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Our country is reeling under the huge burden of student debts. Ask any student or parent and they will tell you how higher education is fast becoming a distant dream for many. Students are unable to shoulder the heavy burden of constantly rising tuition fee and are forced to discontinue and seek jobs.

This in turn has led to a shortage of job opportunities and unemployment is on the rise. Only Congress can provide an answer to this student debt problem. Unless and until emergency action is taken, there is no doubt that students and their families will continue to fall deeper into debt.

For the past decade, due to the economic crisis, there has been a drastic drop in state support offered for higher education. This is the major cause that resulted in the skyrocketing tuition fee. To add salt to their wounds, families in our country saw their incomes shrink.

Many bread owners even lost their jobs and were forced to borrow more in order to send their children to college. A vicious circle was thus set into motion that continues to plague our country.
This alarming situation is revealed by the fact that Americans today owe more on higher education than on their credit cards. The need of the hour is to help our colleges survive.

Our country has been inspiring other countries around the world with its high standard of living predominantly made possible through affordable college education. Our industries have been very successful mainly due to our educated workforce.

There are many challenges we are yet to face in future. all shocks in the coming decades can be handled by us only if we ensure that our children get access to college. This is the only way to produce educated workforce with the capability of supporting new industries. This is also the only way our voters can ensure accountability from our public officials.

In the last few years, a few steps were taken by the Congress to address the student debt issues. Higher education received increased federal funding. In 2010-11, state colleges got their desperately needed funds when President Obama’s stimulus package was passed by the Congress.

Banks were kicked out of the business of subsidized student loan by Congress last year. For long, for-profit colleges have been pushing loans on students who are not qualified. These colleges are now at the receiving end of the Obama administration crackdown.

All this is good but not good enough. Much more needs to be done by the Congress. Student loans must be supported more and state colleges serving most number of students must be provided with more funding.

Funds can be generated towards this only if outrageous tax breaks given to the elite by President George Bush are eliminated. Padding wealthy citizen’s bank account is the least priority now as compared to educating our next generation.

The focus should no more be only on glorified job training. Access to real higher education should be the birth right of every single American citizen. Only this can ensure that they become capable of fulfilling responsibilities as citizens.

Our country’s political and economic future depends entirely on making our colleges affordable. It is imperative that we do this for those strapped students and families as soon as possible.