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Student Debt and the Cost of Education

Group #5
Santiago Mejia
Elizabeth Nelson
Erin Tiernan-Lang
Patricia Flores
Heath Muskat

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PreambleWe intend to call attention the negative impacts of the rising cost of higher education and the
corollary, rising student debt. We chose this issue because it directly affects our generation. We
are either in college or will be soon, and we are all worried about paying for our education and
being saddled with student debt. This policy shows the steps we have taken and the steps we
intend to take in order to increase awareness of our issue. We will define the problem, define
why it is an issue of national concern, and outline the steps required to raise national and political
awareness of the scope, depth, and impact of the problem.
B. Every year more and more students walk away from college with a degree and the burden of
debt on their shoulders, this is due to the rising cost of attending college in America. In the past
two years alone the average cost of attending college has risen $3000. Over the past 30 years, the
price of education has risen 328%, in 1973 the average price for public four year tuition and fees
were $2710 this year it was $8893. Due to this increase in the price of education the economy,
suicide rates, health, and the ability to attend college have been affected. The economy has
suffered greatly due to students having to take out student loans, There is roughly somewhere
between $902 billion and $1 trillion in total outstanding student loan debt in the United States.
Total student loans is three times what it was ten years ago when it was $300 billion dollars.
Furthermore, this debt inhibits the circulation of money. When students graduate, whether or not
they are able to get a job, most of the money they earn is going towards paying off their student
debt, this means they cant contribute money to other sectors of the economy. Student debt
impacts 75% of peoples ability to purchase a home, mortgage companies typically look at two
factors when determining borrowers eligibility for a house mortgage- their credit score and their

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debt-to income ratio. Furthermore, student either choose not to attend college or drop out after a
few years because they cant afford to saddle themselves with debt.
In addition to the economy, student debt affects health and suicide rates. 6% of
undergraduates and 4 percent of graduate students in 4-year colleges have seriously considered
attempting suicide in the past year. And there are more than 1,000 suicides on college campuses
each year. Additionally, there has been a huge increase in mental health issues among college
students, including sleep deprivation, anxiety, and depression. Almost all college students
operate on sleep deprivation which leads to illness such as colds and flu, lower GPA, and
increased automobile accidents.
As previously discussed, the price of education has increased immensely over the last
30 years. In our personal interviews, many of the people we talked to who have not attended
college said that their main reason for not attending was the price of education. Furthermore,
29% of all college students that take out student loans are dropping out of school: a percentage
that has increased one-quarter over the past decade.
Recently, Elizabeth Warrens bill to help students with student debt was not passed. Her
plan was to have wealthy people pay higher taxes. In a procedural vote, the Senate voted 56-38
for Warrens Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act. Thats a majority, but under
Senate rules, 60 votes were needed to end debate on the bill and set up a final vote. However,
her decision to have wealthy people pay higher taxes wouldnt just affect them but also middle
class working citizens. But the bill would affect many who arent billionaires. Her tax hike
would increase taxes on income starting at $1 million per year. Raising taxes isnt particularly
something that people are going to favor. With our policy were just calling awareness to the
issue without raising taxes.

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A main reason many of the bills and such that have dealt with student debt and the cost
of education have failed is the lack of interest from voters. However, there have been very few
bills that have been proposed because those mainly affected by this issue are in the 20-30 year
old bracket which has been shown to have the lowest voter turnout. Additionally, the attempts
to address this issue have called for a raise in taxes, which has traditionally been viewed very
negatively by the majority of American citizens.
In 2010, Obama signed a law that ensured that more students had access to attending
college by revamping the student federal loan. Congress voted Thursday to force commercial
banks out of the federal student loan market, cutting off billions of dollars in profits in a
sweeping restructuring of financial-aid programs and redirecting most of the money to new
education initiatives. A major reason this bill was passed by Congress is because it doesnt
affect the average American citizen and as a whole doesnt affect the nation negatively.

C. Our primary source of gathering information to support our policy was to create a quiz about
facts relating to student loans and student debt. This quiz has served as a way for us to see
exactly how much people actually know about student loans and debt. Some examples of the
questions we asked are, Which age group takes out the most in student loans? When you file
for bankruptcy, what loans dont get erased? and What percentage of full time undergraduate
college students receive some type of financial aid? We each posted the link to our quiz on our
Facebook pages, other media sources, and asked face to face. The highest score that someone
had gotten was 67%, while the average score was 41%. These scores reflect how knowledgeable
society is about the student debt crisis and student debt in America. These results help illustrate
how most people dont know that much about student debt and the effect it has on their lives.

