Make College Affordable

Conservatives Again Risk Higher Student Debt To Protect The Wealthy

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:54:34 -0400

Senate Republicans today filibustered the effort to prevent federal student loan rates from doubling, once again obstructing the majority and putting the finances of millions of college students at risk for the sake of protecting the leather wallets of the 1 percent.

Forty-five Republicans voted against allowing the measure to come to the floor for a full debate and up-or-down vote (52 voted in favor; 60 votes were required) even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to their demand that they be allowed to bring to the floor their proposal to eliminate an illness prevention and public health program to cover the $6 billion cost of keeping student loan interest rates as they are, at 3.4 percent. That was the proposal passed by Republicans in the House, which President Obama has already said he would veto.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's excuse? As reported by Politico, “While we don’t think young people should have to suffer any more than they already are as a result of this president’s failure to turn the economy around, we just disagree that we should pay for a fix by diverting $6 billion from Medicare and raising taxes on the very businesses we’re counting on to hire these young people."

First things first. The real problem with this whole debate over student loan interest rates is the fixation over how to "pay for it." The same conservatives who argue that we must, must cut something—hmm, health care's not that important; let's cut that—to cover the cost of keeping a lid on student loan rates don't have the same fixation over students being loaded down with that debt to begin with.

Why? Because they argue that students will ultimately benefit from the increased salaries they are more likely to get with a college education and can therefore absorb the cost over time.

Frankly, that's the argument we should be making as a nation to keep student debt as low as possible. If we're serious about rebuilding our middle class and putting our federal finances on a sustainable footing, we should be doing everything we can to make college affordable so these young people will have the employability and earning power to buoy the economy in the future. Having the federal government borrow $6 billion at near-zero interest rates today, if need be, so that students won't have to pay more than 3.4 percent interest on their student loans is a bargain. We should take it.

Last month, House Republicans voted for a tax cut in the name of boosting job creation, even though Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation said the tax cut would have a too-small-to-calculate effect on job creation and economic growth. But Republicans nonetheless voted to add $46 billion to the deficit for a tax cut for which half the benefit would go to people earning more than $1 million. That's worth remembering as they say we should not add to the deficit to help working-class people afford a college education.

What we should not do is buy the lie that the decision Democrats made to offer a particular "pay-for" anyway—one that would affect people earning more than $250,000 who are shareholders in Subchapter S corporations—would prevent small businesses from hiring college graduates.

The tax loophole Senate Democrats wanted to close would mainly target white-collar professionals who form companies with two or three partners and structure their compensation in a way that avoids payroll taxes, by making their earned income appear to be unearned income. Some call it the "Newt Gingrich/John Edwards loophole" since both of these former members of Congress used the trick as private citizens. These entities, like Edwards' law firm and Gingrich's various self-promotion vehicles, have no interest in growing their payrolls; these businesses are not set up to be job-creators for anyone other than the small clutch of people who form them and seek to make themselves rich from them. Simply put, Republicans would rather sanction rich people's tax evasion than keep college graduates from being crushed by debt.

It's good news that Senate Democrats were united in their rejection of this right-wing nonsense. There might not be hope that the Congress will do the ultimate right thing and just declare that $6 billion to keep the debt burden on students lighter is a burden we should be willing to shoulder for the good of the nation's economic future. But the very least we can do is draw a line and declare that there are times when those who have already financially successful should give up something so that college students can have a fighting chance.

Student Loan Bill Filibuster - How Is It Reported?

Dave Johnson — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:47:54 -0400

Republicans today filibustered a bill to keep student loan interest rates from doubling. If the public understands that this bill keeps interest rates from doubling and that Republicans filibustered this bill, they can decide whether they approve or disapprove and act accordingly. They can decide who to hold accountable. Will the public receive this information?

Democracy Depends On Public Receiving Accurate Information

Democracy depends on an informed public that is able to receive accurate information. This way the public can make decisions that are based on the facts, and can hold their elected representatives accountable. This is why our Constitution guarantees a free press. The first amendment in the Bill of Rights says, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of ... the press." Of course, then it's up to the press to remain free and unencumbered.

