Today though, President Obama did outline some new guidelines that should make every college student happy and make paying their loans back a bit easier. His plan was supposed to begin in 2014 but due to the deteriorating economy and the dire need for help, students deserve this break sooner than later he said.

1) Starting in 2012 Obama’s plan will lower the student loan maximum payment from 15% to 10% of discretionary annual income. Another important change is that unpaid debt will be forgiven after 20 years instead of the 25 years that is currently on the books. These changes will make things financially easier on students who are struggling to pay off loans.

2) Also meant to financially aid students will be the new ability to consolidate loans from the Federal Family Education Load Program and any direct government loans into one loan. This will enable students who have both of these kinds of loans to get a lower overall interest rate, maybe as much as half a point better than before. Affecting millions of students who have loans, these new measures are meant to make college more affordable at a time when most everyone needs relief.

Of course none of this is going to help anyone get a job and that is also on the mind of most college students and recent graduates. College student jobs are in high demand and a very stressful subject for most young people. The American dream of going to college and graduating to find a good solid job waiting for them seems to be a dream of the past. With Unemployment rates approaching 10% and no indication that things are going to get better, today’s college students are in a very bad financial position, especially with the exorbitant tuition prices we now see everywhere.

It is also very possible that President Obama, by having these measures start in 2012 instead of 2014, is hoping to get more votes from students and younger people who might benefit from them. It is well known that he won his presidency with wide support from college students in 2008 and he surely wants that vote again next year.

Will these new student loan relief measures put forth today make you more likely to vote for Obama in 2012?

Unfortunately, President Obama is not going to do anything to directly combat the problem like lowering those costs. Instead, he has just signed the new student loan bill that will give more government control to the bureaucrats in Washington D.C..

When in our nation’s 200+ year history has a good thing happened when the government took control? The post office is losing millions of dollars a year and thinking of doing away with Saturday deliveries to compete with it’s private sector competitors like FedEx and UPS. Social Security has long been bankrupt as there is more money going out to Baby Boomers than coming in. Additionally the politicians have “borrowed” all the money in the Social Security coffers to pay for their pet projects and there is nothing left. And then there is Medicare and Medicaid where any senior citizen will tell you it is hard to find doctors that will accept either of the two because they don’t pay the doctors enough.

Any reasonably smart person can realize that the government fails in most everything it takes on. So now we are going to have the new Obama student loans bill (which won’t change anything till 2014) that will take loans out of the private sector and put them under the jurisdiction of the federal government. He says the government can loan money to students at a lower rate than the banks and lending institutions do now.

But that would mean that the government is deciding who does and does not qualify for a student loan. Are we going to have quotas that have to be met? Is your child going to be denied a loan because of their skin color or because they come from parents who have too high an income? Is this the road we really want to go down?

There may be some good things that come out of this bill like the expansion of Pell grants and it will make student loans easier to repay in some cases. However, the real problem for most students is the ridiculously high cost of tuition, books, and room and board. It costs an arm and a leg to go to college and this bill does nothing to change that. It looks like the availability of jobs for college students will continue to be the determining factor of whether many students can afford to pay for a college degree. They need work during the school year and over the summers as well which means they need to be working year round. Whatever happened to those good years of young adults going to college and having fun learning and socializing? It looks like those times are gone for good.