A recent report from the Education Sector, a think tank, shows that 30 percent of college students who took out loans eventually dropped out. As Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, noted, this is a problem because of the severe drop in earning potential that occurs when a student leaves school without a degree:

“In the end, it’s about money and time,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. “There’s almost a synergy between the two that will knock you out of school.”

The cost to the economy is roughly half a trillion dollars, he said. Although college dropouts make more than those with only a high school diploma, he said they earn about a million dollars less than college graduates over their careers.

Among 18 countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “the United States finished last (46 percent) for the percentage of students who completed college once they started it.”

In 2010, the total cost in lost earnings and tax revenue due to college dropouts in America was $4.5 billion. In California alone, “college dropouts are losing nearly $15 billion in earnings over their work lives, costing the federal government more than $3 billion in lost income taxes.”

(Note: The original sources for this story, Fox News and Campus Reform, inappropriately and disrespectfully refer to Braly as “anatomically male,” using male pronouns — or no pronouns at all, in the case of Fox News — to reject the authenticity of her identity. Inside Higher Ed has published a story that better articulates her background and experiences.)

Of course, tuition increases and growing debt are a phenomenon several decades in the making. And Romney’s plan would make the problem decidedly worse in two important ways, giving federal money away to Wall Street banks and predatory for-profit colleges, two industries to which Romney has extensive ties.

First, as he’s promised before, Romney intends to divert money away from student aid — instead giving it away to banks — by repealing Obama’s student loan reforms:

Reverse President Obama’s nationalization of the student loan market and welcome private sector participation in providing information, financing, and the education itself.

President Obama did not nationalize the student loan market. (Plenty of banks still make private sector student loans.) Instead, Obama and the Democrats cut private banks out of the federal student loan program, ending billions in subsidies that were needlessly going to banks for acting as loan middlemen. The money saved went into the Pell Grant program. Romney’s plan would entail taking away Pell money in order to pay Wall Street to service federal loans.

Second, Romney would remove regulations meant to protect students from predatory for-profit colleges:

Ill-advised regulation imposed by the Obama administration, such as the so-called “Gainful Employment” rule, has made it even harder for some providers to operate, while distorting their incentives.

This rule simply states that colleges leaving too many students crippled with debt and without good jobs lose their access to federal dollars. Many for-profit schools make nearly all of their revenue from the federal government — in the form of the various streams of aid used by their students — yet have much high rates of student loan default than public schools. Only 11 percent of higher education students in the country attend for-profit schools, but they account for 26 percent of federal student loans and 44 percent of student loan defaults.

Romney is already intimately tied to the for-profit college industry. Inside Higher Ed noted that two of his advisers “have lobbied on behalf of the Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix.” On the campaign trail, Romney has effusively praised Full Sail University, a for-profit institution. And it seems that his policy platform would be a boon to this industry which is, in many instances, extremely predatory.

The House Republican budget also calls for cutting nearly one million students off of Pell Grants. But in an op-ed Ryan wrote over the weekend for the Wisconsin State Journal, he claimed that Republicans are just attempting to tackle “tuition inflation” with their plan for student loans:

The House-passed budget takes steps to tackle tuition inflation…Consequently, student loan debt is on pace to eclipse $1 trillion. This unprecedented level of borrowing, which has surpassed the national level of credit-card debt, is causing young people to graduate with mortgage-sized debt payments, a debilitating hurdle to clear as they seek to start a family, a career, or a business.

The House-passed budget addresses this problem by limiting the growth of open-ended financial-aid subsidies. Instead, we focus aid on low-income students who need help most. Furthermore, we propose to remove regulatory barriers that restrict competition, flexibility and innovation in higher education.

So to Ryan, the way to deal with growing student debt is to cut student aid and deregulate the industry, presumably to allow for-profit colleges to run even more wild than they already are. Ryan also claims that increasing student aid has driven tuition increases, which isn’t actually true.

Meanwhile, Ryan’s entire op-ed on student loans does not mention the fact that the interest rate on student loans will double in just over a month. Senate Republicans have been equally unconcerned with the rate increase, voting last week for several budgets that would allow it to occur. Earlier this month, Ryan said that he would not approve of closing corporate tax loopholes in order to cover the cost of preventing the rate increase.

