Student loan | Sanders beats the student loan drum. Loudly. - Reuters

Student loan | Sanders beats the <b>student loan</b> drum. Loudly. - Reuters

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Sanders beats the <b>student loan</b> drum. Loudly. - Reuters Posted: 11 Jan 2016 08:41 AM PST Bernie Sanders wants to know how much you're in debt. Indeed, the Vermont senator positively encourages supporters at his rallies to discuss how much money they owe on student loans.  Bernie Sanders in Marshalltown, Iowa January 10, 2016. REUTERS/Brian C. Frank At a forum on climate change in Boone, Iowa on Sunday, an attendee, a university senior "already swimming in debt," asked the Vermont senator to elaborate his plans to lessen the burden of college loan expenses, prompting this exchange:  "You have millions of people, including people in this room, who are struggling with outrageously high levels of student debt, am I right?" Sanders asked the 550 strong crowd to cheers, inspiring one woman to shout out her own $100,000 student loan burden.  "$100,000 in debt for the crime of getting an education," Sanders said, as other supporters began yelling out their college obligations.  "$83,000," one voice shouts. "$60,000," came another.    "$120,000, $140,000, $150,000,' others yell.   "My wife and I both have Ph.Ds," one man in the crowd said, totaling up to $300,000 student debt for the couple.   "I feel like this is a Vermont auction," Sanders joked as participants yelled out their various levels of college expenses–all of which were way higher than the $27,000 that the U.S. federal government estimates as the average student loan debt at a four-year institution.   "We're laughing here, but really this is not only not a laughing matter," he said when the crowd finally quieted.   "What we're saying is you're going to be shackled in debt for decades because you wanted to get an education," he said.  Sanders has proposed making tuition at public colleges and universities free of cost, which critics have accused of idealistically ignoring how such a plan would be funded.  Iowa voters go to their nominating caucuses on Feb. 1.

<b>Student loans</b>: Osborne criticised for &#39;back door&#39; repayments change <b>...</b> Posted: 25 Nov 2015 09:55 AM PST Students during a protest calling for the abolition of tuition fees and an end to student debt in Whitehall, London. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA Students and graduates who have taken out student loans since 2012 will face higher repayments after the £21,000 income threshold at which borrowings must be paid back was frozen for five years. The controversial change – omitted from the chancellor's spending review speech in the Commons on Wednesday – means that on average a former student will pay £306 a year more in 2020-21 compared with 2016-17. When the 2012 student loan system was launched, the government pledged that from April 2017, the £21,000 figure would be raised each year in line with average earnings. It now intends to freeze this threshold at £21,000 until April 2021 at the earliest, despite strong opposition in a recent consultation. Related: Spending review 2015: things you may have missed in the small print "This increases the financial commitment of borrowers to repaying their loans," the post-consultation report from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) said, announcing the freeze. "In 2020-21 borrowers will be paying £6 per week, or £306 in the year, more than they will be in 2016-17. "What this means is that graduates would end up paying more each month than the loan scheme previously promised and publicised when students took out the loan," Sorana Vieru, NUS vice-president for higher education, said. "This is yet another betrayal by the government and part of a long list of political measures that shows complete disdain to students and their futures." Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert who chaired the independent taskforce on student finance information, accused the chancellor of not "having the balls to talk about this in the speech and I'm absolutely spitting teeth over this right now". "This is a retrospective change to student loans, millions of people across the country will have to pay more each month," he told LBC. "This is a change going backwards, it's a change from what they said they would have done when people started going to university. "It's an absolute disgrace that breaks the fundamental bond of politics that you do not impose retrospective changes. Commercial companies would not have been allowed to do this. This was snuck in the back door, even though he mentioned student loans in the speech." The business department said it hoped the freeze would increase repayments by £3.2bn over the lifetime of the loans of existing borrowers. Related: What does the spending review mean for science and innovation? Labour MP Wes Streeting, the former NUS president who worked with Lewis on the taskforce, said the move "completely changed the financial conditions, retrospectively, that students signed up to in good faith". "How can students now trust anything the government says about student loans they sign up to? If banks did this to customers, there would be an enormous outcry. This change will hit hardest those graduates on low and middle incomes close to the earnings threshold." A spokesman for the department said the change has been made to reflect the reality of graduate earnings, which he said hadn't risen as high as they were expected to. "When the £21,000 threshold was set in 2010, assumptions had to be made about earnings growth between 2010 and 2016," the spokesman said. "While the economic recovery is underway, it is not yet fully reflected in earnings, so the threshold is higher in real terms than originally intended. "Making this change helps contribute to the current government's debt reduction targets."

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