Taking out loans and acquiring student debt is a burden that many college students experience in their lives — not even the president of the United States can avoid it.

President Barack Obama and wife Michelle Obama did not pay back all of their student loans until 2004 — the same year he won the U.S. Senatorial race. Paying for a college education was a burden for the president and first lady, as it is for many college graduates across the nation.

But a new bill introduced to the Illinois Senate on Feb. 14 has the potential to change that.

Senate Bill 3451 will fund Illinois students so that they can attend a public college or university with the promise that they will repay the state from a portion of future earnings once they are employed.

Under the new bill proposed by State Sen. Michael Frerichs, the plan would allow Illinois college students to borrow interest-free from the state to pay to attend college within the state. After receiving a job, students would be held responsible for paying back their education costs to the state by a percentage of their income until fully paid.

The bill is proposing to have a pilot test-run on a program currently called Pay it Forward, Pay it Back. If it goes well, then it could have a huge impact on the future crop of college students.

This pilot program has its obvious benefits.

Pay it Forward, Pay it Back could potentially allow for more students to enroll in the selected university. One of the main obstacles for people wanting to attend college in the first place is the cost of education. This program would allow individuals the opportunity to obtain a college degree and then work afterward to pay back the loans, interest-free.

The sponsors of the Illinois bill wrote into the legislation that it would be very similar to Pennsylvania’s Pay It Forward, Pay It Back program. 

Pennsylvania’s program, which is currently still a senate bill, would provide interest-free loans to Pennsylvania students whose families meet certain income criteria. Students would pay back what they owed after graduation, and the regular payments would be determined by their post-graduation income.

The Illinois plan sounds very similar to Pennsylvania’s plan and it is exciting to see states trying to combat student loan debt of the future.

The idea of Pay it Forward, Pay it Back sounds promising.

As a college student, I am rooting for the test-run to go smoothly and to have positive results so that the program can be implemented as quickly as possible. However, there are still challenges that the program will need to overcome.

There are many questions that need to be addressed before I would call the plan bulletproof.

Frerichs has already cited a few questions revolving around the funding of this program and the implementation of the pilot test that still need answering.

An important question that needs to be considered is how to measure if it is successful — and it would take several years before that question would be answered.

Also, our state leaders need to make sure the program is adequately funded. It’s important to know where the money is coming from for this program, because last time I checked, Illinois is still in a considerable amount of debt. 

Other aspects of the Pay it Forward, Pay it Back program that would need to be answered are how to address students who are unemployed after graduation or even those who don’t graduate at all. Also, it is important to determine how long the pay back period would last before there would be a significant penalty.

These are just some of the questions that those who want to implement the plan need to figure out. The bill is in its early stages, and there is still time for outlining in detail how the plan will operate.

I want future generations of college students to have the opportunities that I, and many other students at the University, have had. I want this plan to work because it gives children of this state an opportunity to get a college degree without the burden of looking for the means to pay for it along the way.

The program, if done correctly and efficiently, is a step in the right direction for wider access to higher education.

Thaddeus is a senior in LAS. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @Thaddingham.