Another big day for students

Another big step for students occurred today when the House Education and Labor Committee passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 by a vote of 30-17.  The fancy title of the legislation basically means that if this passes Congress it will accomplish:

• Investing $40 billion to increase the maximum annual Pell Grant scholarship to $5,550 in 2010 and to $6,900 by 2019. Starting in 2010, the scholarship will be linked to match rising costs-of-living by indexing it to the Consumer Price Index plus 1 percentage point;
• Investing $3 billion to bolster college access and completion support programs for students;
• Strengthening the Perkins Loan program, a campus-based program that provides low-cost federal loans to students;
• Keeping interest rates low on need-based – or subsidized – federal student loans by making the interest rates on these loans variable beginning in 2012. These interest rates are currently set to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in 2012;
• Making it easier for families to apply for financial aid by simplifying the FAFSA form;
• Providing loan forgiveness for members of the military who are called up to duty in the middle of the academic year; and
• Investing $2.55 billion in Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions to provide students with the support they need to stay in school and graduate.

We wrote about this last Wednesday when the bill was introduced.

This is huge and heads to the floor of the House next.  Want to know more?  Check out our friends over at Campus Progress and their Students Over Banks campaign.

~Mary, Rock the Vote

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Tags: college students, Congress, financial aid, higher education

Mary Bio: @Rockthevote Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 5:09 pm and is filed under education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.