Student Loan Blog : American Association of Community Colleges

Dorms Add to Community Colleges’ Appeal

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:19:00 GMT

In an attempt to offer a low-cost alternative to college students who typically attend more expensive private and public institutions, community colleges have started building on-campus dorms, a move that may soon alter the commuter culture at such schools, reports the Los Angeles Times (“Community Colleges Add Dorms to Boost Appeal,” April 7, 2009).

With tuition rising at most colleges and universities across the country, experts say that larger numbers of college-age students are opting to enroll in two-year schools offering the same type of college dormitory life traditionally found only at a four-year university. And many community colleges are actively promoting their on-campus housing amenities in their recruitment of international students and athletes, two demographics who often prefer on-campus housing.

“We do think it’s a trend for more community colleges to provide residential housing for students,” said Norma Kent, spokeswoman for the American Association of Community Colleges.

States Responding to Need for Community College Dorms

Dorms at community colleges are being built in Washington state, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, and California, where both the University of California and the California State University systems have said they will severely limit freshmen enrollment this fall.

Educators believe that California — with nearly 2.8 million community college students or roughly 25 percent of the nation’s total community college population — may be particularly ripe for adding new dorms.

With both of the state’s university systems accepting fewer freshmen this year, many of the 4,000 first-year students who’ve been denied admission to those four-year schools may be more likely to consider a two-year school that offers on-campus housing versus one that doesn’t.

And what may come as a surprise, the Los Angeles Times reports, is that 11 community colleges in the state already have dorms, although many of those decades-old dorms resemble 1950s-era military barracks. Other dorms, like those at Sierra College near Sacramento, have been updated and include meal plans honored at local restaurants, one of many features intended to lure students to its campus.

Cerro Coso Community College, a 300-student school located in Mammoth Lakes, says that its South Gateway Student Apartments — an $8.5 million residence hall built last August that can house 59 students — is the first new community college housing to go up in California in 20 years. Funded by a grant from the Mammoth Lakes Foundation, the new dorms aren’t cheap: $900 a month for a single room or $750 a month for a shared room, plus meals.

Feedback from students regarding community college dorms is largely positive. Some students say they’re succeeding at school for the first time and that they enjoy the intimate surroundings and small class sizes that community colleges can offer.

Sharon Carroll, a student at Cerro Coso Community College, said that if she had to fight the traffic and large class sizes of an urban community college, “I would have been sick of school already. I figured out a lot from being here. It made me want to go to a four- year college.”

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Colleges May Be Required to Refund Student Loans for Military Members Called Into Service

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:20:00 GMT

At the same time the recently passed GI Bill was being pushed through Congress, legislators have been considering a veterans education “bill of rights” that would protect service members who are called to duty in the middle of their higher education studies, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Congress May Require Colleges to Repay Loans for Students Called to Military Service,” June 27, 2008).

Both the House and Senate are looking at legislation, which has become unpopular among colleges, that would require institutions to refund student loans and other out-of-pocket expenses to students who are called to active military duty mid-semester.

Under the proposed legislation, students would be able to sue colleges that fail to make the refunds and would require colleges to re-enroll veterans at the same academic status they held when they departed for military service.

Opponents say the requirements would be difficult to implement and that the potential changes would conflict with existing rules. They counter that Congress should require the loans to be discharged instead of having colleges repay them.

David Baime, vice president of the American Association of Community Colleges, claims that students should be responsible for the loans they take out, not the institutions they attend.

“It’s kind of outrageous to expect institutions to repay loans” that students take out, he said.

Supporter of the bill Patrick Campbell, legislative director for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, says that the new requirements are only fair, pointing to the many horror stories of vets who have attempted to get refunds or re-enroll at their schools after returning from active duty.

Campbell said, “When veterans come home and their schools make them jump through hoops, some students will not go back.”

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Community Colleges Want to Control How Much Certain Students Can Borrow in Student Loans

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:54:00 GMT

Concerned that some students at two-year schools may borrow more in federal student loans than they can afford to repay, community college officials want the federal government to give community colleges control over how much their students can borrow in federal aid.

Community colleges want the authority to deny some of their own students the right to take out federally subsidized loans, because the schools believe that some students may not earn enough after graduation to repay their student loan debt, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Community Colleges Want Their Authority, Not Banks,’ Over Student Borrowing,” June 18, 2008).

