By: Gaurav Bhola, MSM, Managing EditorOctober 3rd, 2007
Last week, President George Bush agreed to make college more affordable. On September 27, Bush finally assented to signing legislation to make college and university more financially accessible to poor and middle-class families. The children of working families will finally be able to afford school, which has become prohibitively expensive and out of reach of many.
Many in Congress supported the measure, making it veto-free legislation. President Bush had earlier threatened to veto any legislation that would help college students by arguing that it was an unnecessary expansion of federal programs.
However, as soon as he realized that Congress had enough votes to override his veto, President Bush changed his tune. Congress overpoweringly supported a compromise version of the college student financial aid bill, the house approved the bill 292-97 and the Senate vote was 79-12. The lawmakers who voted against the bill to help college students and their families were all Republicans.
The new bill will boost financial aid for needy students. The passage of the bill into law marked a long battle started by Democrats to benefit college students. With the passage of the bill the Democrats fulfilled one of their main promises to education, the middle class, and college students when they took control of Congress in 2006. However, with elections around the corner in 2008, many Republicans voted for the measure as they didn’t want to be seen as against the working middle class and students.
Now, the poorest college students will get more help from the federal government by the way of Pell grant increase from $4,310 a year to $5,400 a year by 2012. Also, federal student loan interest rate will be slashed from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. Overall, the $20 billion college financial aid bill will lower interest rates for student loans and enhance federal grants for low-income college students.
Not since the 1944 GI bill that provided college tuition aid to millions of World War II veterans has there been such a large onetime investment in college education. The new law will also forgive unpaid student loan balances for borrowers who work at least 10 years in the arena of public service during which time they make their regular college loan payments.
Additionally, all federal student loan borrowers will be able to make loan payments based on their personal income. In order to provide these benefits to students, Congress slashed federal subsidies to private lenders that offer federally guaranteed loans, totaling roughly $20 billion.
The compromise reached between the Democrats and Republicans was tenuous from the beginning. Nonetheless, a compromise was reached. However, the bill still doesn’t tackle the rising cost of colleges and universities. In the last five years, public university tuition has gone up by more than 35%, after adjustment for inflation, accounting for record amount of student loan debt. Until, Congress deals with unrestrained cost of school tuition, record loan debts of college students will not cease.
