Student Loan Blog : University of Wisconsin

‘Swine Flu’ Causes Colleges to Cancel Study Abroad Programs

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:29:00 GMT

Although the swine flu virus (H1N1) hasn’t hit most U.S. college campuses, college health officials are starting to take precautions, including cancelling study abroad programs in Mexico, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (“Swine Flu Prompts More Colleges to Cancel Study-Abroad Programs in Mexico,” April 28, 2009).

Earlier this week, the University of Minnesota announced it was suspending “all current and planned education abroad programs in Mexico until further notice” and advised its 21 students currently studying in Mexico to return immediately. The school also canceled several other Mexico-bound programs, involving an additional 52 students that were set to depart in May.

The University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire said that it would not be proceeding with its six-week summer program in Mexico, scheduled to begin May 26. The 23 participating students will be given the option to study abroad in Costa Rica instead.

Officials at Butler University in Indianapolis have called off a three–week Spanish language immersion program for more than a dozen students, which was scheduled to begin in about two weeks.

And study abroad administrators at Pennsylvania State University at Altoona said they would be calling off a program in the Mexican cities of Guanajuato and Mexico City, which was to begin in just over a week.

Many college officials are adopting a “wait-and-see” attitude regarding the spread of the swine flu virus in the United States to see how it may affect their campuses and are closely monitoring reports from the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance.

So far, only two institutions — both in the state of Massachusetts — have reported possible cases of infection of the swine flu virus: Amherst College and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and clinic.

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2009 College Grads: If You Can Find a Job, Expect a Lower Salary

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:14:00 GMT

Getting a decent job this spring is going to be tough: not only are employers projecting that they’ll hire 22 percent fewer college graduates, but they also plan to pay those graduates less than their peers were paid last year, according to The National Association of Colleges and Employers (“Most 2009 College Grads Find Lower Salary Offers,” BusinessWeek, April 8, 2009).

Last year, a typical senior graduating in 2008 was offered a salary of $49,624, while a senior graduating in 2009 can expect almost $1,000 less. Just six months ago, the NACE reported that salaries were up 7.6 percent year-over-year. Now, however, the percentage of disciplines reporting a decline in salary offers has tripled, BusinessWeek reports.

Some majors, including engineering and accounting, are doing better than others, says Leslie Kohlberg, the undergraduate career services director at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Engineering majors, for example, are getting offers that are on average 2.3 percent higher than last year at $58,438, while accounting majors have seen their offers climb by an average of 2 percent to $48,438.

“The projections for the future are that there will be continuing demand for the accounting majors,” says Richard White, undergraduate career services director at Rutgers University.

Business Majors in Demand

Although business majors as a whole showed only marginal improvements in salary offers over 2008 — with the average offer rising just 1 percent to $46,973 — business administration and business management majors did significantly better, with the average offer increasing 3.6 percent to $45,778. Finance majors also reported healthy hikes in their offers, up 2.3 percent to $49,754.

By comparison, recent graduates with liberal arts majors aren’t fairing as well as their business peers, with offers remaining flat at $36,807 compared to 2008 salaries.

And computer science majors, typically among the highest paid professionals, are seeing a drastic 11-percent drop in their salary offers compared to last year, which are down from an average of $65,379 last year to an average of $58,837 this spring.

Internships: Hope on the Horizon

Since graduates will be facing stiff competition when attempting to find full-time employment, some may opt to get their foot in the door with a prospective employer beforehand by landing an internship.

According to figures from their 2009 survey, NACE says that internship hiring is down 21 percent, yet, internship pay is up 5 percent. Pay is up partially because employers, holding out hope that the economy will rebound by next year, want to maintain a strong talent pipeline of new hires, BusinessWeek suggests.

Many employers are bumping up internship salaries and are even considering expanding benefits to ensure they get the best possible candidates for future positions, said Camille Luckenbaugh, who conducted the internship survey for NACE.

“Employers,” she added, “are saying ‘we don't have a lot of jobs but these [internship] programs are still really important to us and we still need to remain competitive.’ ”

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SAT and ACT Tests Not the Best Predictors of College Success, Study Finds

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:12:00 GMT

The colleges and universities that use students’ SAT and ACT standardized test scores when making college admissions and financial aid decisions should base these decisions on tests that more closely reflect a student’s high school achievement and understanding of the high school curriculum, according to the recommendations made by a new commission comprised of influential college admissions officials.

