Newly confirmed United States Secretary of Education John King knows how daunting the student loan repayment process can be. That’s because he is still paying back student loans himself.

“Even though I was confirmed as secretary of education this week, I’m still paying off loans for the graduate degrees that helped me get here,” he said on a conference call with college reporters on Friday.

Less than a week after he was confirmed by the Senate, King conducted the call to speak about the issues of college affordability and student loans. King was joined on the call by Ajita Menon, a senior policy adviser for higher education at the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Tad Mitchell, the undersecretary of education.

King, who was previously deputy secretary of education, was confirmed by the Senate on March 14 with bipartisan support. King’s predecessor, Arne Duncan, announced he was stepping down in October.

King is currently traveling to colleges around the country to talk about the issue of college affordability. He’s been to Georgia and Alabama, and this week he’ll be in San Francisco as part of the College Opportunity Across America Tour, he said.

When King was nominated last month, President Barack Obama said King would continue the administration’s efforts to make college more affordable, according to The Washington Post. These efforts include a Pay As You Earn repayment plan for borrowers who have taken out federal student loans. Under the plan, which became available in December, borrowers can cap their monthly loan repayment at 10 percent of their monthly income. Debt is also relieved after 20 years.

“You will never have to spend more than 10 percent of your income on monthly loan payments if you enroll in one of these plans,” King said. “That’s huge.”

In New York state, borrowers enrolled in a federal Pay As You Earn repayment plan can also enroll in the state’s Get On Your Feet program, which allows up to two years of student loan relief, New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in January.

King also touted a part of the federal PAYE program, which forgives student loan debt after 10 years for borrowers employed in public service positions.

“Some graduates don’t pursue careers like teaching or nursing or working as a public defender or even non-profit careers because they are concerned the salary will not be enough to pay back loans,” King said.

Another initiative that is a priority for the Obama administration is simplifying the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), King said. Part of that includes making the FAFSA available earlier — which King said will happen this year — in order to allow people to use tax returns from the year before their most recent filing and shorten the time it takes to finish the form.

“We’ve cut down the time it takes to complete the FAFSA quite significantly to where it can be completed in as little as the time it takes to watch a TV show,” he said.

King did not mention the Federal Perkins Loan Program, which provides low-interest federal student loans to borrowers with “exceptional financial need,” despite calling on Congress on March 9 to reauthorize the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. The act expired in October and provides more than $1.1 billion for career and technical education programs in the U.S. for students in grades 7-12 and in post-secondary institutions, according to a release from the Department of Education.

The program expired in October, and Syracuse University has lobbied members of Congress to reauthorize it. Eric Persons, the associate vice president of government and community relations at SU, told The Daily Orange in October that about 25 percent of SU students use the Federal Perkins Loan Program.

The Education Department release outlined four of the Obama administration’s priorities for the reauthorization of the Federal Perkins Loan Program, including “effective alignment” with the labor market; enhanced collaboration between secondary and postsecondary institutions, employers and industry partners; increased accountability to better academic and employment outcomes for students; and local and state innovation in career technical education (CTE). CTE is the name for “what we used to refer to as vocational education,” King said in the release.

In an effort to boost the credibility of CTE programs, King also announced on March 9 the launch of the CTE Makeover Challenge, a competition sponsored by the Education Department that will equally divide $200,000 among at most 10 award recipients to “transform classrooms or available space in high schools into places where students have access to the tools to design, build and innovate,” according to the release.

King said on the conference call that the Obama administration is also working to crack down on private companies that scam students into paying unnecessary fees for services that are free through the Department of Education. These services, he said, include charging money for lowering or capping monthly loan payments, consolidating loans, seeing if a borrower qualifies for loan forgiveness or getting advice on getting out of default.

The Obama administration has issued cease and desist orders to these companies that run “debt relief scams,” King said. Sometimes, he added, companies would even use the Department of Education logo to con borrowers.

“This is a broad challenge,” King said. “Part of what we’re seeing is folks using social media, Internet postings, email solicitations to try to persuade people to pay for services that are actually available for free.”

On the subject of private loans, Undersecretary Mitchell said there is active discussion in Congress about refinancing programs that would extend protections under federal loans to private loan borrowers.

Published on March 21, 2016 at 10:57 pm

Contact Rachel: rsandler@syr.edu