Affordable 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.

Cutting Lender Subsidies

The federal government invests billions of dollars a year in the federal student loan programs, but too much money subsidized private banks and lenders. Congress cut out the sweetheart deal and instead uses the money to make college more affordable. Read more about the law. To read more about student activism at campuses around the country, click here.

Student Debt

To decrease student reliance on loans to pay for college, we can substantially increase grant aid. At the federal level, Congress is considering a proposal made by President Obama to cut bank entitlements from the student loan programs, and spend the money on grants and other college access programs.

TexPIRG is also working with the Department of Education to ensure that for-profit college programs don't allow students to plunge headlong into debt.

Finally, we seek to decrease student reliance on private student loans to help pay for college through congressional efforts to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Read more.

Overview

A college degree is practically a necessity these days, not only for the individual student, but for the economic and social health of the country. But the combination of shrinking state budgets and stagnant grant aid has led to an increased reliance on student loans to pay for college. Just 12 years ago only one-third of college graduates from four year public colleges needed to borrow money to attain a college degree, and now more than two-thirds of graduates have federal student loan debt. Twelve years ago, graduates who borrowed carried around $12,000 of debt on average, and now they carry over $23,000 on average. Worse, the percentage of students with $25,000 worth of private student loan debt has increased, from 5 percent in 1996 to 24 percent in 2008.

Relying on student loans to pay for college can have negative consequences. Too much loan debt causes qualified students to opt out of college completely; it causes current students to work too much and study less, and it causes borrowers who’ve graduated to opt out of socially valuable careers, and to delay life milestones like buying a home or getting married. Students who take up private student loans to defray costs face riskier terms and conditions in repayment.

A college degree must remain within reach for families of modest means, and affordable over the long term for the borrowers and parents in repayment. In response, TexPIRG works to increase student grant aid, make debt levels more manageable, and protect students as consumers from practices that contribute to educational debt.

We need robust grant programs on a state and federal level, a simpler system of student aid that actively encourages student and parental participation, and stronger safeguards for student borrowers in repayment.

Also, we can lower student debt by protecting student consumers. College students pay unjustifiably high amounts for college textbooks each year. And those who rely on credit and debit cards to help offset day to day costs of education, or to access their financial aid disbursements, can get slapped with penalty fees and terms that take advantage of them.

Texas is home to several world class universities, including UT-Austin. But high interest rates for student loans and exorbitant textbook costs are making it more and more difficult for students to get an affordable education.