Chris Connolly, field representative for U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, came to speak at the final College Republicans meeting of the semester. He discussed the senator’s plans for fixing education in the country, with three main priorities for the senator’s role on the Senate Education Committee.
The first is to simplify the federal financial aid system, which would take the FAFSA down to a couple of questions, hopefully enough to fit on a postcard.
The second is restructure the payment options for student loans. It would reduce loans to standard payments where a student would pay a fixed amount every month for ten years, like a mortgage, or an income based payment, where they’d pay 10 percent of their income for 20 years.
The third is to make the institutions accountable for the students after they leave school. It would tie student debt to schools and make the institutions less likely to raise the prices of attendance.
There was a question and answer session at the end of the meeting, mostly on President-elect Donald J. Trump. But one student did ask about what the new proposed FAFSA would look like, and it was described as two questions, the amount of people in your immediate family and income of the previous year.
