A college degree is becoming a necessity in today's world. And students are doing whatever it takes to pay for college, including taking on more and more debt. The average student loan burden has grown by 60% in just seven years, and nearly two-thirds of all four-year college graduates now have student loans. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that jobs requiring higher education will grow by 22 percent between 2002 and 2012, nearly double the rate of non-college jobs.

	USPIRG advocate Luke Swarthout testified on May 1 before the House Education committee on reforms to federal higher education policy. View Testimony.
	Swarthout again testified on June 6 before the Senate Banking committee on reforms to protect student borrowers within the private student loan market. Read Testimony.

"Cutting Interest Rates, Lowering Student Debt: An Analysis of the Congressional Proposal to Cut Student Loan Interest Rates in Half"

Congressional leadership has proposed cutting the fixed interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans for undergraduates from 6.8% to 3.4% over the next five years. After graduation, students could consolidate their loans into one loan at the weighted average of the interest rates of their various loans. This report finds that Congress can save the average four-year college student starting school in 2007 about $2,280 over the life of his or her loans. When the interest rate cut is fully phased in, the average four-year college student starting school in 2011 would save $4,420 over the life of the loan.
Read the report.

"Paying Back, Not Giving Back: Student Debt's Negative Impact on Public Service Career Opportunities"

To detail the need for reform in the student aid programs, the state PIRGs wrote and released this report on April 5, 2006. Given increasing dependence on student loans, student borrowers graduating from four-year schools and working in public service careers often carry more debt than they can manage. The prospect of burdensome debt likely deters skilled and dedicated college graduates from entering and staying in important careers educating our nation's children and helping the country's most vulnerable populations.
Read the press release.
Download the full report.

UC Davis Student Body President Darnell Halloway delivered the UCD task force report to former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt at a recent Commission meeting in DC. Dagny Brown, UC Santa Cruz CALPIRG's Student Debt Alert coordinator; Dallas Cole, UC Davis CALPIRG's Student Debt Alert coordinator; and Darnell Halloway discuss student aid concerns with Commissioner Richard Vedder.

Campus by Campus Loan Debt Reports to the Commission, Student leaders, faculty, administrators, local legislators and alumni representatives convened their own task forces on student loan debt at twenty campuses across the nation this spring term. After completing profiles of student debt from their own student bodies, the groups met to discuss policy changes that would alleviate the problem there. The reports came from schools ranging from community colleges to flagship universities. Read the press release.

Read the full report from each task force:

Indiana University Bloomington
Iowa State University
Los Angeles City College
Mercer County Community College
Oberlin College
Southern Oregon University
St. Louis Community College Meramec
The College of New Jersey
The Evergreen State College
University of California Davis
University of California San Diego
University of California Santa Cruz
University of Colorado Denver
University of Connecticut Hartford
University of Maryland
University of Massachusetts Boston
University of Nevada Reno
University of New Hampshire
University of Southern Maine
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh