The Real Effect of Yale and Harvard's Aid Expansion
Recent announcements by Harvard and Yale universities to expand financial aid are good news for the small number of students helped, but do little to dispel the impression of an ivory tower still...
View ArticleMinority Recruitment: Athletics Success, Admissions Failure
Diversity and minority recruitment are hot button words in most four year college admissions offices. There are congratulations when enrollment demographics show greater racial diversity, and there is...
View ArticleTurning up the Heat on Endowments
As the old adage goes, you reap what you sow. For many years colleges and university endowments, which receive very advantageous government tax breaks, have grown at extraordinary rates. Now, two...
View ArticleUnanswered Questions on Bush's Higher Ed Budget
The release of President Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget has prompted some unanswered questions.
View ArticleSubprime Mess Reaches Higher Ed
Policymakers and journalists, don't be fooled by the Career College Association's spin. Sallie Mae's decision last week to stop engaging in subprime student lending at some of the most scandal-ridden...
View ArticleBankruptcy Fight on Private Student Loans
The U.S. House of Representatives has a chance today to provide much-needed relief to low-income and minority students who have fallen victim to predatory private student loan practices by Sallie Mae...
View ArticleThe College Quality Fight
Colleges have won their battle with the Bush administration over accreditation reform. After two years of being chastised and pressured to better report on student learning, and then being threatened...
View ArticleCohort Default Rates: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Two weeks ago, we wrote in favor of a proposal to change how student loan defaults are calculated for the purposes of college accountability. We argued that lengthening the timeframe the government...
View ArticleA False Alarm on Student Loans
Over the last several months, the student loan industry and its allies on Capitol Hill have led a campaign to persuade the news media and policymakers that Congress went too far last year when it cut...
View ArticleA Missed Opportunity to Help Borrowers in Desperate Straits
The U.S. House of Representatives delivered a body blow to financially-distressed student-loan borrowers earlier this month when it voted down an amendment to a key higher education bill that would...
View ArticlePanic is the Enemy for Student Loans
Repeat after me: There is no federal student loan crisis. There is zero danger that federal Stafford loans will not be available in the foreseeable future. Zero danger. At some point in the future,...
View ArticleNCAA Penalties: Cheating vs. Recruiting
Two weeks ago, the NCAA accused Kelvin Sampson, the basketball coach at Indiana University, of committing five major rules violations involving recruiting and improper phone calls. The NCAA report was...
View ArticleConcern over Student Lender Subsidies or Borrower Benefits, Which is it?
Last year when Congress cut subsidies to lenders making federally backed student loans, critics argued that the cut would hurt borrowers. They argued that lenders would reduce voluntarily provided...
View ArticleSec. Spellings on Student Loan Availability
Good job, Secretary Spellings, in assuring college presidents through your letter that the current credit crunch will not negatively impact the availability of federal student loans. According to the...
View ArticleAn Uneven Playing Field in College Athletics
News is circulating about the growing wealth gap between a few elite, well-endowed colleges and the rest of higher education. A Congressional investigation into endowment growth and hoarding, the fears...
View ArticlePenn State Enters Direct Loans
Penn State University announced yesterday afternoon that it will be joining the Department of Education's Direct Loan program as a way of ensuring its students maintain stable access to federal aid.
View ArticleAnswers to the Student Loan Credit Crunch
With any panic, there comes a point when cool heads have to stop saying "don’t worry" and start offering solutions to real and perceived phenomena. Unfortunately, we’ve reached that point when it comes...
View ArticleMarch Madness, Big Money
It's March, and for any basketball fan, this means three glorious weeks of watching the premier teams in the nation battle it out in a single-elimination, high-stakes, high-pressure tournament. March...
View ArticleStates, Students, and Higher Education
Behind closed doors, Members of Congress are battling over a key concept in the pending Higher Education Act reauthorization -- a House of Representatives generated requirement that states maintain...
View ArticleClass Action Lawsuit Challenges Sallie Mae’s Subprime Lending Practices
Sallie Mae is facing a potential series of class action lawsuits from angry investors who believe the student loan giant misled them about the amount of risk the company was taking on in pushing...
View ArticleAcademic Madness in March
Amid the flashy, commercialized spectacle of March Madness, it's time to bring some sanity to the national debate about which team deserves to be crowned the NCAA champion. Here is a different take on...
View ArticleThe Real Causes of the Student Loan Credit Crunch
In trying to raise panic over the student loan crunch, much of the student loan industry has had a not so hidden agenda: to get Congress to revisit lender subsidy cuts it made last fall.
View ArticleAn Academic All-Star Basketball Team
Last week, we published our annual "Academic Sweet Sixteen" bracket, which ranks the teams in the NCAA tournament based on their basketball team graduation rates. While it's important to consider how...
View ArticleHow Many Lenders is Enough?
According to recent reports, some lenders are pulling out of the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL)program due to malfunctioning credit markets - and, some loan industry officials say, due to cuts in...
