Ferris stu­dents have felt the effects of rais­ing tuition and a slow econ­omy, but Obama’s new stu­dent loan plan promises to help ease the pain.

Amidst the tur­moil, President Obama has come forth to announce his hopes for alle­vi­at­ing stu­dent loan debt. This plan will allow stu­dents to “pay as they earn” by con­sol­i­dat­ing their fed­eral loan pay­ments into a sin­gle pay­ment not to exceed 10 per­cent of their dis­cre­tionary income. The plan will also for­give debt after 20 years of payment.

“It will make it eas­ier for stu­dents,” Professor Christine Bailey said. “It will give them breath­ing room.”

While the plan may soothe pay­ments, Bailey points to tuition, books and hous­ing as the biggest finan­cial bur­dens in col­lege and that this plan alone will not help those who can­not afford col­lege get in.

College afford­abil­ity has become a prob­lem in recent years. Some stu­dents feel the plan doesn’t seem to do much to help those who can’t get into col­lege. Admissions declined to com­ment on how the plan would affect stu­dent admis­sion at Ferris.

Ferris stu­dents have shown cau­tious reac­tions to the plan, unsure of how much of an effect it will have. “They’re not going to have to worry about pay­ments as much,” said Valoree Burns, an unde­cided sopho­more. “From what lit­tle I know I don’t really see a down­side.” She added, “I’m just not sure I can trust that they’re really try­ing to help us.”

“It’s a tough call [on how much the plan will help stu­dents in debt]. You have the kids going into phar­macy that are rack­ing up a lot of debt and it will prob­a­bly help them,” Brett Bieth, a sopho­more in health care sys­tems admin­is­tra­tion, said.

He was skep­ti­cal of how much the plan would help him with his expected $40,000 debt.

The prob­lem seems to be the obscenely high cost of edu­ca­tion, the direct cause of the out-of-control stu­dent loan debt. “It’s a band-aid fix,” Andrew Finnerty, pres­i­dent of the Ferris Economics Club, said.