On the recordJuly 10, 2013
Let me say very quickly--and I will use $10 million hypothetically that is borrowed every year--$10 billion, $10 million, whatever you want to use--25 percent of that money goes to the subsidized, just 25 percent. I understand that it is close to about 40 percent of the students who participate in borrowing money, but the volume of money is about 25 percent, one-fourth of the money that is loaned out. So if we are keeping the rates low on one-fourth of the money, that means we artificially have much higher rates on three- fourths of the money students need to get an education. What we are saying is that we are going to bring a larger majority of that down to the lowest rate. We think it is a good policy that we should be discussing and talking about. That is where we are. That is why we came up with the plan we did, but we reduced all the rates. The PLUS loans I think went from 7.9 to 6.21, yes, and then the graduate loans went from 6.8 to 5.21. But if you do all of the undergraduate, it would go from 3.4 to 3.66, a quarter and a point--.26.
