Christine Romans takes an in depth look at the issues of 2012: Paying for College

Christine Romans delves into the issue of college tuition and student debt this morning, an issue at the forefront of the election for young Americans. She speaks with Jackie Giovaniello, who graduated from Brown University this year and decided not to head straight to medical school. Jackie instead took a research job at Sloan-Kettering Hospital to help pay off her student loans, which adds up to $100,000. "It's nice to have a paying job, full-time, where I can pay back part of my student loans before going to med school and possibly adding on a lot more," Jackie says.

Jackie is burdened with this enormous debt because she didn’t qualify for many grants. Her middle class family is considered too wealthy under the current standards, yet not wealthy enough to afford the tuition of over $50,000 per year for Brown. "When you're in the middle class, you are a normal suburban family. But you just don't make an outrageous amount of money so you can't pay for these outrageous prices for tuition, you know," says Giovaniello. She’s one of many young people with the same predicament; the reason student loan debt hit $1 trillion last year and became a key issue in the election.

Romans explains President Obama’s present actions and second term proposals to alleviate the burden as well as Mitt Romney’s plans to help students. While the candidates have widely differing solutions, the students see one problem. They feel left out in the cold.

"A lot of people who don't have students in college or don't have kids my age just think that, oh, you're either wealthy enough to go to college or you get financial aid from the government. It's that simple,” Giovaniello says. “But it's not that simple.”