Helping students, not banks
If you’re in college, or heading there soon, you must be acutely aware of the difference between grants and loans. Grants don’t have to be paid back. Loans do.
You and your parents must also now be experts in the staggering cost of tuition, books, and living expenses.
It used to be that going to a state school was inexpensive, and if you lived at home and/or had a part-time job you could emerge from college without much debt. That must seem amazing to current students.
Something isn’t right when students who can perform at a college level, have an interest in learning more, and need a college degree to obtain a decent job face so many obstacles.
It’s not good for our whole society, since an educated work force is key to our future prosperity.
I’ve heard some older people complaining that today’s young people have it too easy. They question how teenagers can afford expensive coffee lattes, cell phones, MP3 players, laptop computers, and their own cars.
But every youthful generation has its own pleasures and legitimate needs. Many of us older folks spent plenty of our teenage allowances or summer wages at the record store for Elvis or Beatles songs or at the soda fountain counter for raspberry cokes that gave us a mouthful of cavities.
But we didn’t have to mortgage our future in order to attend college. It was expensive, but nothing like what it is today.
A couple of weeks ago, as part of the new health care and education reform legislation, President Obama signed into law major improvements in financial aid for college students.
Here’s how the President described it:
“You see, for almost two decades, we’ve been trying to fix a sweetheart deal in federal law that essentially gave billions of dollars to banks to act as unnecessary middlemen in administering student loans. So those are billions of dollars that could have been spent helping more of our students attend and complete college; that could have been spent advancing the dreams of our children; that could have been spent easing the burden of tuition on middle-class families. Instead, that money was spent padding student lenders’ profits.
“… I didn’t stand with the banks and the financial industries in this fight. That’s not why I came to Washington. And neither did any of the members of Congress who are here today. We stood with you. We stood with America’s students…
“In the 21st century, when the success of every American hinges more than ever on the quality of their education, and when America’s success as a nation rests more than ever on an educated workforce that is second to none, we can’t afford to waste billions of dollars on giveaways to banks.
“We need to invest that money in our students. We need to invest in our community colleges. We need to invest in the future of this country. We need to meet the goal I set last year and graduate more of our students than any other nation by the year 2020…
“By cutting out the middleman, we’ll save American taxpayers $68 billion in the coming years — $68 billion. That’s real money – real savings that we’ll reinvest to help improve the quality of higher education and make it more affordable.”
The new financial aid legislation isn’t as big an improvement as many of us would like, but it’s a major step in the right direction.
All Senate Republicans, including Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, voted against this legislation.
Luckily for the future of our country, there were enough brave Democrats in the House and Senate to lead the country forward on health care and financial aid.
Most of us have forgotten – if we ever knew – the big fights that had to be waged for almost every major program that benefits Americans who aren’t rich. Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Medicare, are all examples of improvements in Americans’ lives that our country was able to bring about when a Democrat was President and Democrats were in the majority in the House and Senate.
Democrats have a record of helping young people afford college in ways that our whole society benefited from. If you doubt that, check out the history of financial aid in this country.
As Democratic President Lyndon Johnson said, “We believe, that is, you and I, that education is not an expense. We believe it is an investment.”
