During the second presidential debate Tuesday night, Mitt Romney was asked by a college student for assurance that he’ll be able to find a job when he graduates. Romney took the opportunity to not only discuss unemployment but the rising amount of debt held by America’s students:

With half of college kids graduating this year without a college — or excuse me, without a job and without a college-level job, that’s just unacceptable. And likewise, you got more and more debt on your back. So more debt and less jobs. I’m going to change that.

Student debt has indeed been rising, hitting an average of more than $25,000 per student. Romney’s plans, however, would do nothing for students struggling with the ever-growing cost of college.

For starters, he has embraced the House Republican budget, which would cut Pell Grants for one million students. Romney has also said that he would repeal the student loan reforms signed by President Obama. Those reforms, included in the Affordable Care Act, stopped the government from wasting money paying private banks to service federal student loans. The money saved was plowed back into financial aid for more students.

Paying private banks to service federal loans was one of the most indefensible uses of taxpayer dollars, yet Romney would return to that system, cutting aid for students in the process. $100 billion will be pumped into the economy via the higher earnings of students who get a better education due to expanded aid.

Romney, meanwhile, suggested that students looking to finance their education just get a loan from their parents.

FOLSOM, California — “I feel like he’s telling me that only rich people should go to college,” Alexis Duclos said outside the Folsom community center.

It was the second Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) town hall the University of the Pacific senior had attended this week. Both times Duclos got up to the mic and asked her congressman why he voted to cut Pell grants, a vital program for poorer students like herself who want to attend college. Both times, her question was ignored.

DUCLOS: I am a Pell grant recipient and I paid for university on my own and that was something I wanted to do, becoming a first-generation college graduate, first in my family to go to school. [Applause] When my parents moved to this country they decided that education was the way to move forward and without the assistance of the Pell grant program that would be even more difficult for me. I’m already $35,000 in debt, not including my senior year. I’m not necessarily looking for a handout but I really believe that you have to invest in the children of today or for the future to really improve. So I’d like to know if you believe the Pell grant program should be cut and if so, what you would do to support California education’s high school and college students.

Watch it:

Duclos works at Kinder’s BBQ during the school year, but minimum wage has barely put a dent in the $35,000 in student loan debt she’s incurred during her first three years. Without Pell grants, it would be nearly impossible for her to afford college. Duclos is proud to be the first in her family to attend university, but she’s worried what could happen for students like her if Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget — which Lungren voted for — became law and Pell grants were cut.

“I feel like he hasn’t kept promise that if I work hard and give back to the community, I could get a college education,” Duclos told ThinkProgress.

Lungren will hold one more town hall this August recess. Duclos plans to attend and hopes she’ll finally get her question answered there.

“Please don’t make me fly out to DC, Mr. Lungren,” she said after the town hall. “I can’t afford it on $8 an hour!”

In just three decades, the price of a college degree has skyrocketed 1,120 percent, according to a report from Bloomberg News. That rate of change is higher than medical care, food, and shelter:

As costs for college rise, the number of people dropping out before they receive a degree grows, even as many of those dropouts have already accrued debt. And the problem will likely get worse, since all indications are that the cost of college will continue to climb. Indeed, a degree would cost around $422,000 for children born today, if current trends hold.

The House of Representatives’ budget, meanwhile, would slash Pell Grant funding by $170 billion, making college even less affordable for more than a million students.

Our guest blogger is Kate Pennington, an education policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Mitt Romney’s choice of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to be his running mate provides a glimpse of what education policy might look like under a Romney administration. And, it isn’t pretty.

Ryan’s 2013 budget proposed $5.3 trillion less in education spending than President Obama’s budget over the next decade. These massive cuts in spending would drain instruction, training, employment, and social services by 33%, leaving a field currently aching for financial assistance with even less — a lot less — to run on. In March of this year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan remarked in testimony before a House subcommittee that, “passage of the Ryan budget would propel the educational success of this country backwards for years to come,”

Duncan estimates that the Ryan budget could cut as much as $2.7 billion from Title I grants — which provides resources for school districts with low-income students — and as much as $2.2 billion from grants for special education. Ryan’s budget could also force as many as 1,000 children to lose access to Head Start early childhood education program, which helps get disadvantaged kids ready for school.

The Ryan budget proposes deep cuts to college aid as well. The budget proposes to reduce funding for Pell Grants by roughly $50 billion over 10 years by making fewer lower-income students eligible for grants and reducing the amount of aid for students who still can receive them.

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Since 1985, the combined cost of college tuition and fees has gone up by about 559 percent, leading to outstanding student loan debt that, by some estimates, has cleared $1 trillion. As colleges have kept on increasing their costs, financial aid has failed to keep up.

