Tag: student loan crisis

House Democrats advance federal student aid overhaul

Bill would expand grants, push back on Trump’s for-profit schools agenda

The House Education and Labor Committee on Thursday voted 28-22 to approve a massive overhaul of federal student loans and other higher education programs that they touted as an overdue move to address the costs of higher education.

The 1,165-page measure earned no Republican support at the end of a markup that began Tuesday. Among numerous other provisions, it would expand Pell Grants, tweak the Federal Work-Study Program, direct more aid to minority-serving institutions, emphasize campus safety and set several new requirements designed to impose tougher standards on for-profit colleges. It would also use federal aid to encourage states to offer tuition-free community college educations.

The measure represents the increasing importance of addressing student debt as a plank of the Democratic agenda. Throughout the debate on amendments, which concluded on Wednesday, Democrats praised the bill as a long-awaited solution to a $1.5 trillion student debt crisis and a necessary crackdown on schools with predatory practices.

View the complete October 31 article by Caroline Simon on The Roll Call website here.

DeVos may abandon Obama policy of fully forgiving debt of defrauded students: report

The following article by Jacqueline Thomsen was posted on the Hill website October 28, 2017:

© Greg Nash

The Trump administration is considering abandoning an Obama-era policy of fully forgiving federal loans for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is reportedly working on a plan that would only give students partial relief from the debt. The Obama administration had allowed the debt to be fully forgiven.

Tens of thousands of students who were deceived by now-defunct for-profit programs had more than $550 million in loans erased under the Obama administration.

The Education Department did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill. Continue reading “DeVos may abandon Obama policy of fully forgiving debt of defrauded students: report”

New Federal Data Show a Student Loan Crisis for African American Borrowers

The following article by Ben Miller was posted on the Center for American Progress website October 16, 2017:

AP/Gerald Herbert
A student studies in a common area on his college campus, February 2013.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education provided the first-ever look at long-term outcomes for student loan borrowers, including results by race and ethnicity.

The data show that 12 years after entering college, the typical African American* student who started in the 2003-04 school year and took on debt for their undergraduate education owed more on their federal student loans than they originally borrowed. This holds true even for students who finished a bachelor’s degree at a public institution. One reason they might not be paying down their loans? Nearly half of African American borrowers defaulted, including 75 percent of those who dropped out of for-profit colleges.

These results show that the U.S. Department of Education cannot ignore the interaction of race and student loans. Traditionally, the agency has not collected any data on the race of borrowers, except in irregular sample surveys conducted by its quasi-independent statistical arm. Unfortunately, not collecting this information has allowed for the disparate outcomes by race to go unnoticed. Continue reading “New Federal Data Show a Student Loan Crisis for African American Borrowers”