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Another way we gathered information was by interviewing people. We each emailed

friends and family asking them if they had time to meet with us face-to-face. We created some
basic questions to ask them regarding student loans, such as if they had any debt when they
graduated college or if they had to take out any loans when attending college. Once they had
answered those questions, we transitioned the conversation towards solutions that they might
have to address the issue of student debt. A lot of the suggestions that we got were about
implementing more programs and opportunities for students to learn more about the actual
benefits and dangers of taking out student loans. The people we interviewed also talked about
the different programs and opportunities there are to pay off your student debt or get it forgiven.
Those types of programs arent made public to a lot of people, so people end up having debt for
years after they graduate when they could have had their debt forgiven. We are going to use this
data to help us design our procedure to address this issue. One of the limitations that we faced
when interviewing those people was that we were only able to interview people who lived close
to us. Also, not everyone replied to our emails.
Overall, our results from our quiz and our interviews were extremely useful to us. Our
quiz is going to help us emphasize the fact that people dont know that much about student loans
or student debt. Our interviews proved valuable to us because it helped us get suggestions from
people as to how we could help address this issue. We got to know the general opinion of what
people think of student debt and what they think of our attempts to solve it. The response we got
was very positive.
D. Our goal is to call attention to the rising cost of education and the student debt crisis. Some
ways we can do this are through social media, creating an ad campaign, and contacting student
leadership at universities. Social media is an effective free method of getting the word out to

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the general population. Some ways we would use social media is by creating a Facebook page,
creating a twitter account to use hashtags and addressing the certain colleges on the Twitter
network. Twitter could be super useful to us by creating another way to reach out to new people
and also the younger generation that will be effected by the issue unless something is done about
it. Many universities have Facebook pages as well as PACs and Super PACS, we can friend
these pages, which will make the information we have more visible. On our Facebook page
we would have the quiz we made, little known facts about student debt, links to organizations
that are attempting to do combat student debt, a link to our Super PAC, and what is being done
about student debt and the price of education in politics. The purpose of our Super PAC will
be to raise money to start an ad campaign stating the effects of student debt, the high price of
education, and the bills in congress and other political movements that deal with our issue.
One Bill that we came across that wed like to call attention to that deals with our issue. The
bill is being sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio, who is a potential candidate for the 2016
presidential election. The bill focuses on leveraging the loan payments according to individual
income. According to the Federal Election Commission website, in order to become a Super
PAC one must must register by filing FEC Form 1 [PDF] (Instructions [PDF]), Statement of
Organization within 10 days after raising or spending in excess of $1,000 in connection with
federal elections. Under "Type of Committee," the PAC would check box 5(f). Additionally, the
committee must submit a letter to identify itself as a Super PAC. The FEC Form 1 is a simple
four page document that requires the group to have a treasurer, a bank account, and a custodian
of records.

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Works Cited
Brennan, Patrick. "Elizabeth Warren's Student-Loan Bill Fails." National Review Online. National
Review Online, 11 June 2014. Web. 22 July 2014.
Durden, Tyler. "Student Loan Bubble Update: "This Situation Is Simply Unsustainable"" Zero Hedge.
Zero Hedge, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 22 July 2014.
Herszenhorn, David M., and Tamar Lewin. "Student Loan Overhaul Approved by Congress." The New
York Times. The New York Times, 25 Mar. 2010. Web. 22 July 2014.
"How Student Loans Helped Destroy America - Zen College Life." Zen College Life. Zen College Life,
4 Oct. 2013. Web. 22 July 2014.
Kavoussi, Bonnie. "More Student Loan Borrowers Are Dropping Out Of College." The Huffington
Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 30 May 2012. Web. 22 July 2014.
Korkki, Phyllis. "The Ripple Effects of Rising Student Debt." The New York Times. The New York
Times, 24 May 2014. Web. 22 July 2014.
"Quick Answers to PAC Questions." Quick Answers. Federal Election Committee, 5 Nov. 2010. Web.
22 July 2014.
Rogin, Josh. "The 50 Most Stressful Colleges." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 4 Apr. 2010.
Web. 22 July 2014.
Stevens, Maggie. "The Student Loan Debt Crisis in 9 Charts." Mother Jones. Mother Jones, 5 June
2013. Web. 22 July 2014.
"Student Loan Debt: Who Are the 1%?" Economix Student Loan Debt Who Are the 1 Comments. U.S
Department of Education, 2 Aug. 2009. Web. 22 July 2014.
"Suicide Statistics." Suicide Statistics. Emory, 12 July 2013. Web. 19 July 2014.
"Tuition and Fee and Room and Board Charges over Time." Tuition and Fee Charges over Time.
CollegeBoard, 12 Oct. 2013. Web. 21 July 2014.

Appendix
Results from Polldaddy quiz

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