Case in point, according to the Institute for College Access and Success, a non-profit organization aiming to expand higher education accessibility, Pell Grants next year will cover the smallest percentage of overall college costs since the creation of the program:

The program has not been able to keep up with ever-escalating college prices: Since 2008, annual spending on the Pell Grant program has more than doubled, to nearly $40 billion, and thanks to the Obama administration and Congress, the maximum grant has jumped from $4,731 to $5,550 (and is scheduled to rise again to $5,635 in fiscal year 2013). Despite these increases, the maximum Pell Grant is expected to cover less than one-third of the average cost of attendance at public four-year colleges next year – a level that would be, according to the Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS), “the lowest in history.”

Just 30 years ago, Pell Grants covered nearly 70 percent of the cost of college:

Over those 30 years, the U.S. has made exactly zero progress in terms of increasing its college graduation rate. Instead of doing anything to address this, House Republicans approved a budget that eliminates Pell Grants for up to one million students.

The House Republican budget makes some deeply flawed arguments about higher education. It claims both that rising financial aid is driving college tuition costs upward and that Pell Grants, which help cover tuition costs for low-income Americans, don’t go to the “truly needy.” Republicans — led by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) — use these falsehoods to justify cutting the Pell Grant program by $200 billion.

According to an analysis by the Education Trust that was provided to the Huffington Post, the House Republican budget would ultimately knock more than one million students off of Pell Grants entirely:

More than 1 million students would lose Pell grants entirely over the next 10 years under Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, according to an analysis that the national reform organization Education Trust provided to The Huffington Post.

And by the looks of it, the Ryan budget, which is slated to hit the House floor this week, would hit the poorest kids hardest. [...]

The budget would cut Pell grant eligibility for students who attend classes on a less-than-halftime schedule — which usually means low-income students who need to work their way through college.

And it gets worse. Sixty percent of students who receive Pell grants also take out loans — twice the rate for college students overall — so they might be doubly hit by the Ryan cuts: In addition to receiving less Pell money, they would have to start paying interest on their loans while still in school.

A new study shows that nearly half of American college students drop out before obtaining a degree, with cost being one of the main factors cited. Since 1985, the cost of college tuition and fees has nearly sextupled, while student loan debt in the U.S., according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has cleared $1 trillion.

At the same time that they’re proposing to cut Pell Grants, Republicans have become fond of promoting for-profit colleges, despite those schools having a record of leaving students buried in debt and with bleak job prospects. Currently, more than three-quarters of for-profit students fail to earn a degree after six years and they are more likely to default on their loans than students at non-profit institutions.

To avoid a government shutdown at the end of 2011, Republicans succeeded in their campaign to cut the federal Pell Grant program by effectively kicking up to 100,000 low-income students off the rolls.

Last week, Arkansas constituent Kelly Eubanks, a college student who has two jobs and two children, confronted her Congressman, Rep. Steve Womack (R), at a town hall meeting over his attack on the program she now relies on. But instead of any explanation, Womack lashed out at Eubanks, telling her to pay her own way by “joining the military” like he did. After refusing to answer her question, he finally just asked her to “be quiet and listen.” Blue Arkansas reports:

According to Kelly and a handful of other witnesses, Womack happily retorted that it wasn’t the federal government’s job to pay for education (he’s doing this in a college town mind you) and then quickly added that he paid for his education by joining the military, apparently suggesting that the mom of two do the same and totally oblivious I guess to the fact that it was, in fact, the federal government that paid for his education then. Well Womack tried to skirt the rest of Ms. Eubanks question and she proceeded to try and get him to address the discrepancy she pointed out. Well at this point, according to Kelly and several other people that were in the room, Womack blew a gasket.

He skirted the rest of my question and I called him out on it.. he ended up getting pissed off.. and screaming at me.. “are you going to be quiet and listen”, [Eubanks said.]

According to Kelly, some of his aides came up and tried to get the mike from her, but she held her ground and kept her cool, insisting her congressman answer her question.

Watch KHBS news coverage of the town hall:

The irony here, as Campus Progress’ Emily Wood notes, is that Womack actually attended college on taxpayer money by joining the National Guard. But instead of acknowledging that fact, he dodged the issue and had the mike taken away from Eubanks. Eubanks attended the town hall with the hopes of understanding Womack’s view. “I thought maybe meeting him and asking him why he’d vote to hurt students but protect Big Oil interests, face to face, would get me a real answer,” she told the Arkansas Times. “I really thought maybe he could explain it somehow. I did not think he was a heartless or arrogant person going in to this, but I definitely do now.”