More "Good News" for College Students...

The only thing wrong with the cartoon below is that the parents should be under the sack of debt along with their child...that is reality for millions of parents who are paying for their children's education...Dennis

It's Official: Student Loan Rates Will Double Monday

SHELBY BREMER , CREDIT.COM JUN. 28, 2013, 1:17 PM

More than 7 million students will see interest rates on their student loans double from 3.4 to 6.8 percent on Monday, after the failure of Congress to pass legislation to prevent the automatic rate hike that they successfully deferred for a year last summer.

Despite the introduction of several bills to serve as a solution, lawmakers will leave for the week-long July 4 recess without implementing any of them, letting the July 1 deadline pass. Any students taking or renewing federal subsidized Stafford loans after that deadline can expect to pay, for example, an additional $3,000 on a $23,000 loan paid off over 10 years.

House Republicans passed the Smarter Solutions for Students Act on May 23, a measure that ties student loan interest rates to market-based rates. This plan would have reset student loan rates every year depending on the rate on U.S. Treasuries, which Senate Democrats claimed was too uncertain and with a cap of 8.5 percent, could push rates even higher than 6.8 percent.

Mitchell Weiss, a student debt expert and contributor to Credit.com, has been following the issue closely.

“The increase impacts the subsidized Stafford rates, which will now double to 6.8% — equal to that of the unsubsidized Stafford loans,” Weiss says. “Although the population of subsidized borrowers is smaller and the House can certainly act to remedy the situation retroactively, I’m actually more concerned about the series of House and Senate proposals that would index all student loan interest to the wrong Treasury note while subjecting the ensuing rate to an unreasonably high mark-up that’s intended to cover administrative costs that have yet to be vetted.”

Read more: http://blog.credit.com/2013/06/student-loan-rates-double-july1/#ixzz2XXe4sPbV