Monday, September 17, 2007

Congress Must Have Children In College! Mulitple Financial Aid Acts PASSED!

The great greek gods must be shining down sweet sugar unto the lips of the "yay" sayers in the american Congress this week! For they have made the first step to recognizing the generation X and Y'rs struggles with the joyous student loans and financial aid departments at colleges across the nation. Being able to have the true college experience and travel abroad, or perhaps purchase all the textbooks for class will be in the near future for up and coming college students!

The College Cost Reduction and Access Act will:
Increase the size of the maximum Pell Grant award, to help low income students pay for college. Create an income-based repayment program that will help graduates with low incomes pay back their loans at a more manageable pace. Reduce interest rates on student loans for more than 5 million low and middle-income student borrowers receiving subsidized Stafford loans.

All of these programs will be paid for without raising taxes - instead, they're funded by cutting down the huge subsidies that go to private lenders like Sallie Mae. And I, for one, have come to dislike Sallie Mae
. The other loans that will most likely be stalking me until I'm retiring from my job in my 50's is that blasted Stafford loan. It is helpful yes, however, it comes with so many strings attached to it that the chance of getting "tied up" by it outweighs the need for pulling the strings.

All college students can look forward to today is, hopefully, counting on the same congressmen to enact the law into full function before we graduate from college. We were mainly the people who started the lobbying to get this act established and recognized properly, the least we could get in return is to take advantage of it. If not that, all of whom signed the petitions and made a huss and fuss about it can sleep better at night knowing that "the man" will not be scrounging around in our empty wallets in the near future for funds.

Now, if only the state to state tax boards will pay attention to this and decide to stop (mainly NJ) forcing all the college to raise tuition upto $1000 each semester. Its killing us!