EDITORIAL: Loans killing college
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If you've been sailing through the year on your loan refund, enjoy it while it lasts and consider saving some for the years to come.
Recently, the Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corp. announced they will not be able to properly fund as many loans for the 2008-09 academic year. This crisis comes in response to the credit squeeze felt by many higher education loan corporations throughout the country.
Iowa Student Loan is a private, nonprofit corporation, to which most parents and students turn to to help supplement the difference in tuition and living costs after exhausting scholarships, grants and federal loans.
Currently, Iowa Student Loan funds more than 68,500 students attending Iowa colleges and universities and is the second largest source of funding for Iowa higher education students.
For the 2006-07 year alone, Iowa Student Loan provided about $350 million in student loans. At this time, they are unsure of how much they can provide to students this fall.
On top of the difficulty in receiving federal loans and grants, private loan companies such as Iowa Student Loan might also be tightening their standards to qualify. Students and parents might be asked to have co-signers, higher credit scores and additional proof of income in the year to come.
Great - as if it isn't tough enough to scrape by on the loans we currently have, here's another barrier on the road to our diplomas. Federal loan interest rates are already daunting enough, not to mention the interest rates of private loans, which feel like credit card bills.
This isn't just an Iowa thing, though - college students nationwide will feel these effects this fall.
A college senior's fear of joining the real world seems almost childish to the terror they should feel as soon as they get their first loan statement six months after graduation.
It's sad that our system has come down to this. Learning and finding something we love to do are no longer the main priorities of our higher education system. We are doomed to find something that we hope will make us occasionally happy and pay us enough to pay back student loans for 20 years after graduation.
We should be very concerned about the commitment of our government to helping us succeed. We need to hold our loan companies, the federal government, and colleges and universities accountable for these funds - college must be kept accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy.
Recently, the Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corp. announced they will not be able to properly fund as many loans for the 2008-09 academic year. This crisis comes in response to the credit squeeze felt by many higher education loan corporations throughout the country.
Iowa Student Loan is a private, nonprofit corporation, to which most parents and students turn to to help supplement the difference in tuition and living costs after exhausting scholarships, grants and federal loans.
Currently, Iowa Student Loan funds more than 68,500 students attending Iowa colleges and universities and is the second largest source of funding for Iowa higher education students.
For the 2006-07 year alone, Iowa Student Loan provided about $350 million in student loans. At this time, they are unsure of how much they can provide to students this fall.
On top of the difficulty in receiving federal loans and grants, private loan companies such as Iowa Student Loan might also be tightening their standards to qualify. Students and parents might be asked to have co-signers, higher credit scores and additional proof of income in the year to come.
Great - as if it isn't tough enough to scrape by on the loans we currently have, here's another barrier on the road to our diplomas. Federal loan interest rates are already daunting enough, not to mention the interest rates of private loans, which feel like credit card bills.
This isn't just an Iowa thing, though - college students nationwide will feel these effects this fall.
A college senior's fear of joining the real world seems almost childish to the terror they should feel as soon as they get their first loan statement six months after graduation.
It's sad that our system has come down to this. Learning and finding something we love to do are no longer the main priorities of our higher education system. We are doomed to find something that we hope will make us occasionally happy and pay us enough to pay back student loans for 20 years after graduation.
We should be very concerned about the commitment of our government to helping us succeed. We need to hold our loan companies, the federal government, and colleges and universities accountable for these funds - college must be kept accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy.
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