Most students are currently too focused on their March Madness brackets to think about life after college. Nevertheless, while we’ve been fretting over whom to send to the Final Four, the government has made some progress for recent graduates.

Last week, President Barack Obama announced his plan for a “Student Aid Bill of Rights,” a series of proposals aimed at addressing problems that arise in the process of receiving and repaying student loans.

Specifically, the proposal advocates for the creation of a centralized complaint system to better track responsible lenders, improve communication between loan holders and servicers and introduce changes to bankruptcy rules for student loan debt.

These proposals certainly do not eliminate many of the major issues that accompany taking out student loans, and, most glaringly, they do not address the skyrocketing cost of tuition at American universities. However, it would be unwise for students to dismiss these proposals when their implementation could lead to significant progress.

Given time, the new plan’s changes to the loan process could rid the system of lenders that only seek to prey on students seeking higher education.
If implemented in a way that allows students to have more transparent interaction with the institutions that loan them money, these proposals could significantly alter the way in which students go about choosing certain loan servicers and serve to take more predatory lenders out of the market. Obama similarly emphasized his belief that all Americans should have a chance to get a degree — something with which most Americans would certainly agree, but disagree on how to achieve.

In this country, college attendance is rightfully held up as a way to advance, with a clear positive correlation between a degree and a stable economic situation later on in life. However, student loan debt often hinders students’ ability to feel financially sound and explore opportunities available to them while at school.

Critics of certain student loan reforms argue that growing programs that serve as government subsidies for students to attend college only pass the cost of college onto taxpayers.

A recent Forbes column criticized Obama’s proposals, saying that the policies “suggest that somebody unnamed should subsidize college so that it is affordable for all.”

But regardless of thestructure of these programs, it seems these proposals aim not to expand government reach into the student loan process, but to weed out some of the worst practices, a proposal that most Americans and all college students should support.