Making College More Affordable, More Diverse

[NJmaverick]

New Student Loan Measures Will Make College More Affordable, Particularly for Minority Students

The Senate yesterday passed the reconciliation bill in one of the final steps in the year-long struggle for health care reform. But as it did so, it simultaneously approved a proposal that would help millions of young people afford college—especially Latinos and African Americans.

The most important education investment in the bill is $36 billion for the Pell grant program, which provides need-based grants to low- and middle-income students. The bill ties the maximum Pell grant award to inflation to ensure that it maintains more of its value overtime, and increases the maximum award to $5,550 next year.

The reconciliation bill will also make student debt more manageable by lowering the monthly payments required of Income-Based Repayment program borrowers from 15 percent to 10 percent of discretionary income—the amount of your adjusted gross income minus 150 percent of the federal poverty level for your family size and state—and by reducing the amount of time borrowers have to wait for their loans to be forgiven from 25 years to 20 years. And it will invest billions in minority-serving institutions, historically black colleges and universities, college access programs, and community colleges.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/03/safra_minorities.html