Students discuss student loans, tuition with state senators

Students had the chance to meet their representatives last week when State Senators Glen Sturtevant (R-Richmond) and Lamont Bagby (D-Charles City) visited VCU to take questions regarding student loans.

Sturtevant, the 33-year-old senator who represents VCU’s district, graduated from the George Mason University School of Law in 2006 and said he is currently paying back student debt.

“I get the student debt issue because I live it. My next tuition payment is due next week. My wife had to repay her loans within ten years because of how the loan was set up and it was a huge, huge burden on my family,” Sturtevant said.

According to Sturtevant, tuition was “really affordable” during his time at George Mason at approximately $11,000 per year.

“Now it’s doubled — I think around $22,000 a year,” Sturtevant said. “Clearly something is not working and needs to change.”

Both senators shared insight on how the state could mitigate rising tuition costs. Bagby said that in order to lower tuition costs, the state could remove its subsidy on its citizen’s car taxes and instead use the money to lower the cost of college to students.

“$1.8 billion is about what the state pays biennium,” Bagby said. “There’s a plethora of things we could do with that money and one of those things is use the money to try and keep tuition under control for state supported universities and colleges.”

Sturtevant, on the other hand, said he believes in regulating the pace at which institutions raise their tuition costs. He cited a bill that he sponsored in the most recent session of the General Assembly which would have prohibited institutions from raising tuition costs more than twice the rate of inflation annually.

The bill, however, was killed in the senate.

“As you might imagine, the influence of lobbyists in the General Assembly is really significant across all sectors,” Sturtevant said.

Sturtevant added that college and university lobbies are strong in Virginia and they did not like his bill “one bit.”

“That billed got killed very,very quickly this session. But it’s a bill that I’m going to keep bringing back because I think it’s important and very reasonable,” Sturtevant said.

Sturtevant was elected into office in November 2015 when he defeated democrat Dan Gecker in the most expensive state senate race in Virginia history. Bagby has served in the state senate for nine years.

Print News Editor, Fadel Allassan

Fadel is a sophomore print journalism major. He is fluent in English, French and Sarcasm, and he probably doesn’t like you. Fadel enjoys writing about politics and making people drive him to Cook-Out. // Facebook | LinkedIn

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