Do you own investment real estate or a business? Have you been considering buying a rental property or starting a business? Have kids going to college in a few years?

If you already plan on your kids going to college, it’s never too late to start planning effective and efficient ways to increase savings, lower your taxes and improve your odds for receiving student financial aid.

Let’s say you already give your children an allowance. You’re already paying out of pocket and not getting any tax benefit. With a few changes you can turn that cash outflow into a tax deductible expense that can even help your kids save for college.

Consider hiring them to work in your business or on the rental property you own.

By paying them a reasonable wage for services like landscaping, cleaning, painting, shoveling snow or doing office administrative work like filing, stuffing envelopes or printing marketing flyers, you have an additional deductible expense which lowers the net income or increases the net loss of your business or property.

And for children earning income in the family business, there is no requirement for payroll taxes. And if you keep the amount of “earned” income below certain limits, you won’t be at risk of paying any “kiddie” tax either. (“Kiddie” tax limits adjust for inflation each year).

In effect, you have shifted income from a taxpayer with a higher tax rate to a low- or no-income tax paying child.

Now get your child to open a Roth IRA with the money you pay them and they have the added benefit of tax-free saving for college since Roth IRAs can be tapped for college tuition without paying a penalty as long as the Roth is open for at least five years (restrictions apply).

By reducing your income, you can also reduce your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) which is the critical number used to determine the amount and kind of student financial aid your child can get for college. The EFC is calculated using a number of things including the amount and type of parental assets as well as reported income. EFC is recalculated each time a financial aid form is submitted and is based on the assets and income from the year before.

So to improve your odds for financial aid, one strategy is to lower your reported income. By employing your child to lower your business or rental property income, you may be able to lower your EFC and improve the amount of aid your child receives.

About Steve Stanganelli, CFP ®

Steven Stanganelli, CRPC®, CFP® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER ™ Professional and a CHARTERED RETIREMENT PLANNING COUNSELOR (sm) with Quest Financial, an independent fee-only financial planning and investment advisory firm with corporate offices in Lynnfield, Massachusetts and satellite locations in Woburn and Amesbury.

Steve is a five-star rated, board-certified financial planning professional offering specialized financial consulting advice on investments, college planning, divorce settlements and retirement income planning using alternatives like self-directed IRAs.

For more information on financial planning strategies, call Steve at 888-323-3456.

Saving for college in tough times

If you are parents looking to save for your children college savings, be sure to make note of the changes in the “Kiddie Tax.” This article will shed light on the impact of the new rules for families this year.

POSTED BY COLLEGIANINTERNATIONAL,   FROM WALL STREET JOURNAL ‘S COOLEGE JOURNAL TODAY, 12/17/07

By MARLA BRILL
From MarketWatch

A few weeks ago my daughter asked about studying abroad as a college junior year next year. I groaned in anticipation of costly airfare, unfavorable foreign exchange rates, junkets to nearby countries, and other extra expenses.

My fears were not unfounded. The erosion of the dollar against many major foreign currencies, which has raised the price of everything from an apartment to a cup of coffee to exorbitant levels in high-demand study destinations such as London and Barcelona, has put Europe out of reach for many students on a budget.

But don’t tell your globetrotting undergrad to unpack just yet. Consider these cost-cutting lessons as a passport to a rich learning experience.Do your homework

Parents of students considering studying abroad should first look at what their school programs have to offer. Have your child talk to someone who has recently returned from a program to get a sense of how much things will cost and how school policy translates into practice.

One of the first things I learned about the foreign studies program at my daughter’s school is that she can go through the university’s own study abroad programs or through programs offered by a list of approved U.S. and foreign schools. If she chooses the latter option, she pays tuition and other expenses directly to the other school at its rate, which is significantly lower than what we currently pay.

Going outside of her home school is more complicated because she will have to take a temporary leave of absence and make sure she can transfer her study abroad credits from the other school before she goes overseas, but the cost savings seem worth it. Getting approval on credit transfers in advance is critical, and happens to be a fairly simple procedure at her school. Otherwise, we could end up paying for extra courses when she returns.

Colleges have widely different policies regarding tuition and credit transfers. Many schools, particularly independent private colleges in the East, stipulate that you pay home school tuition regardless of what the foreign school charges, says Geoff Bannister, president of Cultural Experiences Abroad, a Tempe, Ariz.-based firm that runs study abroad programs for colleges.

The practice, designed to encourage students to choose programs their colleges run, means that students pay their home college’s tuition and fees even if the program cost for international students at the schools they’re attending is significantly less. Moreover, students may have difficulty transferring credits once they get back.

Class notes

Nail down what is or isn’t included in the published price. One program may appear cheaper than another but may not include housing or food, which can be very expensive at some destinations. With that point in mind I dig around the web site for Tel Aviv University, the school my daughter is interested in attending next year. The published rate for tuition and room is quoted at $14,500 for the school year, but that figure does not include board, which the school estimates costs an extra $1,000 a month.

Ask about any excursions and whether they are included. Travel expenses add up quickly and are often under-budgeted. “Hang out with foreign students instead of traveling all the time,” advises Sheila Bayne, associate dean for programs abroad at Tufts University, where about 40% of juniors study abroad. “Students in foreign countries know how to get by on a shoe string. The best way to be thrifty is to spend time with people in your host country.”

Make sure your financial aid carries. Government loans and grants are generally portable outside the U.S., but that is not always the case with college financial aid. A recent study by the Forum on Education Abroad indicates that 74% of colleges allow students to use need-based institutional aid for their own study abroad programs, but that number drops to 61% when students select programs run by other schools.

Use scholarship money. Scholarships can also help defray costs. To my pleasant surprise, I learn that students studying in Israel are eligible to receive a $2,000 grant from masaisrael.org, a non-profit organization in Jerusalem. Good sources of information on study abroad scholarships include StudyAbroadFunding.org and the study abroad offices of colleges and universities. Check your school’s policy on outside scholarships, since students may not be able to get both a scholarship and financial aid concurrently.

Shorten the stay. If studying for a year or a semester seems out of reach financially, or just impractical, consider going for a shorter time period. Over half of U.S. students elect short-term summer study and other programs of less than eight weeks, says the Institute of International Education, while just 5.5% spend a full academic or calendar year abroad.

Choose a bargain destination. The dollar’s decline has likely had a hand in changing travel patterns. The proportion of travel abroad students studying in Europe fell to 58% last year from 65% a decade ago, according to the IIE.

At the same time the number of students heading to foreign destinations was up 8.5% last year and has risen 150% over the past decade. Some are migrating to less traditional (and less expensive) parts of the world.

“We’ve seen a swing in interest from Europe to less traditional places such as Buenos Aires, Eastern Europe, and Costa Rica,” Bannister says.

 POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, CHERRY HILL, NJ 856.673.4087   info@collegianinternational.com, www.collegianinternational.com

“YOUR PARTNER IN FULFILLING EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS WITH LESS STRESS AND LOWER COSTS”

NACAC remains informed of recent measures instituted by the NCAA as they relate to the education, evaluation,

student athletes as interpreted by respective athletic associations and other similar regulatory organizations.

PUBLISHED IN THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER -Monday, December 3, 2007

BY: Tom Bottorf

        Columnist

Q.We just learned that our Expected Family Contribution is $35,000. We can’t come close to paying this for even one year. How are families affording to pay for college?

A.This is one of the most common questions we get this time of year. I’d like to first answer your question and then share with you what the alternative is, seldom being given proper consideration.

Most parents that seek my counsel and assistance wait until their oldest child’s senior year of high school. They don’t learn their EFC until after the student has completed his or her college selection list and submitted all applications for admission. When families operate with this timeline, the unfortunate result – with few exceptions – is predictable. They find themselves borrowing the vast majority of funds in order to pay for college.

Education loans – federal and private – are at an all-time high, approaching the $100 billion mark! Families are tapping into home equity and retirement accounts with no plan for repayment. In many cases, they are strapping the students with loans of $50,000 or more. In the majority of situations I have personally observed, most of this could have been avoided.

It all comes down to proper college planning. There’s so much more to planning than taking – even “acing” – rigorous classes, achieving high standardized test scores, being the president of a club or two, and then applying to “brand name” colleges. In my opinion, there’s an over-emphasis of curriculum, even among independent college counselors. The importance of good grades is obvious, as well as matching academic achievement and major to a college, but the affordability factor is often entirely overlooked until it’s way too late.

Proper college planning should begin in the sophomore year or at the very latest, early in the junior year. There are curriculum considerations, tax strategies (surprised?) and EFC analyses that can ultimately affect college affordability in a dramatic way. Any family that has not begun aggressive planning before December of the student’s junior year is at risk of compromising the affordability of their child’s college education.

FACT OF THE WEEKThe most expensive college in the nation is George Washington University at about $54,000 a year, including tuition, room and board and other fees.

Tom Bottorf is a College Planning Strategist and founder of nonprofit GetCollegeFunding Inc. in Dana Point.

POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, CHERRY HILL, NJ                   TEL : 856.673.4087      infocollegianinternational.com

“helping families fulfill their educational aspirations for their children with less cost and stress”

 From the NICCP(NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CERTIFIED COLLEGE PLANNERS) WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, November 18, 2007

“A FEW THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT
STUDENT LOAN CONSOLIDATION”

A consolidation loan is just what it sounds like: You can take two or more
outstanding loans and re-finance them into one. As with the Stafford Loans,
there are both Direct and FFEL consolidation programs.

To a college grad that is overwhelmed with multiple student loans that are
coming due, loan consolidation is an enticing option. When you consolidate,
a lending institution pays off your existing balances and replaces them with a
new, consolidated loan.

Consolidating offers several benefits:
1. You have just one check to write each month and just one repayment
plan to track.
2. You lock in a fixed interest rate that takes the sweat out of variable-rate
loans. When interest rates are low, consolidating loans can save a great deal
of money. 
3. You can extend your repayment timetable from 10 years up to 30 years,
depending on the size of your debt, so you can shrink your monthly payments.
A consolidation loan may lower your monthly loan payments by as much as
40 percent. 

