In hopes of
ensuring that college students don’t assume too much debt in pursuing a degree,
the U.S. Department of Education is launching a trial program to provide loan counseling
to students while they’re still in school.
Students
already receive some level of counseling when they first take out a loan and
again when they leave or finish school and must start repayment. The federal
program would see that students also get counseling in between, according to a
report on TheStreet.com.
The goal of
this new layer of face-to-face counseling would be, in part, to make sure each
student is not taking on more loans than they could reasonably pay back, given
their anticipated first job. A general rule of thumb is that loans should not
total more than the average annual starting salary in the student’s field of
study.
Colleges
and universities that sign up for the trial program will randomly place
students into two groups for comparison: those who get the extra loan
counseling and those who receive the usual entrance and exit counseling.
“We’re keen
to understand not only whether required loan counseling works, but what kind of
loan counseling is most effective,” said Under Secretary of Education Ted
Mitchell at the National Association of Financial Aid Administrators conference
in Washington, D.C.
