Hillary Rodham Clinton was to announce a $350 billion plan Monday to make college affordable and relieve the burden of student debt for millions of Americans, drawing on popular tenets of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
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Among the many policy proposals included in the compact are ideas that liberal and conservative lawmakers have agreed on, including simplifying the application for financial aid and consolidating student loan repayment plans.
While lower-income students, military veterans and those completing a national service program, such as Americorps, would go for free in the plan setup by Clinton, others would incur certain costs for schooling and their living expenses at public universities that are four years.
Clinton has frequently visited community colleges and technical schools, and indicated she sees an expanded role for such programs in her effort to boost the middle class, and lamented the high interest rates at which some graduates are repaying loans.
Private universities with “modest endowments” that serve a higher percentage of low-income students, including historically black colleges, would also receive federal funds to help lower the costs of attendance and improve graduation rates.
“So many borrowers have been cheated by the student loan industry, just like we saw in the subprime mortgage market”, said Chopra, who left the CFPB earlier this summer.
That means some students, and their families, are still likely to need to take on debt to go to college.
Clinton has positioned herself as a fighter for young people the less fortunate throughout her campaign, and mentioned easier access to higher education in her June 13 campaign launch in New York, but she has waited two months to lay out the more detailed policy platform.
By attempting to contain college costs primarily at public institutions, Clinton’s plan could also put taxpayers at the state and federal level on the hook for more than $350 billion.
“Hillary Clinton’s plan is very big and ambitious – leading to debt-free college and increased economic opportunity for millions of Americans”, PCCC co-founder Adam Green said.
The amount of outstanding educational loans has almost tripled over the past decade to $1.3 trillion, a reflection of the rising costs of college, an economy where more entry level jobs require undergraduate degrees and relatively stagnant personal incomes that have made it hard for parents to save for their children’s education.
“It gives them an incentive to find ways to reduce costs, like lower the cost of textbooks or have free online textbooks”, said Bob Shireman, a former deputy undersecretary of education in the Obama administration who has been advising the Clinton campaign since May. IBR caps monthly student loan payments at 10% of discretionary income and forgives all debt after 20 years of on-time payments.
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Like some of her rivals for the Democratic ticket, Clinton wants to make college “debt free” for more students. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) popularized the notion of student loan refinancing, which has been blocked by Congressional Republicans. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, because, unlike them, she is not relying mostly on the government to deal with student debt. The real problem-which Clinton’s proposals don’t address-is not that there is not enough money available for students; it is that college is too expensive.
