Campaign Offers Scholarship for College Affordability Essay Contest
Washington, DC – June 20, 2007 – The Campaign for College Affordability, a coordinated effort by groups working to ensure access to higher education, today announced an innovative student essay contest, with college scholarship money as the contest prize. At a time when the United States faces a crisis in college costs, student debt, and corruption of the lending process, the contest aims to highlight critical issues and promote effective solutions.
Contestants will have the opportunity, through their contest submissions, to improve the system while reducing their own debt. Students, recent graduates, and others who have educational debt are eligible to enter any published work, and the winner will receive a $2,500 scholarship to help pay off their student loans. The requirement that the entries be published, in print or on the web, is aimed at encouraging more public dialogue on this issue – for example, by encouraging students to examine and publicly report on the lending practices of their own schools. In addition to print entries, audiovisual pieces also are eligible to win the prize.
Campus Progress, a participant member of the Campaign for College Affordability, has contributed the $2,500 scholarship. Campus Progress won this sum for its innovative Debt Hits Hard videos ( http://debthitshard.org ) in Huffington Post’s Contagious Film Festival.
Contestants can submit their entries to the Campaign for College Affordability from now until October 29, 2007, and the winner will be announced November 13, 2007. This summer, the campaign will announce a panel of judges comprised of top policymakers, journalists, and experts. Entries on three topics will be accepted: college access, student debt, and fair lending.
In recent years college has become increasing unaffordable, and young people have had borrow heavily to make up the difference between available student aid and college costs, which have risen nearly 400% in the past twenty five years. These problems have been multiplied by inappropriate and even corrupt relationships between lenders and schools, which have left students at many schools without impartial allies to guide them through the confusing financial process. The Campaign is encouraging all who are interested to write about these topics, get published, and enter to win online at: http://collegeaffordabilitynow.org/essaycontest
The Campaign for College Affordability was launched in fall 2006 to facilitate coordinated public education aimed at making college affordable by: increasing need-based grant aid by raising the maximum Pell Grant award to at least $5100; making student loans more affordable by lowering interest rates, limiting the percentage of income students spend repaying loans, expanding loan forgiveness programs for critical public service careers and reinstating the refinancing of existing loans; and cutting excessive subsidies in the student loan program to using that money to provide more aid to students and parents.
The groups that participate in the Campaign include:
The American College of Physicians; The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); The American Federation of Teachers; The American Medical Students Association (AMSA); Campaign for America’s Future; Campus Progress at the Center for American Progress; The League of Young Voters Education Fund; Mobilize.org; The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); The National Consumers League; The National Education Association; Rock the Vote; Service Employees International Union (SEIU); State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) Higher Education Project; United States Student Association (USSA); USAction; Working America and Young Democrats of America.
