Sen. Charles Schumer called on the federal government Monday to protect student loans as it implements the $700 billion bailout amid a credit crisis that has students worried they won’t be able to pay for college.

If the nation can’t ensure that students who deserve to go to college can pay for it, "the price we’ll pay will be that of a generation," Schumer said outside Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan as the stock market swooned a mile away.

Schumer said he sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke urging them to pay attention to the student loan market as they begin to implement the financial-sector rescue plan.

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