Loan Oversight Needed

South Bend Tribune  
February 6, 2010
Merki, Andrew

Students preparing to graduate from college with a substantial amount of debt are among those pressing for the creation of a strong and independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), writes Andrew Merki, a junior at Indiana University Bloomington. According to the Indiana Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy organization that he chairs at his school, 62 percent of Indiana's college graduates carry student loan debt. A good chunk of this debt is carried on unregulated and risky private student loans, which can boast interest rates as high as 18 percent and fees as high as 10 percent of the loan principal. As state-funded programs are cut and reductions in budgets become more prevalent, many students are forced to take out private loans because the public loans are simply unavailable. An independent CFPA, Merki writes, could bring regulation and fairness to the realm of private student loans and ease the financial burden that many students feel after graduation.

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