The commission, led by William R. Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Harvard University, recently completed a yearlong study that questioned the relevancy of SAT and ACT tests for college admissions (“College Panel Calls for Less Focus on SATs,” The New York Times, Sept. 21, 2008).

“It would be much better for the country,” Fitzsimmons says, “to have students focusing on high school courses that, based on evidence, will prepare them well for college and also prepare them well for the real world beyond college, instead of their spending enormous amounts of time trying to game the SAT.”

Admissions officers should rely instead on exams that are closer linked to high school curriculum like the College Board’s Advanced Placement tests and SAT Subject Tests and the International Baccalaureate exams when making admissions decisions, Fitzsimmons says. Unlike the SAT and ACT exams, he argues, these other tests have fewer ties to the billion-dollar test-prep industry.

Test Scores Indicate Students Who Are Well-Off Have An Advantage

Fitzsimmons’ research group, convened by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, found that the nature of standardized testing places less emphasis on students learning their high school curriculum and more emphasis on test preparation — a discrepancy that favors affluent students who can afford test-prep resources.

The commission’s report found that standardized test scores emphasized the socio-economic differences of the SAT’s and ACT’s test-taking population and were reflective of a student’s race and ethnicity, socio-economic class, and their family’s level of educational attainment.

“Society likes to think that the SAT measures people’s ability or merit,” Fitzsimmons says. “But no one in college admissions who visits the range of secondary schools we visit, and goes to the communities we visit … can come away thinking that standardized tests can be a measure of someone’s true worth or ability.”

Testing Companies, Schools Disagree on Report’s Findings

Representatives from the College Board — which administers the SAT exam, taken by 1.6 million high school students this year — and ACT Inc. — which is responsible for the ACT exam, taken by 1.4 million students this year — both disputed the report’s findings. The companies contend that their tests do measure students’ understanding of classroom material, not just their test-preparation skills, according to a Bloomberg article (“Colleges Shouldn’t Rely on SAT, ACT Tests Study Says,” Sept. 22, 2008).

“Hundreds of national research studies show that the SAT is a valid predictor of college success,” the College Board wrote in a statement. “We have long advised that the use of the SAT in the admission process is in combination with high school grades.”

Prior to the report’s recommendations, only 280 four-year schools, including Wake Forest University, Smith College, Bates College, and the University of Wisconsin, had stopped requiring the standardized tests for admissions, and the report calls for more schools to follow suit.

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Laptop Bans by College Professors May Improve Class Discussions

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:39:00 GMT

Some professors at the nation’s most prominent law schools are resorting to classroom laptop bans to help reengage law students in lectures and discussions, and, despite students’ claims that the anti-laptop policies deny them a proper education, professors are seeing positive results, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Law Professors Rule Laptops Out of Order in Class,” June 13, 2008).

Don Herzog, University of Michigan Law School professor, conducted a one-day laptop ban as an experiment.

“Not only was I stunned by how much better the class was, the students volunteered that it was much better,” he said. Herzog will make the ban permanent when he begins teaching again this fall after completing his sabbatical.

In addition to Herzog, law professors at Florida International University, the University of Wisconsin, Georgetown, and Harvard, have enacted laptop-ban policies for their classroom lectures.

David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, stopped allowing his students to bring laptops to class two years go. A survey of Cole’s students conducted last year regarding his “no laptop” policy found that approximately 75 percent of his students favored the laptop ban and 95 percent admitted to using the internet to engage in activities not related to the class lecture.

“If half the people [in class] are checked out, then the conversation just isn’t going to be as rich,” Cole said.

Not All Educators Agree with Anti-Laptop Policies

Ann Althouse, University of Wisconsin Law School professor, says that there will always be distracted students with or without the internet. Before the web, she says, students doodled, fidgeted, or stared absentmindedly out the window.

“The idea that we're going to somehow save these students from being distracted is a bit absurd,” Althouse told the Chronicle.

With the proliferation of iPhones, Blackberrys, and other PDAs, it may soon be difficult to regulate who’s surfing the Web, says Harvard Business School professor John Deighton.

“Ultimately the only way to ensure that a class member is not on the Web,” he says, “is to conduct an engaging class.”

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University of Wisconsin Students Win $10K in Business Plan Competition

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:42:00 GMT

Sky Vegetables — the brainchild of University of Wisconsin-Madison business students Keith Agoada and Troy Vosseller — was the grand prize winning idea of the school’s 2008 G. Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“High-Minded Idea,” May 23, 2008).

