Clinton readies student loan reform rollout “This will be the big ticket item,” a source with knowledge of her rollout says.

After the dust settles from the Republican debate and before she breaks from the campaign trail for her Hamptons vacation, Hillary Clinton on Monday will roll out what is expected to be the most detailed and costly plank of her campaign: her policy proposals for student loan reform.

“This will be the big ticket item,” a source with knowledge of her rollout said, noting that in terms of her federal budgetary priorities, her plan for student loans will involve the largest investment. The source said the hope was to create a “mandate to act on college affordability” and generate enthusiasm for the campaign around a galvanizing issue for young voters. The announcement is expected to be made at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.


As part of her plan, Clinton is expected to unveil a federal-state partnership to increase funding for public colleges and universities, several sources said. The proposal is expected to create an incentive system for states to increase their investments in higher education — a commitment to increasing public college funding would trigger further investment from the federal government, reducing tuition overall and, more specifically, the portion financed by the student.

One comparison that has been made is to President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, an almost $5 billion Education Department grant unveiled in 2009 for public schools, which creates incentives for how to deliver quality education.

Clinton is also expected to announce a proposal aimed at easing the financial burden for students who attend historically black colleges, a campaign source said. Her advisers have also discussed creating a bill of rights for student loan carriers and risk-sharing for colleges, which means schools could be penalized when students default or can’t repay their loans.

With a student debt crisis climbing upward of $1.2 trillion, college affordability has become a litmus test of the left. Clinton’s campaign has sought advice from policy experts with strong ties to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has crusaded on the issue of refinancing student loans so that students get the same interest rates on federal loans as banks do on theirs.

Both of Clinton’s Democratic challengers have proposed some form of “free” college. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed making college tuition-free and providing $70 billion a year – two-thirds from the federal government, with states picking up the rest – to cover public college and university tuition and fees. But that proposal doesn’t go far enough for some progressives, because it doesn’t cover the full cost of attendance. Under Sanders’ scenario, students would still be on the hook for necessary expenses – textbooks, room and board and other costs of attendance that aren’t built into tuition and fees.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has made “debt-free education” a centerpiece of his run, promising to reduce or freeze public tuition rates, allow student loan refinancing and expand income-based repayment programs as part of a larger plan. States would play a role, too: to help colleges maintain quality, they’d have to sustain funding efforts, with help from federal matching grants.

Clinton’s proposal is expected to provide more granular detail.

State disinvestment in higher education, which accelerated during the economic recession but hasn’t let up with the recovery, is largely responsible for skyrocketing tuition costs and increasing student debt loads, experts say. Federal-state partnerships have emerged as a popular idea among Democrats looking to reverse that trend. President Obama’s free community college proposal would have states cover one-quarter of his estimated $60 billion cost over 10 years. (The America’s College Promise Act, to codify the proposal, has a higher price tag: about $90 billion over a decade.)

Republicans are likely to scoff at such federal mandates. But polls over the past few years show broad support for lowering student loan rates, and that millennials between the ages of 18 and 29 overwhelmingly view the issue of student debt for young people as a major problem.

“College affordability, student debt, and bold solutions to address it are an extremely popular framing set of ideas within the Democratic party,” said Mark Huelsman, senior policy analyst at the left-leaning think tank Demos (Sen. Warren’s daughter serves as chairman of Demos’ board). “It’s something that naturally excites the base, and it excites young people who are dealing with student debt. It excites voters of color, because we know student debt is disproportionately held by black communities.”

Clinton’s policy team for months has been conducting weekly calls and meetings with policy experts on the issue and devoted more time to the roll-out of student loan reform than to any other policy agenda.

POLITICO reported in June that the Clinton campaign has sought advice from Rohit Chopra, formerly the top student loan official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who recently joined the Center for American Progress. Other experts consulted include economist Gene Sperling; James Kvaal, who was Obama’s policy director in the 2012 election; longtime Clinton adviser Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress; and experts from Demos.

The Clinton campaign is hoping to use the issue to get students and millennial voters excited about the campaign.

The timing of the roll-out — originally scheduled for mid-July — coincides with students’ return to their campuses. When the campaign dispatches volunteers with clipboards to college campuses come September, they will be there to talk specifically about Clinton’s college proposal, a campaign aide said.