By: Molly Mitchell
If there's one thing that Jane Lynch doesn't like, it's rising college students not having all the necessary information when it comes to student loans and debt.
Lynch dropped by the show to discuss the National College Finance Center, a site non-profit site she launched with the mission of offering a free "...unbiased resource to help educate students, prospective students and families all across the country on how to evaluate their options for financing a college education."
Lynch is a part of the New York Public Interest Research Group's Don’t Major in Debt campaign, which educates college students and their families about loans and how to pay off debt. During her talk with Mika, Willie and John Heilemann, Lynch said she had used student loans to partly fund her college education at a public school, and she had cleared her debt by the time she turned 30.
The average student loan debt balance for those under 30 is a whopping $20,385, according to new numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Mika asked Lynch, “Obviously student loans and the cost of going to college is a huge issue in this country…what made you get behind this certain issue?”
Lynch replied, “I have nieces and nephews who have either graduated from college or are in college saddled with this terrific amount of debt in their early business lives and it can cripple them financially.” “So we launched [the site], and you can get all this information on how to deal with the debt and which products are best for you, so you go into this with your eyes wide open.”
Mika agreed saying, “They go into college 18 years old and they have no concept of what it’s going to be like to try and pay this off. Add to the fact that unemployment among those who have just graduated right now is a brutal situation so…you might be saddled with a debt you can’t pay.” John Heilemann added, “Nothing has inflated faster than the cost of higher education. So you have higher debt and less employment opportunities.”
Mika summed up the panel’s views of the high interest rates, “I feel like they’re being robbed and quite frankly this country’s future is being robbed, because this is going to end up hurting us ultimately.”
And just as important, Lynch talked a bit about the future of "Glee" and Christopher Guest. It gets no better.