Agoada, a senior marketing major, and Vosseller, a graduate student pursuing his MBA, won $10,000 for their plan to construct and operate commercial hydroponic greenhouses on the rooftops of supermarkets across the United States.

Sky Vegetables would employ specially trained hydroponic farmers who would cultivate fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs in a nutrient-rich solution instead of soil. Since this liquid weighs significantly less than soil, the students say, the supermarket rooftop greenhouses will not cause any undue strain on the buildings.

Key components of the students’ business model involve an elimination of carbon emissions — no transportation would be required to bring the produce to market — and the use of camera-monitored greenhouses that will allow customers to see where their food is being grown.

"These farms in California — you have no idea what goes on," Agoada said. "We're saying that we're so confident in our product, we'll even show you how we make it."

Agoada and Vosseller have entered their business model into the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest. The take-home prize of $200,000 could end up being the seed money to carry the students’ new venture forward.

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Credit Unions Offer Themselves as Partial Solution to Looming Student Loan Crisis

Student Loan Girl — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:19:00 GMT

In the last six months alone, since legislators eliminated over $21 billion in subsidies to student loan lenders in the Federal Family Education Loan Program, at least 44 FFELP lenders have stopped originating federal student loans.

This exodus of lenders from the federal student loan program, combined with the current credit and liquidity crunch resulting from an epidemic of defaulted mortgages, may leave many college students scrambling for money for school this fall.

In an effort to help avoid a student loan crisis before it starts, a group of credit unions serving students in California, Texas, and Wisconsin is lobbying for federal subsidies that would allow credit unions to provide significantly more loan capital for students.

Last September, federal legislation set two lender subsidy rates on federally guaranteed student loans, one rate that applies to for-profit lenders and a second for state-chartered nonprofit agencies, explains Paul Basken of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

When those rates were set, credit unions, which are essentially nonprofit banks, were left out of the picture, neither subject to the for-profit lender rate nor eligible for the nonprofit rate which is guaranteed only to state-chartered lenders.

Now, writes Basken, as more for-profit bank and nonbank lenders abandon the FFEL program each week, the credit unions seek legislation that would make them eligible for the nonprofit subsidy rate (“Credit Unions Will Lobby Congress for Loan-Subsidy Benefits Accorded to Nonprofit Lenders,” April 4, 2008).

A Viable Source for More Student Loans?

Credit unions currently provide less than 1 percent of all FFELP loans, according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, a financial aid website.

However, credit unions could offer significantly more volume at some institutions, Michael K. Kim, vice president for student services at the USC Credit Union, told The Chronicle.

The USC Credit Union provided 30 percent of all federal student loans at the University of Southern California last year, and Kim believes the USC Credit Union could double its student loan lending to $200 million to provide financing for any students unable to find another lender.

Although Kim thinks the credit union might find a way to double its student loans even without the nonprofit subsidy, the nonprofit rate would help.

One of the key selling points in the credit unions’ lobbying efforts, Basken writes, may be the fact that credit unions have a ready pool of capital — their customer deposits — from which to lend. In contrast, nonbank lenders, who don’t hold funding capital, must find external funding sources for their student loans and thus have been more vulnerable to the liquidity crisis that’s followed the fallout in mortgage lending.

Joining Kim’s Southern California credit-union group in lobbying Congress next week for the nonprofit subsidy rate are the UW Credit Union, serving universities in Wisconsin, and the University Federal Credit Union, which serves more than 100 colleges and employers in central Texas.

More, but Still Not Enough

An advisor from Senator Edward Kennedy’s office recently expressed support for the credit unions’ request that their proposal for inclusion in the nonprofit subsidy rate be added to the legislation for reauthorization of the Higher Education Act currently before Congress.

Kantrowitz believes that the credit unions’ subsidy proposal is reasonable since they’re nonprofit entities whose earnings don’t benefit outside investors.

On the other hand, he says, the additional loan volume credit unions could provide for the federally backed student loan program will likely not be enough to staunch the tide of students that may potentially be unable to find lenders this fall.

Kantrowitz further points out that among the 100 largest lenders in the federal student loan program, only three are credit unions.

“If credit unions can double their volume, that’s a 5-percent solution,” Kantrowitz says. “It could be part of the solution, but not even close to the entire solution.”

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