*Federal versus private consolidation
The key terms for federal consolidation loans do not vary by lender:
no application or origination fees are allowed and there are no prepayment
penalties. Federal law sets the period of time for paying back the loans and
sets a ceiling on the interest rate.

Private consolidation lenders, on the other hand, are not subject to those terms
and may included variable rates and any number of fees. Also, some
benefits of a federal consolidation loan, such as interest subsidies on deferred
loans, are not available on private loans.

*Consolidation FAQs

With all the hype, student loan consolidation isn’t for everyone. Here are some
frequently asked questions and answers that may you in deciding if this is for you.
  
* Should I consolidate?
* When is consolidation a bad idea?
* Who can consolidate my loans?
* When should I do it?
* How can I get the best interest rate?
* Can I consolidate more than once?
* Can I bundle my student loans with my spouse’s?
* Will I lose the interest subsidy on my subsidized loans?
* How is loan serialization different from consolidation?
* What fees can I expect to pay?
* How do I apply for a consolidation loan?

— Should I consolidate?
If you need more cash in your pocket right now, consolidation can help by
extending the life of your loan and reduce your monthly payments.  Be aware,
the length of your repayment terms will depend on the amount of debt you have,
and you may not be able to extend at all. But if interest rates are low you can
lock in long-term savings, since less of your money will go to interest. You may
also have access to a new repayment schedule (like an income-contingent plan)
that’s a little easier on your wallet. If you don’t care about the extra cash and
just want a consolidation for the simplicity of a single monthly payment, you can
use any savings to pay down the principal.
(There are no prepayment penalties for student consolidation loans.)

— When is consolidation a bad idea?
If you have only a couple more years or a few thousand dollars to go until you
pay off your student loans, consolidation is probably not a great idea.
Switching to a new lending institution might eliminate any benefits you’ve earned,
like lower interest rates for on-time payments over the years. Consolidating
could take away the opportunity for you to have a Perkins Loan forgiven or
reduced. If you can handle your monthly loan payment as is, carefully
investigate how consolidating will change the total amount you’re expected to
repay.

— Who can consolidate my loans?
You can get a consolidation loan from any private lending institution with
government approval, or from the Department of Education. But, not all
consolidators are the same. Some offer favorable terms such as interest-rate
reduction for making on-time payments or choosing automatic withdrawal;
others may offer repayment plans that better fit your financial situation.
FinAid.org maintains a list of student loan institutions, including large banks;
private companies like Sallie Mae; and state education system lenders like
the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority and the Utah Higher Education
Assistance Authority. You should do research and be able to negotiate
the most favorable terms. Public and private loans can’t be combined, but if
you have multiple private loans, you can consolidate those, too; contact your
lending institutions to find out how.

— When should I do it?
If you’re just finishing college, you’ll want to consolidate your loans after you
graduate but before your grace period ends, so that you can take advantage
of the lower in-school interest rate. You’ll need to complete all the paperwork
and have it processed and approved before repayment begins. The downside
is that your grace period will end once your consolidation loan goes through.
If you’ve already been paying off your loans for a while, you can consolidate
at any time.

— How can I get the best interest rate?
The interest rate on your consolidation loans is the weighted average of the
interest rates on the loans you have now, rounded up to the nearest 1/8 of a
percent and capped at 8.25 percent.  Interest rates are determined by the
federal government and change each year on July 1.

— Can I consolidate more than once?
Current law dictates that you can only consolidate once, so if you consolidate
at a 6% interest rate and rates later drop to 3 percent, you’re out of luck.
There are two exceptions: if you’ve since gone back to school and acquired
new student loans, or if an outstanding loan was excluded from your original
consolidation. In those cases, you may be able to consolidate again.

— Can I consolidate my student loans with my spouse’s?
A married couple can jointly consolidate their loans, but it may not be a good
idea. To do so, you’ll both have to agree to assume full responsibility for
payment of the debt. So if your marriage ends in divorce, your loans will still be
living together and one ex-spouse will be held responsible if the other refuses
to pay.

— Will I lose the interest subsidy on my subsidized loans?
No. Although your existing loans will be packaged as one larger loan, your
subsidized and unsubsidized loans are grouped so that you won’t be held
responsible for extra interest on subsidized loans.

— How is loan serialization different from consolidation?
With loan serialization, a single lender buys your student loans and “stacks”
them; you maintain your original terms and interest rates, but pay the loans
off one at a time, starting with the loan with the worst interest rate. Unlike
with refinancing, serialization won’t lock in a good interest rate. Perkins
Loans cannot be serialized.

— What fees can I expect to pay?
You shouldn’t pay origination or any other fees to get a consolidation loan.

— How do I apply for a consolidation loan?
Most lending institutions, including the federal government, offer both online
and paper applications. If you have all Direct Loans, you can even apply by
phone. Along with basic personal contact information, you’ll need to be able
to provide data on the type of loan you have, the balance, and the current loan
holder. You will be asked to provide your employer’s name and contact
information, the name of your school, and the names of several references.
Ask the lender you’ve chosen for an application, complete it, and then wait for
them to send you the paperwork to sign. Go over everything carefully for
accuracy, because the lending institution will check to verify that the information
you provided is true. Once your loan has been approved, you’ll receive
notification and a new repayment schedule from your new loan holder.

POSTED BY :    COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, Cherry Hill,NJ                              tel:  856.673.4087          info@collegianinternational.com

“YOUR PARTNER IN HELPING FAMILIES ACHIEVE EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS FOR THEIR CHILDREN WITH LESS STREE AND COSTS”

PUBLISHED IN ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, Oct 29 

Friday, October 26, 2007

BY TOM BOTTORF

Columnist

Q. I have a small business. How do these assets affect financial aid?A.It depends. The FAFSA form doesn’t require you to claim business value as long as your company has 100 employees or less. The CSS Profile form, however, will require you to declare business value regardless of the size of your business. The guideline you should use in determining business value is to first determine what you believe you could sell your business for in the event of a “forced 30-day sale.” Then subtract any debts owed on the business. This difference is the business value that should be declared.

 POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, CHERRY HILL, NJ info@collegianinternational.com      Tel:  856.673.4087

“your partner in helping families fulfill educational aspirations for their children     with less stress and costs”

Originally posted on insidehighered.com, Nov 1, 2007 

Nov. 1

The Education Department’s Activist Agenda

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings continues to try to counter the twin perceptions of her Education Department as lax on enforcement on the one hand and inappropriately meddling in the affairs of colleges on the other.

During a news conference Wednesday, Spellings listed a “litany” of steps her department had taken in recent months on a range of regulatory and policy fronts — “scratching lots of itches,” as Spellings put it in her down-home manner of speaking. Several of her efforts — like the release today of final federal rules to govern the relationships between lenders and college officials and a ratcheting up of the department’s scrutiny of universities where most students borrow from a single lender — seemed designed to challenge the view (favored by some Democratic members of Congress) that the Bush administration had let abuses in the student loan industry to develop by being asleep at the switch.

And other parts of Spellings’ presentation — her review of the department’s recent grant to three higher education associations to develop better ways of measuring student learning, for instance — sought to leave the impression that the secretary is fulfilling her vow to work “with” colleges on issues of accountability and transparency, rather than stick it “to” them, as some higher education officials have complained. At various turns, Spellings appeared to want to portray the department as an activist, yet collaborative, federal agency.

Most of the efforts Spellings discussed will be old news to faithful readers of Inside Higher Ed, including:

• Today’s release in the Federal Register of a final version of new federal rules designed to govern the interactions between lenders, college officials and prospective borrowers, regulations that the department proposed in June and on which financial aid officers and lenders commented in August. Among other things, the rules, which take effect next July, will bar gifts of anything of more than nominal value from lenders to financial aid officers; require colleges’ lists of preferred lenders to contain at least three unaffiliated loan providers; and would require significantly more disclosure to students about their rights as borrowers. Spellings said the department was preparing a “Dear Colleague” letter urging the student loan industry and campus administrators not to wait until the rules become final to start carrying them out.
• The secretary’s attempt to jumpstart conversations among various federal agencies about who is responsible for what in overseeing the market for private student loans, which Spellings has argued is largely outside the purview of the Education Department, which has direct authority over federally backed loans. Spellings said the “interagency work group” that she had assembled — including the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — planned a second meeting next month, and that her agency and the Federal Trade Commission had begun monthly meetings to consider the best ways to respond to consumer complaints about the student loan industry, an issue that has been raised by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
• The department’s awarding of a $2.4 million grant to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges to help them assess existing, and develop new, tests and other tools to measure student outcomes on a wide range of skills. Officials of the agency and of the higher education groups heralded as a breakthrough in government-higher education collaboration.

If there was a nugget of new news in what Spellings and Under Secretary Sara Martinez Tucker discussed Wednesday, it was that the department had followed up a batch of letters it sent to 921 colleges in July expressing concern that at least 80 percent of their federal student loan volume was held by one lender. Department officials have characterized a single lender’s domination of a college’s loan volume as a red flag, providing evidence that the institution is directing prospective borrowers to that lender (which usually appears on its list of “preferred lenders”) and raising questions about why.

Tucker said on Wednesday that the department had sent new letters to 55 colleges, all of which had at least $10 million in federal loan volume and most of which distributed at least 95 percent of their federally subsidized through one lender, as well as to 23 student loan providers with which those colleges did business. Tucker said the letters (a sample of which can be found here) requested additional information about their arrangements with lenders, to make sure that “nothing untoward” has been done to consumers and that students are given a choice of lender, as federal law requires. “We are not accusing [the colleges] of anything illegal at this point in time,” Tucker said. Department officials said they would release a list of the institutions and lenders that received the letters only in response to a federal Freedom of Information Act request, which can take several weeks to fulfill.

Spellings also effusively praised the plan formally unveiled Wednesday by the National Association of System Heads and the Education Trust in which 19 public college systems have agreed to cut in half within eight years their gaps in college-going and college graduation rates for low-income students and those from underrepresented minority groups. Spellings called those behind the effort “true leaders and pioneers in the academy.”

— Doug Lederman

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/01/spellings.

