Romney’s stance on student debt alienating

Shane Wade
Opinion Editor

When it comes to assisting college students with mountainous amounts of debt, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney made it completely clear at a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday that as students, we’re on our own if he is elected.

“It is very tempting as a politician to say, ‘You know what, I will just give you some money. The government is just going to give you some money and pay back your loans for you,’” he said. “I am not going to tell you something that is not the truth, because you know, that is just taking money from your other pocket and giving it to the other pocket.”

It’s important to remember that, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney cut funding to his own state’s universities. According to the Boston Indicators Project, a civic community project, Massachusetts’ per capita funding for public universities decreased from $158 to $137. In 2003, under Governor Romney’s education plan, higher education institutions faced $100 million in budget cuts, $50 million in tuition increases and an increase of only $44 million financial aid. The Boston Globe and Massachusetts Board of Education also found that students at state university and colleges faced a 63 percent increase in fee cost over the `03 — `07 reign of Romney.

It should surprise no one when he openly admits that he’s not out to make life at all easier for students. Romney needs to know that if he wants to be president, it would behoove him to have a concise platform to stand on, especially at a time where 18-29 year olds graduate into an economy of 12.7 percent unemployment.

The student debt crisis isn’t going to resolve itself and it’s not an issue that can even be solved by ensuring students can get jobs once they graduate. It’s also a mistake for him to equate confronting the student debt crisis with offering government handouts, while simultaneously promising to create jobs so that students will be able to pay back those loans.

If he wants to “get the government off (my) back, so (I) can keep more of what (I earn),” then he can propose and pass legislation that addresses, decreases, or manages the amount of debt students have to pay back, rather than making vague, pandering promises of “more jobs.”

With more than 37 million Americans in the grips of $1 trillion worth of student loan debt, inaction is not a logical or defensible course of action.

Under President Obama’s “Pay As You Earn” plan, which caps monthly federal student loan repayment at 10 percent of monthly discretionary income, I’ll be paying, at most, $103 per month, as opposed to the standard 10-year payment of $690 when I graduate. That’s getting student debt off my back so I can keep more of what I earn. That’s promising me a future.

Romney will let American students and families drown in debt just to prove to a disinterested populace that he’s a true, dyed-in-the-red-state-wool conservative. What’s his solution? “Borrow money from your parents.”

With the number of solid economic ideas and thinkers at the Republican National Convention two weeks ago, you’d think at least one of them would step up and challenge Romney’s plan to cold shoulder college students.

Make no mistake – President Obama could be doing more than asserting vague and disconcerting utterances about cutting federal funding to colleges that don’t lower tuition rates and overall college cost, but it’s a great deal more progressive and comforting than anything Romney has proposed. .

Opinions expressed are those of individual writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Commonwealth Times or Virginia Commonwealth University. Unsigned editorials represent the institutional opinion of The CT.