Early Look at College Net Price Calculators Finds Mixed Results
By the end of October, colleges must create online calculators to help prospective students judge college costs. The price of tuition doesn’t tell students everything they need to know about cost. Students are also responsible for fees, books, food and housing, and transportation costs. Also, some high-tuition schools offer generous grants and scholarships. The new “net price calculators” can help students understand which schools they can afford. A report by the Institute for College Access…
Are student loan borrowers effectively managing their student loan debt?
Many more student loan borrowers are having difficulty repaying their student loans than is generally recognized. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) studied data on 8.7 million student loan borrowers and 27.5 million student loans, focusing on the 1.8 million borrowers who entered repayment in 2005 and issued an illuminating report: Delinquency: The Untold Story of Student Loan Borrowing. Student Loan Default Rates Don’t Tell the Whole Story Default rates only tell us so much. Deferment and forbearance allow borrowers to…
Increased Oversight of Tuition Assistance Program is Needed
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is calling for expanded education quality review procedures after auditing the Department of Defense’s (DOD) oversight of the Military Tuition Assistance Program. The Military Tuition Assistance Program provided $517 million in tuition assistance to approximately 377,000 service members in fiscal year 2009. These funds help service members pay for higher education. The GAO found that DOD review of the quality of academic courses and services was too narrow. Although 71% of the courses…
More Financial Need, Less Student Aid
The economic downturn has shrunk college endowments creating financial pressures for colleges. Some colleges are responding to the financial downturn by changing their financial aid policies in ways that raise costs for wealthier families. Other colleges are adjusting “need-blind” admissions policies and admitting fewer students who cannot afford to pay full tuition. A shift to “need aware” policies grants admissions advantage to students from affluent families. Just when more students than ever…
Senate Bill Would Preserve Pell Grant Funding
Senate Democrats have introduced a spending bill for Fiscal Year 2011 that maintains the current maximum Pell Grant – $5500. The House-passed spending bill seeks to cut the maximum Pell Grant award by more than $800. Currently, the federal government is operating under a continuing resolution that is set to expire on March 18th.
