From The Kansas City Star:

College students and their families will pay higher interest rates on their school loans if Congress approves a deficit-reduction bill that contains the largest cuts in history to the federal Student Loan program.

The bill would immediately raise the interest rates charged to students by 1.5 percentage points - an increase of roughly 28 percent..."In an ideal world, I don't think that anyone who wants greater support for higher education would say, `This is the bill,''' said Jim Boyle, president of College Parents of America, a parents-advocacy group based in Washington. "But it's a lot better than it could have been."

The Senate barely passed the bill Wednesday with a vote of 51-50. The measure, which slashes almost $13 billion from the federal loan program, is awaiting approval by the House of Representatives.

The loan-program cuts constitute about a third of nearly $40 million in federal deficit reductions the bill claims to achieve, a fact that disappoints some who hoped the savings would be put back into education.

"The money they're saving in loans is not being put back into programs aimed at helping the neediest students," said Marguerite Jacobs, the assistant director of financial aid at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. "If they don't get money through the government, they will have to go through private lenders."

Also disappointing to some was that the bill contains no increase in grant money for the nation's neediest students.Disconcerting news for students already struggling to finance their education. What does this foretell for the future of higher education?