Democrats passed the Higher Education Access Act, the largest student aid relief package since the GI Bill in World War II!
The House and Senate have now agreed on the final version of the bill, and the Senate is likely to approve it today, followed quickly by House approval. It's now called the Higher Education Access and Cost Reduction Act, and in a matter of days, it could be on the president's desk waiting for his signature.
Democrats are doing everything in their power to prevent the student loan industry from derailing this needed legislation. For years, Sallie Mae and other lenders have been siphoning off billions of dollars in federal subsidies intended for students, while charging students astronomical interest rates for the loans they need to pay for college. It's long past time to put a stop to that outrageous abuse.
Just this week, I released a new report on the urgent need for student loan reform. The report describes how lenders make improper payments to colleges in return for preferential treatment on student loans. The abuses include "day retreats," free Rose Bowl tickets, and even free manicures and pedicures for college officials. These benefits are used to entice those officials to favor particular lenders instead of providing neutral financial advice to students.
Student loans shouldn't be decided by box seats and beauty services. We owe it to students to provide them with every opportunity they need for success, and to make sure they're getting the best deal possible for their hard-earned education dollars.
I've received thousands of stories from people across the country who struggle with college debt -- including many from people here at the Huffington Post.
Phansen wrote:
I'll be starting grad school in a month, pursuing a PhD in English. While I'm hoping to leave with only about 25k in loan debt, I'm not heading towards a particularly lucrative career. By making education financing so difficult, we pressure students to enter professions based purely on financial reward. How will this impact our national culture down the road, when all we have is I.T. professionals and lawyers?
Ron704 wrote:
I have over $40,000 in student loan debt and went to a state university in my middle age in an attempt to better myself. Unfortunately, now I'm disabled and I'm 2-1/2 years into the social security process. I'm quite sure every nickel and dime bill collector that my loans got sold to will be in line to garnish the paltry sum I will eventually receive from SS, keeping me in abject poverty the rest of my life. Even at that, with interest accumulation, there's no possible way my loans could ever be paid in my lifetime.
Every year, 400,000 qualified students don't go to a four-year-college, because they can't afford it. Those who do attend are too often faced with crippling debt like Phansen and Ron704 face.
We're a better nation than that. Please contact your representatives in Washington to ensure that the Higher Education Access and Cost Reduction Act makes it through Congress -- and that President Bush signs it into law.
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Senator Kennedy,
We appreciate your efforts on behalf of college students. I am in favor of students being able to borrow money to attend college at an interest rate that is affordable for pay-back. I am not in favor of students going to college tuition free simply because they are going to be teachers, physicists, engineers, or whatever. I am in favor of students being able to work in areas of high need regardless of the area of degree, and have that count as a portion of payback for their loans. There should be equal access/cost for students. Those students who are eligible should receive pell grants for a portion of their costs. And, those in positions of power who have taken advantage of money designated to help college students should have to pay it back at double the highest interest rate charged to college students.
Loans for middle class students are, in the long run, a hindrance, not a help. The basic assumption is that the Graduate will pay off his massive debt as soon as he finishes college and becomes employed. The fact is that along with that debt comes LIFE. Which means that the young person must right out of school find a high paying job that will cover his costs of rent or mortgage, car, food, etc. as well as the massive debt he just accrued getting an education. How much must this new-graduate earn to accomplish this? Thirty, forty,fifty thousand per year? And how much must he or she earn if along the way he or she get married and have a child, or two.
There has to be a better way to provide higher education for our young people. Or must college again go back to the days that only the rich can enjoy the luxury of being educated.
I do not have the answer. Maybe more work programs for students through the state or federal programming- tutoring, construction work on federal projects, helping the hanicapped, to name a few. Provide services for your education. Just a thought.
There has to be a better way. Our young people must be educated for our country to survive
Let's think outside the box Senator. How about free tuition, books and related expenses for all qualified students who want to go to a state university?
Let's have single payer not for profit universal health care for all US citizens, not just those in gov't service.
Let's abolish Nafta and other "free trade" agreements that are killing whats left of our "middle class". Immediately stop invasion of Mexican trucks on our roads. Now.
Let's stop funding the needless, useless war in Iraq. Now.
Let's stop promulgating endless amnesty beaner appeasement acts and enforce existing laws. End totally the H1B and H1C visa programs.
Let's have term limits for all elected officials and public funding for elections.
Let's eliminate the archaic "personhood provision" that have empowered corporations to their present ruthlessness.
Let's accept no further shipments of anything from communist China. Turn the boats around.
Let's see our Congress grow spine and do concrete things for the American people. 50 years of lollygagging is long enough.
Enough talk. Do.
Give 'em hell Senator Kennedy. I'm behind you 1000%. Thanks for always standing up for the working class.
