Obama administration outlines plans for decreasing student debt

The Obama administration has taken actions that might make college more affordable, or at least… The Obama administration has taken actions that might make college more affordable, or at least make student loan debt easier to bear.

President Barack Obama signed three executive orders on Wednesday that seek to make college more affordable and make it easier for students to repay their federal student loans, with an end goal of strengthening the economy. The orders will not have to go through Congress.

Obama announced the plan less than two weeks after Congress rejected his American Jobs Act, a $447 billion program meant to target spending and alter the tax code to increase revenue, and just one day after premiering a national mortgage refinancing plan.

In a speech touting the new initiatives in Denver, Obama said that college graduates who take out loans leave college owing an average of $24,000.

“Now, living with that kind of debt means making some pretty tough choices when you’re first starting out,” Obama said in Denver. “It might mean putting off buying a house. It might mean you can’t start a business idea that you’ve got. It may mean that you’ve got to wait longer to start a family, or certainly it means you’re putting off saving for retirement because you’re still paying off your student loans.”

Emphasizing the economic benefits of his new program has become a running theme in the president’s most high-profile efforts over the past few weeks. With not much economic legislation coming out of a divided Congress, Obama has now turned to executive orders to try and stimulate a struggling economy while a tough re-election campaign looms.

One of the main aspects of this series of executive orders is the “Pay As You Earn” plan, which allows borrowers to cap their student loan payments to 10 percent of their discretionary income.

In 2010, Obama enacted an income-based repayment plan that allowed borrowers to cap their monthly student loan payments at 15 percent of their discretionary income. The plan was set to reduce the limit from 15 to 10 percent beginning in 2014.

But Melody Barnes, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a Wednesday conference call that Obama “realized students need relief sooner than that,” so this proposal will take effect in January 2012.

There are currently 36 million borrowers, but only 450,000 of them are participating in the current program. Barnes is hoping more people will take advantage of the new program. She said it will also have a significant effect on college graduates who are currently working to pay off their student loans.

She said these proposed changes could reduce payments by hundreds of dollars each month for more than 1.6 million student borrowers.

She said one major problem is that debt levels discourage potential students from going to college. Debt also discourages college graduates from entering lower-paying jobs like teaching or other public service careers because of high monthly loan payments.

Obama said the changes outlined in his series of executive orders will help young people figure out how to afford college and will put more money in their pocket when they graduate.

“And because you’ll have some certainty, knowing that it’s only a certain percentage of your income that is going to pay off your student loans, that means you will be more confident and comfortable to buy a house or save for retirement,” Obama said. “And that will give our economy a boost at a time when it desperately needs it. So this is not just important to our country right now, it’s important to our country’s future.”

Another part of the series will help students manage their debt by consolidating their student loans. Currently, the separate payments for loans, such as Stafford loans and Direct loans, make borrowers more likely to default, Barnes said.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said during the call that the administration has done everything it can to help on the front end of college affordability, including increasing funding for Pell Grants, a move separate from Obama’s three executive orders.

Duncan said that the greatest increase in Pell Grants, which will amount to $40 million, will occur within the next decade.

He said that it is now time to help on the back end by reducing loan repayments and consolidating loans for students who have already graduated, so that they can put that money back in their pockets and pay for things like rent and groceries.

The way to get America’s economy back on track is to “educate our way to a better economy,” he said.

Raj Date, the special adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, noted another initiative that will help students with loans before they even come to college.

The “Know Before You Owe” plan will create a one-page financial aid shopping sheet, which will make it easier for students to compare financial aid offers from different institutions side by side. Right now the sheet is a prototype, and Date said they are waiting on student input before making a final document.

On the sheet, college applicants will be able to distinguish between loans and scholarships, and the sheet will also outline the full cost of attendance of college, the total debt the student might incur and the monthly payment for the loans.

Date said during the conference call that the financial aid letters are confusing right now because they are full of jargon and students “cannot easily determine how much debt their taking on and how much debt is too much.”

“We want to make sure the risks are clear to students before they take on that debt,” Date said.

Barnes said she realizes that college costs have drastically increased over the past few years, including the costs of tuition, books and room and board.

“We know students can’t wait, and that’s why we’re not waiting to make college more affordable,” she said.