PBS高端访谈:总统大力阻止学生贷款利率翻番

 　　JEFFREY BROWN:And we turn to a July 1stdeadline for interest rates on student loans and the economic consequences of growing student debt.

　　PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:Now is not the time for us to turn back on young people.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Flanked by students in the Rose Garden today, President Obama again pressed Congress not to allow college loan interest rates to double in a month.

　　PRESIDENT OBAMA:And that means that the average student with these loans will rack up an additional $1,000 dollars in debt. That's like a $1,000 dollar tax hike. I assume most of you cannot afford that.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:The president made a similar push last year before Congress ultimately agreed to a one-year fix. That kept rates on federally subsidized Stafford student loans from jumping from 3.4 to 6.8 percent.

　　A year later, lawmakers from both parties are eager to avert¹ the same hike, but they're at odds² over how.

　　MAN:Motion to reconsider is laid on the table.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Last week, the Republican-led House passed its answer, a bill that would avoid the impending³ rate increase, but tie rates on future loans to treasury⁴ bonds and allow the rates to float with the market.

　　House Education and Work Force Committee Chairman John Kline:

　　REP. JOHN KLINE, R-Minn.: We have an opportunity to provide students with more stability in the long run by putting an end to quick fixes and campaign promises, and we have an opportunity to build upon common ground with the administration to advance a bipartisan solution that's a win for both students and taxpayers⁶.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:It's a plan not likely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, where there's a push to extend the current government subsidies⁷.

　　For his part, the president has also proposed tying rates to treasury notes, but he would allow students to lock in their initial rates for the life of the loans.

　　PRESIDENT OBAMA:The House bill isn't smart and it's not fair. I'm glad the House is paying attention to it, but they didn't do it the right way.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Replying in a statement today, House Speaker John Boehner accused the president of playing partisan⁵ games, writing: "The differences between the House plan and the president's are small. But, today, rather than working to resolve the issue, the president resorted to a campaign stunt⁸ to try to score political points."

　　Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats⁹, announced it has taken out adds in six college papers across the country in a bid to pressure House Republicans on the issue ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.

　　And we examine some of the possible solutions ahead of the July 1strate hike.

　　With me are leaders of two nonprofit groups that advocate for the millennial¹⁰ generation. Matthew Segal is president of OurTime.org. He was at the White House this week discussing the issue. Evan Feinberg is president of Generation Opportunity. Last year, he made an unsuccessful run for Congress as a Republican. Also joining us is Anya Kamenetz. She's the author of "Generation Debt."

　　And welcome, all.

　　Matthew, let me—Segal—let me start with you.

　　With a specific program before the president and the Congress, what in a nutshell do you think is the best approach right now?

　　MATTHEW SEGAL, President, OurTime.org: Well, I think, first of all, we need to put this in a larger context and go after the source of the problem, which is the spiraling cost of education in the first place, which is far outpacing the cost of inflation. It's far outpacing the cost of any good.

　　And until we really rein¹¹ in on the cost of education, and look at the states—47 states have cut higher education—look at the fact that colleges are not necessarily spending their money on learning, but, in fact, on the college experience, investing their money in the wrong sorts of priorities that are for prestige, as opposed to the core competency of the school, and unless we improve the job market so that there's not such a monopoly on needing to go to college as the only way forward, that's really where the real conversation needs to happen.

　　As far as student interest rates are going, this is completely manufactured crisis that we have kicked the can down the road on, and I think ultimately there will be a 23rd-hour deal that has some combination of pretty much having the 3.4 percent rate continue for a year, until we can have the larger debate.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Evan Feinberg, do you agree about the scale of the problem? And what's your possible solution?

　　EVAN FEINBERG,President, Generation Opportunity: Well, I agree that college affordability¹² is the really important issue here.

　　Young people just simply can't afford college today in today's economy. But I completely disagree about the cause of that. I think both sides are pandering¹³ right now, trying to offer to young people a lower interest rate on their student loans, when they're really missing the entire problem that government's meddling¹⁴, government's involvement, government subsidizing and guaranteeing so much of the cost of higher education is what's made it so expensive in the first place.

　　So I think both parties right now are really—there isn't a huge difference between the two of them. This is pandering.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:You're seeing the subsidy¹⁵ that—whatever the interest rate is, as a subsidy that is part of the problem?

　　EVAN FEINBERG:Yes.

