Gov. Walker Does Nothing for One Million Student Loan Borrowers
While Walker Blocks Student Loan Refinancing Plan, Wisconsin Has Risen to 3rd Highest in Nation in Grads with Student Debt
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Scott Walker’s election-year grandstanding on the student loan debt crisis after cutting $1 billion from universities and technical colleges and his opposition to the Higher Ed, Lower Debt student loan refinancing plan “insults the intelligence of every student loan borrower in the state of Wisconsin.”
“Gov. Scott Walker has once again failed the student loan borrowers of Wisconsin,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. “Wisconsin has nearly one million student loan borrowers who have almost $20 billion in debt and Gov. Walker and the Republican legislature is stopping them from having the chance to refinance their loans at lower interest rates, just like you can with a mortgage.”
Gov. Walker has presided over Wisconsin rising from 10th, when he took office, to 3rd highest in the entire nation for percentage of graduates with student loan debt — a full 70 percent of grads. At the same time, Walker opposes the student loan debt reform Higher Ed, Lower Debt bill, which would allow hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers across Wisconsin to refinance their loans, just like you can a mortgage, at lower, market-based rates, and at no cost to taxpayers.
“Students and their families are doing the right thing – they’re working hard to get their education and they’ve taken on the personal responsibility to pay for it,” concluded Ross. “But Gov. Walker is making education less and less affordable, with serious consequences for our state economy and the best he can do is apparently hold photo ops with bureaucrats.”
A 2015 report by One Wisconsin Institute and the national think tank, Demos entitled, “Wisconsin’s Great Cost Shift: How Higher Education Cuts Undermine the State’s Future Middle Class,” showed that declining financial support for higher education by the state of Wisconsin has shifted costs onto students and families, increased student loan debt and decreased the affordability of higher education The study found the confluence of the these factors is “endangering the quality of its institutions of higher learning, threatening the state’s economic competitiveness and the future of its young people.”
Gov. Walker and the Republican majority in the state legislature have enacted the largest cuts to public education, including repeated cuts totaling $1 billion to the University of Wisconsin and the state technical college system. In addition UW students and their families were hit with a double digit tuition increase in the 2011 state budget along with stagnant levels of state financial aid. In fact, state student financial aid programs were so underfunded that over 40,000 eligible students were denied assistance last year.
One Wisconsin Now is a statewide communications network specializing in effective earned media and online organizing to advance progressive leadership and values.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
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