House Republicans have unveiled their plans to reform higher education in the U.S. through budget reconciliation text released Monday.<\/p>\n
The text hits on a variety of issues as it looks to expand Pell Grants, change student loan repayment plans and put limits on how much some individuals can borrow.<\/p>\n
The measure will go to a full committee markup Tuesday as House Education and the Workforce Committee Chair Tim Walberg\u00a0(R-Mich.) was tasked with saving more than\u00a0$330 billion to help President Trump\u2019s tax plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor decades Congress has responded to the student loan crisis by\u00a0throwing\u00a0more and more taxpayer dollars\u00a0at the problem \u2014 never addressing the root causes of skyrocketing college costs. Colleges have ridden this gravy train of taxpayer dollars without any accountability for the quality of the education they provide or whether students can find jobs when they graduate,\u201d Walberg said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis plan brings accountability and holds schools financially responsible for loading students up with debt. The bill also includes other reforms that will lower costs for students and families\u00a0while ensuring the fiscal sustainability of targeted programs like the Pell Grant.\u00a0Bottom line, it\u2019s time to fix this broken cycle that is costly to taxpayers and leaves students worse off than if they\u00a0never went to college,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The reforms look to only offer borrowers two student loan repayment options, taking away other options available to those repaying student loans now.<\/p>\n
The two available options would be a Repayment Assistance Plan, an income-based repayment plan or a standard repayment plan.<\/p>\n
The text would also create a limit for how much different types of students, whether graduate, undergraduate or parents, can borrow from the federal government for school and expand Pell Grants to those who want to go into short-term training programs.<\/p>\n
Changes to the plans are still likely at this stage, but shifts to the student loan system come as the Trump administration recently announced it will restart involuntary collections against borrowers who are in default.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really see this as an attack on students and working families with student loan debt. We\u2019ve seen an array of really problematic proposals that are on the table for congressional Republicans,\u201d Aissa Canchola Ba\u00f1ez, policy director for Student Borrower Protection Center, previously told The Hill<\/a> when earlier versions of the potential budget reconciliation text were released.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of these would cause massive spikes for families with monthly student loan payments,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" House Republicans have unveiled their plans to reform higher education in the U.S. through budget…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}