We need more student aid!

State budgets are shrinking, college costs are rising, and students have little choice but to plunge headlong into debt just to get a college degree. There has never been a greater need than now to invest in financial aid for students. Students like me.

As a junior at the University of California Irvine who will graduate with 20,000 dollars in debt, I urge Senators Feinstein and Boxer to vote for the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act currently being considered in Congress.

While I want to be in college, and graduate into the workforce, I have serious concerns about my mounting debt. I am most concerned about not being able to continue my education for a master’s in policial science. I want to go into diplomacy or humanitarian aid; however, being $20,000 in debt impedes these goals. Instead I know I will have enter the workforce to save up for graduate school but fear that once I start working, it will be harder to go back to school. I am just one of millions of students facing this struggle.

The federal financial aid system was designed to make sure that every student can access a college education regardless of their financial background. However, in the past decade, over 4.4 million qualified high school seniors did not apply for college because the large levels of debt they would incur.

This hasn’t always been the case. Just over a decade ago only a third of graduates needed to borrow for their education and their average debt was about $9,000. Back then, students were able to manage their debt. Now, two-thirds of college graduates are in debt with an average debt level of $23,200.

High levels of student debt are unmanageable. Young adults are facing record unemployment. Unemployment among 16 to 24 year-olds was 18.5 percent in late last year, the highest rate on record. The unemployment rate for college graduates aged 20 to 24 in the third quarter of 2009 was 10.6 percent. New data reveal many borrowers are indeed having trouble paying their student loans. Currently, 56 percent of counties in the United States have double-digit student loan delinquency rates, some as high as 50 percent.

The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act will revitalize the federal student aid system that has been pushing students into loans and instead invest in grants that students don’t have to repay. The bill will invest $40 billion into grants for students, which will enable students like me to take out less in loans in the future.

In a time of deep national deficit, this bill also doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime. For years, private banks and lenders have been receiving excessive subsidies from within the federal financial aid system. Ending their corporate entitlements will save our country billions and go toward paying for more financial aid. We should fund students and not banks!

The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act will help million of students like me toward a brighter future, as well as help taxpayers. Senators Boxer and Feinstein should vote for this bill.