In recent years, however, most of the American media has been bought up by large corporations. Just six companies control 90% of what we read, watch or listen to. See this "Infographic" Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice from Frugal Dad.

Today's Vote - Republicans Filibuster

If Congress does not act soon, student loan interest rates double from 3.4% to 6.8%.

Jeff Bryant, in Student Loan Relief Is An Investment, Not A 'Cost' explains the stakes,

Drawing from the data compiled by Project Student Debt, we know that "members of the college class of 2010 who took out student loans owed on average $25,250 upon graduation, a 5 percent increase from the year before." Total student loan debt has reached $1 trillion, exceeding what Americans owe on their credit cards.

Furthermore, this problem will only get worse. The cost of attending college -- which has increased by 559 percent since 1985, rising far faster than costs for gasoline and health care -- continued its steep climb in the 2011-12 school year, with in-state tuition and fees at public four-year institutions averaging $8,244, which is 8.3 percent higher than the previous year according to The College Board.

As Robert Borosage explains who people should support this bill, in Don't Let Congress Kick College Grads In The Teeth,

Here’s the real debt crisis: student loan debt. Today, the average student graduates from college with a diploma and an anchor — $25,000 of debt.

And if Congress doesn’t act, student loan interest rates will double on July 1.

... President Obama supports keeping the current Stafford Loan interest rate at a low 3.4% rate. His opponent Mitt Romney just reversed his position and said he agrees. This should not be a partisan issue.

... Instead of kicking students when they are down, we should end the student debt crisis. The Federal Reserve lends money to banks at rates near 0%, why not lend to students at similar rates? Unlike banks, graduates won’t use the money to blow up the economy.

What actually happened today was that Republicans filibustered to block the bill from coming to a vote.

How Is Today's Vote Reported?

Does the nation's media inform citizens that Republicans filibustered a bill to keep student loan rates from doubling? Or will the public be told a much more general story of failure that does not let them know what happened, and who to hold accountable? Will the headline be "Republicans Filibustered" or "Congress Failed?" Or worse, "Dems Fail" or even "Obama Fails?"

See for yourself:

Bad: CBS: Student loan bill fails as Senate gears up for protracted battle

Bad: ABC: Student Loan Effort Stalls on Capitol Hill,

The Democrats’ student loan bill, as predicted, has failed to move forward in the Senate.
Cloture on the “motion to proceed” to the bill was not invoked which means the bill will not be formally taken up.

Bad: NY Daily News says Democrats fail: Student loan bill, proposed by Democrats, fails in Senate

Bad: Fox headline says Democrats fail, story is accurate: Democrat-backed student loan bill fails in Senate

Republicans have blocked the Senate from debating a Democratic bill keeping interest rates on college loans from doubling this summer for 7.4 million students.
Republicans say they support heading off higher rates on subsidized Stafford loans. They oppose how Democrats would pay for the measure -- raising payroll taxes on high-earning stockholders of some privately owned corporations.

Bad: Politico leads with "Obama failed": Student loan bill blocked in Senate,

Another of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priorities was stymied in the Senate Tuesday when lawmakers rejected a bill to stop student loan interest rates from doubling in July.
The legislation failed to muster the 60 votes needed to break a GOP-led filibuster. Senate Republicans vehemently opposed the measure because it would’ve eliminated a tax loophole for certain businesses – a move the GOP called a tax hike on job creators.

Bad: The Hill: Dems' student loan bill fails in Senate.

Bad: Marketwatch: Funding fight hamstrings student-loan bill

Bad: Wash. Times: Student loan bill stumbles in Senate

Bad: Daily Beast: Senate Lets Student Loan Bill Fail

Terrible: CNN: Senate balks at taking up student loan bill,

With federal student loan interest rates set to double July 1, the Senate failed Tuesday to get enough votes to take up a bill to extend low 3.4% rates for another year.