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“your partner in helping families fulfill educational aspirations for their children with less stress and costs”

info

From:  insidehighered.com, Nov. 2

The Possible New Pell Grant: $4,925

It may be moot if President Bush follows through on his threat to veto a spending bill for education, health and labor programs. But for the moment, the Pell Grant program is enjoying an embarrassment of riches after years of stagnation.

Weeks after Congress approved and President Bush signed budget legislation to provide billions in federal mandatory funds that will add $490 to the maximum Pell Grant in 2008, negotiators from the Senate and House of Representatives reached agreement Thursday on a spending bill for the Education Department and other agencies that would raise the maximum grant by another $125 through the annual appropriations process.

If that increase holds — and the odds are iffy at best, given the president’s threatened veto — the federal government’s core program for needy students will have seen its maximum grant rise from $4,050 (where it was stuck for five years) in January to $4,925, a 21.6 percent increase. That includes the $260 increase that the new Democratic Congress added in its spending bill for 2007 ($4,310); the $125 increase that Congress has settled on for 2008 ($4,435); and the $490 in additional funds from the College Cost Reduction and Access Act ($4,925).

“This session of Congress is truly the Pell Grant Congress,” said an ebullient Cynthia A. Littlefield, director of federal relations at the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. She and other college lobbyists had been warned that an increase in discretionary (or annually appropriated) funds for Pell were unlikely because of the infusion of money from the budget legislation. The Senate’s own spending bill, in fact, proposed no increase above the 2007 level of $4,310, while the House’s companion legislation called for an increase to $4,700. As in many cases in such negotiations, the lawmakers came down somewhere in between.

The conference agreement reached by the House and Senate negotiators Thursday on the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies also would:

• Provide $30 billion in funds for the National Institutes of Health, up from $28.9 million in 2007 and $100 million more than the Senate had proposed in its version of the 2008 spending bill.
• Increase spending on the TRIO programs for low-income students to $868 million, up from $828 million in 2007, consistent with what the House proposed, and $10 million more than the Senate had proposed. The GEAR UP program, which also helps needy students prepare for college, would receive $318 million, $15 million more than last year.
• Keep spending flat for the campus-based aid programs and the Leveraging Educational Assistance Program, rejecting cuts that President Bush had sought in his 2008 budget.
• Provide $515 million for minority serving and other colleges under Title III of the Higher Education Act, $10 million more than the programs received in 2007 but about $140 million less than the House had recommended.

The appropriations legislation also keeps a provision that would require all research financed by the National Institutes of Health to be published online and made freely available. Advocates for open access favor the measure, but publishers generally oppose it.

President Bush has repeatedly vowed to veto the spending legislation for these agencies because it would spend billions more than the president himself recommended for the departments. He has characterized the spending as fiscally irresponsible, while Democrats said the new funds were needed to make up for important social services that had been starved while Republicans controlled Congress.

— Doug Lederman

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/02/approps.
From insidehihered.com, Nov. 2, 2007

POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL

info@collegianinternational.com   tel:  856.673.4087

“YOUR PARTNER IN HELPHING FAMILIES FULFILL EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS WITH LESS STRESS AND COST”

Smaller Divide in Public
And Private School Fees

By LEAH FABEL
From MarketWatch

College tuition costs continue to climb across the board, but rates at four-year public universities have gone up faster than at other schools, according to a report released this week by the College Board.  

As a result, schools are digging deeper into their coffers to continue to attract middle- and low-income students, and students are increasingly taking out loans from private lenders.  

In the past five years, public university in-state tuition and fees have grown 31%, to an average of $6,185 per year last year, compared with 14% growth at private colleges and universities to an average of $23,712. In the five years before that, between 1997 and 2002, both types of schools saw tuition growth of 17%.

Over the same ten-year period, enrollment numbers continued to rise, but in many locales state funding didn’t keep pace. Total student aid jumped by about 82% in inflation-adjusted dollars to more than $130 billion, according to the report. In that time, private lenders have gone from providing 6% of loan money in 1997 to 24% in 2006.  

“The finger has to point at policy planners and decision-makers who have failed to keep up,” said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director for Washington-based American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

“It’s not like anyone is hiding money under their mattresses, but it’s a question of making sure everyone pulls their fair share. The escalating costs of public institutions have to do with the fact that the states are not keeping up.”  

Shirley Ort, director of scholarships and student aid at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, considers herself lucky because North Carolina’s legislature has outshone others in putting money toward need-based financial aid.  

Ort attributes the prioritizing of funds to a public consciousness in North Carolina “that’s an uncommon tradition in public education,” citing UNC’s position as the first public university in the country.  

After spending thirty years in the financial aid field, however, Ort worries for her colleagues around the nation. “It has surprised me over the past 20 years how much larger a proportion of aid is in the form of loans as opposed to grants, and that the purchasing power of the Pell Grant has been so diminished over the years.”

The Pell Grant, provided by the federal government to low-income students based on financial need, today covers about 32% of average tuition, fees, and board at public universities, compared with 52% in 1987. However, in September Congress increased the maximum Pell Grant to $4,310 for the current school year, from $4,050, a move financial-aid practitioners roundly applauded.  

Students, parents ante up

Even so, the diluted impact of state and federal funds in the face of rising tuitions means more responsibility for students and their families, many of whom turn to less-attractive private loans or, in the worst-case scenario, credit card debt.

Although public universities face more rapidly rising tuitions, private universities are feeling a similar crunch when it comes to ensuring aid for students who need it the most.

At the University of Pennsylvania, that’s meant a focus on raising the amount of grant money available to students to avoid overburdening them with debt. Most of the grants, said William Schilling, Penn’s director of student financial services, have been coming from the university’s general funds. There’s been an active effort over the past ten years to increase the size of the school’s endowment, he said, as well as a capital campaign with undergraduate aid as a major component.

“Obviously, what a school can do depends on its endowment,” Schilling said. “The other component depends on how many of the students are needy. Schools with a high proportion of needy students are going to have a bigger problem meeting their needs and getting revenue.”

That’s one of Nassirian’s most pressing concerns: Affordability for lower-income students. “A generation ago it might have been possible for a student who worked really hard over the summer to stuff enough money aside to pay tuition and fees for a year at a land-grant university. That is no longer the case.”

Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.

–November 01, 2007

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“YOUR PARTNER IN FULFILLING EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS FOR FAMILIES WITH LESS STREE AND COST”

Originally published in INSIDEHIGHERED.com, October 25, 2007

POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, Cherry Hill, NJ 

Oct. 23

Freshman Year Abroad

Think back to packing the car for that first semester, freshman year — the uncertainty, the anxiety about how to present oneself to a new world. How many framed pictures of proms and graduations and boyfriends and girlfriends are too many, and how few are too few?

Now imagine transferring the components of that same childhood room into one monster suitcase — or, more likely perhaps, a sturdy new backpack — for freshman fall abroad.

An increasing number of colleges are offering semester- or year-long study abroad programs specifically for freshmen, billed as opportunities for students to start their college careers at Florida State, New York or Syracuse Universities — overseas.

Only a handful of institutions offer the option, but with internationalization the buzz word on (and off) campuses these days, there seems to be growing interest in the model from the long-established leaders in study abroad and relative newcomers to the field alike. Syracuse announced a new “Discovery Florence” first-semester, liberal arts-oriented study abroad program for freshmen last week, and the University of Mississippi is offering freshmen high-achievers the option to spend their whole first year at the University of Edinburgh starting in 2008. About 200 NYU students start their degrees in London, Paris and Florence: The programs originally were intended to ease the transition for international students (albeit, as the student newspaper reports, with mixed results), but they’re now open to American students as well.

Florida State even offers in-state tuition rates as a carrot to attract talented out-of-staters to attend its freshman year abroad programs in Florence, London, Panama City and Valencia. Participating freshmen who return to Tallahassee for sophomore year pay in-state tuition rates — representing a total savings of up to $55,000 — for the remainder of their undergraduate degree programs.

Meanwhile, the University of New Haven just sent its first cohort of first semester freshman to London’s Roehampton University for the fall, and Plymouth State University started sending freshmen to Ireland in 2004, only two years after starting a formal study abroad program. The “First Year Study Abroad Experience,” an Arcadia University program established in 2003, features semester-long options in London, Limerick or Stirling, Scotland.

“The rationale that I have for it is, number one, it attracts a different kind of student. The student is definitely independent, adventurous. They want to do something different than what everyone else is doing, they definitely want to study abroad, so you end up getting a student that you might not normally get,” says Dennis Nostrand, vice president for enrollment management at the University of New Haven. Nostrand, who came to New Haven from Arcadia, says that, in his experience, students who actively show an interest in a college’s freshman study abroad programs are significantly more likely to come to the college than students who do not, regardless of whether they end up studying abroad at the start.

Second, Nostrand says in reference to low study abroad participation rates — the study abroad world is focused on quintupling participation to one million within a decade — “Maybe what’s really keeping [students] from studying abroad is going to college. They get involved in a routine, they get involved in athletics, they get a boyfriend or girlfriend, they get in clubs and organizations or, worst of all, they put it off for so long that they can’t fit it into their curriculum.”

‘They’re Still 18-Year-Olds’

In addition to serving a strategic purpose for colleges looking to improve the quality of their applicant pool and also step up their study abroad credentials, proponents say the freshman year abroad programs instill a lifelong appetite for intercultural experiences (and set the stage for students to study abroad a second time later in their college careers), and provide immediate exposure to diverse people and ideas (a primary impetus at relatively homogenous Plymouth State in New Hampshire, for instance, as an official there explains). Furthermore, supporters say, they offer greater context to the traditional college experience upon return, and provide a unique opportunity for mature, successful students who come to college in many cases with a substantial number of transferable credits already completed.

Yet, Mary Stuart Hunter, director of the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina, says that while the freshman first semester or year abroad “is an intriguing idea,” it’s also a challenging one.

“The transition issues that first-year students have are pretty significant and one of the things that’s most important in helping students to transition into their first year on campus is developing a sense of community,” says Hunter. “I just think about all the things that many campuses attempt to do to help first-year students succeed, and I think it would be really challenging to be as effective when they’re not even on campus.”