　　So the government took over student loans almost entirely¹⁶ as a part of Obamacare, but really the government has been controlling the student loan market for a long time. And by subsidizing and guaranteeing so much of the cost of higher education, government has actually been the problem, not the solution, to the problem of college affordability.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:And let me bring Anya Kamenetz in here just to give us some larger context, I guess, is -- what—help describe the system as it exists right now.

　　ANYA KAMENETZ,Author, "Generation Debt": Sure.

　　So, you know, I think Matthew's got a lot of good points about the cost of higher education. And what we're missing here is the way that the cost and the ability to finance that cost really fit into each other. So, you know, we talk about a subsidy and Obama talked about a tax. The important thing to remember here is that by taking over the student loan industry, the federal government is actually earning $50 billion dollars a year on making those student loans.

　　And by providing that easy financing, that easy credit to students, it makes it that much easier for the states to turn around and pass the cost or shift the cost from the states on the federal government via this means of student loans. So you really have a very nasty vicious circle, where tuition continues to grow. Affordability, we see, is a really huge problem, particularly for students from lower-income quadrants.

　　Accessibility is not working. Pell Grants aren't working the way that they should. And none of this is really the way that we would design it if we were to start over from scratch.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Well, so, Matthew, pick up on some of that, because in terms of the interest rate itself, you still think the government should play—as opposed to what Evan Feinberg was saying, you still think the government should play some role in that subsidy?

　　MATTHEW SEGAL:Well, I think it's important to clarify that more student loans is nobody's solution. Student loans are not a good thing.

　　In fact, ideally, I believe and many young people believe that college is and higher education is a public good and that we as a society all benefit from it, so we have to make it affordable¹⁷.

　　And the way we're going to make it affordable are through Pell Grants, are through state funding and through making sure that colleges use their endowment money and their tuition money to go into learning and scholarships and aid, as opposed to this arms race to the top, if you will, that people in the college administrator¹⁸ world are putting into the U.S. News & World Report rankings, which I like to call the “U.S. News & World Report industrial complex,” because it perverse-incentivizes schools to try to build mega-buildings and football fields, as opposed to actually worrying about learning, which is obviously the necessity and core competency of the school.

　　But I think in terms of the government subsidizing loans, yes, we're going to have massive income inequality to a certain degree unless we do incentivize younger people who are from low-income backgrounds to be able to take out loans that are not going to be subject to usury¹⁹ and hiked rates from private lenders who, you know, are making college a big business for them. And should college be a booming business?

　　That's where there's a philosophical²⁰ disagreement among Democrats and Republicans or just people from different political spectrums.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Do you want to respond?

　　EVAN FEINBERG:Well, I think Matt's talking about the college industrial complex, which is a very real problem, as the government continues to put more and more resources into higher education.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:So, you—wait. You agree on the industrial complex, but you think it's partly caused by government?

　　EVAN FEINBERG:Yes, sure.

　　Anya mentioned that the government profits off of all these loans. I'm not sure that most young people are excited that the government is a huge bank that makes huge profits off of student loans and in the process is driving up the price of education. Right now, we're debating the difference in the rate on a government loan, rather than the size of that loan in the first place.

　　And as government keeps putting more and more resources into it, it grows the cost. If we gave everyone in America, every young person got $100 dollars to buy an iPhone tomorrow, what would Apple do? They'd raise the price of iPhones because they knew everyone in the country had $100 dollars more to pay for an iPhone.

　　The problem here is that the government is putting money, so much money, some so many guarantees, so many rules and regulations on higher education, it's driving the price through the roof.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Anya, do you see—you look all around the country at different things, the experiments going on. Do you see interesting things that might help us find ways through all this?

　　ANYA KAMENETZ: You know, I really do.

　　And there was a really fantastic announcement just made yesterday by Coursera, which is one of the massively open online course platforms. They currently have over three million students enrolled²¹ in versions of courses from colleges like Harvard and MIT that are absolutely free. Coursera has got Penn and Stanford.

　　And they just announced partnerships²² with 10 major state university systems. And all of those university systems -- these are in states coast to coast and they're enrolling²³ over a million students—are looking at ways to share resources, to collaborate²⁴ and to use technology to really build the infrastructure²⁵ for what we'd all like to see, which is radically²⁶ more affordable and more accessible high-quality learning experiences that can cut through the cost fog.

