House appropriators’ Labor-H funding bill would end subsidized federal student loans.
Kent Nishimura/Contributor/AFP/Getty Images
Republican House appropriators are planning to shore up funding for Pell Grants, which aid low-income college students. But they would do so through cuts that include eliminating subsidized federal student loans. Higher ed groups are calling it a poor solution to the estimated $17 billion Pell shortfall.
“We’re enormously appreciative that the House Republican legislation would address that shortfall and protect the program for students that are most in need,” said Craig Lindwarm, senior vice president of governmental affairs for the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. “Unfortunately, though, it does so in a way that takes from students in another manner.”
At the end of December, almost three million borrowers were using subsidized loans, said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education. (Only undergraduates qualify for these loans.) Current borrowers wouldn’t be affected, he said, but that’s how many could be affected in the future.
