The battle to make college more affordable has come down to a critical few weeks in the Senate. The banks and student loan companies already have spent millions of dollars on lobbying, PR firms, and advertisements in their attempt to stop reform and hang on to $87 billion in subsidies that could be going to help students.
Now Campus Progress is taking action. We’ve raised money to put this :30 second spot on cable TV and on Hulu in key states across the country:
We don’t have the kind of money student loan companies have, so we’re going to need your help spreading the ad on Facebook, Twitter, and email if we’re going to get the word out. Click here to help us spread the word.
Last week I wrote about a new campaign by loan companies called “Protect Student Choice.” The campaign is being run by Qorvis Communications, a controversial PR firm.
Thanks to YouTube’s “studentloanreform,” we can now see that the firm has had a desire to astroturf on this issue since at least 2007. Mr. or Ms. Studentloanreform posted a presentation by the company to the 2007 Legislative Conference of the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs, a student loan industry association.
Check it out:
My favorite part: the fact that they photoshopped Hillary Clinton’s head onto George Bush’s body.
Earlier this month, I wrote about the lack of any student opposition to the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which would cut wasteful government subsidies to student loan companies, and use the $87 billion in savings to raise Pell grants, invest in community colleges and minority serving institutions, expand the Perkins loan program, and more.
As it turns out, I may have spoken too soon. There is now one student who, through a lender run campaign, has spoken out against SAFRA. A freshman at Vanderbilt University has signed up with “Protect Student Choice/Protect Local Jobs,” which is apparently being run by Qorvis Communications. The student would not say whether he has any student loans.
While industry has found one student in its campaign to protect “student choice,” Campus Progress and its coalition partners have been more successful. More than 10,000 students signed a petition either online or on their campus to support student loan reform on the National Wall of Debt Day of Action on September 16th, and more than 40,000 people have signed petitions on Facebook supporting reform.
There have been some great pieces to come out this week about the political debate about Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) on that vast series of tubes we call the worldwide web. SAFRA would eliminate a government program (Federal Family Education Loan Program – FFELP) that involves large, wasteful federal subsidies to student loan companies, and use the $87 billion in savings to raise Pell grants, improve access and completion rates, invest in minority serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities, and more.
It should come as no surprise that when Student Loan Analytics explored the topic of student opinion on SAFRA, they found many student newspapers in support of the legislation, and none opposed to it. In fact, when they searched Google for “students who support FFELP,” they got a very familiar message:
No results found for ”students who support FFELP”
And why should students support FFELP? As the same blog has pointed out before, FFELP offers students little to nothing in terms of choice, despite lender claims to the contrary. Billions in additional need-based grant funding for low and middle income students seems, obviously, more valuable to both students and taxpayers than preserving subsidies for lenders. (more…)
According to an article in the New York Times, the House Committee on Education and Labor will be introducing legislation this week along the lines of President Obama’s proposal to cut wasteful subsidies to student loan companies and use the $87 billion in savings to make college more affordable for low and middle income students.
Loan companies circulated at least 13 different plans on Capitol Hill, lobbied furiously against the President’s proposal, and finally (almost) uniting around a single “Frankenstein” counter-proposal. It now looks like these efforts have failed to influence the shape of the legislation that will be considered in the House Education and Labor Committee. (more…)
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Earlier this month, I wrote about the 