-Zachary Bernstein

But it doesn’t just affect people who are currently in the workforce. It has also contributed to a growing education gap that is affecting low- and middle-income children, according to a Center for American Progress report on income inequality and the middle class. The lowest-achieving students from high-income backgrounds are more likely to obtain a college education than the highest achieving students from low-income backgrounds, the report showed:

Perhaps most stunningly, there is evidence that low-income children who demonstrate aptitude for postsecondary education do not have the same access as children from higher-income backgrounds. The U.S. Department of Education reports that the probability that a top-scoring low-income student completes college is about the same as the probability that a low-scoring high-income student does, while the probability that a top-scoring middle-income student completes college is about as likely as a middle-scoring high-income student.

As income inequality continues to increase, the gap in educational attainment is growing too. The achievement gap between high- and low-income students is 30 to 40 percent larger than it was a generation ago, according to the paper, and income inequality is the primary reason. Areas of the country in which the middle class makes a higher share of income, meanwhile, demonstrate higher scores on achievement tests.

These problems lead to cycles of inequality that persist through generations. As Alan Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, notes, the future economic mobility of American children is more closely tied to their parents’ income than it is in any other developed country. That means that rising income inequality, and the growing education gap it leads to, is jeopardizing the future for millions of American children before they even have a chance to change it.

1. The number of students who have to go into debt to get a bachelor’s degree has risen from 45% in 1993 to 94% today.

2. There is now more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt in the United States.

3. Over the last 10 years, tuition and fees at state schools have increased 72%.

4. During the late 1970s, Ohio spent 17% of their budget on higher education and 4% of prisions. Today, Ohio spends 11% on higher ed and 8% of prisons.

5. This year, national, state and local spending on higher education reached a 25-year low.

This week, the issue escalated as the Tennessee legislature passed a bill threatening to cut state funding to any university that does not allow its religious student clubs to discriminate according to their beliefs. Though he does not agree with Vanderbilt’s policy, Gov. Bill Haslam (R) has committed to vetoing the bill — his first veto in office — because he considers it government overreach:

HASLAM: It is counter-intuitive to make campus organizations open their membership and leadership positions to anyone and everyone, even when potential members philosophically disagree with the core values and beliefs of the organization. Although I disagree with Vanderbilt’s policy, as someone who strongly believes in limited government, I think it is inappropriate for government to mandate the policies of a private institution.

Despite the veto, the debate will surely rage on. A nation-wide group known as the Christian Legal Society (which also has a Vanderbilt chapter) took a similar fight at a public college all the way to the Supreme Court a few years ago and lost. In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the Court found that “all-comers” policies were viewpoint neutral, and thus are no more unfair to Christian groups than any other student groups.

Despite the broad support they’ve received from the religious right, the Christian groups’ arguments generally lack merit. They allege that their organizations could somehow be infiltrated by antagonistic individuals attempting to take over the leadership, but not only has this never happened, but there’s also nothing keeping members from splintering off and forming a new group. They also argue that the exception that allows fraternities and sororities to discriminate based on sex is unfair, but of course this ignores the reality that Greek organizations are often intentionally single-sex because their members live together. Ultimately, these tactics represent a false victimization, an attempt by conservative groups to use campus resources to discriminate against other students. Thankfully, the state will not have the opportunity to compromise the university’s principles.

Instead, administrators merely committed to more “ongoing dialogue,” falling back on the university’s 15-year-old “Statement of Inclusion,” which recognizes gays and lesbians as members of the community but offers them no legal protections. Vice President for Student Affairs Rev. Thomas P. Doyle tried to make it sound like the campus environment had dramatically changed in the interim:

DOYLE: The University has made significant progress over the past 15 years in its support for gay, lesbian, bisexual and questioning students, but we’ve always emphasized the desire to continuously improve and to be responsive to student concerns. The conversations between students and the administration both recently and over the past several years have been very important.

This is unhelpful pandering. Conversations only lead to change if the invested parties listen to each other, and Doyle’s remarks demonstrate that administrators are clearly not listening to the community’s concerns. Notre Dame trustees last voted against adding sexual orientation protections fifteen years ago, and in those fifteen years, nothing has changed. In fact, the status quo dates back to 1977, when trustees expressed concern that non-discrimination protections could inhibit the university’s ability to “make decisions that are necessary to support Catholic Church teaching.”

Administrators claim they are committed to “improving awareness.” Perhaps they had best begin with their own.

This kind of devisiveness, this attack of success, is very different than what we’ve seen in our country’s history. We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.

Watch it:

The advice fits right into the characterization that Romney is ‘out of touch’ with regular people. Most students don’t have parents with $20,000 in disposable capital sitting around to give to their kids to start a business.

