North Dakota Students Worried Over Cuts To Student Loan Programs
FARGO (AP) - North Dakota college students are speaking out against a federal budget bill they say would hit student loan programs hard.
"I'm afraid it will price students out of college," said Minot State University junior Mike Sadowski.
Kayla Pulvermacher, a senior at North Dakota State University, said she worries the bill will force her two younger brothers to bypass a college education.
"It is important to me to see my younger brothers have the same opportunity as me," Pulvermacher said Tuesday, at a press conference called by the North Dakota Progressive Coalition.
"They (lawmakers) need to find a different alternative."
The budget bill is an attempt to control automatic growth in such government programs as Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies, but even some Republicans in Congress are unhappy with it, and changes are expected.
About 75 percent of North Dakota's college students, or about 30,000, have loans, said Barry Nelson, the North Dakota Progressive Coalition board chairman.
I appreciate the concern of students who depend on student loan programs for their education, but the truth of the matter is that as more federal money for college tuition becomes available the price of tuition goes up.
This is the effect programs like Medicare and student loans have on markets. They insulate citizens from the true costs of things like education and health care thus allowing health care providers and higher learning institutions to charge outrageous prices for their services with little or no backlash.
College tuition prices have become a vicious cycle. The price of tuition goes up, so the government makes more money available. Colleges see that more money is available and raise tuition again. At some point, though, there has to be an end. If more money didn't become available tuition isn't as likely to go up. And if it does it probably won't stay up for long. After all, these colleges aren't going to price themselves out of business.
Further, letting the students feel some more of the financial impact from their academic decisions will likely prompt more of them to work a little harder in school. How many college students do you know spend the first year or so at school messing around and not really taking things seriously? We hear a lot of complaints about the "party atmosphere" on a lot of college campuses. How long do you think the party would last once students were tasked with shouldering more of their own tuition costs?
(via The North Dakota Democrats Blog)
