Heidi Alexander: “the goal here is to help students. The goal here is to find ways to help college students find easier ways to apply to a…”

“the goal here is to help students. The goal here is to find ways to help college students find easier ways to apply to a college and to avoid overborrowing. The goal would be to give them a year-round Pell grant. The goal would be to simplify the application form they have to complete. The goal would be to keep the interest rates as low as we can. The goal would be to make it easier to repay student loans. That is our goal. Our education committee, in which the Senator from Wisconsin and the Senator from Pennsylvania are very valuable members, is completing work on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act with just those goals. We have had eight hearings. We are considering a number of bipartisan proposals to, as I said, simplify the grants and loans for college, to provide for year-round Pell Grants, to make it easier to repay student loans and to discourage overborrowing, which is weighing down these students. One of the most important of those proposals, which was recommended to us by witnesses, is that we should simplify the process so there is one grant and one loan. That would be a Pell grant and a loan. In the last reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 2008, Congress agreed to sunset the Perkins Loan Program, and that is what is happening now. I support sunsetting this program, although students who currently receive a Perkins loan would continue to do so.…”