{"id":13634,"date":"2017-03-02T14:18:33","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T22:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=13634"},"modified":"2017-03-08T15:21:18","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T23:21:18","slug":"provincial-government-limits-interest-on-student-loans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2017\/03\/02\/provincial-government-limits-interest-on-student-loans\/","title":{"rendered":"Provincial government limits interest on student loans"},"content":{"rendered":"

On February 21, British Columbia\u2019s Budget 2017<\/em> was released, with one very noteworthy inclusion for students: in it, the government announced that interest charged on all post-secondary student loans will now be limited to the prime rate. Interest charges in BC previously averaged prime plus two percent to five percent, one of the highest rates in the country. This reform is expected to save British Columbians and their families\u00a0an average of $17 million annually.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur government has been successful in managing our budget so that we have a completely balanced budget,\u201d says provincial minster of advanced education Andrew Wilkinson. \u201cOne of the dividends of that fiscal responsibility is that we have the ability to invest in some things like cutting the student loan interest rate in half.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College students who take out student loans will be paying a bit less now (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This development has some people saying there should be more extensive reforms to the province\u2019s student-loan system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe congratulate the government on making this first step,\u201d says Camosun College Student Society executive director Michel Turcotte, \u201cbut we would like to move to a point where interest rates on student loans are eliminated. That is the logical conclusion. The next step the government of British Columbia can take would be to implement a student grant program so that it would reduce the indebtedness that BC students would have in terms of the BC student-loan program.”<\/p>\n

Wilkinson, however, holds to the government\u2019s belief in interest-based student investment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an idea out there that student loans should carry no interest, which means that nobody would ever pay them back,\u201d Wilkinson says. \u201cThat\u2019s just the basic economics of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But British Columbia Federation of Students secretary-treasurer Jenelle Davis says that students would pay their student loan off regardless of whether or not there\u2019s interest on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s an ideological sort of issue that governments and some folks carry about this idea of student debt, this strange idea that if you don\u2019t pay for something, you don\u2019t care for it as much, or you don\u2019t respect it,” she says. “We hear from minister Wilkinson and others in the past, and even now, that if you don\u2019t charge a little bit of interest on something, students are simply not going to repay the money. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s much to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turcotte says that, regardless of interest charged, students have an attachment to their education.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the government believes that students need to have a personal investment in their education, there\u2019s little that we can do to shake that point of view entirely,\u201d he says. \u201cBut if students are paying $1,000 or paying $10,000, they\u2019re still going to feel personally invested in their education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that these changes are happening,\u00a0all those concerned will be watching the government\u2019s next steps.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a matter of putting in grants for students, but increasing funding [toward] students\u2019 tuitions, so they\u2019re not scrambling at the lack of resources coming their way as well,\u201d says Davis. \u201cThere needs to be a comprehensive long-term strategy, figuring out what we can do today, tomorrow, and in five years to ensure that education remains accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 21, British Columbia\u2019s Budget 2017 was released, with one very noteworthy inclusion for students: in it, the government announced that interest charged on all post-secondary student loans will now be limited to the prime rate. Interest charges in BC previously averaged prime plus two percent to five percent, one of the highest rates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13634"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13662,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634\/revisions\/13662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}