[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11491]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          STUDENT DEBT CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PAULSEN. Mr. Speaker, we continue to hear about the challenges 
for college students who borrow more and more to pay higher tuition 
rates and then are saddled with huge debt loads that they will have 
great difficulty paying back.
  The average debt for a 4-year college student today is nearly 
$37,000. We need to explore new ways to ensure that every student has 
the opportunity to go to school, to develop their skills, and then 
pursue their dreams without feeling deterred by the price tag.
  I think we need to look at a new approach, an approach that would 
help students pay for college. It is a concept known as an income-share 
agreement. It is a concept that would provide students the funding that 
they agree to pay back as small, affordable portions of their income 
over the years following graduation.
  Income-share agreements are interest free, and students only will 
make those payments if they are employed and if they receive an income 
that meets a certain threshold. This method of financing puts less 
pressure on students to keep up with fixed high-interest payments while 
they are faced with job uncertainty.
  Rather than accruing debt under the traditional student loan 
structure, this makes the investment in these students' future more 
equity-based. Their payments are guaranteed to be affordable, rather 
than fixed, and a certain price.
  This is a much more manageable plan for students, Mr. Speaker, who 
are eager to get a career underway after graduation and want to make 
sure that they are putting their degrees into practice in a field that 
they have studied and have a passion for, rather than feel constrained 
by the impending weight of paying back loans right away.
  That is why I am co-authoring the Investing in Student Success Act. 
It is modeled after a program at Purdue University. At Purdue, an 
average student received a little over $13,000 in funding for tuition, 
paired with a student promise to pay back that money in 6 to 10 years 
after graduation in small percentages of their income.
  The bill provides a legal framework for private organizations to 
invest in individual students through implementing similar income-share 
agreements. Doing so creates more options for payment and increases 
accessibility for higher education.
  Today, the cost of tuition at a public 4-year university is nearly 
quadruple what it was back in 1974. Due to rising tuition costs and the 
increased need for a college degree in the workforce, it is more 
important now, more than ever before, to address the student loan debt 
crisis and provide students with the resources they need to graduate 
with minimal loans.
  Income-share agreements also provide the flexibility that students 
need when faced with an uncertain job market and provide an alternative 
to the traditional student loan repayment structure.
  Mr. Speaker, as we look for ways to make higher education more 
affordable and more accessible, we should be advancing new innovative 
solutions to help students go to college without that burden of high 
debt after graduation, and income-share agreements are another way of 
accomplishing this.

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