Student Loan Blog : Columbia University

New York AG Examines Colleges’ Relationships With Health Insurers

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:30:00 GMT

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the relationships between colleges and the health insurance companies they do business with just two years after he launched a similar investigation that uncovered conflicts of interest between some colleges and student loan companies, The New York Times reports (“Cuomo Investigating Colleges’ Deals With Health Insurers,” Nov. 17, 2008).

Investigators will focus on determining if schools adequately disclose the policy terms and costs of their school-sponsored health insurance plans to their students, as well as whether or not insurers offer schools a monetary incentive to require that their students buy health insurance through a particular provider.

In an e-mail message, Benjamin Lawsky, special assistant to the attorney general, wrote “We are primarily focused on whether insurance companies are paying schools to push students into health coverage they don’t really need and shouldn’t really want.”

“With students and their families being financially squeezed at every turn,” he added, “colleges must ensure that they are looking out for students’ best interest first and foremost as opposed to their own financial bottom line.”

Cuomo has requested health insurance–related documents from six State University of New York schools — Binghamton, Buffalo State, Oswego, Purchase, Stony Brook, and the University at Buffalo. Investigators have asked to see copies of the schools’ requests for proposals from insurers, insurance contracts, and the information given to students about the health plans available to them, as well as statistics on the health insurance premiums paid by students.

Four institutions, Georgetown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, and Sarah Lawrence College, said they had received subpoenas.

Parents have complained that some schools require students to purchase school-sponsored health insurance, even though the student is already insured under a family health insurance policy, said James Boyle, president of College Parents of America, an association of parents of college students.

Although “the vast majority of college students” are covered under their parent’s health insurance, most campus health centers don’t accept insurance plans that aren’t affiliated with the school, Boyle added.

“Instead,” he said, “some schools force the student, as a condition of enrollment, to purchase health insurance policies offered by the school.”

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College Employees’ Donations to Obama Far Outweigh Contributions to McCain

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:38:00 GMT

College employees have given eight times as much money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign — $12.2 million — as they have to John McCain’s — just over $1.5 million, making it the widest gap in donations by academics in the past five presidential elections, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Obama, who taught constitutional law as a lecturer at the University of Chicago, has received donations from dozens of college presidents, from professors from a variety of liberal arts disciplines, and from faculty members at business, law, and medical schools, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Donors From Academe Favor Obama by a Wide Margin,” Oct. 24, 2008).

A large amount of McCain’s donations from academic sources also came from a handful of college presidents and from faculty members at business, law, and medical schools. McCain also received donations from the head football and basketball coaches at the University of Arizona, a school in his home state.

Among the top 10 academic institutions to make donations to Obama’s campaign were the University of Chicago, Columbia University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science, and Harvard University, where he earned a law degree.

Top 10 Colleges With Donors Giving to Obama Campaign

University of California: $778,000
Harvard University: $496,000
Stanford University: $342,000
University of Chicago: $285,000
Columbia University: $267,000
Northwestern University: $179,000
Georgetown University: $179,000
University of Washington: $165,000
University of Pennsylvania: $162,000
New York University: $158,000

Top 10 Colleges With Donors Giving to McCain Campaign

University of California: $40,000
Harvard University: $39,000
Columbia University: $35,000
University of Texas: $33,000
University of Pennsylvania: $28,000
Northwestern University: $21,000
Stanford University: $19,000
University of Minnesota: $18,000
George Washington University: $17,000
Washington University in St. Louis: $16,000

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Davidson College Sees Positive Results After Eliminating Student Loans

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:44:00 GMT

While Princeton was the first university to completely eliminate student loans from its financial aid packages in 2001, it was Harvard’s announcement to follow in Princeton’s footsteps this fall that garnered national media attention as no-loan financial aid policies for 2008–09 began to turn up at elite colleges and universities across the country: Amherst, Columbia, Dartmouth, Stanford, Swarthmore, Yale.

So far, some 50 institutions across the country have implemented no-loan and loan-cap financial aid policies, according to the Project on Student Debt, a nonprofit advocacy group — in some cases for all students; in others, only for students whose families fall below a certain income cutoff, although that cutoff runs as high as $150,000 a year at some schools.

