Released: February 15, 2006

College loan crunch

Source: By Ashlea Ebeling, Forbes

In the 2006 budget-cutting “reconciliation” bill President George W. Bush signed this month, the best known student loan programs for middle-class families - Stafford loans for students and so-called PLUS loans for parents - took a big hit. But the small Perkins Loan Program, which helps lower-income and lower middle-income students, was spared. Now, it turns out, the reprieve may have been temporary. President Bush’s fiscal 2007 budget proposal calls for ending the Perkins Loan program altogether.

“There’s a lot of angst with the president proposing to eliminate the program,” says Harrison Wadsworth, executive director of the Coalition of Higher Education Assistance Organizations, an association of administrators of the Perkins Loan Program.

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