The top Eastern Universities — Harvard, Princeton, and Yale have completed their graduation ceremonies. Their competition, the UC campuses, are the ones with graduations this month on June 14, 15, and 16th. The interest rate on student loans is due to double at the end of June from 3.4% to 6.8%, without congressional extension. We are ten campuses with students still on campus next week to hold a protest. I realize that that is also finals week, which can be especially stressful for seniors. But as the central administration likes to tell us, we have the “Power of Ten” to support us. Actually, Cal graduated a long time ago, as did UC Merced, UCSF, and USC. Stanford has the same graduation schedule as UCI, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UCD, UCR, and UCSC, centered around June 14. This leaves us with the power of eight in California.
The ASUCI states in it mission statement that it “strives to improve the quality of student life by” … “Advocating to protect the student’s needs” and “Protecting the affordability, accessibility, and diversity of our University”. All of these call for attention and action to the looming student loan cliff. While the UC tuition assignment is designed to support people in financial need, some students still have to rely on student loans, especially in professional schools.
For the 2010-11 graduating class who started as freshman, 49% took student loans. The average debt for these was $18,719. At 3.4%, the yearly payments would be $636. Doubling that if no congressional action is taken would be $1,272 a year.
This is an urgent wake up call, pointing out that the cause has to rely on the late graduating universities for attention in the second week of June.
Even letters to local congressmen can help to show student concern. They know that students vote, and that their parents, who are helping to pay the bills, also vote. It is important to spread the word to other students, and to inform the local press that this is a most serious student concern. Local businesses are also doing everything they can to encourage local students in specialties necessary for their businesses. They will have to increase salary offers to recruit students who will have larger loan debts.
The more this becomes an issue, congressmen can realize that the voting block represented by a large campus is 30,000 students. Students have two parents and perhaps a sibling. That can be seen as a voting block of 120,000 in the districts around a campus. Not bad for leverage.
A world-wide site on student debt is at collegestats.org.
