Bush's budget leaves college students behind

[rodeodance]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002198988&zsection_id=268883724&slug=ronthomas07&date=20050307
Monday, March 07, 2005, 04:51 P.M. Pacific


Bush's budget leaves college students behind

By Ronald R. Thomas
Special to The Times

The same administration that seeks to leave no child behind has proposed a budget that will leave many students without access to higher education while it significantly increases spending on security.

President Bush has proposed budget cuts of $773 million in pre-college education programs, in addition to earlier changes in the Pell Grant college-aid program that left 80,000 students no longer eligible for such grants.

Now, students and families seeking to fund their education with a Federal Perkins Loan will be even harder hit as well: The Bush administration wants to eliminate that self-sustaining program entirely.

Started in 1958 under President Dwight Eisenhower, Perkins loans were the first federal assistance program dedicated specifically for higher education. Perkins currently provides low-interest loans to more than 600,000 students at 1,796 colleges across the country. It is one of the most popular and successful government programs of any kind. But not with this administration........

[geomon666]

1. We need a link my good man nt

[rodeodance]

3. the good woman has provided the link

[geomon666]

6. of course.

*removes foot from mouth*

[solinvictus]

2. Senator Jeff Sessions...

My Republican Senator from Alabama has come out against this. He should considering the research universities and community colleges that'll be hit with this. Bush is such a fucknut. I hate him. I really do.

[Trajan]

4. They are killing EVERYTHING the progressives have instituted ....

Its like we have returned to the 20's ....

Where is Smedley Butler when you need him ? ...

There is NO DOUBT that this administration is in the hands of extremist right wingers who are hell bent in destroying the legacy of 100 years of Progessivism in this nation .....

FDR's New Deal is just the beginning ...

[booksenkatz]

5. Yeah, the 20s... the 1320's. :( NT

[kineneb]

9. And without the education to prevent the Black Plague

Read an article somewhere that we are falling behind on technology development...maybe because we don't invest in higher ed? So when that plague does arrive, we will have to depend on foreign medicine, etc.

Ya'know...Ike used "national security" as the reason to build the iterstate highway system and increase college attendance.

So much for "homeland security" Blahhhh!

[dxstone]

7. you shouldn't misunderestimate the edumacation president...

He doesn't know fact from fiction, he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground... but that's OK, cuz he has fact-checkers and ass-checkers and royal wipers and other necessary support staff to keep the Evil Puppet whirring and humming and pissing everyone off... and if he really gets stumped, Rove is right there in his ear...
The man has no essential respect for education... as a policy, as a philosophical concept... No Child Left Behind? Yeah, right!


http://www.presidentevilonline.com/4morebeers.html


D X Stone
"I LOVE horror movies, man... I just don't want to LIVE in one."

[rurallib]

8. B**** budget leaves Merica behind - period

[depakid]

10. Wonder how those college Republicans feel

bout being looked right in the eyes and lied to about this during the debates?

It may not be enough to connect the dots in their narrow little minds- but at least a few of them will be getting a taste of their own medicine.

[VegasWolf]

11. If you aren't born with weathly parents then god doesn't like you and

you have no business in college.

[union_maid]

12. This has an upside as well as a downside

I hate not to hate everything that the Bush administration is doing and I know that their motivation is bad on this as well, but the student loan thing has gotten way out of hand. It really needs to get dialed back. Students are graduating with crushing debt that can't be discharged under bankruptcy no matter what. A lot of the time less expensive alternatives are available and they get talked right out of them. When my son was in his senior year of high school and we kept trying to explain to his guidance counselor that we couldn't afford $30,000 a year for college, she kept telling us that all that could be worked out. No amount of investigation turned up any real way it could be worked out except for borrowing the money. We didn't go that way and he went to a less expensive school and got a decent scholarship to help and a very small student loan, and then moved on to a public university. A number of his friends went ahead to the more expensive schools and I wondered how it was all going to work out. Well, now they're all out and a lot of them are in overwhelming debt. Some didn't even finish school so they don't have the degree to show for it but they do have considerable debt.

My nephews and neices met with the same attitude in their schools - a lot of encouragement on the part of teachers and guidance departments to go to schools that they really couldn't afford and to take loans that they couldn't be sure they'd be able to afford in the future. I work with a social worker who has $57,000 dollars in student debt. Do you know what social workers make? She's not a kid now and she'll be paying that back for the rest of her life. Another young woman I know has $150,000 in debt. She got a PhD, but has not got particularly lucrative career as yet and there's no guarantee that she's going to have one. Not all educations lead to big money careers and the decisions a student makes about federally guaranteed loans can really screw him or her up for many years, or forever. It can be self-perpetuating, too. You don't have to start paying back while you're still a fulltime student, so you get another degree and deeper in debt while you make a plan for yourself. In the public interest agency I work for, a lot of people who are 40 and 50 years old are still struggling with their student loans.

Don't get me wrong. I'd like to see a lot of things we'll never see out of this administration. I'd like to see free money - grants - make a comeback. When I was college age, if you wanted to go and if you could get into a school, you were going to be able to find the money and your debt upon graduation was likely to be very moderate. I'd like to see more money poured into community and state colleges and state univerisities. I don't want to see the end to federal student loans, but as long as the subject has come up I'd sure like to see a greater sense of responsibilty on the part of people whose job it is to advise students and their parents in what can be a very confusing endeavor.

[niceypoo]

14. Crushing debt my ass

If not for the perking loan program I would have to borrow at exorbant rates. You see, not all of us qualify for pell grants. I pay my debts. I don't need the government to "Save me from myself" thank you.

[niceypoo]

13. I'm in school right now on a perkins loan

If this happens I wont be able to finish college.