Once again, as seemingly happens every summer, loan interest rates will again increase. This time, the Stafford Loan interest rates will increase approximately two percent on July 1, 2006.
The burden this poses to those college students already swimming in debt cannot be over-exaggerated -- as if it weren't hard enough to be a student on financial aid, now the process of repaying the money becomes all the more difficult.
Yet there is a recourse offered that permits students to avoid becoming victimized: Loan consolidation. Act before the end of the month, and one can get the rate at which one pays back college loans fixed. With this process, one becomes free from the threat of future loan hikes.
The major problem, however, is that few students are aware of this process. While Student Financial Services does send out e-mails regarding the deadline and posts a warning on its website, students still often remain oblivious -- the SFS website is not often visited, and e-mails just as often become lost in the cluttered mess that is a college student's inbox.
And while one could moan and whine about the increase in interest rates, it will change nothing. Instead, students must act proactively.
Students need to become, in essence, more fluent in finance: College is an expensive investment, and it is a disservice not to be completely aware of all of the various factors that influence its cost.
Students must take the initiative, but Student Financial Services must continue to aid students -- warning reminders are well and good, but until students truly understand the circumstances concerning their financial aid at Penn, the warnings will fall on deaf ears.
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