The vote was 52-45 to take up the bill, 8 fewer than the 60 needed to officially start debating the bill. Senate Republicans and Democrats are still negotiating a compromise, and the Senate could vote again this week.

Very bad: Washington Post: Student loan plan fails in the Senate,

The Senate failed Tuesday to advance a bill to keep federally subsidized college student loan rates lower for another year, prolonging debate on an issue that has emerged as an election-year flashpoint.

Good: AP: GOP blocks Senate debate on Dem student loan bill

Good: WSJ: GOP Blocks Debate on Student-Loan Bill

Good: Business Week: Senate Republicans Block Student-Loan Rate Freeze

Good: CS Monitor: Student loans: GOP filibuster blocks Senate move to freeze low rates

Good: NPR: GOP Senators Block Democrats' Student Loan Bill

Very good: NY Times: Senate Republicans Block Bill on Student Loan Rates,

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked consideration of a Democratic bill to prevent the doubling of some student loan interest rates, leaving the legislation in limbo less than two months before rates on subsidized federal loans are set to shoot upward.

Very Good: LA Times: Republicans block Senate proposal to keep student loan rates low,

Senators blocked President Obama’s student loan bailout bill Tuesday, upping the chances of another deadline-busting battle this summer as both sides dig in over how to pay for continued government assistance to college students.

Tell The Senate To Act On Student Loan Debt

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:32:15 -0400

As the Senate prepares to vote Tuesday on legislation that will stop a scheduled doubling of the rate on Stafford student loans on July 1, conservatives are engaged in a shameless (and shameful) effort to detail the effort.

That's why, this afternoon and Tuesday morning, it's critical for you to send a message to your senator to tell them you do not stand for students being shackled by more debt. Tell your senator to support the "Stop Student Interest Loan Hike Act."

The conservative shenanigans on this issue would be comical if it were not for the deadly serious ramifications of saddling students with more than $1 trillion in student debt—more debt than they and the entire rest of the nation have on their credit cards. On Sunday conservative columnist George Will said that the federal student loan program represented "a slow-motion, almost absentminded creation of a new entitlement"—as if bestowing the word "entitlement" on a student loan program made any sense at all and as if the taint of the "e-word" would make the program go away.

Crooks & Liars has a wonderful rejoinder to Will. When Will was challenged on ABC's "This Week" by commentator Tavis Smiley about giving "interest-free loans to bankers" but not to college students, Will responded, "Let's not give interest-free loans to anyone." The writer, karoli, responded:

At last! Something I agree with George Will about. Truly, let's not give interest-free loans to the banks, and let's not make students and their struggling middle class parents break under the weight of student loans. Instead, let's recognize that this country has always believed that educating our children is the cornerstone of a healthy democracy, and start paying for it again the way we have in the past.

... I'm completely serious about the need to return to the values that made this country great, and those values include assuming the costs for educating our young people and making sure they have the finest education possible in order to innovate, create, and shape a new, better, more equal world. Enough of the philosophy of educating only caretakers for the oligarchs.

When conservatives are not making idiotic statements about student loans being "entitlements" as Will did, or implying that students are racking up student debt because they are lazy and irresponsible, they are using the student loan issue as a pawn in a game of political posturing.

It would cost the federal government $6 billion to keep the student loan rate from increasing from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. It would be wise policy to just add $6 billion to the deficit—a relatively insignificant amount given the size of the deficit—with the knowledge that because of the students who were able to use their college educations to get better jobs, the nation would be better off.

Instead, the Republicans are insisting on cutting funding for preventative health care to offset the cost of freezing the interest rate level. Senate Democrats are at least being a tad more sensible; their bill would close a loophole that allows some high earners from avoiding paying payroll taxes on some of their income.

But conservatives reject even this type of compromise. When Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. and the architect of the Republican budget, was asked at a student town hall meeting if he would "support closing corporate tax loopholes to pay for" maintaining student loan rates at their current level, Ryan said, "Nope," adding that since the student loan bill was "more spending, let’s cut spending that is lower-priority spending to address this higher-priority need."