The change is needed because colleges currently have no way of preventing a student from taking out a college loan that doesn’t make economic sense given the student’s long-term job prospects, says David Baime, vice president of government relations for the American Association of Community Colleges.

The association, which represents more than 1,200 institutions nationwide, is pushing for legislation that would give community colleges the right to control how much their students can borrow, rather than being at the mercy of private lenders who can stop lending to certain schools at any time. The AACC is lobbying for this authority after a recent move by some of the nation’s biggest banks to stop offering student loans to certain community colleges and other two-year institutions.

The banks’ decision to cease lending to these schools also prompted Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Christopher Dodd to introduce legislation that would prohibit lenders from ‘cherry-picking’ which schools they do business with.

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Back from Surgery, Kennedy Calls On Community Colleges to Switch to Direct Lending

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:11:00 GMT

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., sent a letter Monday to the American Association of Community Colleges, urging its members to enroll in the government’s Direct Loan Program in order to ensure community college students have access to student loans for the 2008–09 academic year.

Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions who is recovering from surgery to remove part of a malignant brain tumor, encouraged AACC member colleges to sign up for the direct lending program, which allows students and parents to take out student loans directly from the U.S. Department of Education.

Almost 100 lenders in the rival Federal Family Education Loan Program, in which student loans are provided by private lenders, have reduced or stopped offering borrower incentives, or have dropped out of the FFEL program altogether.

Government subsidy cuts and the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis have hurt lenders and have prompted some to announce they will no longer offer student loans to certain community colleges and other two-year institutions whose borrowers tend to carry smaller, less-profitable loans.

"Since lenders continue to say they may have to limit new loans to certain colleges, it’s possible that the neediest students, particularly those at community colleges, will need an alternative to the bank-based FFEL program," Kennedy wrote.

David Baime, vice president of government affairs for the AACC, countered that the problem is not that student loans are inaccessible, but that community college students tend to borrow more money than they can afford to repay ("Kennedy Urges Community Colleges to Enroll in Direct-Loan Program," June 17, 2008).

That’s why the association is pushing a measure through Congress, Baime says, that would give colleges the authority to reduce maximum college loan amounts that students could borrow under the federal student loan programs.

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Trade Schools Are Better Than Community Colleges, Say Americans in Poll

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:38:00 GMT

Results of a recent public opinion poll point to a strong belief among Americans that career and technical schools may be better than community colleges at preparing students for today’s competitive workforce, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Americans Favor Career and Technical Colleges Over Community Colleges, Report Says,” June 4, 2008).

The poll results, released by the Career College Association, reveal 40 percent of the 830 respondents choosing career colleges as the best alternative to four-year institutions, versus the 17 percent who favored community colleges.

Community college officials have taken issue with the survey’s findings, pointing out that the growth in enrollment at community colleges has dwarfed increases in enrollment at career schools in the for-profit sector — a fact administrators consider to be a vote of confidence in the community college system.

“I don’t deny some [technical school] programs are good programs, but to draw a comparison like that and write a survey on it seems to me to be a curious way to use their resources,” said David Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.

Survey Reveals Shift Away From ‘Education for Education’s Sake’

Instead of indicating the superiority of one type of institution over another, the survey results may indicate a subtle shift in education values, say CCA executives, with a greater number of students each year choosing the skills-based training at career or technical colleges over the traditional “book-learning” education found at other two- and four-year colleges.

“Spending four years cloistered on campus is growing increasingly unlikely for a growing number of Americans — Americans still in need of the skills and abilities delivered through higher education,” the report’s authors concluded.

The growing trend among college students has been toward viewing higher education as a pathway to a specific job or career, notes Harris Miller, CCA president. “Apparently, today they’re not convinced that traditional higher education, for all of its important strengths, really serves that purpose very well.”

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What are the Salaries of Presidents at Two-Year Colleges?

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:26:00 GMT

So, looking for a high-paying job that you might want to aspire to one day? Love college and the whole academic environment? Well, what about becoming the president of a community college? According to an April 16, 2007 article written by Elyse Ashburn titled, “Presidential Pay Tops $160,000 at 2-Year Colleges, Survey Finds,” that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Community-college presidents make an average of $161,380, up 6 percent from last year, according to preliminary survey results released on Sunday by the American Association of Community Colleges.”

