By Deirdre Spilman
Opinion Assignment Editor
After waiting for what seems like forever, the 2012 presidential election is finally over, and President Barack Obama will remain in office.
Whether or not you voted for President Obama, you need to keep on living your life. For the majority of Bonaventure students, that means going to class and figuring out a way to pay for it.
With Obama’s new plan to finance education, this may be easier than most think. The president has composed a new “Pay as You Earn” plan which would lower monthly federal student loan payments for Americans whose debt is more than they earn and schedule payments so they are more manageable, according to an Oct. 26 CBS News article.
This is definitely helpful with outstanding student loans being projected to reach one trillion dollars later this year, according to the same article. Not one billion but one trillion. That is an absolutely insane amount of debt.
Lower student loan payments will get us out of this seemingly never ending amount of debt.
Students attend universities and colleges so they will have a higher chance of being employed and have the ability to pay off their student loans. However, with job market as bad it is, it is unlikely the majority of students will find jobs as soon as they would like to after graduation. A statistic from the U.S. Census Bureau says that 53.6 percent of the class of 2011 is either unemployed or working in a job that does not require a Bachelor’s degree, which shows an increase in unemployment from the previous year.
The job market is improving slightly, but not at a rate equal with the amount of graduates. “Between September 2008 and August 2010, 6.9 million American jobs were eliminated. In the last year and a half, 3.1 million jobs have been created. The strengthening job market has made a big difference to seniors who are job-hunting in their final semester,” according to a May 13 CBS News article.
More than 90 percent of St. Bonaventure students receive some sort of financial aid, according to the university’s website, so even if you wanted the election to turn out differently, Obama’s plan will most likely affect you in some way, hopefully for the better.
The average student-loan debt for the class of 2011 was $26,500, according to a study conducted by the Institute for College Access and Success. Most people are not equipped to deal with that amount of money as soon as they graduate.
This plan is income-based so the payment schedule and the amounts that are paid are different for students. That is what is needed because every person’s financial situation is different.
With Obama’s new term comes new changes, and the plan is sure to help students crawl their way out of this enormous pile of debt.
