Signing off on student loan reform

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – When President Barack Obama walked into the small auditorium at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria yesterday, his effect on audience members was immediate.

They shot from their chairs like they were sitting on a hot stove, grinning and furiously applauding, as if to see who could be loudest.

And when he raised pen after pen to sign the long-awaited student aid reform bill into law, some looked as though they could hardly contain their excitement, facial expressions ranging from anxious to relieved to downright giddy.

About 200 people, many of them students or recent graduates, came to hear Obama speak and watch him sign the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 — the final victory for his two major domestic priorities.

For President Brian Burrell and Krystala Skordalos, members of the university's chapter of MaryPIRG — an on-campus student lobbying organization — the event marked the culmination of a six-month long campaign pushing for reform.

And U.S. PIRG, the national organization, has been fighting even longer. For their efforts, the group was given 15 tickets to the event, and doled them out to members of this university's chapter because of its proximity to Alexandria, Va., said Campus Organizer Lindsay Ehrhart.

They woke before sunrise. They waited in the wind in long lines winding around the small college's campus. But when Burrell and Skordalos rose to their feet as Obama crossed the stage, it all seemed worth it.

"It's a part of history," said Skordalos, a sophomore government and politics major. "If [the bill] succeeds and it does well, we were here to see it signed."

Last week, Obama signed the healthcare and education reform legislation. Yesterday's bill is a package of "fixes" that makes it complete. The legislation also cuts out the middlemen in federal student loans and channels the $68 billion in savings toward increases in Pell Grant funding, investments in community colleges and minority-serving institutions and online learning resources. The two initiatives were paired together because only one reconciliation bill is permitted per legislative session.

Last October, MaryPIRG kicked off its "Raising Pell" Week to get students involved in asking their senators to vote for the legislation. They got "tons of students to realize [they're] who the bill benefits," and to push for passage, said Burrell, a junior English major.

Next fall, in-state tuition is set to rise by 3 percent, ending a four-year tuition freeze. The loan reforms would help out those students who may not qualify for Pell Grants but still struggle with high costs.

The bill also makes it easier for graduates to repay their loans by expanding the Income-Based Repayment system that already exists. Starting in 2014, graduates won't have to repay more than 10 percent of their income each year, and loans will be forgiven after 20 years. Graduates who enter jobs such as teaching would have their loans forgiven in just 10 years — an incentive to nudge more students into public-service professions.

"Today, we're finally making our student loan system work for students," Obama said.

The applause was deafening.

Obama said he hopes the reforms will help achieve "an educated work force that is second to none" and will push the country toward his goal of graduating the highest proportion of students in the world by 2020.

After Obama spoke to the crowd and praised lawmakers for persisting toward this "important milestone" in higher education, he made his way to a small wooden desk adorned with the Presidential Seal and locked in the reforms he had long promised.

"Thank you! Thank you!" shouted audience members as the president stood up. One man yelled, "Yes, we can!"

Skordalos said the personal atmosphere in the auditorium made the event more special, even though she had seen Obama in person twice before.

"It's so much different than what we saw at College Park [for the health care rally in September]," she said. "This is so much more intimate. It feels like he was talking directly to us."

Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's wife, who teaches at the Alexandria campus where the ceremony was held, introduced Obama and was joined on-stage by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the bill.

gulin@umdbk.com