After stinging rebukes from legislators critical of yearly tuition-hikes that have outstripped inflation and the proliferation of costly private student loans in undergraduate debt loads, many of the nation’s richest schools have moved to reduce student dependency on college loans and to entice greater numbers of low- and middle-income students to enroll at their institutions.

But it’s a small, selective liberal arts institution in North Carolina — Davidson College — that’s already seeing the results of eliminating student loans from its financial aid packages (“At Davidson, Getting Rid of Loans Shows Early Signs of Success,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11, 2008).

While the long-term, broader nationwide impact of these new financial aid policies may not be seen for a few years, Davidson — which got a head start over the rest of the Ivy Leagues by instituting its no-loan policy a year earlier, in the fall of 2007 — has already experienced a three-percent jump this year in the number of incoming students who demonstrate financial need.

Although Davidson’s endowment of $489 million is much smaller than the multibillion-dollar endowments of its Ivy League competitors, the school has set a goal to have 40 percent of its incoming students receiving only need-based aid by 2011 — a plan that Davidson’s dean of admissions and financial aid, Christopher Gruber, says will cost $3.5 million to implement.

"We're moving in the right direction with a year to promote it," Gruber says.

Davidson’s early results aren’t surprising, says Jonathan Epstein, from the education consulting firm Maguire Associates. But families shouldn’t expect no-loan policies to become the norm. “My take is, it’s not something that, as announced policy, is going to spread across the country.”

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Huge Donation to Go Toward Student Aid at Columbia

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:01:00 GMT

Though the money will not be donated until after his death, “A $400-million gift pledged to Columbia University on Wednesday by John W. Kluge, a media tycoon, will eventually allow the institution to expand the number of needy undergraduates on full scholarships and increase scholarship levels for graduate students,” according to an April 12, 2007 article by Goldie Blumenstyk, titled “$400-Million Gift to Columbia U. Will Go to Student Aid,” that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The donation has been earmarked for a specific purpose, which “will eventually allow the institution to expand the number of needy undergraduates on full scholarships and increase scholarship levels for graduate students,” the article said.

According to the article, “Observers said the pledge was significant both for its size and its purpose. ‘We’re into gigantism now in philanthropy,’ said Stanley N. Katz, a longtime observer of giving trends and director of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

“Although Columbia is wealthy in its own right, the donation is ‘a big deal because it’s focused on the support of undergraduate financial aid,’ Mr. Katz said.”

Significance of Gift

According to the article, “Columbia said it now enrolled a greater proportion of needy students than any other Ivy League college, but in meeting their financial needs, it must dig into its endowment, which is smaller than that of Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford Universities. Mr. Katz said the gift ‘presumably will catapult Columbia’ into a position where it can more easily afford to match the financial-aid offers of its competitors, in the Ivy League and elsewhere.”

Columbia University recently has taken on a rather ambitious ideal: that of ensuring that students from low-income families will be able to attend college without taking out student loans. The article gave the details:

“In kicking off its $4-billion fund-raising campaign, Columbia has already announced that, beginning this fall, all students at its two main undergraduate colleges with annual family incomes below $50,000 will receive aid packages that will allow them to attend without taking out loans.

“The gift from Mr. Kluge, which will not come to the university until after his death, will give the university resources to expand that effort by raising the income threshold for full-scholarship students and by offering higher levels of scholarship aid to graduate students.”

Lower Income College Affordability Plan?

This huge gift by Mr. Kluge donated with the intention of assisting undergraduate students, combined with Columbia’s initiative of eliminating student loans for lower income students suggests a rather interesting means of helping those who are from lower income families attend college. Is it naive to think that other schools could follow Columbia’s example in instituting similar programs? Granted, few colleges have endowments anywhere near that of Columbia. Yet, with a strategic plan and a targeted effort, conceivably funds could be raised that would go toward lower income students’ tuition bills. Perhaps, unlike Columbia, other schools would not be able to cover the total bill, but the money certainly would go a long way in making college more affordable for those who do not have the funds.

It is important to keep up to date on all the news regarding student loans and education.

Talk to the education financial advisors at NextStudent. They have all the information and advice you need on student loans. Check out www.nextstudent.com.

Be sure to tune in next Monday for my next blog on student loan issues in the news.

Student Loan Girl

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