And, from the student’s perspective, Hunter adds, “I would think it would be fairly challenging for a student to begin abroad and then come back their second year. It’d be almost like having a first-year experience all over again.”

The various programs offer varying levels of support to students abroad, and even their biggest proponents point out that freshman year or freshman first semester abroad is only for a particular type of student. “You get surprised looks from parents and some students….’First year, first semester – really?’” says Debra Regan, senior associate director of the Office of International Programs at Plymouth State. “But we find it’s a pretty self-selecting group. Students know immediately: This is for me or this is not for me.”

Only 3.1 percent of American students studying abroad in 2004-5 — the last year for which the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors data are available — were freshmen, a proportion that’s fluctuated between a low of 2 percent and high of 3.5 percent since 1993-94. Other than NYU, which still attracts a lot of international students to its first-year programs in Europe, even the most established of the freshman year abroad programs tend to have only a few dozen freshmen abroad at a time — 57 this fall across the three Arcadia locations, 37 total at the 12-month programs offered at four Florida State international centers.

The programs vary dramatically in structure. Many, if not most, are housed at university-owned centers, which offer university courses, taught by university faculty. Others, like the University of New Haven’s and Plymouth State’s, feature direct enrollment in foreign institutions, coordinated through an outside provider (in both cases, the Center for International Studies). Plymouth specifically offers a hybrid program: Students take two courses with a Plymouth State professor, and take the balance of their credits at the University of Limerick. The new Syracuse program will have homestays, but in most other cases, freshmen live in apartments or residence halls.

Students are generally screened for admission to the freshmen abroad program: At Arcadia, for instance, qualified students are invited to apply only after meeting a certain cut-off in terms of high school grade point average, class rank, standardized test scores, and indicators of international experience/interest. Students are only accepted to the study abroad program after phone or in-person interviews.

Syracuse is also planning a selective application and interview process for its brand-new freshman first semester abroad program, piloting next fall with a target enrollment of 20 students.

“We really want to get a feeling for the sophistication of the student,” says Daeya Malboeuf, associate director of marketing and communications for Syracuse University Abroad.

Although, Malboeuf adds, “Even if they are more sophisticated and mature, even if they have traveled before, they’re still 18-year-olds and we know that. There’s going to be a lot of support for them too — student services and advisers who are really going to watch over this group carefully.”

Coming Back and Going

The support takes various forms: In addition to studying Italian and European history and culture in Florence, Syracuse students will also be required to take a nutrition class and “The First-Year Forum,” basically an extended, credit-bearing orientation course. In addition to support structures already in place at university centers abroad, a number of institutions, including Arcadia, invite freshmen to first-year orientation on the main campus — where they can forge relationships with an academic adviser and their classmates — before they board the plane.

Upon return, Plymouth State’s Regan says, “They seem to adjust. The students that go to Ireland have already navigated a different culture, so to come back and navigate this one, they’ve got the tools to do that.”

Sending freshmen abroad before they bond with peers and find their niche on campus may seem counter-intuitive, given the attention generally placed on making sure they feel comfortable and can succeed on campus. The freshmen year abroad programs are largely geared toward humanities and social science majors — triggering the obvious worry that students might self-identify as such before discovering a passion for science or engineering during an introductory course back on campus (given the sequential nature of science curriculums, discovering that passion a year later could potentially be too late).

And of course, while the freshman study abroad program may be an effective recruiting tool for attracting particularly talented students, that doesn’t necessarily mean that students will find the college itself to be the right fit. As the University of New Haven’s Nostrand says, “There is that danger that you make them so worldly that they decide that they picked the wrong college.”

Yet, program advisers say retention rates among participants generally mirror or exceed those of the general university population (with the caveat that those who start their degrees abroad tend to have stronger academic profiles to begin with).

The students who attended Arcadia’s first freshman fall abroad program in 2003, for instance, just graduated at a retention rate of 65 percent, which mirrors the rate for the whole of the university’s Glenside, Penn. campus, says Janice A. Finn, assistant dean for international services at Arcadia. The percentage of freshman fall abroad participants who return to the Glenside campus for sophomore year has been trending upwards, increasing from 78 percent for the 2003 group to 89 percent for the fall 2006 cohort.

“One of the downsides of traditional study abroad is that students historically haven’t gone until much later in their careers,” says Louisa Blenman, director of student affairs and student services for international programs at Florida State.

“As a result of that, they bring their international experience back with them and they come back changed but the campus only benefits from their new insights and wisdom and perspectives for two semesters, usually.”

“By doing [freshman year abroad], we’re bringing students back to our campus who will be with us for three more years. The idea is that they will be different when they come here, and will approach things with a different perspective and ask different questions in class,” Blenman says.

Arcadia’s Finn, however, says that while there may be increasing interest in the freshman abroad model, she doubts it will catch on widely because of the extra supports needed for students whose first semester abroad may represent their first extended period away from home….ever.

“Many schools are thinking about it, but I’m not so sure that they would have the infrastructure to build upon,” Finn says. “You can’t just send students overseas….All the same issues that you have to think about when sending students abroad, A-Z, you have all those, but you also have to think about what are the developmental issues when you have freshmen overseas?”

“It depends really on the institution and the student. Just as it’s not right for every student, it’s also not good for every school,” says Peggy Blumenthal, who, as executive vice president of the Institute of International Education also speaks from the perspective of someone who spent her freshman spring overseas.

“For schools that can provide a very strong preparation while they’re abroad, provide support while they’re abroad and can reintegrate them when they’re back, I think it’s a very fruitful avenue for expanding the study abroad definition and also bringing back a whole group of students who are really excited about study abroad.”

— Elizabeth Redden

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/23/freshmen

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FROM INSIDE HIGHER EDUCATION, OCTOBER 23, 2007 

Oct. 23

Rate of Tuition Increases Is Up

The rate of tuition increases is going up — in public and private higher education.

Across sectors, an annual report by the College Board found that this year’s percentage increases were slightly larger than those reported a year ago.

Here are some of the key data released by the College Board Monday:

Tuition Changes by Sector, 2007-8

The College Board also reported, but with some caution because data cover only 57 percent of enrollments, that the average tuition at for-profit colleges is $12,089 this academic year, up 6.2 from last year.

For residential students, room and board are also key costs and here, too, they are up. At public institutions, the average room and board this year is $7,404, an increase of 5.3 percent over last year. At private colleges, the average this year is $8,595, an increase of 5.0 percent. (Last year, the percentage increases in room and board were 5.1 percent at public institutions and 5.0 percent at privates.)

A major theme of the College Board report every year is that the relatively few institutions for which total costs now exceed $50,000 a year are highly atypical, even if they include some of the more prestigious colleges and universities in the country. Only 5 percent of students at private four-year institutions (which enroll fewer students than publics) attend colleges where tuition and fees total $36,000 or more. Sixty-five percent of private college students are enrolled at institutions where tuition is less than $27,000.

At public four-year institutions, a plurality of students (43 percent) attend institutions where tuition and fees are $3,000-$5,999. The next largest group (34 percent) enroll at institutions where tuition and fees are $6,000-$8,999.

Another major theme of the College Board, this year as in the past, was that what students actually pay (“net price”) tends to be considerably less than what colleges list as their tuition and fee rates. Net price subtracts grants or tax breaks, and the figures here are based on averages for the sectors. While the numbers for net price are going up as well, the base is much smaller.

Net Tuition and Fees, 2007-8

Sandy Baum, a Skidmore College economist and senior policy analyst at the College Board, said that these data provide important context. She said that there are major “gaps in access” to higher education for members of disadvantaged groups, and she said that “money is a factor” in those gaps. But she said that the relatively low cost of many colleges (especially after aid is awarded) suggested that there are other issues in play as well.

In terms of aid, the College Board offered extensive data there as well. Federal loans are the top source of aid for both undergraduate and graduate students, the data show, with loans playing a much larger role for graduate education.

Student Aid by Type, 2006-7

One key trend on student loans is the continued growth in private borrowing, which worries many educators because such loan programs have far fewer protections for student borrowers. In 2006-7, the last year for which data are available, private borrowing reached 24 percent of student loan volume. That’s up just one percentage point from the previous year, but is double the 12 percent share private loans had in 2000-1, and four times the 6 percent share that the loans had in 1996-7.

Baum said she wasn’t sure why the growth slowed. While private loans have received much publicity in the last year due to scandals over campus aid leaders recommending lenders who were also providing them with certain benefits, those scandals broke after the period when most of the borrowing in this year’s report would have taken place.

— Scott Jaschik

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/23/tuition.

© Copyright 2007 Inside Higher Ed

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“Your partner in helping families fulfill educational aspirations for their children with less cost and stress”

FROM THE NICCP WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, October 21, 2007

Posted By COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, Cherry Hill, NJ

“WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING
IN THE STUDENT LOAN INDUSTRY?”
by Keith Landis

This continuing mess started in June 2006. It was then that a company by the
name of MRU Holdings, better know as MyRichUncle, started running
advertisements in several prominent newspapers. The text of the advertisements
accused financial aid officers of receiving funds in return for access to the
students at their institution. The ads accused student loan lenders of giving
items of value to financial aid officers in return for preferential treatments.
Ironically, this practice was used by MyRichUncle until just before the ads
were run. Quickly Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General for the state of New
York started investigating. Additionally, Senator Edward Kennedy, who
attempted to close down the FFELP product 2 decades ago, also jumped
on the bandwagon.

The net effect of what has occurred is that students will now have a wider array
of lenders to choose from when at the financial aid office. In the student loan
industry the distribution channel of promoting a loan through the school for the
student is called the School Channel. The School Channel historically has been
the most cost effective way for a lender to acquire student clients. Additionally,
the system worked well in that the financial aid office worked as a watchdog
and quite often created intense competition, thus forcing down rates and fees
for their students. Where there some misdeeds? Sure, as in any industry there
will always be a minority that do things that shouldn’t be done. There are
roughly 6,000 schools that are governed by the Higher Education Act. The
size of financial aid offices vary from as small as 1 employee to tens of employees.
Out of all of those financial aid offices less than 20 financial aid officers have been
disciplined.

