As of November 2014, Redeeming America's Promise is now named the Campaign for Free College Tuition. American Promise scholarships are now known as National Promise scholarships.
It’s not helping our economy either. Purdue University President and Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels announced the results of a March survey of more than 30,000 college graduates that showed “student debt hinders our national economy just as it hinders the individual life prospects of students who borrow too much of it. It is past time for leaders in higher education to go to work on restraining costs and making sure that our doors remain open to all students who meet our standards."
The survey, conducted by Gallup in partnership with the Lumina Foundation created an index that “examines the long-term success of graduates as they pursue a good job and a better life.” They found “the amount of student loans that graduates take out to pay for their undergraduate degree is related to their well-being in every element. The higher the loan amount, the worse the well-being. Only 4% of graduates who owed between $20,000 and $40,000 are thriving in all areas, compared with 14% of those who did not take out loan.”
The data is worse for students with over $40,000 of debt and will unfortunately impact our nation’s future economic success as “high student loan debt also may inhibit entrepreneurial activity, particularly among those who graduated after 1990. The higher the loan amount that graduates reported they took out for their undergraduate education, the less likely they are to say they started a business.”
Redeeming America’s Promise has a plan to deal with this problem by making college tuition free for every lower and middle income high school student who is academically ready and personally determined to earn a postsecondary degree or certificate. Please click here for the details.
Our goal is to make higher education a possibility for every American, without regard to their financial circumstances.
We have a lot to do and not much time to do it, so your support is critical for our campaign to succeed. It’s with your investment that we can fundamentally reform how higher education is financed in this country, opening the doors to a more equitable society.
If you agree with our goal, our plan, and the urgency of the problem, we ask that you give what you can to help us write the next chapter in our nation’s history of continuously expanding access to universal, free education.