In the conservative mind, keeping federal student loan rates at a percentage-point above the rate of general inflation amounts to "more spending" on an "entitlement." Tell the Senate: Reject that nonsense. This step to make college more affordable is an investment in the future of the country, as important today as it was when post-World War II America committed to the GI Bill. This is a must-do in the struggle to rebuild the middle class.

Forging a strategy for a broad college affordability agenda for the 99 Percent is one of the topics at the Take Back the American Dream conference June 18-20 in Washington. Get more information and register.

Student Loan Relief Is An Investment, Not A 'Cost'

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:43:18 -0400

Republicans in the US House of Representatives have scheduled a vote on Friday to stop interest rates on college student loans from doubling beginning July 1. Up until now, Republicans on the Hill had been staunchly opposed to any bipartisan action to stop the interest rate increases. What gives?

Not that there aren't multiple reasons for urgent action on student debt relief . . .

Drawing from the data compiled by Project Student Debt, we know that "members of the college class of 2010 who took out student loans owed on average $25,250 upon graduation, a 5 percent increase from the year before." Total student loan debt has reached $1 trillion, exceeding what Americans owe on their credit cards.

Furthermore, this problem will only get worse. The cost of attending college -- which has increased by 559 percent since 1985, rising far faster than costs for gasoline and health care -- continued its steep climb in the 2011-12 school year, with in-state tuition and fees at public four-year institutions averaging $8,244, which is 8.3 percent higher than the previous year according to The College Board.

So the Republican's swift action to call for a vote on relieving college student loan debt is a good thing, right? Not at all.

Republicans Think Education Is Just A Cost

According to a report from The Hill Speaker John Boehner has coupled the vote on student loan relief "with an attack on Obama’s healthcare law" by insisting that any student loan debt relief be balanced with cuts to healthcare funding.

Democratic Congressional leaders in the Senate have countered Republican objections to student loan relief with proposals to offset the $5.9 billion budget impact by closing a loophole that lets wealthy shareholders in S-corporations dodge payroll taxes. In the House, Rep. George Miller, the senior Democrat on the House Education Committee, introduced legislation that would balance any impact of student debt relief by eliminating tax breaks for the oil-and-gas industries.

Framing the debate exactly right, however, was President Obama.

The Right Frame For Speaking About Student Loan Relief

Speaking this week at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Obama plainly stated what ought to be the nation's priorities, saying:

Whether you're here at a four-year college or university, or you're at a two-year community college, in today’s economy, there's no greater predictor of individual success than a good education. Right now, the unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average. The incomes of folks with a college degree are twice as high as those who don’t have a high school diploma. A higher education is the clearest path into the middle class.

The president got this exactly right. We know that educating our children and young adults is one of the best investments we can make as a nation. It's investing in America. When we help the next generation of Americans grow and succeed, we are paving the way for our country’s future citizens, workers, and leaders. Supporting students and paying for education isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s smart.

So what Congressional leaders of both parties need to get a grip on is that relieving our students' debt burden is not an intolerable cost but an essential investment. Republicans in particular need to rearrange their heads to understand that the interests of the nation are best served when education is viewed not in the context of today's budget but in the context of the future return of the investment. Democrats, on the other hand, who seem to already understand the ROI of education spending, must also understand they need not make any concessions at all for education investment. In fact, they should start negotiating from the position that student loan interest rates should be lowered and the subject of debt forgiveness deserves to be on the table.

Sensing that conservative Republicans in the House may have gotten this argument completely wrong, Mitt Romney, Obama's likely opponent in the fall general elections, executed one of his signature flip-flops he is so well known for and suddenly expressed support for student debt relief.

Romney Way Is The Wrong Way For Education

Remember, it was just last month that Romney made headlines when he warned a high school student not to "expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on" for a college education. Yet now he apparently fully supports "extending the temporarily relief" on student loan interest rates.