The other prominent distribution channel is what is called the DTC, or Direct to
Consumer, channel. Using the DTC channel entails web advertising, direct mail,
email, television and the like. What few people outside of the student lending
community are aware of is the fact that the pricing on loans acquired through
the DTC channel have higher rates and fees than loans acquired through the
school channel. Think of it like a mortgage company charging varying rates and
fees based on what house you purchase. As late as October 12, 2007 Mr.
Cuomo announced legal action against an additional 29 lenders. This fact
combined with the federal government eliminating $18B in loan subsidies, has
had the net effect of loan fees and rates escalating for the 2008 – 2009 lending
cycle.

What the industry will look like when it is over is anyone’s guess. To date
several large companies have closed or have ceased ongoing operations. Many
others have had dramatic layoffs. The remaining student loan lenders are
attempting to determine how to stay profitable. All the while the students, our
youth are paying more for their student loans that they did a year ago. 

 POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, CHERRY HILL, NJ, info@collegianinternational.com,  856.673.4087

“your partner helping families reach educational aspirations for their children with less financial burdens and stress”
 

FROM COLLEGE JOURNAL, WALL STREET JOURNAL,OCTOBER 12, 2007

POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL

By MARSHALL LOEB
From MarketWatch

With college costs continuing to rise, parents and students are increasingly turning to private lenders to cover the cost of tuition.

Between 1995 and 2006, the amount of money borrowed from private lenders to pay for college went from $1.3 billion to $17.3 billion, according to MSN Money columnist Liz Pulliam Weston. Why should this concern you? Because not all loans are created equal.
There are three basic types of loans available to undergrads: federal loans issued directly by the government, loans from private lenders that are subsidized and guaranteed by the government and private loans.

The interest rates on federal loans are typically in the neighborhood of 6.25% and 8%; the interest rates on private loans, by contrast, regularly run from 12% to 13% and can sometimes go as high as 28%, according Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice.org, a grassroots organization dedicated to reforming predatory lending practices.

Private loans also offer less flexibility when it comes time to pay them back, Collinge warns. There are options available to borrowers who fall behind on their federal loans, such as forbearances and graduated repayment plans. Some private lenders offer help for borrowers experiencing financial hardship as well, but they tend to be less forgiving.

It’s not uncommon for a lender to significantly jack up the interest rate on a loan when you miss payments, Collinge says. Furthermore, unlike credit-card debt, private student debt isn’t wiped out when you declare bankruptcy.

The lesson: proceed with extreme caution. Collinge offers a list of do’s and don’ts for borrowers considering private student loans:
Do

• Tap all federal loans. Work closely with your school’s financial-aid office to ensure that you’re taking advantage of all of the federal funds you have coming to you. According to a 2003 study by the Public Interest Research Group, 50% of borrowers take out private loans before tapping all of the federal loan money available to them.
• Try to negotiate a better package with your school. “People don’t realize that, unless your going to a Top 30 school, there’s a good chance the school will be willing to revisit your financial-aid package,” says Collinge. If you’re unhappy with the mix of loans, grant and scholarship money being offered, go back to the bargaining table.
• Consider all of your options. Before you take out private loans, exhaust every other option available to you, urges Collinge. Be diligent about applying for scholarships, grants or other loans, including loans from family members.

Don’t

• Stop with only the financial-aid office. While many private lenders that advertise directly to the consumer charge high fees and exorbitant interest rates, there are deals to be had outside the financial-aid office, so cast a wide net. If the lender your school suggests isn’t offering competitive rates, try approaching another reputable lender. You may get a better deal.
• Have your parents cosign unless it’s absolutely necessary. If you decide to go ahead and take out private loans for schools, avoid having your parents cosign, warns Collinge. “Oftentimes cosigners’ houses and retirement packages end up as a part of the collateral on these loans,” Collinge says. This means that if you fall behind, your parents may pay the price.

Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.

–October 12, 2007

 POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, CHERRY HILL, NJ

info@collegianinternational.com

“ASSISTING FAMILIES ATTAIN THEIR HIGHER EDUCATION ASPIRATIONS FOR THEIR CHILDREN”

POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL

By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

From The Wall Street Journal Online

A law President Bush signed last month drew a lot of attention for trying to make college more affordable for many. Less trumpeted were provisions that support the altruists among us.

The law, signed by President Bush last month, appropriates $20 billion to cut interest rates on certain federal student loans and increase grant aid for low-income students over the next five years. But the College Cost Reduction and Access Act also creates an important incentive for all students to enter fields of public service by offering to forgive what could amount to tens of thousands of dollars of school debt per student.

The legislation broadly defines public service to include a wide range of occupations, such as public health, public education, working for a nonprofit organization and serving in law enforcement or as a public-interest lawyer. The Education Department says it expects to issue guidance to clarify exactly which professions will qualify.

“It changes the whole calculus of the situation,” says Honora Spillane, a 25-year-old law student at Syracuse University. After graduation, Ms. Spillane wants to work in state and local government, but for a long time, she wasn’t sure she could afford to. Now, the new law makes that a more realistic goal, she says.

The median starting salary for public-interest law is about $40,000, compared with pay at private law firms that can start at $150,000 for a highly rated graduate, according to Philip Schrag, a professor at Georgetown University who directs the law school’s Public Interest Law Scholars Program. Students coming out of private law schools carry about $100,000 in debt on average.

If public service “was your career goal, and that was why you went to law school, then this law is going to make it possible,” Mr. Schrag says. He says the legislation could potentially reshape the field of public service, providing more lawyers to serve more people, such as middle-income families who can’t afford a lawyer but aren’t poor enough to qualify for legal aid.

Here’s how the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program will work: For people working in public service, the balance of a student loan is forgiven after 120 monthly payments, equal to 10 years. Let’s say a single borrower graduates with $100,000 in student debt and gets a public-service job that pays $40,000 a year with annual raises of 3%. Because of the relatively low salary, the borrower would qualify for a newly created program known as Income Based Repayment, which stretches out the repayment period beyond the usual 10 years. Monthly repayments for this graduate would be between $309 and $403. After 10 years, the individual has repaid $42,448, and is forgiven the balance of $125,552, assuming interest of 6.8%, the current rate for federal Stafford loans.

In order to qualify for the program, your loans must come under the federal Direct Loan program. If you borrowed from banks and other commercial lenders for your federal student loans, you can still qualify for the program by consolidating them through the Direct Loan program. Some colleges offer direct federal loans, while others work through commercial lenders only. Your college financial-aid office should have more information on the program. Or you can check FinAid.org, which offers financial-aid information and has a page at: www.finaid.org/loans/publicservice.phtml.

Other professional groups also are expecting heightened interest in public-service work. “We have low salaries and a very high debt burden,” says Rebecca Myers, special assistant to the executive director at the National Association of Social Workers. “We’re really glad to see that there’s some movement on this, and we believe it will help social workers.”

For medical-school graduates, who carry an average $130,000 of debt, the provision could save up to $75,000 in student-loan payments by working in public service for at least 10 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The group says it is seeking clarification on which specific types of jobs qualify as “public health” workers under the terms of the new provision.

Some caveats: Federal law treats the amount of any debt forgiven as taxable income. Also, if a borrower gets married, the couple’s combined income is counted toward calculating monthly payments, and the borrower might not qualify for Income Based Repayment.

Beyond public service, the new law aims to make college more affordable for middle-income and low-income students by gradually halving the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford loans, to 3.4% from 6.8% currently, by 2011. The Stafford loan program is the government’s biggest student-loan program, with more than six million undergraduates expected to borrow more than $37 billion for the 2007-08 academic year. More than half of those typically qualify for subsidized loans, where interest accrued in school is paid for by the federal government.

Tuition increases continue to surpass the typical rate of inflation. Average tuition and fees at four-year private colleges in 2006-07 are $22,218 — 5.9% higher than they were a year earlier. Add in room and board and the total comes to $30,367. At public colleges, total tuition and fees in 2006-07 for in-state students is $5,836 — 6.3% more than a year ago.

The law also helps needy students who receive Pell Grants. The maximum amount that students can currently receive is $4,310. That gets increased to $4,800 by next year, then to $5,000 starting in 2010, and then to $5,400 by 2012.

However, to offset the cost of the additional spending, the government has reduced payments to banks and other lenders who, acting as middlemen, issue the federal loans to students. These lenders in turn have begun scaling back a host of discounts they had previously offered students amid competition for borrowers.

The law also makes some improvements in the federal formula that schools use to determine aid. It doubles the amount of a dependent student’s earnings that are sheltered to $6,000 by 2012-13 from $3,080 for 2008-09. It also raises the income threshold below which a family isn’t expected to contribute to college to $30,000 from the current $20,000.

Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.

–October 15, 2007

POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, CHERRY HILL, NJ

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“ASSISTING FAMILIES FULFILL HIGHER EDUCATION ASPIRATIONS FOR THEIR CHILDREN”

Originally on WALL STREET JOURNAL’s COLLEGE JOURNAL e-LETTER, October 4, 2007 

By JANE J. KIM
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

From The Wall Street Journal Online

Banks and other lenders who issue federal student loans have begun to scale back a host of borrower discounts after a new law took effect yesterday that cuts federal payments to the lending institutions.

Lenders have long used discounts to compete for borrowers of federal student loans, including Stafford, PLUS loans taken out by parents of undergraduates or by graduate students themselves, and federal consolidation loans. These so-called borrower benefits typically included interest-rate reductions for signing up to have payments automatically debited from a bank account or for making a certain number of consecutive, on-time payments.

Now, in a push by politicians to make college more affordable, the new law, known as the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, will cut payments to lenders for issuing the federal loans by $21 billion over five years. In turn, the law reduces the cost to undergraduate borrowers who qualify for federally subsidized Stafford loans by lowering the rate on the loans to 3.4% from 6.8% by 2011. It also, among other things, increases the maximum Pell Grant amounts for low-income families.

Feeling their profit margins squeezed, several lenders, including Wells Fargo & Co., Nelnet Inc. and Goal Financial LLC, eliminated many of their borrower benefits on new federal loans. Nelnet also reinstated origination and default fees on its Stafford loans, which were previously waived, of as much as 2.5%. And National City Corp., which had discounted the rate on its Graduate PLUS loan to 6.8%, raised the rate to 7.65% as a result of the new regulations, although this is still below the typical market rate of 8.5% for Graduate PLUS loans.

