AFFIL Supports Education Reform

On November 10, AFFIL and many other groups sent this letter (PDF) to two Senators regarding our nation’s higher education system.  The letter addresses a broad array of concerns, and supports doing away with the FFEL Student Lending program to save taxpayers $87 billion over ten years.

As we’ve blogged about before, federal student loans are channeled through two programs – Direct Lending and FFEL (the Federal Family Education Loan Program).  President Obama proposed switching to Direct Lending to do away with the costly subsidies which flow to lenders who participate in the FFEL Program (read more about the two programs  here).  The House of Representatives passed legislation which would make this change a few weeks ago by a vote of 253-171.

Unless we find ways to fix our nation’s  higher education system, in 2025 we will be 16 million graduates short of what our workforce requires.  The $87 billion we could save by switching to Direct Lending would be used to help send more students to college, and shrink this ominous gap.

(Photo: benrybobenry)