2005-06-08 - 1:17 p.m.

(Note to those who don't have massive student loan debt - you may want to skip this. Or not. If you do, kindly click on the "previous" link at the bottom of this entry to read a nice little story about crazy people in Somerville)

So federal student loan interest rates will rise 1.93% on July 1st, 2005. If you're like me, you may have missed this information, because you get approximately 50 mailings per day offering loan consolidation and there's a very high signal-to-noise ratio to deal with. You can lock in the lower rate by consolidating your loans. This might screw with your credit rating a little, as what this does is "pays off" all your loans at once and grants you a lump-sum loan from another agency, and credit agencies prefer that you spend a lot of time paying off your loans. Really. They call people who pay it all off at once "deadbeats".

This is infuriating when you consider that average student loan debt is somewhere between $17,000 and $20,000 and that the cost of college tuition has been outpacing inflation, and that in Europe, tuition ranges from zero to $2,000.

American college students from lower- and middle-income families are being asked to shoulder an already crushing burden in order to pursue higher education, and this rate increase just makes it worse (No Child Left Behind, my tuchus). Increasingly, a college degree is required to get a decent job, and increasingly, these jobs are harder to find. And skilled professionals who work with the community and are not paid very well, like teachers and social workers, are the most unfairly penalized.

In conclusion:

1. Freaking consolidate your student loans.
2. Free college would be nice.
3. There really aren't so many well-paying jobs.

(x-posted to the livejournal for greater exposure)