To: The United States Senate
Expand Student-to-Service Student Loan Repayment Programs
The national student loan debt is an estimated $1.4 trillion dollars. This leaves most students in crippling debt for a huge portion of their working lives.
Why is this important?
Most students leave college in crippling debt with no work experience. Meanwhile, Betsy DeVos, Paul Ryan, and Trump appear to be doing their level best to dismantle any programs that have been historically helpful. Programs such as Teach America and the HRSA Student Loan Repayment Program provide students with a way to pay back a major portion of their loans by working for schools or agencies that work with underserved populations. This provides students with work experience, eases their debt, helps overworked agencies, and ultimately strengthens the infrastructure of the country. This petition asks Congress and the Department of Education to expand existing Student-to-service programs and provide incentives for the development of new ones. The goal of these programs is to help community agencies with employee retention, strengthen aid to underserved populations, and help new graduates get the work experience and debt relief they need.