Currently students who hold federal student loan debt who borrowed from 7/1/06 to 6/30/11 are locked in at interest rates from 4.5% to 7.9%, while new students can borrow at 3.4%.
With student loans, instead of being able to take advantage of lower interest rates like many citizens do by refinancing mortgages, lines of credit, and business loans, students can only consolidate with a weighted average of the interest rates of existing loans.
Students should be able to take advantage of changes in interest rates just like any other citizen. This petition proposes to eliminate weighted average consolidation and allow students to refinance loans at the current borrowing rate.