Tell Congress to fix our broken student loan system

Our student loan system is broken.

The Higher Education Act (HEA) is the main federal law that creates our financial aid system. The HEA is supposed to be reauthorized every 5 years, but since 2013, Congress has simply kicked the can down the road, refusing to make strong improvements to the HEA that would address the staggering student debt crisis.

Because of Congressional inaction:

• Applying for financial aid through the cumbersome FAFSA form is needlessly difficult and the resulting package more difficult to understand than it should be.
• States continue to under-fund public college systems making them increasingly out of reach for low and middle income families forcing everyone to take on more debt.
• Most public and private colleges have no incentive to hold the line on tuition nor do they clearly inform the public of the outcomes of their graduates.
• Graduates seeking to take advantage of historically low interest rates do not have the opportunity to refinance.
• The private companies who you pay your loans are often uniformly unhelpful, do not communicate the many useful options people could use to better manage their payments, and engage in numerous abuses.

The result? Tuition is up, debt is way up, and inequality deepens across the country.

Whether Democrats or Republicans, we all agree education provides opportunity, ensures American competitiveness in the global economy, and that our education loan system needs reform.

Call upon your member of Congress to commit to reforming this system today by co-sponsoring the reauthorization of HEA by Feb 2017.