But don't for a minute think that Romney views education spending as an investment. Whatever the current Romney-stance-of-the-day may be on student debt relief, we know all too well that Romney's core philosophy on education is to view it through the lens of business and profit. In previous remarks, he has sung the praises of for-profit colleges that charge exorbitant tuition, have low graduation rates, and load students with debt amounts that are even higher than the current national average.

If you want to view the gross underbelly of the Romney Way for higher education, you need only venture into the subways of New York City. Car after car are emblazoned with colorful banner ads touting colleges, universities, and certificate programs that offer young adults opportunities to "advance" themselves and achieve "success." The ads invariably feature images of smiling young adults of color and headlines exhorting them to "aim high" and "advance yourself." And a prominent bullet point in nearly every ad is "we'll arrange the financing for you."

The advertising onslaught stems both from the demand our nation's younger generation feels as a result of being increasingly unemployed with fewer and fewer job prospects and a relentless campaign from institutions of higher learning to capitalize on that anxiety with promises to provide a pathway to future employment through education. It's marketing 101 -- selling pain relief for the "Excedrin moment."

An especially prominent marketer behind these campaigns is the rapidly expanding for-profit higher education sector that, according to Republic Report's David Halperin "gets about $32 billion of its approximately $35 billion annual revenue from federal financial aid."

Yet instead of calling for investigations of this sector's impact on the student loan crisis, prominent Republicans speak at for-profit higher ed meetings and rake in campaign contributions from these institutions.

Stop Disinvesting In Higher Education

Of course for-profit colleges are not the only ones to blame for the expanding debt burden being placed on young adults. Conservative governors and state legislatures across the nation have enacted huge cuts to public university systems and community colleges. California's higher education system now extracts a greater percentage of its funds from tuition and fees charged to students than it does from government funding -- making it a public education system in name only.

According to a recent article in U.S. News and World Report,"A major factor in tuition increases at public institutions has been the withdrawal of state and local funding."

Quoting from a document called "The Great Cost Shift," the article describes "an irreversible slide of U.S. higher education being a collectively-funded public good to that of an individually purchased private good," and offers plenty bullet-points in proof, such as:

• The proportion of revenues that public colleges and universities received from state appropriations dropped from 38.3 percent in 1991-1992 to 24.4 percent in 2008-2009.
• In addition, the financial aid system has failed to keep pace with escalating costs, forcing students and their families to rely on financing strategies that reduce their odds of completing school.
• States reoriented their financial aid programs away from need-based assistance to merit-based aid, which favors wealthier students.

Invest In We, The People, Not Big Business

Higher education must not be just for the wealthy and the privileged. And government needs to fund the education our children deserve rather than direct more of that money to business profits that benefit only the few. Tell Congress that.

Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/jeffbcdm

Don't Let Congress Kick College Grads In The Teeth

Robert Borosage — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:01:33 -0400

Here’s the real debt crisis: student loan debt. Today, the average student graduates from college with a diploma and an anchor — $25,000 of debt.

And if Congress doesn’t act, student loan interest rates will double on July 1.

Don’t let Congress kick new graduates in the teeth. Click here to demand your representatives in Congress stop the student loan rate increase.

President Obama supports keeping the current Stafford Loan interest rate at a low 3.4% rate. His opponent Mitt Romney just reversed his position and said he agrees. This should not be a partisan issue.

Yet the House bill to stop the scheduled rate increase has no Republican sponsors.

The Republican chair of the House education committee says he has “serious concerns” about the bill. And the Republican budget — championed by Paul Ryan and embraced as “marvelous” by Mitt Romney — both calls for deep cuts in Pell grants and assumes that the interest rates on government sponsored student loans will double.

What are the Republican “concerns”? They claim to be opposed to the $6 billion cost of keeping the rate low.

But jacking up the rate simply shifts that $6 billion cost onto the next generation of students who are already crushed by debt.

And House Republicans didn’t have a problem last week passing a bill with yet another tax break for the rich that would add $46 billion to the national debt.

It gets worse, the key Republican subcommittee chair recently revealed her ignorance about today’s high cost of college. Rep. Virginia Foxx declared she had “very little tolerance” for students with major debt because there is “no reason” to take out big student loans.

