Tonight, Governor Paul LePage will participate in his third gubernatorial debate, and if last week’s debates were any indication, LePage will once again trumpet his plan to address the student loan debt crisis: selling student loans to employers. LePage also raised this proposal on Monday during an appearance at the University of Maine, where students were on fall break at the time. Perhaps if he’d had the event when students were actually on campus, they would have told him what several USM students told American Bridge: it’s a singularly “bad idea” to sell student loans to employers in exchange for a tax credit.
When we asked students about Governor LePage so-called student loan “system,” the responses ranged from the bewildered “what’s the benefit to me?” to the outraged “that’s terribly sick,” and more utterances of “bad idea” than we can count. One student likened LePage’s proposal to “selling students as if they were indentured servants.”
Maine students deserve to hear from Governor LePage tonight on why his cavalier plan to treat their student loan debt as a tax incentive for employers is in their best interest (spoiler alert: it’s not). If these reactions are any judge, he has a lot more explaining to do.
WATCH Maine students speak out against LePage’s student loan plan:
Published: Oct 15, 2014