Walker, GOP Higher Education Agenda Fails to Include Tackling Trillion-Dollar Student Loan Debt Crisis

MADISON, Wis. — Original research by the One Wisconsin Institute found that the trillion-dollar student loan debt crisis is not just hurting students and their families, but is a significant drag on the entire state economy. The following are the statements of One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross regarding Gov. Walker and the Republican’s latest budget action on tuition and the University of Wisconsin System:

“The trillion-dollar student loan debt crisis is a clear and present danger to our entire economy. While a tuition freeze is positive step, it is a stop-gap that maintains a status quo in which students and their families are awash in debt and the entire Wisconsin economy suffers.

“Recently the U.S. Federal Reserve has sounded the alarm about the trillion dollar student loan debt crisis, noting rising levels of student loan debt are a risk to the economy. And the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has confirmed our findings that auto and home purchasing suffers because of student loan debt.

“Policy makers need to realize the depths of the trillion-dollar debt crisis. And the public needs to demand more than stopgaps and half measures if we’re going to solve this crisis and restore higher education as the path to the middle class, not a sentence to decades of debt.

“And lastly, the unprecedented attack on United Council by Gov. Walker’s allies reveals a contept for students and their interests that even goes beyond their indifference to the trillion-dollar student loan debt crisis.”