Check Out "Tackling the Student Debt Crisis"

A week after President Obama’s address to Congress, the most memorable moment that has stuck with me from the speech was the president’s forceful call to action on education. He pledged to support a quality education for every citizen, resulting in our country having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

Since then, there’s been a lot of attention paid to the current state of our education system. Experts have debated the feasibility of the President’s plans. Educators have discussed the squeeze community colleges and public universities are feeling with a new surge of bargain-conscious students. And cost is at the forefront of almost every family’s mind – spiraling tuitions and the difficulty in even seeking assistance in paying for college with the confusing FAFSA form.

This afternoon, our friends at the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University will be hosting a panel: “Tackling the Student Debt Crisis: Affording Grad School in Today’s Economy.” Moderated by journalist Diana Jean Schemo, panelists will include Tamara Draut, author of Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead, Michael Dannenberg, founding director and senior education policy fellow at the New America Foundation, and Rock the Vote’s own Political Outreach Director, Kat Barr. They’ll be discussing the current student debt crisis and possible solutions to the growing problem.

You can stream it here live at 12:00PM EST. We’ll also be bringing you video from the event later on in the week.

Let us know your thoughts. How are you paying for college? What do you think of the proposals on the table for making higher education more affordable?

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Rock the Vote Bio: Rock the Vote was founded in 1990 to organize artists and fight against censorship of musicians. Since then we've evolved to focus on empowering young people to get involved in the political process. We use pop culture, peer-to-peer organizing, and the latest technology to raise visibility of politics and demystify the process of registering to vote. @rockthevote Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 11:20 am and is filed under college affordability, education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.