Some lenders are evaluating their programs. Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s Chase, KeyCorp’s KeyBank and MRU Holdings Inc.’s MyRichUncle say their borrower-benefit programs remain unchanged. “We do anticipate there will be changes, and we’re still working through the details of what those changes will be,” says Jill Arslanian, a KeyBank spokeswoman.

Lenders are making the biggest cuts in their federal consolidation loans, which typically have the slimmest profit margins. SLM Corp.’s Sallie Mae and Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank, for example, which kept their borrower benefits on Stafford, PLUS and Graduate PLUS loans, now only allow borrowers to get a 0.25 percentage point rate reduction on consolidation loans for enrolling in automatic payments. Previously, the lenders also offered a one percentage point rate reduction after the first 36 months of on-time payments.

College Loan Corp., which scaled back many of its borrower benefits across its Stafford and PLUS loans, says it is no longer offering any repayment benefits on its federal consolidation loans. And Wachovia Corp. dropped its benefit programs on its federal consolidation loans, which had allowed borrowers to cut their interest rates by as much as 1.25 percentage points. A federal consolidation loan allows borrowers to combine all their federal loans into one loan to lock in a fixed interest rate and simplify and reduce monthly payments.

Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, says he expects that many lenders will reduce their discounts by about half or eliminate them. And while some lenders might maintain some of their discounts on PLUS or Stafford loans, they will likely make it harder for borrowers to qualify for the discounts. For example, instead of requiring 36 months of on-time payments to get an interest-rate reduction, they might require 48 or 60 months of on-time payments, he says. Borrowers with larger balances may get more of a break, because those loans are more profitable, he says.

The changes may also force schools with preferred-lender lists to re-examine their lists if the changes significantly affect borrowers’ costs, he adds.

Only a fraction of borrowers received all of the discounts offered. Only 20% of borrowers, for instance, are able to make the first 36 months of payments on time, Mr. Kantrowitz says.

Despite cutting its borrower-benefit programs, Wells Fargo says it will continue to pay the 1.5% origination fee on Stafford loans and the default fee of 1%, when a guarantor doesn’t pick up this fee.

Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.

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HELPING FAMILIES FULFILL EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS FOR THEIR CHILDREN WITH LESS STRESS AND FINANCIAL PAIN

FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED e-LETTER, October 5, 2007

If, after nearly four years of work, Congress finally enacts legislation to renew the Higher Education Act this year — and certainly if it does not — the bill introduced Thursday by Republicans on the House of Representatives education committee may have been but a blip on the radar screen. At the very least, though, the GOP measure unveiled Thursday has to be seen as signaling what Republicans will emphasize as they seek to shape the final legislation.

The 400-plus-page bill was made public only late in the day, and college lobbyists and others were poring over the legislation looking for surprises (pleasant, rude or otherwise) last evening. Much of the bill echoes ideas that Republicans have put forward in previous versions of the Higher Education Act legislation, such as provisions that would publicly embarrass colleges that raise tuition significantly and repeatedly. But there are also some new things, including language to repeal the auction of federal loans for parents that Congress approved as part of the education budget bill that President Bush signed last month.

Among other thing, the bill introduced by Republican leaders of the House Education and Labor Committee, Reps. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Calif.) and Ric Keller (R-Fla.), would:

• Authorize a maximum Pell Grant of $6,000 and allow recipients to receive Pell Grants year-round.
• Reduce interest rates for parent and graduate loans in the guaranteed student loan program to 7.9 percent, the same as the rate for such loans offered through the competing direct loan program, a change pushed by lenders to “level the playing field” in response to a change made by Congress (mistakenly) in 2005.
• Eliminate what McKeon and Keller called the “untested” auction scheme that Congress enacted in budget reconciliation legislation, which the lawmakers said would “strip parent borrowers of the right to choose a lender.”
• Embrace a proposal that would require the education secretary to annually identify (and publicly embarrass) colleges that receive the most notices of copyright violations through “peer to peer” file sharing on campus networks. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had sought to attach a similar plan to the Senate’s version of the Higher Education Act legislation in July, but he withdrew the proposal amid significant opposition from colleges.
• Adopt a “single definition” of “institution of higher education” that would give for-profit colleges access to some pools of federal education money from which they are currently excluded. The Republican bill would also further soften provisions aimed at ensuring that colleges (especially commercial ones) don’t generate virtually all of their revenues from federal student aid, which the GOP lawmakers said unfairly jeopardize financial aid for low-income and nontraditional students.
• Increase the limits on the amount of federal loans that a student can borrow, a proposal generally favored by private colleges but opposed by some advocates for students who worry about excessive debt burdens.
• Put in place a series of restrictions the behavior of and relationships between colleges and lenders.

McKeon said the legislation, which was introduced along with a companion measure to renew federal job training programs under the Workforce Investment Act, would “go a long way toward ensuring American competitiveness now and into the future.”

Added Keller: “The agenda we’ve introduced provides common-sense reforms that are long overdue. Our plans are good news for the workforce and good news for families making important choices about higher education. Our comprehensive approach recognizes the fact that American competitiveness is dependent upon creative ideas in education and job training initiatives.”

A spokeswoman for Democrats on the House education panel said they planned to extend the Higher Education Act this year (following on legislation to rein in student loan abuses and provide billions in additional aid for students) and said they would seek “strategies for reining in increases in college tuition,” among other things. “We are glad to see that Rep. McKeon is willing to work with us and hope he will join us in our ongoing efforts to make college more affordable and accessible and to bolster our economic competitiveness,” said the spokeswoman, Rachel Racusen.

College lobbyists, meanwhile, said they found areas of promise and peril in the Republican bill.

“Many of the ideas in the bill merit consideration while others would harm institutions and undermine their ability to provide a high-quality education to students,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education. “Ironically, as drafted the legislation would wrap institutions in an amazing amount of new federal red tape and, at the same time, order the Secretary of Education to study ways to reduce overregulation. We will work with Mr. McKeon and Mr. Keller to address these issues in a way that will not impose extraordinary compliance costs on institutions or put government bureaucrats in charge of campus academic programs.”

— Doug Lederman

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/05/gop.
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ASSISTING FAMILIES FULFILL EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS FOR THEIR CHILDREN WITHOUT  STRESS AND FINANCIAL PAIN

FROM NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR CERTIFIED COLLEGE PLANNERS’ October 7 e-Newsletter

“STUDENT LOAN BREAK FOR RESERVISTS”

A college education bill signed by President Bush in late September includes
a provision to give mobilized reservists a break when it comes to repaying
student loans.

The College Cost Reduction Act, which expands the federal Pell Grant
program, includes legislation proposed by Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif.,
that lets mobilized National Guard and Reserve members to defer
repaying student loans for up to 13 months after they are released from
active duty.

Before this provision, Guard and Reserve members were not required to
make student loan payments while on active duty, but had to begin making
payments immediately upon release from active duty.

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The College Planning Newsletter^(TM)
October 2007 Issue

    Welcome to The College Planning Newsletter, a monthly newsletter dedicated to helping college applicants find and get into the colleges that make sense for them. Each issue of The College Planning Newsletter provides an inside look at the admission process as it unfolds, giving you–the applicant–insights and tips as you prepare to encounter the maze of deadlines and requirements. It also sheds light on elements of the “hidden agenda”- little-known factors that often influence admission outcomes at many selective colleges and universities. Use this information to prepare well for the competition. Whenever a college can say “no” to any its applicants, The College Planning Newsletter will increase your odds of hearing “yes!”

In this Issue:

• Invest in a Positive Outcome
• Arriving at a Short List that Makes Sense
• Straight Talk!
• Considering the Early Decision (ED) Option?
• Early Action (EA)
• ED/EA Data Available
• Early Decision Do’s and Don’ts
• Coming Events
• Letters of Recommendation: Help Them Help You
• Scam Watch
• Notes from the Annual NACAC Conference
• Q&A

Invest In a Positive Outcome
Think about the following statistics: slightly more than half of the students who begin their college experience each year will eventually graduate from college-and even fewer will graduate from the institutions at which they start. Folks, these are not a good numbers. Given the time and money invested in the college going process by many families, a transfer or early departure from college represents a lost opportunity at the very least and a poor return on their investments.

So, why do so many young people struggle to finish what they start? Frankly, there are lots of reasons why students transfer or drop out. Most of them are related to environments that turn out to be ill-fitted to their academic needs, learning styles, social expectations or financial constraints. While many students land on their feet at new schools, they still wrestle with feelings of frustration and failure. They also have a sense of lost opportunity–a loss of time and money–to an experience that wasn’t meant for them.  

Avoid becoming a statistic.  The extra time you put into an honest assessment of your needs, within the context of what each college has to offer, will pay dividends. Investing in a college that is a “good fit” for you is an investment in a positive outcome.

Arriving at a Short List that Makes Sense
If you are a high school Senior and you haven’t done so already, it’s time to narrow your college selections to a short list that makes sense for you.  How many should that be?  Six is a good number–there is certainly no need to go higher than eight. If you find that you are sending out more than eight applications, it is likely that you haven’t been as discriminating as you need to be in reviewing your options.  

You have heard this before but it really is true that the schools to which you apply really should be places that are good “fits” for you–not your parents or your friends or the court of public opinion! Reflect on your core priorities-what are the two or three things you want to be sure you accomplish before your cross the stage at your college graduation–and then determine how each of the schools on your list will help you achieve those objectives. Add affordability into the mix as well.  The best schools will be those that are the best “fits” when all things are considered.

Between the Lines:  You hear a lot of talk about applying to schools that fit the categories of “reach,” “competitive” and “safety.” I don’t really subscribe to this notion as it encourages students to submit applications that don’t make sense. (I’ve heard of kids who apply to a dozen or more “reach” schools on the assumption that they are increasing their odds of getting into at least one or two of them–WRONG!) Remember to put yourself on the right competitive playing field each time you apply and you should find success without having to send out lots of applications.

