Should You be Worried? What Can Your Campus Do?

Robert Shireman, executive director of The Institute for College Access and Success tells us that "there has not been one case of a student or parent who can't get the federal loan they are eligible for." But that doesn't mean there aren't problems to address:

I suggest a different solution to help the dependent students who genuinely need additional loans. College financial aid officials should have access to a substantial, but not unlimited, pot of additional loan funds to allocate to students who face exceptional circumstances as determined by the college. The additional loan funds should be available to colleges that, overall, do a good job of preventing students from having to take out a lot of loans. This approach respects the professional role that financial aid officials play in assessing students’ needs and family situations. It provides them with a tool they can use for those cases, while preventing schools from broadly taking advantage of students and of the federal government.

In the midst of this economic disarray, it would have been reasonable to expect that the student loan system would be in shambles. That is why editors keep assigning reporters to write stories about people who can’t get loans. But the real problem is not a lack of access to student loans. It is much bigger than that. The challenge is to make sure there is an affordable place in college for students from all backgrounds, in the face of growing financial need, increased demand for higher education, and underfunding at the state and federal levels.