From CNN, "Dems: make student loans student friendly
Companies that make money in education have had good friends in Congress. That may change under the Democrats, says Fortune's Bethany McLean" by Bethany McLean, Fortune editor-at-large.
George Miller (D-California), who is likely to become the new chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, wants to cut interest rates on student loans in half.
Last spring Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) introduced a Student Borrower Bill of Rights. Among its tenets are a cap on loan interest as a percentage of a borrower's income. "A Democratic majority will definitely have an opportunity to change student-loan law," says Michael Dannenberg, who directs education policy at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.
It's no secret that change is needed. A just-released report commissioned by the Secretary of Education calls for "complete restructuring of the current federal financial aid system."
Cost is a major culprit. Tuition has grown at double digits for more than a decade, and federal aid has not kept up, resulting in often crippling levels of student debt.
As a blogger using the name "collegedebt4life" writes, "We went into debt to get an education so that we could get good jobs, and we find that we have mortgaged away the rest of our lives by taking out student loans."
Read the entire article here.
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