Straight Talk!
Last month, I added an exciting new feature to the program offerings associated with The Admission Game^(R).  The “Straight Talk About College Admission” teleseminar series takes you behind the scenes of college admission where I am joined by co-host and former director of admission at the College of Wooster, Sam Barnett, to give you insight into how the process works. “Straight Talk” premiered on September 19 with a great discussion of “College Rankings: What They Mean and How to Use Them.”

Join us for the next seminar, “The Biggest Mistakes Made in Applying to College,” on October 17, 2007 at 9:00 PM ET.  Go to www.TheAdmissionGame.com for more information and to register for this FREE introductory seminar.

Considering the Early Decision (ED) Option?
Many of the nation’s more selective institutions offer opportunities for students to declare their enrollment intentions early–ahead of the often more intense competition associated with the regular admission process. According to the rules for early decision (ED), you may submit one ED application to your first-choice college. In return, that college will give you a decision within 30 days. If you are admitted, you are expected to withdraw all other outstanding applications and enroll at the college that has admitted you ED.

ED programs are very popular at selective colleges and are often strategic elements of the enrollment management process. The reason is that colleges need only admit one student to enroll one student through ED. Quite often they must admit five to get one through Regular Decision. As a result, there is an unspoken premium on ED enrollments at many places.  Don’t be surprised, then, if you should hear something like the following in your conversations with admission recruiters: “If you really want to be here, your best chance of getting in is through ED.” And now you know why. At most schools, the odds do indeed favor the ED applicant.

That said, do NOT apply ED–unless your passion for a college is true and unconditional. Has the college in question passed the “certainty” test? Is it truly the very best “fit?” Are you ready to make a commitment? Or, is ED simply the easiest route to admission at a “hot” school? If the latter is the sole reason for considering ED, the risk of disappointment is greater. While you might get in, there is a greater chance that you will find that you have acted in haste as you become better acclimated with the place over time.

Between the Lines:  Before applying ED, sleep on the possible commitment. Not for a day, or a weekend, or even a month. (That may mean having to wait to apply ED at a Round Two deadline in January.) During that time, take a serious look at 2-3 other colleges that you like as well. Test your conviction. If the passion for a place is just as strong after two months as it was at the start, then ED probably makes sense. Go for it! There are no guarantees of admission, but if you get in, the chances are in your favor for a happy and productive four years.

Early Action (EA)
Whereas Early Decision programs are contractual in nature, Early Action programs offer a bit more flexibility. When you apply EA somewhere, you are stating your first-choice interest in that school. In return, the school will take action on your application earlier. You are not committed to enroll if admitted, nor are you obligated to withdraw the applications you have submitted to other colleges.  

Many EA schools have established a practice of “single choice early action.” This means that a student choosing to apply early action may do so at only one institution. Make sure you are familiar with the rules and deadlines for applications at each of the schools on your list.

ED/EA Data Available
For more information about the advantages and disadvantages of ED/EA as well as a directory of the 378 colleges and universities that offer ED/EA options, visit the website for the National Association for College Admission Counselors (NACAC) at: www.nacacnet.org/memberportal/ForStudents/

Early Decision “Do’s and Don’ts”

• Do be sure to visit multiple college campuses before choosing to apply ED. Give yourself a good perspective from which to choose appropriately.
• Don’t apply ED to more than one school at a time.
• Do ask for an “early read” of your financial aid application before you apply ED if you have concerns about affording that college’s costs.
• Don’t apply ED if you feel it is important to compare financial aid offers.
• Do make sure that you are “in love” with a school before applying ED. It will be the place you call “home” for the next four years.
• Don’t apply ED simply to “beat the odds.” Chances are that you will get in-and then find yourself in an unhappy situation at a school that really isn’t for you.
• Do understand what the institution’s rules are with regard to ED/EA submissions.
• Don’t succumb to the temptation to let your other applications “ride” after you have been admitted ED somewhere. Not only is it unethical, the chances are you will get caught–and lose all of your potential offers and/or enrollments!

Between the Lines: It should be clear by now that colleges are very strategic to the way they enroll their classes.  Admit ratio (percent of applicants admitted) and yield (percent of admitted students who enroll) are carefully studied and applied concepts. As a result, continue to be attentive to your relationships with colleges on your short list and make sure there can be no doubt about the sincerity of your interest. In a tight competition, persistent and unanswered questions about the likelihood of your enrollment (“Will he come if we admit him?”) may cost you a place in the class.

Coming Events…
Do you want to know more about how to get from where you are to where you want to be educationally? Are you puzzling over how and when to get started in college planning? Or are you still trying to get your arms around the application process? Maybe I can help. Check http://www.theadmissiongame.com/event_schedule.php to find out when I will be presenting programs that address such questions at schools or bookstores near you.

Letters of Recommendation: Help Them Help You
As you pull together your applications, remember that the teachers who have agreed to write on your behalf are doing you a favor.  Be considerate of their time and attention.  In most cases, they are using their own time to craft statements that will help you and any other students who have asked for recommendations.  Moreover, they will be championing your cause.

You can be helpful by making sure that they have the necessary information and insight about you that will enable them to write well-balanced letters. Set up a meeting after school or during lunch when you can talk one-on-one with each of them about your college planning. Create a resume that you can leave behind that details your accomplishments.  And if things haven’t always gone well for you in the classroom, you probably have a story to tell. Let them help you tell it. Their perspectives on such matters can be remarkably helpful.

Scam Watch
At some point in the last few months, there is a very good chance you have heard from financial planning companies that offer to help you “maximize your financial aid and scholarship potential.” Be careful. If such offers sound too good to be true, they probably are! Many of these outfits will end up charging you a substantial fee for information and support you would have gotten regardless through the financial aid offices at the colleges where you are applying.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling provides information on its website that allows you to access scholarship scam information. For more information, go to: www.nacacnet.org/Memberportal/ForStudents/ScholarshipScams/

Notes from the Annual NACAC Conference
Every year, the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC) invites college counselors and admission officers from around the world to its annual conference and business meeting. The 2007 meeting just concluded in Austin, Texas, where more than 4,000 individuals gather to share information and network with each other.

I presented a workshop to a sold-out audience of college advisors entitled “Hotspots, Hooks, and Hidden Agendas“ that provided insight into how colleges make admission decisions and manage their enrollments and signed copies of my book, Winning the College Admission Game, at the Conference Bookstore.

Visit www.nacacnet.org/Memberportal for links to stories that relate to the Conference and college admission in general.

Winning the College Admission Game is in bookstores and available on-line!  Winning the College Admission Game features additional tips about writing a winning essay, telling your story and much more insight into the admission process. I wrote this “flip-book” expressly so that parents and students might find a common ground for approaching the college planning process. Book reviews and a schedule of book signing events can be found at The Admission Game website (www.TheAdmissionGame.com).

The Admission Game (TAG) Q&A–straight answers to important questions from readers of The College Planning Newsletter about the admission and financial aid processes.

Dear TAG,
My school doesn’t report a class rank. I have done really well and have a good GPA but I’m not sure that colleges will understand without a rank. Will that be a problem?    
Sincerely,   Wondering if they will know where I stand

Dear Wondering,
The lack of a class rank should not be an issue for most colleges. In fact, colleges that are very selective and must make fine distinctions will spend a lot of time trying to understand your academic performance within the context of your school’s academic environment. They will utilize profile information provided by your counselor as well as the letters of recommendation from your teachers to determine the strength of your program and your ability to function in it.  Believe it or not, nearly half of the high schools in the country don’t rank their students, so you are in good company!   TAG

Dear TAG,
I want to study international politics and have been told that the best place to do that is in Washington, D.C. Is that true?
Sincerely,   Looking for guidance

Dear Looking,
While Washington, D.C. is certainly a major hub of international relations, it is not the only place where you can study international politics. Many colleges that are well removed from Washington are able to sponsor superb internship and semester study programs in D.C. In fact, any college that is well networked electronically can give you virtual experiences when you want them. And don’t forget, most of what you will learn about international politics during your undergraduate experience will be derived from critical analysis of events past and present. Look for schools that have strong library resources and faculty who are able to engage and inspire you in your own process of discovery. You’ll get to Washington soon enough!  TAG

Dear TAG,
If I apply Early Decision, what will happen to my chances of getting in and receiving the financial aid I need?
Sincerely,   Worried About Money

Dear Worried,
It is hard to tell. Some schools prefer not to award financial aid until they have seen applications from all of the candidates who need assistance. They may defer your application in order to consider it later with the regular decision candidates. Others may reward your ED interest with a more generous award in order to secure your commitment. Yet others may admit you and offer less aid because of your presumed commitment (“He’ll come regardless of what we give him.”)   Unfortunately, you’re not likely to get clear indicators on the latter. Most schools, however, will award aid to admitted ED candidates in much the same manner as they would regular decision candidates. This is a topic we will discuss in further detail during the November 20 “Straight Talk” teleseminar, “To ED or Not ED: The Pluses and Minuses of Early Decision.”   TAG

Questions for The Admission Game (TAG) Q&A in upcoming issues can be directed to Peter@theadmissiongame.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Admission Game^(R)

PO Box 4982
Lancaster, PA
17604
US

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The College Access and Opportunity Act

In 1965, the Higher Education Act (HEA) was established to help low- and middle-income students gain access to college. Today, the federal government is investing tens of billions of dollars annually in direct aid to students, and hundreds of millions of dollars more are provided to colleges and universities.  Yet many of these resources are no longer focused on expanding access for students, the purpose for which the HEA was established four decades ago.  And troubling cost increases, year after year, have made it clear that colleges and universities must remain accountable to students and parents, the consumers of higher education.

With the College Access & Opportunity Act, Republicans will restore the HEA to its original mission of providing access to college for low- and middle-income students.  The bill will empower consumers through sunshine in college costs, financial aid, and accreditation; update programs to better meet the needs of changing student populations; and strengthen financial aid opportunities.  Together, these reforms will strengthen America’s higher education system by expanding college access and restoring the focus on students.

