Dive Summary:

• Congress approved legislation to link the interest rates on government-sponsored student loans to a market-based rate; President Barack Obama has said he will sign it.
• The new rates will be retroactive to July 1 — that's when the interest rate for subsidized Stafford loans doubled to 6.8%.
• The bill sets the rate for undergraduate Stafford loans for 2013-2014 at 3.86%, though that is likely to rise in successive years.

From the article:

... “Like the 30-year mortgage, once you take out the loan, you know what your rate is going to be so you can plan on it,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters yesterday. He called measure “a compromise "to the extent it reflects market rates’’ sought by Republicans and Obama. ...