EDITORIAL: Obama's new student loan executive order exposes larger problems
Graduates overburdened with student loan debt are now eligible for a new reduced payment plan.
President Obama's executive order of a program designed to cap monthly payments on loans acknowledges that students are often unable to pay their loans back in this economic climate.
The plan, for those who qualify, will reduce the minimum yearly repayment to 10 percent of disposable income.
There are many troubling questions raised by the president's executive order.
The program does not cover students who took out private loans, or made use of of the PLUS loans advocated by our own Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid. What are these graduates supposed to do?
Why was the federal government unable to act on this issue as a functional body?
Obama going outside the legislative process in order to accomplish what seems like a common-sense measure shows the degree to which our government has ceased to function.
The use of an executive order to support students and graduates shows the extent to which a gridlocked legislature is unwilling to take action on what should be an apolitical issue.
Reducing the minimum payment on loans disregards the cause of students' massive loan burdens in the first place: constantly rising tuition rates. Allowing students to stop making payments on their loans after 20 years instead of 25 acknowledges the reality that many students are now forced to take on a debt burden for most of their adult lives in order to obtain the education required to be at all competitive in the current economy.
Critics of student loan reform often draw on their own experience of paying for school entirely by working their way through college. This criticism ignores the two-fold issue of skyrocketing tuition and a lack of jobs for Americans.
The program that the 10-percent cap replaces was underused, and there is no guarantee that eligible students will apply for the new program
Obama's order is a step in the right direction, but the details of the program and the way in which he plans to enact it expose much larger problems in our government and our universities.
