Mitch Landrieu: “I rise today to introduce to my colleagues, the Consolidation Student Loan Flexibility Act of 2002, a bill of great…”

“I rise today to introduce to my colleagues, the Consolidation Student Loan Flexibility Act of 2002, a bill of great importance to the hundreds and thousands of students working to make the dream of a college education a reality. According to a recent report published by the National Center for Higher Education, the cost of attending two- and four-year public and private colleges has grown more rapidly than inflation, and faster than family income. Poor families spent as much as 25 percent of their annual income to send their children to a public, four-year colleges in 2000, compared with 13 percent in 1980. What's worse, the Federal Pell Grant program, designed to help alleviate the financial burden on low income families, covered only 57 percent of the cost of tuition at public four-year colleges in 1999, compared with 98 percent in 1986. The most widespread response to the increasing costs, according to the report, involves debt, more students are borrowing more money than ever before.”