The GOP package, called the “Lowering Education Costs and Debt Act,” consists of five bills that the senators say will address the root causes of the student debt issue such as the increasing price of college and students taking out loans they can’t afford.
Sounds good on the face of it but really doesn’t address the mountain of debt most people are in currently. Agreed that schools and deceptive lending practices need to be reigned in, but let’s be real here, this doesn’t really address the root cause of the problem which is runaway costs. As long as people are willing to take the loans out the schools will continue to charge what they want. From what I read it’s just kicking the can down the road and putting the onus on a young student coming out of high school to make the right decision.
root causes
Oh, great! So it’s going to restore all that state funding that universities used to get? The funding that student loans were used to make up after it was cut?
No?
Oh well.
So their plan is to ensure students know the costs upfront (This is already done) and then to limit certain students from borrowing. What a wonderful idea to bring home to your constituents while not addressing the issue of rising costs.
This does nothing to address one of the most expensive aspects of attending college - room and board. With rent and real estate prices climbing dramatically, this is a huge (>50%) part of the expense of college for those who cannot live at home. Students get loans to help cover that and over four years it adds up to many tens of thousands of dollars.
This is very true in my experience. My college expenses were slashed in half when I moved out of the dorm and into a tiny studio apartment across the city from my campus. It also really hurt my ability to study when I was so far from campus. It hurt my studies even moreso when I needed to take on a part time job to try mitigating the costs of my rent. It’s a really toxic system, because the parts of cities with universties tend to be the expensive parts of cities.
