The Student Loan Debacle

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, spoke up for poor and middle-class Americans last week when she excoriated the federal government for making money on the student loan program. She also criticized Republicans for killing bills earlier this month that would have prevented interest rates on subsidized student loans from doubling. Rates on those loans have jumped from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, further burdening one-third of all college students who use them to pay for an education.

During the last decade, Congress sensibly replaced a system of variable-rate loans with fixed rates that allowed families to know what their loans would cost. It set the rate on both subsidized and unsubsidized loans at 6.8 percent, but later ordered the rate on subsidized loans — two-thirds of which go to families with incomes under $50,000 — to gradually decline by half. The refusal of Republicans in both houses to renew the lower rate means that students who start college this fall and finish in four years will be saddled, on average, with an extra $4,000 in debt.

This increase in costs comes at a time when college debt has already reached record levels, damaging the economy and hobbling young graduates. It also draws attention to the fact that the federal government is making quite a lot of money from the loan program. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the new, higher rate would earn the government about $184 billion over the next decade, after taking into account program costs, including potential defaults. Ms. Warren and other lawmakers describe this pile of money as “profit.” The Obama administration disputes this. But if it is not profit, what is it?......read more