College tuition hurts more than interest rates

Congress left Washington without keeping the interest rate on student loans from doubling today, soaring from 3.2 percent to 6.4 percent. While that’s bad news for students and their families, it could be worse. Most people don’t borrow in July, and Congress will be back later this summer with time to find a compromise before school starts in the fall. What should be troubling, though, is the failure of the government to deal with interest rates, which should be the easy part of the college affordability problem.
A bigger cause of concern is the constantly rising principal of student loans, not the interest. College costs continue to rise, and students are expected to pay a bigger share of the cost of their education. That means many potential students either are priced out of starting college or forced to leave before acquiring a degree. Read more...