Presidents at Two-Year Colleges vs. Professors at Two-Year Colleges

Professors at two-year colleges are doing pretty well for themselves nowadays, too, however, not quite as well as community college presidents. Ashburn reported, “Presidents’ base salaries averaged $153,684, plus other cash benefits, according to a national survey of 548 two-year colleges conducted in November. By comparison, full professors at community colleges make $68,289 on average, according to data released last week by the American Association of University Professors (The Chronicle, April 12, 2007).”

Other Fun Facts on Presidents at Two-Year Colleges

The findings on presidential compensation as well as other facts about community college presidents were released at the American Association of Community Colleges’ recent annual conference. Ashburn reported that other findings of the survey included:

“Colleges leaders in the far Western states and the mid-Atlantic were the highest paid, while those in the Rocky Mountain region were the lowest paid.
Male college presidents made $164,759 on average, while female leaders made $160,137.
About 2 percent of presidents received signing bonuses.
About 20 percent of presidents received compensation for outside work, earning an average of $8,784 a year.
Half of presidential contracts placed no restrictions on outside work.”

If you want to know more, you’ll have to wait until this summer when the American Association of Community Colleges releases a full report on its findings.

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Be sure to tune in next Tuesday for my next blog about this week in student loans.

Student Loan Girl

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Perkins Program Cuts: Hint of More to Come?

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:46:00 GMT

This past week I have reported on what is happening with the FY08 budget, a big part of which is the increase in the Pell Grant from $4,600 this year up to $5,400 by 2012. The question on everyone’s mind is: Where is all that extra money going to come from? Many have speculated that the $2 billion-plus required to cover the increase would come from cutting other federal programs or grants that favor low-income students and their families.

According to a Feb. 6, 2007 article by Karin Fischer titled, “Perkins Career and Technical Education Program Survives but Would Be Cut in Half” that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, there may be a partial answer. Apparently, President Bush is slashing funding for the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education program that serves low-income families. My guess is that this action is the beginning of several cuts yet to come that likely will cover the $2 billion Pell Grant shortfall.

Funds Slashed, But Program Retained

Fischer wrote, “Under the president’s budget plan for 2008, which was released on Monday, the vocational-education program would receive $617.4-million, down 52.6 percent from the 2006 fiscal year, the most recent year in which a federal budget was signed into law.”

Earlier, Bush commented that the program was “ineffective,” the article said, intending to eliminate it altogether. In fact, according to the article, “In his 2007 budget proposal, President Bush had called for the elimination of all federal technical-educational spending, saying that the Perkins program had ‘produced little or no evidence of improved outcomes for students despite decades of federal investment.’ ”

The article continued, “But administration officials were persuaded not to press again to scrap Perkins after changes were made during the program’s reauthorization last summer (The Chronicle, August 4, 2006).”

Either way you look at it, the money has to come from somewhere, and that means cuts to valuable programs of debatable value, depending upon with whom you talk. This implies growing pains for those who see their funding disappear, pains that likely will be isolated to the low-income college student camp.

Low-Income Students, Community Colleges Most Affected

The intended cut has received much criticism. The article quoted David S. Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, who said, “Our colleges cannot comprehend that an administration that is so laudatory of their work would slash a program that is so essential to their quality. It is just totally bewildering to us.”

This community college segment of the student population is the one that may be hardest hit. “About 40 percent of Perkins funds go annually to community colleges to prepare students from low-income families for the workplace,” the article stated.

Here is the rundown from the article on the specifics of the cuts: “The budget plan would cut the amount of money awarded in state grants through the Perkins program by nearly 50 percent from the 2006 fiscal year allocation, to $600-million. And it would eliminate federal support for the Tech-Prep program, which gives students a technical education spread across two years of high school and two years of community college. About $104.8-million in Tech-Prep grants were awarded in 2006.”

We Got Our Wish—Or Did We?

So, as college students, we got what we asked for: increased Pell Grants. For that I am encouraged and thankful. However, I wonder the real long-term effects and how they will “shake out.” Will we really be reaping the benefits, as the government says, or are we simply witnessing a shifting of funds from one program to another, due to popular demand? Only time will tell.

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Be sure to tune in next Thursday for my next blog on student loan advice.

Student Loan Girl

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