"No Student Left Behind" - Student Loan Rates Set To Double On July 1.(NPR).
The interest rate on government-backed student loans is going to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent Monday.Republicans, Democrats and the Obama administration could not agree on a plan to keep it from happening. Lawmakers say a deal is still possible after the July 4 recess. But if they don’t agree on a plan soon, 7 million students expected to take out new Stafford loans could be stuck with a much bigger bill when they start paying the money back.
"They're sort of putting the burden on a younger generation, and once we are old enough to vote and once we're part of the economy and we ... default on our loans, it's going to be a big issue, and they're going to regret it," she says.
Kyle Siefring, a political science major at the University of Maryland, is applying for his first Stafford loan this school year. He says politicians seemingly couldn't care less about the interest rate students have to pay — for good reason.
"College students don't vote like other people do," he says.
But there's a bigger problem, Siefring says.
"College students aren't the most financially literate people. They see a bill, and they just think about how they're going to pay it, and it's something that they can kind of slip under the table and not necessarily face the consequences right away. It's just something that they can kind of kick down the road," he says.
And that's just like what politicians in Washington do, Siefring says. Congress and the administration are reportedly close to agreeing on a plan to keep interest rates from doubling, but not before the July 1 deadline.Read the full story here.
