Are you struggling with college debt? Have you been forced to take out more loans than you feel you can afford?
Many Americans are in the same boat, which is why college federal funding has presented itself as an important issue of the upcoming election.
Many college students breathed a sigh of relief last July when congress prevented the doubling of interest on Stafford loans for a year. Though the issue of increasing loan cost was temporarily avoided, the amount of student debt in the United States is skyrocketing.
According to a study by the Pew Research Center, about 22.4 million Americans had college debt. That is about one in every five households.
Both presidential candidates Barack Obama (D) and Mitt Romney (R) have presented their thoughts and opinions on the federal government’s role in assisting students. Each candidate believes that the rising costs of tuition must go down, though they have differing opinions on what course of action should be taken.
President Obama signed off on the Income Based Repayment (IBR) plan in 2009, which allowed students to cap their loans at 15 percent if the loans were paid off on time. He also enforced the Student Loan Forgiveness plan, which clears all remaining debt after a person has been paying back loans for a minimum of 20 years.
In January, Obama proposed the College Affordability Plan, which would change much of the current financial aid process. In this plan, the government would financially reward schools with “reasonable” tuition rates, and would give less to those that enforced higher tuition. Obama also enacted the American Opportunity Tax Credit Program, which is a tax credit toward tuition for college students.
Though many support the actions of the President to try to lessen the expenses of higher education, some believe that it is only doing more damage.
Mitt Romney strongly disagrees with Obama’s measures, and though Romney supports the preservation of some college financial aid programs, he believes that the federal government should cut the amount of money being spent on financial aid in order to establish a more reasonable budget. Romney believes that the answer to the student loan crisis is to create more, better paying jobs.
“The best thing I can do is not to [say,] ‘Hey, I’ll loan you more money. Here let’s loan you,’” Said Romney in response to a question from a University of Miami student, “I don’t want to overwhelm you with debts. I want to make sure you can pay back the debts you’ve already got and that will happen with good jobs.”
