Although the federal government has made recent efforts to bring tuition debt relief to students, partisan politics have gotten in the way of bringing reform.
President Barack Obama signed an executive order on June 9 to expand the program letting students pay 10 percent of their monthly income toward their student loans.
However, the recent bill proposal written by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to allow some students to refinance their loans did not pass in the House of Representatives.
Steven Greene, a professor in political science, said the key component to reforming student loans is working out how it’s going to be paid for, which must happen by either imposing more taxes or by cutting programs.
The News & Observer reported the rejected senate bill would have been financed by a tax on citizens with an income greater than $1 million.
Now that Republicans have the majority in the House of Representatives, as opposed to in 2012, Democrats would have known the bill would fail, Greene said.
Because the bill essentially relies on increasing taxes, Democrats in the Senate never intended on it becoming policy in the short term. This is because, historically, Republicans have always been opposed to raising taxes, according to Greene.
“They’re using it more as a political weapon because they know Republicans will never agree to increasing taxes,” Greene said.
Because it is so widely known that the bill would not have passed in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, Democrats could’ve proposed the bill to gain the turnout of young voters in the midterm elections, according to Greene.
“Part of what Democrats are trying to do is anything they can to get young people actually turning out to the polls in the midterm elections, since it’s an issue that resonates with many of them,” Greene said.
Only 11 percent of voters were from age 18 to 29. They reported the majority of votes swayed Democrat, as opposed to other age groups, according to the Washington Post.
Greene said even though Democrats are trying to help relieve graduates’ burdens of debt, this seems to be more of an effort at symbolic politics than something that actually has a chance of passing right now.
Michael Cobb, a professor of political science, said the bill may have been a ploy, but regardless, a ploy such as this one has the potential to have good policy outcomes and make it easier for more people to obtain a degree.
“College education is becoming crucial to do well in today’s economy,” Cobb said. “But the cost of tuition has been far exceeding the pace of inflation.”
Cobb said a college education is becoming crucial for people to do well, but the costs have become incredibly high because tuition increases are far exceeding the pace of inflation.
Cobb said the cost of college tuition is one of the highest rising costs of any sector.
“While N.C. State is a bargain comparatively, it’s still fairly expensive for a large percentage of the kinds of students that come to State,” Cobb said.
According to The New York Times, in 2010, Congress cut off private lenders from making student loans with federal money so the government could handle more of the loans directly, and commercial banks were prevented from making billions of dollars in profit.
Even though the amount of money given through Pell Grants, a federal program that provides need-based grants to college students, was raised that year also, the New York Times reported it only covers one-third of the average cost of a public college’s tuition. In the 1970s, when the Pell Grant was started, it covered three-quarters of the cost.
Cobb said the main problem with the price of college education is that tuition is rising faster than the ability to help subsidize those costs for the middle class and people with lower incomes. Getting tuition costs under control and increasing the amount of financial assistance are the two most important factors of reform.
