Higher Education

Current Campaigns

Affordable Textbooks

Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks—20 percent of tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community college. Textbook prices have increased at four times the rate of inflation since 1994, and continue to rise. Read more.

Crushing Student Debt

Higher education in America continues to be critical for both individual success and the economic and political health of our country. While college attendance has grown over the past two decades, state and federal aid has failed to keep pace with the rising cost of higher education. As a result, more students than ever must rely on student loans to pay for a four-year degree and start their post-collegiate lives with significant debt.

Cutting Lender Subsidies

Sens. Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.), and Reps. George Miller (Calif.) and Thomas Petri (Wis.) have introduced that Student Aid Rewards (STAR) Act. The STAR Act would increase student aid by at least $10 billion dollars over the next ten years at no additional cost to taxpayers by cutting subsidies to private banks. Read more.

Overview

American colleges and universities play a pivotal role in training the nation’s citizens, leaders, innovators, public servants and educators. In the past decade, government support for higher education has declined; as a result, tuition and fees have increased. Grants have failed to keep pace. As costs continue to swell, students are taking on more and more debt to pay for their degrees.

We support access to higher education through increased need-based financial aid and streamlined federal student aid programs. We should increase the affordability of a college education by controlling the rise in student debt, by making loans more affordable and by cutting special-interest subsidies in the student loan programs.

NJPIRG Board Chair and Rutgers University student Sarah Clader speaks with congressional supporters of student aid. The House of Representatives went on to pass a bill to cut student loan interest rates.