Student Loans

For our class assignment I explored the website www.law.com to learn something new about the financial aid and higher education issue. Specifically, I was looking to learn more about how retention rates of students of who are already in college are affected by the economy and the financial aid available to students. I stumbled upon an article by Karen Sloan from The National Law Journal called "Wall Street Stress for Law Grads" which you can view at http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202425094042. By reading this, I learned more about how our current economic state has affected, and will continue to affect, the distribution of loans for undergraduate and graduate students.

The most intriguing part of this article was a part about how "undergraduates who soon will enter law schools may also take more of an economic hit than current law students. That's because undergraduates use private loans to pay for college far more often than law students, and the interest rates on those undergraduate private loans is on the rise" (Sloan). Private loans are not as readily available as they have been in the past because of the economic state, however, due to our sloping economy, a college degree is still critical for economic survival and success.

This statement correlates directly to the motivation for students who are pursuing a degree right now to stay in school and finish their degree sooner rather than later. The lack of financial aid available puts pressure on students to graduate in a shorter amount of time and improve overall retention rates. As a current college student, I believe that financial aid needs to be more of a priority in order to keep students in college. By keeping retention rates high, more Americans can have a college degree, meaning more economic success in comparison to foreign competitors.