As a current 34 year old Law Student in my second year, I can say reform is badly needed. I'm taking out loans to the tune of $50k - $60k per year, all of them Fed and at about 8% interest. Private Sector loans look even worse, interest wise. I look at my classmates who want to go into public interest work, such as Prosecutor's, Public Defenders, Human Rights advocates and such, and just have no idea how they are going to manage. I myself was very interested in being a D.A., but a quick math check revealed there was just no way to do so when saddled with such high tuition and interest rates. What does this bode for future lawyers who want to protect our rights and/or put the bad guys away? Where will they come from, and what will be the quality of their education?
I'm in the top 20% of my class and involved in a half-dozen extra-curriculars from Law Journals to Public Interest Groups to Legal Clinics, had high test scores and a high GPA from my previous schooling, and yet there is no scholarship relief or loan abatement on the horizon. I'm either too white, too old, too young, or am just plain rejected with no explanation.
I talk to people who went to school just 10 years ago who were able to get loans for 2%-4%, and wonder what the hell happened to those programs. The whole thing reeks of corporate payoffs and protectionism, and even most schools Financial Aid departments have gotten sucked into it.
Sure, there are cheaper schools I could have gone to, but the projected future income from those schools was also quite a bit lower, as was their ranking and desirability of graduates, making it all come out in the wash, so to speak.
And just imagine, Europe's universities don't charge for education, which is about to change
because of American influence. Education should be made available for all the ones that can pass an aptitude test. But I realize here it is capitalism and we need to charge so a few get richer and the DEMS are not one iota different than the crooked GOP. They have stood by too long and let it happen.
Senator, with all due respect and generally I think very highly of you (except for this nonsense of amnesty for illegal aliens) but where have you been for the last twenty years that this has been going on?
Seriously, it's big news now but students for years and years have been losing ground because of the predatory practices and the refusal of the congress to allow bankruptcies for student loans.
So where have you been?
BUT is congress REALLY going to do anything about it? Those loan outfits have DEEP DEEP POCKETS and big shot lobbyists and congressmen/women are very shallow when it comes to who donates to their elections.
AND every effort to curtail this has gone down to defeat and I mean gone down easily. Your fellow democrats routinely vote against any reform.
WHY?
So where have you been all these years?
I am certain that Senator Kennedy has in fact been working to reform this system for years but Republicans have been running Congress for the past 12 years and his efforts were shot donw in prior congresses. There's only so much one senator can do . . .
http://www
It's a humorous yet very accurate look at many colleges. Right now, Syracuse architecture students don't take classes on campus. We couldn't watch a movie in one of my lectures today because a cement mixing truck was operating outside.
But of course, if the Carrier Dome were to ever be in danger, this problem would be fixed very quickly. It's all about the bottom line.
My question is, why do we have tax cuts for the richest 1%, when ALL of that money could go education and would completely revitalize our system? This country is in a precarious situation, and being 19 years old it's on people my age to fix this mess, but we're going to be too swamped with student loans to fix it! Something needs to be done now before it's too late, before America goes down the road Rome did.
I really think there is a dire problem for people in the middle class. People who are in the top echelon financially do not have to worry about the costs of college because they happen to have an extra 200,000 lying around. People who come from destitute poverty do not have to worry because they come for close to nothing. I go to Syracuse. My financial aid package is a 6,000 dollar educational grant, and a Stafford loan. I get nothing needs based even though my family is being crippled by this school, a degree that I need to get any respectable job. Including what my parents can afford to give me (I'm from Chelmsford, so you can probably understand that my parents can give a good amount, but at some point, college is just so much money, it's like trying to push back the tide) that leaves me having to take out around a 10,000 dollar loan every year. I spent 700 dollars, half of the money I earned this summer, on books alone. I had to reduce my meal plan to 5 meals a week. Meals end up coming out to be 15 DOLLARS A MEAL. Does this not seem like a ripoff to anyone else? 15 dollars to get some cafeteria slop? Running a washer and dryer for one small load costs 3.25. I pay room fees but things like toilet paper are my responsibility.
Keep out loopholes in the system that allow people who can afford to easily pay for all 4 years of undergrad to get need-based financial aid. Try to do something about the cost of books, which are a complete ripoff.
I feel like I've been rambling. All I can say is that there's a problem. And it's on you to fix it, because the welfare of the Commonwealth depends on it.
Dear Senator: What many of us with children and grandchildren to help educate also wonder is if you can explain more fully how importing so many workers, both through the visa AND "comprehensive immigration reform" doorway will benefit, not hurt, us, in affording college for our own. What ever happened to the old adage, "Charity begins at home?"
I'm thankful someone has drawn the contrast between Sen. Kennedy's support for mass immigration (particularly of un- or under-educated populations) and our need to make college more affordable for Americans who are willing and able to attend. The immigration "reform" he backed makes utterly no sense from that perspective.
I think that on the subject of education, people need to ponder the life and times of one Abraham Lincoln, a man who went on to be president, but reportedly ended up doing some of his schoolwork on a manual earthmover 'PDA'.
