Students over Banks

Anyone who’s got student loans, is thinking about or is in college or knows someone in school should appreciate this.  This morning, Rep. George Miller (CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, introduced the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act.  This bill proposes to eliminate subsidies to student loan companies and use the $87 billion in savings on a package to make college more affordable and accessible for low and middle income families.

Check it out, this bill will:

• Invest $40 billion to increase the maximum Pell grant award to $5,550 by 2010, and $6,900 by 2019. It will also pave the way to tie the maximum award level to inflation plus 1%.
• Invest in community colleges and historically black colleges and universities, as well as efforts to improve college access and completion rates.
• Strengthen the Perkins loan program to help students avoid risky private loans.
• Simplify the FASFA.
• Provide $10 billion in deficit reduction.
• Originate all future loans through the Direct Loan program, which will create $87 billion in savings over ten years.

Here are the details directly from the House Education and Labor Committee.

Also be sure to check out our friends over at Campus Progress have launched a great campaign called ‘Students Over Banks’ to fight for students in this legislative process.

It’s nice to see to finally see something come out of Washington that prioritizes students over banks.  It’s about time.

~Mary, Rock the Vote

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Tags: higher education

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

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:07 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.