Earlier this week, President Obama announced a proposal for a new Student Aid Bill of Rights. The plan is aimed at making the process of managing and repaying student loans easier for borrowers.
The president's plan calls for implementing a new complaint forum for student borrowers, a centralized website to track student loans, stricter laws for debt collectors, and possibly even bankruptcy for student loans. President Obama spoke about his plan at Georgia Tech University and told the crowd,
We're going to require that the businesses that service your loans provide clear information about how much you owe, what your options are for repaying it, and if you're falling behind, help you get back in good standing with reasonable fees on a reasonable timeline.
But as Yahoo Finance's Mandi Woodruff writes, this does not solve the issue of student loans. As Woodruff notes, the plan "is not addressing the core issue, which is that they had to take out nearly 30 grand worth of debt in the first place." And Woodruff is absolutely right. Tuition has risen 12-fold over the past decade, leading to more students and families borrowing more than ever.
Though Obama's proposal does not fix the student loan issue, it's certainly a step in the right direction. Hopefully, it does not end here.