Student groups want BC to scrap interest
Posted August 12, 2012 7:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – College graduates with $30,000 debts are looking at almost $10,000 in interest over a decade.
Some local student groups are pushing hard for BC to follow other provinces and get rid of this interest.
PEI and Newfoundland have scrapped their student loan interest, and Adam Awad with the Canadian Federation of Students BC says our province needs to follow suit.
“Banks and governments alike are very happy to point out that youths today aren’t saving as much as other people think they should be,” he says. “Well, it’s because we have huge amounts of debt when we graduate and we have to pay that off.”
He says many graduates are delaying future plans in order to do just that.
“If you’re paying $500 a month in loan repayments, you can’t exactly put money aside to save for retirement,” Awad explains. “It also means that we make choices to delay having a family, getting married, buying a house, buying a car because we can’t find great jobs out of university but we have to pay off this debt.”
He adds that if BC scraps the interest, it will help our economy in the long run. In total, BC students have $1-billion in debt.
