hurricanemaxi
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Joined: 17 Sep 2011
Posts: 48
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 Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 1:50 pm Post subject: View: Help Students Run the Numbers on Higher Education |
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Barriers to college are barriers to the pursuit of happiness. Research shows that college graduates live healthier, happier lives. At the same time, their productivity is increasingly vital to the U.S. economy. A college graduate today can expect almost double the lifetime earnings of someone with only a high-school diploma, and that wage differential continues to rise.
Cities with high levels of education have correspondingly high incomes, which help attract more educated newcomers, and higher-paying employers, in a dynamic, virtuous economic circle.
But despite many pockets of excellence, the U.S. higher- education system overall achieves mediocre results at a high cost. In recent years, the U.S. has fallen from first in the world in the percentage of young people who are college graduates to 16th. Roughly two-thirds of those graduates have student-loan debt; for the class of 2010, the average debt rose to a record of more than $25,000 per graduate. Some carry debt loads so burdensome that they influence not only the viability of career paths but even prospects for marriage and child- rearing.
Having previously increased federal grants for college students, President Barack Obama last month announced a plan to enable borrowers to cap their student-loan debt repayments at 10 percent of discretionary income. It’s a sensible effort to increase the money in young consumers’ pockets during hard economic times and to make college slightly more affordable. But even if every qualifying student takes advantage of it, its effect will be limited.
Given budget constraints and gridlock in Washington, additional financial help is unlikely to materialize. Yet as a report released last week by the American Enterprise Institute makes clear, there is still much that the government can do to help students navigate a system that is often as bewildering as it is expensive.
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