Why? Because she worked her way through college 50 years ago … when the cost of college was about three times cheaper.

They are playing politics with the futures of our students. It must stop.

Conservatives routinely claim we need severe austerity to save the next generation from massive debt. Yet here they are, about to dump more debt on them right now.

Instead of kicking students when they are down, we should end the student debt crisis. The Federal Reserve lends money to banks at rates near 0%, why not lend to students at similar rates? Unlike banks, graduates won’t use the money to blow up the economy.

We need bold ideas to make college affordable and give every child the tools to thrive in the modern economy.

For example, estimates on what it would cost to give every student free tuition at public colleges are LESS than the cost of Ryan and Romney’s pledge to eliminate the estate tax on multi-million dollar fortunes.

Surely it makes more sense to insure that every qualified student can afford the education that he or she has earned than it does to guarantee that the heirs of the wealthy need never work another day in their lives.

We cannot simply protect the status quo. But the absolute last thing our college graduates need right now is to add to the burden of their school debts.

We need to win this fight against the loan rate increase today, and build momentum to win big progressive reforms tomorrow.

Student-Debt Free, At Last?

Terrance Heath — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:45:46 -0400

When I graduated from high school, my parents expected that I would go to college. I say "expected," but it was really closer to a demand than an expectation. As my father said, "I don't know where you'll go, but you're going to somebody's university." Education was a high priority in our home. Even though neither of my parents went to college, they saw a college degree as the first step towards a "good job" and upward mobility.

We were comfortably middle class. So, I didn't qualify for much in the way of financial aid. But my parents could not afford to foot the entire bill for my education, even at the public university I chose to attend. My grades were good enough to get me a few scholarships to make that first year easier, but that was it. Like a lot people, I financed my education through student loans.

I was 18-years-old when I went into debt to get an education — as an investment in my future. That was over twenty years ago. Last year, at the age of forty-two, I finally paid off that debt.

Getting an education shouldn't mean decades of crushing debt. Tell Congress to stop student loan interest rates from doubling.

Things have changed a lot in the time it took me to pay off my student loans, and not for the better.

Last November, a report from the Project on Student Debt showed the average student loan debt for graduates in 2010 was $25,250, up 5.2 percent from 2009.
Two thirds of college seniors graduate in debt in 2010.
Thirty-seven million Americans have student loan debt, and most are between the ages of 18 and 39.
Last month, student loan debt topped $1 trillion.
According to ColorLines, African American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students are in the top bracket of borrowers.

Like a lot of graduates today, I had tens of thousands of dollars in debt by the time I finished college. Needless to say, tuition has increased a lot since then. Today, students who go to a public state university like I did are looking at about $32,000 for tuition alone.

Unlike 36 million million Americans who attended college without earning a degree — but still have student debt — I at least had a degree to show for it all.

Unlike today's graduates, I didn't graduate off a cliff. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average unemployment rate the year I graduated (1993) was just 6.9%, compared to 8.9% today. I didn't have to contend with chronic unemployment. I didn't have to start out my career when jobs were scarce. I didn't have to compete for entry-level positions with people who were the age I am now, because they'd been out of work for so long they were desperate for anything.

I didn't have to resort to going to grad school because I had no hope of finding employment in an abysmal job market, while putting off repayment and taking on more debt as a result.

Unlike a lot of today's graduates, I was able to find a job soon after graduation. (I didn't consider sex-work to pay off student loans, because there were so few other options.)

Like a lot of today's graduates, my parents helped me out by co-signing for student loans. My parents were happy to help, not just by co-signing for my loans, but making payments for me after I graduated, until I could afford to make them myself. I took over the payments from them when my father retired, and my parents' had to adjust to living on a fixed income.

Unlike the parents of many of today's graduates, my mom (who survives my dad) isn't among the senior citizens still on the hook for $36 billion in student debt. Many of those seniors co-signed loans for children or grandchildren who can't find work after graduation — or can't find work that pays enough to cover living expenses and their student loans.

