Student Loan Reform 101

What the new law, shoehorned into the health care bill at the eleventh hour, means for college kids.

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Also read: The rest of the 2010 MoJo Mini College Guide, plus the 2009 MoJo Mini College Guide.

Congress reformed more than just health care this year. Below, four ways the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act affects you:

 Your federal Stafford Loan will now be made directly by the Department of Education, saving the government tens of billions it used to pay in administrative fees to companies like Sallie Mae.

 If your parents’ combined income is less than $50,000, you qualify for a Pell Grant (PDF), and your yearly scholarship will increase by as much as $425.

 Community colleges and historically black- and minority-serving schools will get grants totaling $4.5 billion to use at their discretion.

 Once you finish school, your loan payments can be no more than 15 percent of your monthly salary. Students borrowing after 2014 will have to set aside only 10 percent of their paycheck for loans.

Also read: The rest of the 2010 MoJo Mini College Guide, plus the 2009 MoJo Mini College Guide.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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