QWANZ

With the historical health care reform legislation, the Student Aid initiative was also passed. In essence student loan reform brought to you by eliminating the middlemen. Obama's program ends a costly route of federal governments paying banks and other private lenders to provide federally backed loans to students (which ended up costing the government more since if students defaulted on their loans, the banks still got their money)...   >>>

With the historical health care reform legislation, the Student Aid initiative was also passed. In essence student loan reform brought to you by eliminating the middlemen. Obama's program ends a costly route of federal governments paying banks and other private lenders to provide federally backed loans to students (which ended up costing the government more since if students defaulted on their loans, the banks still got their money)



With the Student Aid Initiative, President Obama gets the Education Department to grant all federally backed student loans, while still providing the student assistance it was before the student loan reform.



You'd think that simplifying the process—eliminating the middlemen (especially when the middlemen and people who look like them are in the doghouse for causing an economic recession) would make everyone happy. But with the accusations that the student loan reform would cause lay offs in the loan industry (a definite buzz kill) AND worse yet, make the student loan process difficult, it seems that there are actually opponents to helping more people get a college education AND saving money that would go towards Pell Grants that would fund even more people to get a college education.

I don't think these naysayers realize that they're proving Obama's point—we need smarter Americans.