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.

To hear Republicans tell it, the constantly rising cost of higher education is attributable to increases in federal financial aid. House Republicans even made this argument to justify cutting Pell Grants in their fiscal year 2013 budget.

However, a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that, at least in the last several years, tuition increases have been driven not by rising financial aid but by decreasing state budgets:

After 2007, the group of states with the most funding cuts (Group 1) also has the highest growth in tuition in each year, with an average annual growth rate of 3.4 percent in tuition. Our analysis suggests that over this period, a 10 percent decline in public funding for Group 1 is associated with an average annual increase of 3.1 percent in tuition at public institutions. This compares with an increase of 1.2 percent in public institution tuition for a 10 percent decline in public funding in our full sample over the same period (2007-11). That is, we observe an economically meaningful relationship between public funding and public institution tuition changes but mainly since the recession began and especially for the group of states with larger higher education funding cuts. [...]

In the public discourse, federal funding is often blamed for driving up tuition. However, our analysis suggests that public schools are increasing tuition as a way to make up for decreasing state and local appropriations for higher education, and that deeper cuts in public funding may be associated with correspondingly greater tuition hikes.

The Republican budget would reduce Pell Grants for one million students, even though 70 percent of Pell Grants recipients last year came from households with incomes under $30,000.

According to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), federal student loans are the start of a “slippery slope” that could eventually lead to a Holocaust. While speaking at Maryland’s Allegany College on Wednesday, Bartlett invoked this horrid comparison while arguing that government loans are unconstitutional:

Not that it’s not a good idea to give students loans, it certainly is a good idea to give them loans. But if you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad. You could. There are more people in our, in America today of German ancestry than any other [inaudible]. The Holocaust that occurred in Germany — how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope.

Watch the video:

As ThinkProgress Ian Millhiser has noted, federal spending on education is plainly constitutional. And at the moment, constantly rising costs are a major reason why nearly half of American college students drop out of school before completing their degree, making federal aid more important than ever.

Two-thirds of American students currently go into debt in order to get a college education, with 10 percent of those borrowers owing $50,000 or more. But Bartlett and House Republicans still voted this year to eliminate Pell Grants for more than one million students, and the GOP has promised to undo the student loan reform signed into law by President Obama, which would take federal education funding away from students, giving it to bank middlemen instead.

During a town hall at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire today, Mitt Romney took a question from a St. Anselm junior who just took out her first loan. The student asked Romney to explain his plan for her generation, which is facing a student debt crisis of historic proportions.

Rather than propose a substantive plan to help college students afford their education, Romney offered a generalized critique of the economy without once mentioning the student debt crisis. Romney essentially told the young woman to get a job, cracking a joke about how the new American dream is “getting your kids out of the home you own.”

ROMNEY: The first thing I will do is to make sure we do not keep adding more and more debt you do not even know about. That’s number one. Number two, the next thing I will do for you is to make sure when you graduate, you can get a job. Half of the kids coming out of college this year, half can’t find a job or a job that is consistent with a college degree. It’s unacceptable. We have to make sure young people coming into the work force can get a job…Now I know it is very tempting as a politician to go out and say, you know what, I’ll just give you some money. The government’s just going to give you some money and pay back your loans for you. I’m not going to tell you something that’s not the truth. Because that is just taking money from your other pocket and giving it to the other pocket. I’m not going to go out and promise all sorts of free stuff that I know you’re going to end up paying for. What I want to do is give you a great job so you will be able to pay back yourself. And I want to get the government off your back so you can keep more of what you earned.

Watch it:

Two-thirds of American students go into debt in order to get a college degree, and some estimates have put the national student loan debt at $1 trillion. In the past, Romney has revealed his indifference toward rising tuition costs by blithely telling students to “get as much education as they can afford,” “borrow money if you have to from your parents,” or join the military. Meanwhile, Romney has chosen a running mate who wants to gut Pell grants for more than 1 million students in the next decade. Obama, on the other hand, recently signed a bill to keep student loan interest rates from doubling.