The Voice recently reported that the interest rates on federally backed Stafford loans will double July 1 -- from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent -- unless Congress gets its shit together.

Well, it looks like some legislators in the House are trying to prevent this increase -- by cutting funding to health programs, that is.

Seriously.

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Hey, college students!

If you weren't already bummed that 53 percent of you will likely face joblessness or underemployment upon graduation, or that university is a big waste of time and money, we have even more bad news for you.

Unless Congress gets its shit together -- which it probably won't because it's Congress -- interest rates for federally backed Stafford loans will totally swell from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent July 1, according to the Associated Press.

For some 7 million U.S. undergrads, that means that tuition would go up $1,000.

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Over 7 million students receive some sort of subsidized student loan from the U.S. federal government. That is a ton of debt and it's getting larger every year: eclipsing credit cards and car loans, the figure right now stands at around $870 billion nationally. And, on July 1st, it could double in size.More >>

HuffPo recently posted "College Degree Is Cheaper Than The Cost Of Dropping Out," an item imploring young folk to stay in school.

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Maybe the aggregation turbine is broken?

Looks like HuffPo, the "internet newspaper," might soon become a term paper mill.

Huffington Post College tweeted late last night: "Want to publish your senior thesis on the Huffington Post? Email rharrington [at] huffingtonpost [dot] com for more details."

(H/T @mylestanzer, a former Voice intern who sometimes contributes to RS).

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Sam Levin

City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez alongside students from Urban Youth Collaborative.

Public school students from across the city rallied this afternoon inside a room in a New York University building -- calling on the mayor and the Department of Education to do a better job of preparing minority and low-income students for college.

When Runnin' Scared first showed up to the rally, we wondered how all these students -- around 50 or so from elementary to high school ages -- were able to take a break from class and be activists for the day.

But then we realized it wasn't a break from school -- it was actually a break from winter break! For a cause that electeds and students in attendance said is crucial to the future of the city and the public school system.

Spearheaded by the Urban Youth Collaborative, the event marked the official launch of a student-led campaign called "Get Us To College," centered on the troubling statistic that just 13 percent of black and Latino New York City students are prepared for college. One in four throughout the system finish high school college-ready.

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Occupy Princeton -- which, yes, it exists -- mic-checked a J.P. Morgan recruiting event on Wednesday and a Goldman Sachs event, above, on Thursday. This is similar to what happened at Harvard recently, though we haven't found a bizarrely pro-Goldman editorial in The Daily Princetonian yet.

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nyu4ows.tumblr.com

Occupy Wall Street is now official enough to enter the halls of higher education. Next semester, NYU's department of Social and Cultural Analysis will offer a course called "Cultures and Economies: Why Occupy Wall Street?"

The course description:

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The CUNY board of trustees will be voting on possible tuition hikes today, and students are planning a big action in protest this afternoon. In response, CUNY is planning something of a pre-emptive strike to prevent the kind of disorder that happened last time; the school has already set up barricades and has cancelled all classes after 3 p.m. to reduce the number of students on campus.

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Yesterday, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi attended a press conference to discuss the pepper spraying of a group of passive students. After a long delay, Katehi eventually left the building where the press conference was being held and was confronted by an unknown number of silent students sitting cross-legged--just like their peers who were pepper sprayed the day before. Watch the eerie protest above.

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