Thomas Daschle: “Students are borrowing too much, and students are working too much in order to finance rising college costs. Sixty-four…”

“Students are borrowing too much, and students are working too much in order to finance rising college costs. Sixty-four percent of all students borrow Federal student loans to finance a college education today. The typical undergraduate student graduates with about $17,000 in Federal loan debt. Student debt is skyrocketing. As a result, many students find themselves saddled with unimaginable levels of student loan debt and experience difficulty in repaying their loans. An estimated 39 percent of all student borrowers today graduate with unimaginable student loan debt. The administration, in late April, proposed to exacerbate the current circumstances in ways that were inexplicable to many of us. They proposed to raise student loan interest rates for consolidated loans by changing the consolidation loan interest rate from a fixed to variable rates. This proposal has come along, as I noted, when millions of students are struggling to pay for college.”