College Loan Survey

Recent research suggests that Americans view a college education as more important than before, and they simultaneously worry that it is becoming less affordable. Graduates are entering work a degree, as well as a large amount of student loan debt to repay. Middle-class and low-income families have been surveyed. Those surveyed believe that the government should be doing more to help, and they support reforms to make loan payments more manageable.

For Americans of all socioeconomic backgrounds, borrowing has become a path to a higher education. The Project on Student Debt works to increase public understanding of this trend and its implications for American families, the economy, and society as a whole. Citing concerns about how rising student debt and interest rates affect American families, groups representing students, parents, educators, and the loan industry petitioned Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to make regulatory changes that would create more flexible and affordable ways to repay student loans.

A petition seeks restructuring of the current repayment rules that are inconsistent, confusing, and contradictory and do not provide clear and meaningful protections to borrowers who make good faith efforts to meet their obligations. The petitioners are requesting regulatory changes that would limit required loan payments to a manageable proportion of income and forgive certain debts after twenty years of repayment.

According to a recent survey, eighty percent of adults say a college education is more important today than it was ten years ago. However, sixty-six percent also say that affording college is more difficult now, and seventy percent expect it to be even harder in the future. Three in five adults and two in three parents of current college students say students today graduate with too much debt. Two-thirds of adults say it is difficult to repay student loans.

Sixty-four percent of adults say the federal government is doing too little to make higher education available and affordable. Sixty-one percent of adults and seventy percent of recent college students favor a proposal to cap student loan payments at ten percent of income, even if it involves some additional government spending.

Three out of four adults support a refundable tax credit for student loan interest costs. That support, which crosses demographic and ideological lines, is strong despite possible costs of up to two billion dollars every year.