The interest I have in this research question is derived from personal experience.  Upon graduation I will be the first person in my family to earn a bachelor's degree and receive a college education.  I support myself entirely and my college tuition and fees are only a portion of my expenses.  My first two years I went to Midlands Technical College and paid for my tuition out of pocket.  I was debt free before attending the University of South Carolina.  Applying late in the summer I received my acceptance letter to the University of South Carolina with short notice and was unable to prepare financially for the tuition and fees that would be due within the next few weeks for the fall semester.  As a result I applied for federal student aid as well as a subsidized and unsubsidized federal student loans.  The latter of which I wasn't even aware of at the time.  Receiving the run around with financial aid getting held up with whatever protocol is required to process financial aid I was forced to apply for a payment plan making the first payment of 1500 out of pocket and hoping that my financial aid would come through by the time my next payment was due.  Of course it didn't and being unfamiliar with USC's policy I was concerned that I would be dropped from my classes.  Thankfully there is only a $100 late fee for each late payment.  Which I was subject to for the following three payments as well. Due to the late arrival of my Federal financial aid I was more concerned with having it processed and having it cover my tuition than actually reading the small print on these loans.  When I was applying for financial aid I thought that the money I had applied for was all from my FAFSA or that's how the employees at the financial aid office had explained it to me.  I was unaware I had applied for student loans at all whatsoever. Originally I wanted to decline them but due to my financial status I had to accept the $6,500 to cover part of my tuition for this semester and next.  To date I am completely unfamiliar with the terms and conditions of my student loans and as a result it has intrigued me to research and eradicate the ignorance of our generation when it comes to applying for and accepting student loans.

The first articles central claim is that the majority of the 1.2 trillion dollars of student is a result of the government allowing an almost unlimited amount of borrowing.  Also the article claims that most of the horror stories you hear about student debt is most likely from grad students.  I believe the major values and interests at stake with this article is that grad school is a major player in the game of student debt and student loans and also that due to the great recession mid-career professionals went to grad school as a lifeline and their loans are now due. "Bob Sullivan is author of the New York Times best-sellers Gotcha Capitalism and Stop Getting Ripped Off. His stories have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and hundreds of other publications. He has appeared as a consumer advocate and technology expert numerous times on NBC's TODAY show, NBC Nightly News, CNBC, NPR's Marketplace, Terry Gross' Fresh Air, and various other radio and TV outlets. He helped start MSNBC.com and wrote there for nearly 20 years, most of it penning the consumer advocacy column The Red Tape Chronicles."  Due to the various amount of publications by credible sources I would say that the article is credible and although he has an agenda he's pushing there was no obvious bias present within the article that I could see greatly.

The second article I read focused more on the population of those who attend 2 year schools or for profit schools and don't graduate they end up being worse off for interacting with the higher education system. These non-traditional low income borrowers make up 40 percent of those who took out federal loans.  Most of these borrowers drop out and don't have as much debt, most have 10k or below but "those leaving school in 2011 and finding a job in 2013, half earned less than $20,900 (for profit graduates) or 23,900 (community college graduates), and 21 and 17 percent were unemployed, respectively." (insert intext citation) "Kevin James is a research fellow with the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute, where he researches and writes about higher education financing, quality assurance in colleges and universities, and traditionally underrepresented populations' access to higher education." (in text citation) As a result I find him to be an educated writer representing a population other than himself leading to a miniscule amount of bias. 

The central claim and evidence in the third article brings to light that no presidential candidate has a viable plan to change the structure of student loans or debt besides some talk about interest rates.  There is a lack in desire to restructure the system and not because the will to reduce student loan rates is probably nonexistent but also when you consider our ideologically divided government.  Lawmakers would also have to find a way to replace the revenue of a government program that generates $50 billion in annual profits to one that merely breaks even. The article claims that the only way to deal with the loan portfolio is to restructure it entirely by extending the duration of all loans while modifying the rates of interest so that the installments become affordable. This article is content on USA today but it was written by a partner credit.com, as a reliable news website I trust USA today but am unfamiliar with credit.com the article seemed factual informative and although opinionated it offered a solution to a great problem.  

The research question is arguable because there are some people who don't believe there is a problem with student loan debt, the government and banks that are profiting from the interest rates have no desire to lower the interest rates or reform and restructure the student loan system.  They are benefitting greatly and so by making it more affordable will only lose them profit.  Some agreements are that there is a problem with the student loan system but some of the disagreements focus on underrepresented parties such as minorities that went to two year schools and didn't graduate or those who went to grad school and claim that grad students are the main reason there is so much student debt.  Although there are multiple perspectives and opinions, my main focus and concern is why there is such a problem with graduates repaying their student loans and what can be done to restructure and reform the system to make it more manageable for American citizens.  I could revise my research question by being more specific instead of asking why is there such a great population affected, to what is causing student loan debt to be so unaffordable for such a high percentage of the population.