View ArticleMissing Sweetheart Loan Deals at Private Colleges
Chains of publicly-traded, for-profit trade schools have made a number of deals with loan providers like Sallie Mae that have allowed them to push low- and moderate-income students to take out high...
View ArticleQuestionable College-Business Partnerships
From dorm and building access, to discounts for movie tickets and accessing the meal plan, a student's ID card is a nearly indispensable part of campus life. But at a growing number of colleges, those...
View ArticleAdjunct faculty grow, but how are students to know?
Colleges' reliance on adjuncts, or low-paid part-time instructors, to carry much of the teaching load at their institutions has long been one of higher education's dirty little secrets. College...
View ArticlePredatory Student Lending Bites Back
With calls from student loan providers for a bailout growing louder every day, it's worth remembering that the lenders have brought a good part of these problems onto themselves. Investors are wary of...
View ArticleFueling Sham Trade Schools
We have written a lot recently about Silver State Helicopters, a Nevada-based company that left the 2,500 students who attended its flight academies in the lurch when it shut its doors without warning...
View ArticleBen Bernanke Suggests Student Loan Auction
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the government’s biggest student loan program, the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, is poorly designed. His suggested solution sounds a lot like...
View ArticleSwiped into Debt
Increasingly, colleges are forging agreements with credit card companies, whereby schools profits from student borrowing. It may be good business, but persistent credit card marketing on campus and...
View ArticleLoans of Last Resort: A Program Only Rube Goldberg Could Love
The Department of Education recently announced modifications to its lender of last resort program as part of its effort to prepare for the possibility of federal student loan shortages as a result of...
View ArticleExposing Institutional Subsidies for Athletics
With all of the talk about the commercialization of college sports, there is a common assumption that university athletics programs pay for themselves. A new report from the National Collegiate...
View ArticleKanjorski's Conflict
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education offered a full-scale plan to bail out the student loan industry. Under the plan, the Department will not only buy student loans from lenders, as Congress...
View ArticleThe Honeymoon is Over for NASFAA Head
Up until now, it's been worth giving Philip Day the benefit of the doubt.In March, Day, the former chancellor at the City College of San Francisco, became the president of the National Association of...
View ArticleMore Student Loans Silver Lining from the Credit Crunch
The Career College Association continues to breathlessly proclaim that the decision by some major lenders to stop providing subprime private loans to students attending for-profit trade schools of...
View ArticleImportant News for College Graduates
Attention recent college graduates: starting July 1st, you will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to significantly reduce your federal student loan costs. It's important to know this, because if...
View ArticleStudent Loan Companies Have Sizeable Presence on College Financial Aid...
There has long been concern about the close ties between the student loan industry and the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), an organization that lobbies on behalf...
View ArticleA "Key" Development in the Case of Silver State Helicopters
For a long time it's been known that KeyBank has played a leading role in aiding and abetting the efforts of sham for-profit trade schools to scam vulnerable students. What was unknown realize,...
View ArticleShining a Light on the University of Phoenix
"Bring on the data," was the message echoed loudly by representatives of for-profit colleges at a recent event on the sector hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think...
View ArticleLender Subsidies and Red Herrings
Student loan industry officials have been pushing Congress to revisit cuts it made last fall to subsidies lenders receive for participating in the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. They...
View ArticleObama's Disappointing Omission
On Monday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) unveiled plans to rewrite federal bankruptcy laws to make it easier for financially-strapped senior citizens, military families, and individuals suffering medical...
View ArticleGuaranty Agencies: A Middleman in College Access Clothing
What do an appendix, plica semilunaris, and student-loan guaranty agency all have in common? They're all vestigial structures whose original purpose is no longer necessary. But unlike the first two...
View ArticleCollege Sports Reform: Putting More Focus on Academics
It is a sad reality that many colleges do not treat their athletes as students, but rather as semi-professionals, for four years before dropping them into the real world without a meaningful degree or...
View ArticleUndermining a New Effort to Promote Public Service
Is the U.S. Department of Education deliberately trying to undermine a new program created by Congress to encourage students to pursue careers in the public service?
View ArticleNASFAA's Clouded View
As individuals on the "‘front lines" of the financial aid process, financial aid administrators offer an important perspective on the credit crunch's daily effects on student loan availability. As...
View ArticleCollege Sports Reform: Opening Up the Budget Books
Big-time college sports teams are not only skilled on the field, they are also talented at keeping their off-the-field activities in the dark. Athletics programs, for example, are experts at keeping...
View ArticleA Few of the Best Things (From Final Higher Ed Bill)
A decade after its last reauthorization and five years since an updated version was due, a new version of the Higher Education Act has finally passed Congress. Here is what to like in the final higher...
View ArticleSome Big Disappointments (With Final Higher Ed Bill)
Yesterday's post highlighted some of the best provisions in the final version of legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. With the bill waiting for President Bush's signature, here is a...
View ArticleCongress Falls Short In Effort to Curb Sweetheart Student Loan Deals
It's hard to decide what to make of the sections in the Higher Education Act reauthorization that target "pay for play" conflicts of interest in the student loan programs.
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