College education becomes more expensive every year. While pursuing a higher education is a great way to mature intellectually and open paths to a variety of career choices, it is becoming a bit of a problem for some families to pay for a college degree. One way to help these less fortunate families has been around for many years now, known as student loans. This program was implemented to create a way for students to get the money to pay for college now and be able to pay the money back with interest after obtaining a career in the field of their choice. While this was intended to make things easier for students, it turned out to have an overall negative effect. Countless students are faced with overwhelming debt after graduation, and with interest rates on the rise, this burden is not being alleviated at all (Frizell). In fact, saying that student loans have caused more harm than good to college graduates over the years is not necessarily an incorrect statement. At this point, it is clear and necessary that current and prospective college students should not rely entirely on student loans, so that they can save themselves from a lifetime of debt. Student loans are clearly more harmful to college students and therefore should be replaced by a better reformed version or alternative program to help make college education affordable and alleviate the debt that students graduate with. Students who have taken out loans have suffered greatly throughout their lives after graduation, and there is incontrovertible evidence to support this statement. Many students are so deeply in debt that they feel safe just staying in school. One student admits: “The only way I feel I can survive financially is to go back to… middle of paper… more affordable and revive some aspects of the economy. This counterclaim by conservatives against the new college assistance program is completely ill-conceived. Cutting funding for Pell Grants would be senseless, “because recipients largely come from traditionally underserved communities,” which fits the purpose of student loans, but without requiring students to repay the money years later at extremely high interest rates ( Garofalo). Pell Grants not only aim to help needy families pay for college, but “also address the country's economic competitiveness, which depends on the availability of a highly educated, 21st-century workforce” (Garofalo). The conservative push to reduce the supply of Pell Grants would have the opposite effect and sacrifice America's long-term economic strength on the altar of short-term deficit reduction (Garofalo).