　　It's true that the role of easy finance and the ability to borrow has driven up the cost and made—muddied the waters a little bit. But we all think—or many of us believe, especially on the Democratic side, that there is a role for subsidizing education as a public good. The question is, what is the best way to do that?

　　And I really believe that technology offers a fascinating way forward for a college education that is more like what our parents experienced, which is, in the 1970s, a young person could go to college, a state university, and they could pay for that with a part-time job. And that's what we'd all like to get back to.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Well, let me—I'm guessing that you would all agree that the student debt problem is hurting the economy, something we heard in our earlier segment.

　　MATTHEW SEGAL:It's massively hurting the economy.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Yes, do you think the rest of the population understands that? Do you want to start?

　　MATTHEW SEGAL:No.

　　I think the problem is we have a student loan debt crisis that people think is just for students, when, in fact, 50 percent of the people with outstanding student loan debt in this country are over the age of 30. By the way, people who are seniors have student loans, and they will deduct²⁷ it, because you cannot forgive student loan debt or restructure student loan debt in bankruptcy²⁸ court, because there are very few, if not negligible, protections for student borrowers.

　　They will take it out of your Social Security. So, I think the fact that there has not been a vociferous²⁹ student lobby in this area that is advocating for their rights and needs around college affordability and better loan pathways is a very big problem for the economy.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Just in our last minute, is this an area we can agree on?

　　EVAN FEINBERG:Absolutely.

　　Eighty-four percent of young people 18-29 are delaying major life decisions because of the poor economy and because of the massive student loan debt they're under. Fifty percent are coming out of school and can't find full-time³⁰ work. We have got a real crisis with the millennials.

　　I think it's a government-caused crisis. The government meddling in student loans, meddling in the economy has made it very difficult for our generation to have the kind of opportunity that our parents and grandparents had. It's a major crisis. But we agree on that.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:All right, to be continued.

　　Evan Feinberg, Matthew Segal, and Anya Kamenetz, thank you all very much.

　　MATTHEW SEGAL:You bet. My pleasure.

　　ANYA KAMENETZ:Thank you.

1 avert   

v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等)

参考例句：

• He managed to avert suspicion.他设法避嫌。
• I would do what I could to avert it.我会尽力去避免发生这种情况。

2 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

3 impending   

a.imminent, about to come or happen

参考例句：

• Against a background of impending famine, heavy fighting took place. 即将发生饥荒之时，严重的战乱爆发了。
• The king convoke parliament to cope with the impending danger. 国王召开国会以应付迫近眉睫的危险。

4 treasury   

n.宝库；国库，金库；文库

参考例句：

• The Treasury was opposed in principle to the proposals.财政部原则上反对这些提案。
• This book is a treasury of useful information.这本书是有价值的信息宝库。

5 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

6 taxpayers   

纳税人，纳税的机构( taxpayer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Finance for education comes from taxpayers. 教育经费来自纳税人。
• She was declaiming against the waste of the taxpayers' money. 她慷慨陈词猛烈抨击对纳税人金钱的浪费。

7 subsidies   

n.补贴，津贴，补助金( subsidy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• European agriculture ministers failed to break the deadlock over farm subsidies. 欧洲各国农业部长在农业补贴问题上未能打破僵局。
• Agricultural subsidies absorb about half the EU's income. 农业补贴占去了欧盟收入的大约一半。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 stunt   

n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长

参考例句：

• Lack of the right food may stunt growth.缺乏适当的食物会阻碍发育。
• Right up there is where the big stunt is taking place.那边将会有惊人的表演。

9 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 millennial   

一千年的，千福年的

参考例句：

• Both Russia and America looked to the future to fulfill their millennial expectations. 俄国和美国都把实现他们黄金时代的希望寄托于未来。
• The millennial generation is celebrating the global commons every day, apparently unmindful of Hardin's warning. 千禧一代显然对哈丁的警告不以为然，每天都在颂扬全球“公地”。

11 rein   

n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治

参考例句：

• The horse answered to the slightest pull on the rein.只要缰绳轻轻一拉,马就作出反应。
• He never drew rein for a moment till he reached the river.他一刻不停地一直跑到河边。

12 affordability   

可购性

参考例句：

• Performance-Based Logistics Affordability: Can We Afford Categorical Conversion to Performance-Based Acquisition? 基于性能的后期的可承受性：能否担负得起向基于性能的采办的无条件的转变？
• There would be no crisis of affordability, as't for food or clothing. 就想食物与服装一样，因为供给没有危机。