At least it’s more than Romney’s surrogates had to offer young people on their youth policy conference call this week.

The executive order will target several main areas, particularly by requiring colleges to provide the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Know Before You Owe financial aid information to all students and cracking down on aggressive recruiting practices. Schools with histories of bad practices will be kept from recruiting on military bases and, through the CFPB, existing rules will be more stringently enforced and a complaint system for military students will be created.

Obama told the story of one college recruiter who visited North Caronlina’s Camp LeJeune and signed up Marines who had brain injuries “just for the money.”

“One of the worst examples of this is a college recruiter who had the nerve to visit a barracks at Camp Lejeune and enroll marines with brain injuries, just for the money,” Obama said. “These Marines had injuries so severe, some of them couldn’t recall what courses the recruiter had signed them up for. That’s appalling. That’s disgraceful. It should never happen in America.”

He continued: “They’ll say you don’t have to pay a dime for your degree but once you register they make you sign up for a high interest student loan. They say if you transfer schools, you transfer credits. When you try to do that, you suddenly find out you can’t. They’ll say they’ve got a job placement program when, in fact, they don’t. It’s not right. They’re trying to swindle and hoodwink you. Today here at Ft. Stewart we’re going to put an end to it.”

The executive order’s primary target is for-profit schools. These schools often charge exorbitant tuition prices while leaving students buried in debt and with few job prospects. Military members are among the industry’s biggest targets: in 2010, 20 for-profit companies took more than $500 million in military education benefits, primarily because taking assistance money from the G.I. allows the colleges to exploit a loophole that lets them take more loan money from the federal government. Because of these practices and others, state attorneys generals across the country are now investigating these schools.

The group put out a “Key Vote Alert” this morning “urg[ing] all House members to vote “NO” on the Interest Rate Reduction Act (HR 4628)” and warning members that their vote may be used against them on the Club’s Congressional Scorecard, which they use to rate members when making considerations about endorsements and independent expenditures.

The Club explains that it thinks the government should not be subsidizing student loans and that the the Affordable Care Act should only be repealed as a whole:

Regardless of the merits, the government should not be in the business of subsidizing student loans. [...] It’s bad policy to subsidize student loans in the first place, but the net result will likely drive up tuition costs for all students, making the overall cost of the bill much higher than its current price tag. House Republicans want to offset this subsidy by repealing the Prevention and Public Health Fund that was created with the passage of ObamaCare. That fund should indeed be repealed, but fiscal conservatives should only try to repeal the entire law, not just parts of it. And for the most part, the offset is irrelevant. Fiscal conservatives should not be promoting bad policy, which this bill contains.

As Education Secretary Arne Duncan has noted, federal tuition assistance has not at all kept up with tuition increases, so there is little evidence to support the Club’s claim that subsidizing student loans leads to higher tuition costs. Data from Pell Grants also casts doubt on the claim.

The Club has been active in a number key Republican primary elections this year, funding hard-right challengers against mainline conservative incumbents.

But Romney’s “man in Congress,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), seems to misunderstand the issue. In an interview on MSNBC this afternoon, Blunt blamed high student loan rates on the Affordable Care Act:

BLUNT: Why is that rate as high as it is? Because it was one of the pay-fors in the president’s health care plan. If the health care plan goes away, as the court very well might decide, there is no longer an argument about this loan rate, because it was used to take money from students, and pay for health care. … The wrapping up of that student loan thing into the Obama health care deal is the real problem here.

Watch it:

In fact, the rate was set back in 2007, when President Bush signed a Democratic-backed law to lower the rate from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. That law expires on July 1 of this year, and the lower rates end along with it. The Affordable Care Act and President Obama are entirely irrelevant.

Blunt is likely thinking of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), a bill that was attached to the Affordable Care Act. And while it did not affect loan rates, it did remove banker middlemen from the student loan process, which will save taxpayers millions of dollars.

Now freed from the shackles of life on the carefully scripted campaign trail, Santorum acknowledged that he was wrong about Obama’s remarks:

MORGAN: Of all those, which is the one you most regret looking back?

SANTORUM: The snob one, because I misread his comment. I thought he said everybody should go to college. And it was…what I had read was someone’s interpretation of what—and I just used that as a fact. That it was factually incorrect. That’s the one I feel bad about.

