Saturday, August 8, 2009

Quick Notes - City of Albany Proposing Student Loan Forgiveness

The City of Albany is proposing student loan forgiveness. Albany Councilman and Chair of the Finance Committee, Jim Sano, learned about the student loan debt movement(s) from his daughter. Mr. Sano states, "I was forwarded an article by my daughter Kathryn in regard to using student loan forgiveness as an economic stimulus tool. I have since used my position as an elected official to introduce a resolution to advocate using student loan forgiveness as an economic stimulus tool."

Education Matters will continue to monitor the developments of this legislation.

4 comments:

adirondackmoose said...

Does anyone know what became of this meeting on August 12?

Cryn Johannsen said...

Hi Adirondack Moose:

Yes. It went well. I spoke to Jim Sano last night. It was a good conversation.

Rep. Paul Tonko was there as well. They will pass the resolution soon.

adirondackmoose said...

Does this mean that the movement is gaining momentum? Sounds like it is.

I read somewhere that the number of people effected by student loans could be in the millions? If that is the case, this could snow ball as more and more hear about the cause.

Cryn Johannsen said...

Hi, Adirondackmoose,

It is my hunch that this is gaining momentum, and I think it's highly possible that millions of people are burdened with student loan debt.

While they might be paying it back and claims like the one that came out of the College Board are accurate, that doesn't answer a host of questions that I discussed in an earlier blog.

Here are a few that I would like answered:

-If most students are "managing" their debt, what about their credit card debt? (That was no taken into consideration by the College Board)

-Are these students living at home? Are they struggling to pay their rent, buy decent groceries?

-Even more important, and something Americans oftentimes overlook as a culture: what about their psychic states? Are these students who are paying loans off happy with their lives? Do they feel that their degree or degrees were worth it? Or do they feel overwhelmed and frustrated, even though they're paying back their debts?