Sometimes, the pupil makes the best instructor,
and though we've become rather enamored with the entire process and institution of education,
it is to be noted that some wildly successful people such as Bill Gates dropped OUT of college.
A degree as such is no real guarantee of anything, other than to sort of serve as a reciept and parole for time served. Depending on the curriculum and desired degree,
your college time can end up basically being
extended day-care, or some parents' novel method of sending forth their layabout offspring to a less bothersome yet still semi-supervised venue.
Bottom line? For all the billions spent on 'education', I don't see any flying cars...
I'd love to write my senator, but he happens to be John Boehner, who has been key in creating this mess. He is loved by banks and Sallie Mae and should be investigated thoroughly. He's referred to as the senator from West Chester, Ohio-unfortunately our voting areas have been redistricted by the Republicans and he's their boy. Also, guess who signed No Child Left Behind in Hamilton, Ohio with Pres. Bush? None other than John Boehner-he wasn't content to rig the loan system so he gets the money and not the college students-he want to destroy any chance of children recieving an education at public schools. And now, Boehner's campaign manager is replacing Rove.
I'm 53 and I recieved a good public education in Butler Co. and me and many of my friends were able to attend Miami University with grants, scholarships, work-study programs and part-time work-very little debt incurred. Thanks to Boehner and his buddies, that is now impossible. Most of the school districts in Butler Co. are struggling-at present-Middletown Public schools have cut transportation, extracurriculars, and are ending the school day at 1:30-state minimums. Has Boehner even addressed this at any level?
No, but he was sure there for NCLB, which I think should be totally and forever ended. I love to see this creep forced to take some accountability for his actions. He refers to Democrats as Defeatocrats-so I and anyone in his district who is not Republican doesn't matter. He should be thoroughly investigated.
John Boehner is your congressman -your senators are George Voynevich and Sherod Brown.I agree with you Boehner is a scummy partisan.
Glad you called attention to my mistake-yes, John Boehner is my representative-if you can call it that.
When I went to college I took out National Student Defense Loans (NSDL). I paid 3% interest and was able to pay all the money back and look for good work. This was in the day when Government did things like that. Then Reagan came along and told us that Government was the problem. Everybody loved Ronnie and they believed him so we got rid of those nasty Government student loans and gave it to the private sector. So, all of you college students mired in debt, how's it working out for you? If you think that's bad just wait until you get into the Republican constructed private health care system. You're in for quite a shock when you have a real medical emergency. Kiss your savings goodbye. Meanwhile you can think about all those commie socialists like the British, Canadians, French, Spanish, and Scandinavians who enjoy universal access in countries where the Government still remains the problem.
We have more access in this Country than anywhere else in the world. So, I can't afford to send my children to College, but I should pay my money (Taxes) so you can? How is that the right thing to do? Why not either pay for it or don't go. What makes you think everyone should have a College Education? Should the government pay my mortgage? I believe they should. It makes for a greater country, where we all own homes, right? Same with College, an educated populous is happier and makes a greater country. Would you pay for my home mortgage?
Whatever happened to the federal student loan program that existed when I went to college in the late 60s/early 70s? Those were loans that had no payments or interest due until after graduation. Many students I knew used that program and I had it available as a safety net.
Fortunately, the State of Wisconsin (at that time - not now) heavily subsidized resident tuition at the state colleges and that, along with a nearly full time job, I was able to pay my way through the entire 4 years. However, it was nice to know that a loan would have been available if necessary. Wisconsin certainly benefitted from my education considering the taxes I paid after my education, but no longer look at the long term benefits of putting money into education and getting more money out later in the taxes that graduates will pay.
The Federal Government has taken the same narrow-minded view of education. They don't look at the long term benefits (college educated people make more money, therefore pay more taxes) of providing educational grants and loans. Instead, this area has been turned over to the private sector as a profit making opportunity. And, like banks and credit card companies, use every trick and loophole to maximize their profits while leaving people in debt, often for decades.
We need to return to a time where students can actually get a college education rather than just dream about it. States as well as the Federal Government will benefit from subsidizing college education. Taking out these predatory loans or forcing parents to raid their retirement accounts or home equity to enable their children to have better lives is threatening to turn our young people into hamburger flippers.
Not everyone deserves a college education. We need more people in Trades. Nobody talks about Vocational Schools anymore. Anyone can get a loan for school. If you don't understand your responsibility to the lender, you should get a lawyer, or don't get the loans. You still have 6 months after Grad to start paying back. Deal with it. Drop outs in College are huge, they owe the money without graduating.
The problem is that people who do merit a college education can't afford it. Ditto with vocational school. It is in our best interest to provide low cost federal loans and expand grants so that everyone who qualifies for higher education, whether college or vocational, can obtain it.
As it is right now, predatory lending or parents going into serious debt are the only options available to those who weren't born with a silver or gold spoon in their mouths.
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