Santorum’s wife Karen, who was also on the program alongside her husband, agreed. “I wish he hadn’t said that,” she told Morgan. Watch it:

Santorum’s “snob” comment, which he repeated several times during his campaign, grossly mischaracterized President Obama’s actual remarks. In everything from campaign speeches to addresses before Congress, President Obama said that all young Americans should receive some kind of post-secondary education, whether by going to a four year college or community college or vocational training program. Notably, during the campaign, Santorum stood by his original comment during a late February appearance on Meet the Press.

However, not all Republican candidates are quite so eager to jump on board. During an interview today with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-FL), who is running for the Senate, declined to say whether he’d vote to extend the current interest rate, despite being asked repeatedly:

TODD: Mitt Romney and President Obama are both endorsing essentially this plan that would not allow student loan interest rates to double by the summer. Where are you on this?

MACK: Well, look, again, I think what’s happening in the state of Florida, if you don’t mind, Chuck, I want to talk about what’s happening here in the state of Florida…

TODD: No, I understand that, but this is a vote that you’re going to have to make in Congress.

MACK: But what I’m telling you is in the state of Florida, during this Senate campaign, people are concerned about their homes and jobs. That is the issue. [...]

TODD: But you have to cast a vote about this issue of student loans. What vote are you going to cast?

MACK: When the vote comes up, we’ll cast that vote, but what I’m telling you is that people watching your program today, and if they’re in Florida, what they’re concerned about it jobs and the economy and how we’re going to balance a budget with a $16 trillion debt and a $1.4 trillion deficit. This is what, Chuck, this is what people down here are talking about.

TODD: You don’t think anybody’s concerned about their student loan interest rate?

MACK: We will absolutely be able to cast a vote, and when that happens we will be happy to do so.

Watch it:

Mack didn’t vote when House Republicans passed their radical fiscal 2013 budget, but Mack had derided the plan as a “joke” for not going far enough with its spending cuts. That budget would allow student loan interest rates to double in July, and House Republicans have thus far been disinclined to prevent the increase.

“President Obama gets an ‘F’ for failing our youth,” said surrogate Hank Brown, a 72-year-old former Republican senator from Colorado who also served as the president of the University of Colorado. Obama was merely “able to fool” the two-thirds of people under 30 who voted for him in 2008, Brown added, before promising, “You’re going to see a dramatic turnaround on the campuses this year, with much stronger support for the Republican ticket.”

So, if Obama was so bad, what would a Romney presidency do instead? The septuagenarian Brown, joined on the call by Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) and College Republican National Committee Chairman Alex Schriver, didn’t really have much to offer.

First, Romney’s surrogates downplayed the importance of issues that directly affect young people. Schock criticized Obama for his “focus on student loan and student debt,” saying the real issue young people care about is jobs. Brown, meanwhile, attacked Obama for not reforming entitlement programs, saying young people should worry about their solvency in the future.

And, while Romney and Obama agree that Congress should extend a provision currently before Congress to extend lower interest rates on some student loans, Schock was not optimistic about his Republican colleagues’ willingness to pass it. The congressman repeatedly called the issue a distraction, saying, “In the grand scheme of things, it’s not what we ought to be — we shouldn’t allow issues like this to bog down the bigger agenda, which is how do create jobs in this country.” He added: “In the meantime, we need to be focused on the bigger issues.”

Meanwhile, Schriver suggested the reason tuition costs are going up is because “this president decided to take over the student loan market.” Schriver is referring to a provision passed along with the Affordable Care Act, that removed Wall Street middlemen from the student loan process. Tuition costs were rising long before the law passed in 2010, and the reform actually saves taxpayers money, so Schriver’s claim rings hollow. But Romney himself has suggested that he would roll back this provision, and insert banks once again in the student loan system, where the money comes from taxpayers and the middlemen merely add costs with profit.

In all, the call mentioned not a single positive program to help young people directly, offering only attacks on Obama and generalized prescriptions for the entire economy.

Not mentioned on the call is how young people wold be negatively impacted by other policies Romney supports, starting with the House Republican budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). The proposal, which Romney has strongly endorsed (and Schock voted for), would allow student loan interest rates to double, and would cut $200 billion from the Pell Grant program, kicking off over 1 million students.

Romney also wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including its provision that allows kids up to 26 years old to remain on their parents’ health insurance plans. More than 2.5 million young adults had already received coverage, as of December, under this part of the law, and would presumably lose it if Romney has his way.

A new poll from Harvard University shows Obama widening his lead over Romney among voters 18 to 29, now enjoying a 17 point lead, a gain of six points from the last poll in November.