Anthony — to your two missing points, add two more: Daniel de Vise, the reporter, leaves out some critical details:

This summer brings a measure of relief. Starting July 1, student borrowers can cap their monthly payments at a modest sum determined by income and family size. A second initiative, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, will erase student debt entirely after 10 years for graduates who work for government or various nonprofit organizations. […]
Authors of the legislation cannot predict how many of the nation’s 30 million student borrowers might qualify. Income-based repayment is available to borrowers with any federally guaranteed loan. Loan forgiveness is open only to those with direct federal loans. Neither program applies to private loans, a smaller but critical share of student aid.
Help might be coming for new borrowers, as well. On Tuesday, a House committee takes up the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which proposes to expand federal lending and simplify the application process.

1. De Vise writes that the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act would “expand federal lending” — but how? As I explained in this article, the act would accomplish this by supplanting federally guaranteed lending with direct federal lending. De Vise writes that “Loan forgiveness is open only to those with direct federal loans.” As it stands, direct federal loans account for only 15 percent of all student loans (including private, non-guaranteed loans). But if the new Student Aid Act passes, direct federal lending would expand to account for 78 percent of all student loans. Within a matter of years, a large majority of American college students would have a powerful incentive to go into government or non-profit work. I suppose that’s for the best, considering the direction Obama is taking us: Those will be the only jobs left.

2. De Vise writes that private loans constitute a “smaller but critical share of student aid” — how much smaller? According to the College Board’s Trends in Student Aid, private loans made up less than 11 percent of all student aid in 2007-08. De Vise writes that “Students tend to load up on private debt after borrowing all they can in federal loans,” but the numbers show that students who “load up” on this kind of debt are relatively rare. De Vise tells the story of Mikaela Rossman Clark, who took out $90,000 in private loans on top of $30,000 in federal loans to pay for law school, then eschewed a lucrative career at a big firm because she made “some quality-of-life decisions.” Are we really supposed to feel bad for her?

Some advise for de Vise: If you’re going to load your article up with anecdotal evidence, you should be especially mindful of the need to supplement it with a balanced presentation of the data.