Obama's student loan plan step in right direction

President Barack Obama addressed various of issues in his State of the Union address last Wednesday, but his new plan to help cut student loans might be the most important topic for students at MSU and across the country.

Currently, a student’s monthly loan payment is 15 percent of a borrower’s income and loans are forgiven after 25 years. Obama’s new plan would cut those numbers down to 10 percent and 20 years, respectively. The plan is expected to cost the federal government between $1 billion and $2 billion throughout the next five years, said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid and FastWeb Web sites.

Although a few billion dollars is no small amount of money, it is essential that the government emphasizes the importance of a college education as much as potential employers do. It has become nearly impossible to get a good and high paying job without a college degree.

At the same time, college continues to become more expensive. If making it easier to pay student loans helps more young Americans further their education and increase their opportunity to succeed, then that alone is worth the cost.

Obama’s proposal certainly is a positive step. However, that does not mean the government should pass the plan and ignore the greater problems with the cost of higher education. Instead, spending should be reduced in other areas, making it possible to spend more on subsidizing education. We appreciate that the government notices how difficult it has become to pay for college, but money should not be spent where it can’t be afforded.

In a perfect world, the government would help make tuition less expensive rather than try to reduce the cost of student loans. The fear of one day being in an insurmountable amount of debt is enough to discourage some from even going to college. But if the money spent on helping to pay student loans went directly toward our country’s colleges and universities, making tuition cheaper, some of those loans might not be as necessary.

The $1 billion to $2 billion it will take for this plan to work will help the debt problem that some college graduates have, but is more of a Band-Aid on a bullet wound than a solution. If the government really wants to prove education is a priority, it will begin to subsidize education and truly make college more affordable.

Our country’s leaders often talk about the value of a quality education, but as students, we have seen public institutions cut entire programs and departments. Until the federal government recognizes that higher education is as much a priority as defense spending or health care, plans such as Obama’s only are keeping students afloat — and nothing more.

Enabling students to go to college is not necessarily the government’s responsibility, but a college education is more important now than it ever has been. Even though what the government is trying to do is not ideal, it is better than nothing and a step in the right direction.