Spellings: Students Face ‘Perfect Storm’

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings told financial aid professionals from around the country that college students “face a perfect storm” of growing admissions anxieties, rising tuition costs and a historic credit crisis.

Speaking to the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid Conference in Las Vegas, Spellings outlined steps the department has taken to ensure the continued availability of federal student aid in the current stormy economic times.

“So far our actions are working,” Spellings said. “But in the long term, to help students survive this perfect storm, we need to build a better ark.”

Spellings said she soon will send the U.S. Congress recommendations for streamlining student aid, and she outlined the following key principles behind those recommendations:

• Recognize that the system exists to serve students and families.
• Target the neediest students first.
• Get the same amount of aid to a student regardless of which school the student chooses.
• Put the consumer first.

Read the full text of Spellings’ remarks.