Keeping up the fight on student loans: Students across the country are making calls to their representatives to demand that this Congress stop raiding student aid to pay for other priorities. Word has it that Senator Gordon Smith's answering machine is full in Oregon...

The latest update is that the House and Senate members who will decide the final "compromise" package of cuts to student aid will meet on Monday or Tuesday---the compromise being between a very large set of cuts and a smaller set of cuts. But it is cuts either way, unless the whole thing is stopped.

Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun editorializes against the cuts today:

Who isn't aware by now that the cost of attending American four-year colleges has been soaring far beyond the rate of growth in U.S. family incomes, and that more and more students are having to take out loans to get by?

About half of all student aid now comes as loans, and students are leaving college with an average of more than $17,000 in debt to repay. In addition, about three-quarters of college students report relying on credit cards to pay for food, books and other school expenses. As a result, 39 percent of all college graduates leave school saddled with a level of loans and other debts considered unmanageable.

And now Congress is poised to help make that average debt total leap higher. Among the House's proposed spending cuts is $14.3 billion from federal student loan programs over the next five years. These cuts won't decrease the number of loans but would raise student borrowing costs by almost $9 billion - or an estimated $5,000 per student, according to the U.S. Student Association. The best hope for college students offered by Congress is not that much better: the Senate's competing proposal of $8.5 billion in student loan cuts through 2010.

So keep up the good fight! We're stalling them, and that can only help.