Home  

   

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Push for Student Debt Relief Greets Small Victory

With student debt on the rise, activists recently employed public pressure to convince a federal panel laden with corporate representatives to drop a recommendation that more families take on private loans for education, a move they argued would exacerbate student debt.

The recommendation was made by the secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which was formed by the US Department of Education last September in order to design a “national strategy” to increase access to higher education, including changes to the financial-aid system. The Commission is made up of professors, university presidents and representatives from companies such as IBM, Kaplan and the nonprofit lending company EduCap.

The Commission will issue a final report in mid-September, according to Department of Education spokeswoman Samara Yudof.

In a previous draft of the report, the Commission recommended that families look to private loans to fund education costs in order to free “scarce public funds to focus on aid for economically disadvantaged students and families.”

But the Commission dropped the text after student associations and advocacy groups called for its dismissal, said Jay Bhatt, president of the American Medical Student Association, which lobbies on issues ranging from reduced resident work hours to policies that make medical school more affordable.

Source: http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=3542

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home