Empowering consumers through “sunshine” in college costs, financial aid & accreditation:

• Giving consumers more information about what they’re getting for their money.  The bill calls for greater disclosure of comparable, useful data to help students and families make educated higher education choices.

• Shining a spotlight on excessive tuition hikes.  For students and families grappling with rising college costs, the bill establishes a college affordability comparison to help put the cost increases into perspective.  Schools may also provide information about what is causing cost increases, and identify strategies that can be used to help hold costs down.

• Protecting students from financial aid conflicts of interest.  The bill requires additional disclosure for lenders and colleges to ensure students are protected and their interests come first.  It requires institutions to establish codes of conduct, and clarifies what actions would be considered illegal inducements.

• Making accrediting agencies more accountable by making information more public.  Accreditation is a fundamental component of our nation’s higher education system, with many consumers viewing accreditation as a seal of quality.  The bill will help make the accreditation system more transparent and understandable to the public.

• Making transfer of credit policies public.  To help students better prepare for a higher education path that might involve multiple schools, the bill calls for transfer of credit policies to be made public.

Updating programs to better meet the needs of changing student populations:

• Strengthening Pell Grants.  The bill will allow year-round Pell Grant aid for students attending school throughout the year, and encourage students to make progress toward degree completion.

• Simplifying the financial aid process for needy students and families.  To ease the financial aid application process, the bill would encourage a reduction in the number of questions on the FAFSA form, take steps to make reapplying for aid easier.  

• Ensuring fair treatment of institutions of higher education.  The bill will protect low-income and non-traditional students by ensuring student aid isn’t jeopardized by the burdensome “90/10” rule, and will ensure more equitable recognition of institutions under the law.

• Strengthening federal college access programs.  The bill will reauthorize and strengthen federal college access programs for low- and middle-income students, including TRIO and GEAR UP.  

• Supporting minority serving institutions.  The bill reauthorizes and strengthens minority serving institutions such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Historically Black Graduate Institutions (HBGIs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), which play a key role in providing access to higher education for American students.

Strengthening financial aid opportunities:

• Ensuring fair loan terms for parents and graduate students.  The bill will reduce interest rates for parent and graduate PLUS borrowers in the Federal Family Education Loan Program, aligning rates with the 7.9% currently offered in the Direct Loan program.  It will also eliminate the untested auction scheme recently enacted, which would strip parent borrowers of the right to choose a lender.

• Creating a one-stop financial aid website.  To streamline and improve access to information about federal financial aid programs, the bill requires that the Department of Education provide easier access to its student financial assistance website and share information about financial aid opportunities available through other federal agencies.

• Targeting loan forgiveness to priority fields.  The bill will provide loan forgiveness opportunities for professionals in high-demand fields including nurses, early childhood educators, foreign language specialists, speech language pathologists, and medical specialists.

Other features:

• Protecting students’ rights and personal privacy.

• Creating opportunities for graduate study that will improve K-12 education.

• Strengthening international and foreign language studies programs for the post-9/11 era.

• Improving teacher training by increasing accountability.

• Strengthening higher education opportunities for military personnel.

• Promoting financial and economic literacy.

• Reducing red tape for schools.

• Strengthening U.S. competitiveness through math and science programs.

• Repealing duplicative, expired, and/or unnecessary programs.

2101 Rayburn House Office Bldg. – House of Representatives – Washington, D.C. 20515

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College affordability of National Interest: an editorial

October 03, 2007

Source: Burlington Free Press

Increasingly, a college education or its technical equivalent is becoming a must in order to secure a decent job. College is also a critical incubator for talent and innovation in a broad range of disciplines from art to science. Yet rising cost is threatening to put a college education beyond the means of even middle-class families without the help of mortgage-size loans. It makes no sense for a country to boast the finest colleges and universities in the world if only a select few can afford to attend.

At the University of Vermont, in-state tuition has gone up 48 percent in the past decade, room and board 52 percent and fees a whopping 288 percent, in a period when consumer prices rose by about 30 percent. The total bill for the current academic year comes to just over $20,000. Nationally, The Associated Press reported that college costs have nearly doubled in the past decade, and that total outstanding student loans rose from $38 billion in 1995 to $85 billion last year.

The AP also reports that, “Many in the next generation will be so debt-burdened they will have to delay home purchases, limit vacations, even eat out less to pay loans on time.” Here’s how that scenario could play out in Vermont.

The state is working to keep young graduates from leaving the state, and trying to lure back those who have left. The state has one of the oldest populations in the nations, and the lack of young people, especially highly educated workers, could hurt the economy. Yet graduates with hundreds of dollars in monthly payments on their college and graduate school loans would find it difficult to afford the state’s high housing costs on the lower-than-averages wages they would find in Vermont.

College affordability is, at its core, an economic issue, and a strong economy is a matter of national security. That should be reason enough to further boost aid. Vermont — and the nation — can’t risk letting a college education become unaffordable.

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YOUR SOURCE FOR HELPING FAMILIES FULFILL EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS FOR THEIR CHILDREN WITH LESS STRESS AND FINANCIAL PAIN

October 03, 2007

Source: Tulsa World

By Shannon Muchmore

Oct. 3, 2007 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) –

The Tulsa City-County Library is hosting several college preparation programs in the next two months, most tailored for specific ages or ethnic backgrounds.

The first program will be geared toward American Indian freshmen and sophomores, but the information will be applicable to all students who recently started high school, said Sue Anderson, branch manager at Maxwell Park Library.

High school students often wait too long to start thinking about how they’re going to finance their college educations, and this workshop shows them how to get a head start, Anderson said.

“It gives them the big picture from the very beginning,” she said.

Another program for American Indians will discuss the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and is designed for juniors and seniors, she said.

“It dispels the myth that all American Indian students are entitled to a free education,” she said.

Both programs require preregistration and will be at Maxwell Park Library.

The second annual Latino College Fair will be at Martin Regional Library. Presentations will be given in Spanish, but information will also be available in English.

A representative from the Hispanic

Scholarship Foundation’s Gates Millennium Scholars Program will be among those making presentations, said Sara Martinez, coordinator of the library’s Hispanic Resource Center.

The program will include information about the new immigration law, House Bill 1804, and how it may or may not affect undocumented students who want to attend college, Martinez said.

“We’ll try to clear up some confusion about that,” she said.

A program at Central Library will focus on college financial aid. It will present information relevant to parents of preschool age children, adults considering going back to college and all ages in between, said Ellen Cummings, manager of the library’s Research Center.

“We kind of touch on a little bit of everything,” she said.

The program will include high school and college counselors, a financial planner and a representative from the Oklahoma Higher Learning Access Program, which provides college tuition to students who meet financial aid requirements and take certain high school courses.

Cummings will also give a short presentation on the resources available at the library.

She emphasized that students and parents who can’t make it to the upcoming college preparation programs can still find help.

“The library always has resources on college financial aid availability,” she said.

——

Maxwell Park Library, 1313 N. Canton Ave.

Saturday: College Preparation for American Indian Freshmen and Sophomores, 10 a.m. to noon

Nov. 17: American Indian Workshop: Free Application for Federal Student Aid, 10 a.m. to noon

Dec. 1: Gates Millennium Scholars Program for American Indian Students, 10 a.m. to noon

For more: Call 669-6055.

Central Library, Fourth Street and Denver Avenue

Oct. 13: American Indian Higher Education Fair, 10 a.m. to noon

Nov. 8: College Financial Aid: Begin the Search to Fund Your Future, 7 to 8:30 p.m.

For more: Call 596-7977.

Martin Regional Library, 2601 S. Garnett Road

Nov. 14: Second Annual Latino College Fair, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

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Graduation Rates for Athletes Stable

FROM INSIDE HIGHER EDUCATION, OCTOBER 4, 2007

The proportion of athletes who entered Division I colleges between 1997 and 2000 and earned degrees within six years — 77 percent — did not budge from the previous year, National Collegiate Athletic Association officials said Wednesday in their first of several annual reports on how athletes fared academically. But the association’s president, Myles Brand, cited data showing improvements over time in high-profile (and traditionally low performing) sports — notably men’s basketball — to argue that the NCAA’s newly adopted academic rules are beginning to have an impact.

“We have seen some effect of our academic reform, and it has been positive,” Brand said in a telephone news conference Wednesday. He was particularly enthused by statistics showing that the Graduation Success Rate — the NCAA’s home-grown metric for measuring longterm academic performance — for men’s basketball had improved from 55.8 percent for the class that entered Division I colleges in 1995 to 63.6 percent for the class of 2000. “It is very encouraging as an early indication that thousands of athletic administrators, coaches and, most importantly, student-athletes are understanding the importance of getting an education and taking to heart the value of being a student-athlete,” added Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford and chairman of the NCAA’s Committee on Academic Performance, which helped draft the new standards.

The information released by the association on Wednesday provides sport-specific data both at the national level and college by college (select from the dropdown menus on the linked page to find your institution of choice). The NCAA provides some data about athletes’ performance using the federal graduation rate, but the association emphasizes the Graduation Success Rate, which Brand characterizes as far more accurate because it includes athletes who transfer into NCAA colleges (rather than focusing exclusively on first-time freshmen) and excludes from the denominator athletes who leave their colleges in good academic standing.

At the national level, although the overall proportion of athletes who earned degrees stayed constant from the previous year’s report, Brand emphasized the progress in multiple sports over the last few years, as the NCAA has altered its rules to hold colleges more accountable for the classroom success of their athletes.

Below is a look at how athletes fared sport by sport at the national level:

Graduation Success Rates and Federal Graduation Rates for Division I Athletes, Selected Years

Although Brand touted the improvement in men’s basketball graduation rates in recent years, he also noted that the sport lags behind all others in its overall performance. Below is a snapshot of how last year’s top Division I basketball teams (as ranked by USA Today at season’s end) fared in the latest NCAA stats, which shows starkly the ways in which many big-time basketball programs — including some of the most successful ones — fail to graduate players:

Graduation Success and Federal Graduation Rates for 2006-7 Division I Top 25 Men’s Basketball Teams, 1997-2000 Entering Classes

The NCAA has appointed a special panel to look at strategies for improving the academic performance of male basketball players.

— Doug Lederman

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/04/gradrates.

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