Since most American students cannot simply pay their full tuition out of pocket, financing a college education often takes the form of loans, both private and from the government.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If there were no government-guaranteed student loans, college tuition would be much lower.
When it comes to college education, American families are paying more and getting less.
Borrowing to pay for college used to be the exception; now it's the rule.
The whole student loan thing drives me completely nuts. If it wasn't possible for 18-year-olds to sign themselves up for tens of thousands of dollars in debt in order to pay their college bills, the state governments wouldn't have found it so politically easy to cut taxpayer support for public colleges and universities.
We need to make college affordable in price, and also have lower-cost student loans and more available grants for students.
I am here to give the American people some straight talk about higher education. Some have said we might have cut financial aid for college students. The truth is we have expanded access to college for our neediest students through the record growth of the Pell grant program.
Poorer students take out larger loans and will have to contribute more to the cost of higher education.
Student loan debt is the reason I don't advise students who want to become entrepreneurs to apply to elite, expensive colleges. They can be as successful if they go to a relatively inexpensive public college.
Our obsessive focus on college schooling has blinded us to basic truths. College is a place, not a magic formula. It matters what subjects students study, and subsidies should focus on the subjects that matter the most - not to the students, but to everyone else.
The new American dream is one of responsibility. What is the bottom-line number that you're going to be able to pay back toward a student loan responsibly if you're doing it yourself after you have a job? That dictates the amount of money you can borrow. That dictates the school you can go to, if you can even go to a four-year college at all.
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