Graduate students will pay more for loans under debt deal

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Graduate students will pay more for loans under debt deal
Posted on Monday, 08.01.11

Community colleges win in debt deal, but graduate students lose.

By DOUGLAS HANKS and MICHAEL VASQUEZ
[e-mail]

Graduate students wound up on the “Loser” list from Washington’s debt deal.

Tucked into the bill that would enact the $2.4 trillion debt-reduction plan is a provision that would force graduate students to pay interest on student loans while they’re still in school. Currently, Washington picks up the interest payments for graduate students while they attend school.

The cut is part of a surprise compromise that preserves tuition payments for low-income college students under the Pell grant program. While Pell grants were expected to take big spending hits next year, they emerged almost fully funded in the debt deal, said Terry Hartle, spokesman for the American Council on Education, which lobbies for colleges and universities.

~snip~
While the details were sketchy as Washington raced to resolve a debt crisis by Tuesday, education professionals said the deal will mean real changes to how many graduate students fund their education.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/01/2341046/graduate-students-will-pay-more.html

[DURHAM D]

1. you have got to be kidding -

pay interest while in grad school?


The stupid it burns.

[sweetloukillbot]

3. pay interest? Or are the loans just accruing interest?

Right now I get about 20K a year in subsidized and unsubsidized (more unsubsidized). As I understand it, I'll still be able to get that loan total, but the gov't won't pick up the interest while I'm in school. Means I pay more on the back end, but I won't be actively paying on the loans while in school. Sucks, but it could be a lot worse, and the interest on gov't student loans is not bad at all.
And if it was necessary to preserve Pell grants for low income students, I can't complain as much - everything I was hearing last week was that Pell grants were going to get eviscerated.

[bayareamike]

5. Well put.

It sucks that I'll have to -- as you said -- pay more on the back end. Just another example of the ever-intensifying challenge to acquire sufficient education in this country.

That being said, I'm glad Pell grants aren't devastated.

[No Elephants]

2. The RW hates educated people. From "Ivory tower." to "elites" to "limousine liberals."

[Igel]

16. Professional, humanities, and social science.

I knew very few grad students in engineering or science that didn't live on RA and TAships. Then, if they needed to be free during their writing phase they just went on leave and had no tuition/fees.

Now humanities and social sciences, as well as professional students--yikes. It'll make it that much harder to pay off medical school bills, and who'll want to be a vet? (If it reduces the number of lawyers, well, is there some way to make them pay extra interest, sort of subsidize one of the other more important fields? I don't know, like Romanian porcelain or Chinese history?)

[enlightenment]

4. Reading the language, and referencing back to the

Higher Education Act (Title IV), it looks like they are cutting all subsidized loans to grad and professional students (allowing them to take out, in unsubsidized loans, the additional amount they would have been eligible for in subsidized) except for students pursuing degrees in elementary and secondary education.

Assuming I'm reading it correctly.

I'm surprised they didn't limit it to students studying maths and science education . . .

http://rules.house.gov/Media/file/PDF_112_1/Floor_Text/DEBT_016_xml.pdf
http://www.tgslc.org/pdf/HEA_Title_IV_Oct02.pdf

[BenzoDia]

10. Thanks for posting the piece of the Higher Education Act

I got to the part in the Budget Control Act where they reference it and was too lazy to look it up.

[DollyM]

6. The first 2/3 of the loan payments are mostly interest!

Basically you will be paying back your student loan the second you take it out! I have a Master's degree which I have found pretty worthless to find a job so I checked with my computer college and planned to enroll in a web design program. I have some computer skills and thought that would help, maybe give me an edge for a different kind of job. Guess what, once you have a degree, you are not eligible for student aid, no pell, nothing! I never took student aid other than student loans for my Masters degree yet I cannot get a frickin Pell grant even though I am jobless and about to run out of unemployment. My husband is disabled so without a job that leaves us with 500.00 a month to live on! I am so tired of living (if you can call this living) in a country that doesn't seem to give a rats ass about its citizens.

[joeglow3]

13. What is your Masters in?

[DollyM]

17. Behavioral Science

It's basically a social services degree. Social service programs are being cut left and right so I don't hold out much hope of getting something in that field.

[a la izquierda]

7. I heard this last night.

I just finished my PhD. I paid my way through 6 years of Undergrad and an MA, so you can imagine how much I owe the government. If one has to pay interest while in school, that is devastating to people who are already struggling financially.

[wilt the stilt]

8. This is the fundamental republican belief

Only aristocrats should be allowed to attend school. Oh for the gilded age when those low level people worked in company towns.This is the thinning of the ranks for the privileged.

[PinkTiger]

9. I've been living on student loans

while working on my Ph.D. since 2009, after being laid off from my job of 10 years. This is like getting a double whammy. Makes me totally sick. I don't see why people like me have to pay for the rich getting their tax cuts. I feel like I've been raped, all over again, and left out in the street naked.
Where is our champion? Why is there no one in Washington looking out for the poor? Are these Congress people so out of touch with reality that they can honestly say this is the right thing to do to someone who is already facing a shit load of debt when they graduate?

[barb162]

18. "Why is there no one in Washington looking out for the poor?"

The poor have a low vote rate so not all that many in Congress pay attention. Also the poor don't give a lot to the campaigns, since they don't have anything to give. Money talks and the corporations and rich give, give, give. There is no champion of the poor other than perhaps people like Kucinich, etal

[woo me with science]

11. The banks profit from our debt.

This must be viewed in the context of disaster capitalism and the society that they are deliberately constructing. Our economy and our way of life are being restructured to make us permanent sources of wealth for the already obscenely wealthy.

They have already turned our health care system into a for-profit enterprise that mandates people buy insurance they cannot afford to use.

They are working on turning our educational system into a profit-making enterprise, as well.

The wars are a major source of profit for them, because they are run on expensive borrowed money.

And now college, rather than being a means for most to improve their economic situation, is increasingly becoming an avenue by which people sink deep into debt that they will be paying back, with interest, for the rest of their lives. This is happening not just through the restructuring of student loan programs that trap students attending legitimate educational programs, but also through the mushrooming of for-profit, fly-by-night educational institutions that promise a better life but end up offering their students worthless "McDegrees" and an albatross of student loans.

[N7Shepard]

12. I just finished my M.S. in math a year ago and I'm never going back

Thankfully for me I just made it before this crap. Sorry for those of you still in it :(

[OhioChick]

14. This is beyond fucked up n/t

[ChromeFoundry]

15. K&R n/t