Like many people, I applied for forbearance on my loans when faced with job loss and other financial difficulties, even though I knew that interest would keep adding up, and that it would take longer to pay off my loans as a result.

When I could afford to start paying again, I decided to pay as much as I could afford. By then, Congress had transformed student debt into lifelong debt. Even bankruptcy can't wipe it out. The sooner I could get rid of mine the better. Almost twenty years after I graduated, I could finally afford make payments big enough to pay off the remainder of my loans quickly.

(By the way, not everyone with student debt is a twenty-something graduate. People in my age group are piling up student debt faster than anyone else. Student debt for Americans ages 39 to 45 jumped 50 percent in the last three years. That's because so many of us are going back to school or paying for mid-career job training, in hopes of getting a better job — or any job at all — in the middle of a recession and an unemployment crisis.)

Like fellow college-graduate Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), I worked my way through college. My student loans covered my tuition, but I worked to pay for my room and board. Like Foxx, it also took me longer than four years to graduate, because I worked and went to school part-time.

It may be news to Rep. Foxx, but it's entirely possible to work your way through college and still graduate with debt. According to her Wikipedia bio Foxx graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1968. Things have changed a lot since then. Think Progress points out that UNC tuition was just $87.50 per semester when Foxx attended.

That’s right, Virginia Foxx paid $87.50 in tuition. That was the price of a full semester’s tuition at UNC in 1961. The Chair of the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training is completely out of touch with the very different realities facing today’s students.

To be fair, prices have gone up a lot since 1961. If you take that $87.50 and adjust it for inflation, the actual dollar amount is a whopping $671.30 per semester. Including tuition and fees, Representative Foxx would have paid $279 for the academic year—about $2,140 today. That’s about equivalent to what students pay right now at community colleges, not public four-year institutions—especially not public flagships.

In-state students at Representative Foxx’s alma mater pay $7,008—more than three times what Foxx paid. It took Foxx seven years to graduate, probably because she was working to put herself through college. During the 7-year period she was at UNC, tuition and fees increased about 0.6 percent per year. Compare that to UNC students who have seen their tuition and fees increase on average 7.2 percent per year since 2005. UNC students who take fewer classes in order to subsidize their tuition through work have found themselves in a losing battle with steep tuition increases.

President Obama addressed Foxx's comments directly, when he spoke at her alma mater today.

“She said she had ‘very little tolerance for people who tell me they graduate with debt because there’s no reason for that.’ I’m just quoting here,” Obama said. “The students who rack up student loan debt are just ‘sitting on their butts having opportunity dumped in your lap.’ I’m reading it here. I didn’t make this up.”

The president is right.

Like today's graduates, I didn't take out student loans because I was lazy. Like many young people today, I worked my way through college and took on loans, because no matter how many jobs I had (I'm talking to you, Paul Ryan) I still couldn't have earned enough to pay all of my expenses. I didn't have anything "dropped in my lap." I took out loans to pay my tuition, and worked to pay my room and board, because I believed that both were an investment in my future.

My parents didn't co-sign for my loans because they were lazy either. My parents believed that education was essential for their children to secure a better future. As I said earlier, my parents were not college educated. They were working class people, one generation removed from sharecropping, who moved up to the middle class at a time when there were still "good jobs" that paid enough for a working-class family to achieve upward mobility.

Like the president said in his speech, I was one of those students whose parents said to themselves "I didn't get to go to college, but maybe my children can." Their hope was to provide their children with the kinds of education and opportunities they never had.

That was their dream. I inherited that dream. We sat down more than twenty years ago, took a deep breath, and together we invested in that dream.

Today, I'm a parent who has dreams for his own children. I'm the parent of a bright third-grader with dreams of his own. I'm the parent of a nine-year-old who recently captained his class team in the third grade "Geography Bee", and who speaks in terms of when he goes to college, not if. Like me, he picked that up from his parents. One of us is the son of working class parents who believed education would mean a better life for their children.

