Rubio Campaign Press Release - Rubio: Students Deserve More Transparency

What will I earn with this degree at this college?

In Waukee, Iowa this weekend, Marco Rubio reiterated his proposal to ensure students and their families get all of the facts about their degree of choice at a given college or university before they take out student loans:

"I believe that before any of our young people take out student loans, that school has to tell you how much you can expect to make when you graduate from that degree from that school so people can decide whether it's worth borrowing tens of thousands of dollars to major in basket weaving."

Struggling to repay student loans is a challenge Marco knows about first hand:

"Each semester I would sign the promissory note borrowing more money. I never sat down to calculate how much I could expect to make once I graduated and whether it would be enough to afford my loan payments. There was no source to provide me with that information either.

"Finally, in 1996 I graduated from law school. I had a Juris Doctor in one hand and over $100,000 in loans in the other. Then a few months later, the bills began to arrive.

"My first job paid well for a young attorney. I was making over $50,000, which was more than either of my parents had ever made. I thought I was rich. But I was living with my parents and paying them rent. I was trying to save for my wedding and hopefully to buy a house. And when the $1500 monthly bills for my loans started coming in, I realized I couldn't pay them.

"So I did deferment. And forbearance. I paid only interest for a while. But the loans quickly became my single largest expense. I remember looking at the coupon book for one of them and realizing that at the pace I was paying these things, I wouldn't pay them off until I was over 50."

The problem is that we are trying to prepare people for the new economy using a higher education system built for the old economy. As a result, many high-skilled, high-paying industries suffer from a shortage of labor, while too many low-paying industries suffer from a surplus.

• In the coming decade, 63 percent of jobs will require postsecondary training.
• If current education trends continue, we will fall short of filling these skilled positions by 300,000 people per year.
• Nationally, majors such as business, liberal arts, and hospitality have underemployment rates at or above 50 percent.
• Engineering, health services and education all have underemployment rates less than 25 percent.

Students and their families need to be equipped with the information necessary to make well-informed decisions about which majors at which institutions are likely to yield the best return on investment. This is why Marco has authored and championed the "Student Right to Know Before You Go Act," which aims to give students reliable data on how much they can expect to make versus how much they can expect to owe.

Summarized from remarks of Marco Rubio during "Making Community Colleges Work" at Miami-Dade College.