Shaheen, Young Renew Push to Curb Mounting Student Debt by Improving Institutional Accountability

**Bipartisan bill would hold institutes of higher education accountable for debt their students are unable to pay while using those funds to support schools that serve low-income students well**
(Washington, DC) - As student debt continues to soar across the country, U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Todd Young (R-IN) are renewing their push on theStudent Protection and Success Act, bipartisan legislation to curb the mounting student debt crisis by increasing higher education institutions’ accountability for their students’ ability to repay their loans and requiring institutions to have a vested interest in the success of their students.“The rising cost of college—coupled with the debt students incur in order to attend—has become a barrier for too many young people who want to pursue higher education to achieve their career and life goals,”said Senator Shaheen.“Our bipartisan bill will increase accountability measures for loan repayments to ensure that institutions of higher education keep their promises to borrowers and empower students to succeed after graduation – helping to address the alarmingly high cost of higher education and better ensure college affordability for generations of students to come.”
“Our Student Protection and Success Act will help ensure colleges and universities are preparing hard-working students for meaningful careers that will better enable graduates to repay their student loans,”said Senator Young.TheStudent Protection and Success Actwould enact a series of measures to hold higher education institutions accountable by requiring them to share responsibility for student success. The bipartisan bill would remove federal student loan eligibility from all colleges and universities where less than 15 percent of their students are able to begin repaying their loans within three years of graduating or leaving school. The bill would also require schools to pay a “risk-sharing fee” based on the total loan volume their students are not able to repay, and the Department of Education would then allocate those funds to support schools that are better assisting low-income students.New Hampshire borrowers areconsistently ranked as having some of the highest student loan debt rates in the nation. According to the U.S. Federal Reserve, student loan debt has more than doubled in the past two decades. While various initiatives have been undertaken to address mounting student debt, there has been little recent bipartisan collaboration about how to address affordability for the long term. Shaheen and Young’s bipartisan bill would better protect both borrowers and taxpayers by incentivizing colleges and universities to help ensure students are actually able to repay the loans they take out to attend.TheStudent Protection and Success Actwould:
Full text of Shaheen and Young’s Student Protection and Success Act is availableHERE.
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