Student loans imperiled by supercommittee’s failure

Chronicle of Higher Education : The so-called supercommittee of 12 congressional Democrats and 12 congressional Republicans admitted yesterday that it had failed to carry out its charge: to reach agreement on a series of deficit-reducing measures. The failure triggers automatic spending cuts, which include a $3.54 billion reduction in the budget of the Department of Education. If the automatic spending cuts go through as scheduled in 2013, student-aid programs will lose $134 million, which will affect some 1.3 million students. The Chronicle‘s Kelly Field reports that the cuts to Education are especially severe because they come on top of cuts imposed in 2011 on career and technical education and college preparatory programs.