One of us is the son of immigrants who knew education would help their children the way it helped them. Together, my husband and I are working to secure for our children the same dreams our parents held for us.

We made sure both of our sons had college savings accounts before they could even talk. We hope those savings will be enough when it's time to send out children off to college. But given the rate at which tuition keeps going up, there's no guarantee that our children (and us, along with them) won't have to deal with the difficulties of student debt.

Am I student debt free, at last? I can only hope.

Unlike the student loan industry's favorite legislator, because of my own experiences I have a lot of sympathy for today's for what today's graduates — and future graduates — and their families face.

We Need Bold Steps To Make College Affordable

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:51:32 -0400

The White House has ramped up its efforts this week for congressional action to prevent interest rates on the Stafford federal college loan program, now at 3.4 percent, from doubling on July 1. As important as addressing that crisis is, it is one skirmish in a much larger fight to return college education to what it has historically been, a boost up the economic ladder, rather than the economic millstone around the neck of young people that it is today.

President Obama plans to make a speech on the subject at the University of North Carolina on Tuesday, no doubt underscoring the themes in his weekly White House address on Saturday. In address, he warned that "if Congress doesn’t act, on July 1st interest rates on some student loans will double. Nearly seven and half million students will end up owing more on their loan payments. That would be a tremendous blow."

For many students, a doubling of the interest rate on their student loan would mean as much as an additional $5,000 out of their pockets, said Molly Katchpole, who is doing online activism for Rebuild the Dream, in an interview today.

President Obama and rational lawmakers in Congress are arguing that the government should be taking steps to make college more affordable for everyone, and intervening on this issue would seem to be a no-brainer first step. "Making it harder for our young people to afford higher education and earn their degrees is nothing more than cutting our own future off at the knees," Obama said. "Congress needs to keep interest rates on student loans from doubling, and they need to do it now."

A leading conservative voice on higher education issues, however, last week opted to blame the students rather than acknowledging the problem. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said that she had "very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that." After all, according to Think Progress, she could pay off the tuition fees she racked up as a student at the University of North Carolina in the 1960s in the seven years it took her to graduate—at the rate of what would be $671 a semester in today's dollars. In other words, as Katchpole said, "what she paid per semester is akin to what we pay each semester in books alone."

Katchpole, herself laboring under a heavy student debt load, launched a petition denouncing Foxx, which will be delivered Tuesday to House Speaker John Boehner with more than 108,000 signatures. It makes clear that a broad cross-section of the public will not stand for conservative grandstanding and scapegoating on the issue of college student debt.

But this isn't simply about the interest rate on a single loan program or about the bone-headed comments of a clueless congresswoman. Katchpole is right when she says in our interview that "drastic measures need to be taken to make sure that college is affordable everywhere." Even at less than 4 percent interest, asking young people to take out loans of $20,000 or more to get through a year of college is absurd—and especially so when these students are then graduating into an economy with too few jobs and too-low wages.

President Obama could start by staking out a bold position that low-cost or no-cost college—in other words, the return of the kinds of options that used to exist at many state colleges before states drastically cut tuition subsidies—be on our agenda for economic recovery. And we shouldn't look to "pay for" such an initiative with cuts to other programs vital to our domestic economic security. This is an investment that would pay for itself with more people able to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to build a vibrant, innovative economy.

At the very least. President Obama should be considering legislation such as a bill by Rep. Hansen Clarke, D-Mich., which if enacted would forgive a student's outstanding loan debt once the student has made payments equal to 10 percent of his or her discretionary income for 10 years. "This provides student loan borrowers with a second chance, those who have been struggling financially," Clarke told his colleagues on the floor of the House. "And by cutting this debt, this frees up their money to invest on their own. That will create new jobs throughout this country."

What we should have no tolerance for is the lawmakers who are more interested in belittling the struggles of working-class students and parents than doing whatever is necessary to ensure they can be the cornerstone of a new economy of broad prosperity.

Molly Katchpole will be a featured speaker at the Take Back the American Dream Conference, June 18-20 in Washington. Click here to learn more and register.