13 pandering   

v.迎合（他人的低级趣味或淫欲）( pander的现在分词 )；纵容某人；迁就某事物

参考例句：

• This magazine is criticized for pandering to the vulgar taste of some readers. 这家杂志因迎合某些读者的低级趣味而遭到批评。 来自辞典例句
• We're four points up there; we don't need to get hit for pandering. 我们在那儿领先四个百分点；我们不必为了迎合一些选民而遭受批评。 来自电影对白

14 meddling   

v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He denounced all "meddling" attempts to promote a negotiation. 他斥责了一切“干预”促成谈判的企图。 来自辞典例句
• They liked this field because it was never visited by meddling strangers. 她们喜欢这块田野，因为好事的陌生人从来不到那里去。 来自辞典例句

15 subsidy   

n.补助金，津贴

参考例句：

• The university will receive a subsidy for research in artificial intelligence.那个大学将得到一笔人工智能研究的补助费。
• The living subsidy for senior expert's family is included in the remuneration.报酬已包含高级专家家人的生活补贴。

16 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

17 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

18 administrator   

n.经营管理者，行政官员

参考例句：

• The role of administrator absorbed much of Ben's energy.行政职务耗掉本很多精力。
• He has proved himself capable as administrator.他表现出管理才能。

19 usury   

n.高利贷

参考例句：

• The interest of usury is unfairly high.高利贷的利息惊人得高。
• He used to practise usury frequently.他过去经常放高利贷。

20 philosophical   

adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的

参考例句：

• The teacher couldn't answer the philosophical problem.老师不能解答这个哲学问题。
• She is very philosophical about her bad luck.她对自己的不幸看得很开。

21 enrolled   

adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起

参考例句：

• They have been studying hard from the moment they enrolled. 从入学时起，他们就一直努力学习。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He enrolled with an employment agency for a teaching position. 他在职业介绍所登了记以谋求一个教师的职位。 来自《简明英汉词典》

22 partnerships   

n.伙伴关系( partnership的名词复数 )；合伙人身份；合作关系

参考例句：

• Partnerships suffer another major disadvantage: decision-making is shared. 合伙企业的另一主要缺点是决定要由大家来作。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• It involved selling off limited partnerships. 它涉及到售出有限的合伙权。 来自辞典例句

23 enrolling   

v.招收( enrol的现在分词 )；吸收；入学；加入；[亦作enrol]( enroll的现在分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起

参考例句：

• They lashed out at the university enrolling system. 他们猛烈抨击大学的招生制度。 来自辞典例句
• You're enrolling in a country club, Billy. 你是注册加入乡村俱乐部了，比利。 来自辞典例句

24 collaborate   

vi.协作，合作；协调

参考例句：

• The work gets done more quickly when we collaborate.我们一旦合作，工作做起来就更快了。
• I would ask you to collaborate with us in this work.我们愿意请你们在这项工作中和我们合作。

25 infrastructure   

n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施

参考例句：

• We should step up the development of infrastructure for research.加强科学基础设施建设。
• We should strengthen cultural infrastructure and boost various types of popular culture.加强文化基础设施建设，发展各类群众文化。

26 radically   

ad.根本地，本质地

参考例句：

• I think we may have to rethink our policies fairly radically. 我认为我们可能要对我们的政策进行根本的反思。
• The health service must be radically reformed. 公共医疗卫生服务必须进行彻底改革。

27 deduct   

vt.扣除，减去

参考例句：

• You can deduct the twenty - five cents out of my allowance.你可在我的零用钱里扣去二角五分钱。
• On condition of your signing this contract,I will deduct a percentage.如果你在这份合同上签字，我就会给你减免一个百分比。

28 bankruptcy   

n.破产；无偿付能力

参考例句：

• You will have to pull in if you want to escape bankruptcy.如果你想避免破产，就必须节省开支。
• His firm is just on thin ice of bankruptcy.他的商号正面临破产的危险。

29 vociferous   

adj.喧哗的，大叫大嚷的

参考例句：

• They are holding a vociferous debate.他们在吵吵嚷嚷地辩论。
• He was a vociferous opponent of Conservatism.他高声反对保守主义。

30 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。