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New Brunswick, NJ --- With the new academic year beginning at Rutgers University this week, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) came to the campus today to unveil his three-point plan to make college more affordable for New Jersey students and their families who may find a college education is out of reach.
This year, Rutgers University students will need about $22,700 to cover tuition, room, board and other student fees, a 46-percent increase over the $16,100 that was needed back in 2000. The dramatic increases in college costs that Rutgers students have witnessed in recent years is common statewide. In New Jersey, the costs of attending a four-year public college have jumped 36-percent since 2000, while private college costs have increased by 25-percent. Pallone said that increasing college costs have led to the typical borrower in New Jersey graduating from college now with $16,450 in debt.
"College students should not be forced to borrow away their futures in order to attend college," Pallone said. "For six years now, Washington Republicans have refused to provide any relief to college students trying to get the education they need to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy. In fact, earlier this year, Republicans made it harder to pay for college when they cut $12 billion out of federal student aid programs.
"I find this record abysmal, and want to take America in a new direction where annual tuition increases do not prevent students from attending schools like Rutgers," Pallone continued. "My three-point college affordability package will allow more New Jerseyans to attend college by expanding Pell Grants and will help ease the financial pain of students now in school by making college tuition tax credits more accessible and cutting student loan interest rates in half."
Pallone and other Congressional Democrats are supporting a three-point College Affordability Package that:
· Expands Tax Incentives to Make College More Affordable by combining the HOPE credit (a tax credit based on earnings worth as much as $1,500 for eligible freshmen and sophomores) and the Lifetime Learning credit (a credit for upper class and graduate students) and then increasing the tax incentive. Under the new combined credit, 100-percent of the first $3,000 in college tuition would be tax deductible every year a student is in school.
· Cuts Interest Rates on College Loans in half which will save an undergraduate student borrower with $17,500 in debt a total of $5,600 over the life of their loans. Specifically, the plan cuts the interest rate on new student loans in half---from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent, and cuts the interest rate on new parent loans in half---from 8.5 percent to 4.25 percent.
· Boosts the Maximum Pell Grant by 25 percent-to $5,100 helping to make college more affordable for more than five million students receiving Pell Grants. The Republican Congress and President Bush have frozen the maximum Pell Grant at $4,050 for four straight years. The maximum Pell Grant is now worth $900 less, in real terms, than in 1976, when the maximum grant covered 72 percent of the costs of a four-year public college. Today, the maximum Pell Grant only covers 32 percent of those costs.
Pallone also voiced concern that some undergraduate and graduate students who took action to consolidate their loans before a July 1 deadline are running into problems now because their lender did not turn over the loan verification certificate within the required 10 day period. Last week, the New Jersey congressman sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling asking that the lenders, not the individual loan holders, be responsible for fixing this problem. |
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