Making college accessible only to the rich

Despite all the talk about college readiness and 21st-century jobs, a college education is becoming inaccessible to all but the children of the rich or to those able to take on a burden of life-long debt. Like the indentured servants of old, today's poor or working-class students will graduate with dimming prospects for working in the field for which they are trained and will be working as much for the bankers as for their employer or themselves.

Yesterday's New York Times reports that on July 1st, the interest rate on many student loans is scheduled to double to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent — just as it was last year, when in the midst of an election campaign, Congress voted to extend the lower rate.  Today, student advocacy groups released an issue brief charging that the federal government should not be profiting from student loans, while more and more students bear a crushing debt burden.