Student Loan Blog : college students

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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Stimulus Funds Give Oregon Pell-Grant Recipients a Boost

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:54:00 GMT

Funding from President Obama’s stimulus plan will soon reach Oregon college students in the form of almost $280 million in Pell Grant funds, a 41-percent jump over the previous year, reports the Portland Business Journal (“Stimulus boosts Oregon Pell Grants to $279.4 million,” March 31, 2009).

This funding boost will translate to about a $500-award increase for Oregon Pell Grant recipients, which the students can use to offset the $18,500 in tuition it costs on average to attend one of the state’s six public institutions.

Approximately 10 percent of the nearly 180,000 students who enroll in Oregon’s public colleges and universities during the 2009–10 school year will benefit from the stimulus money; they could see their maximum Pell Grant award bumped up to as much as $5,350.

Donna Fossum, student financial aid director at Western Oregon University, says the new maximum award amount is almost enough to cover all tuition costs at her institution, at which about one-in- four students rely on Pell Grants to help pay for college.

At Portland State University, Oregon’s largest institution by enrollment, more than 45 percent of the school’s 27,000 students receive Pell Grants, the Portland Business Journal reports.

It’s “amazing” that Oregon college students are getting the extra money for school, says Mary Moller, the associate director of government relations for Portland State University.

Although the $500 increase may not seem like a deal big, says Phillip Rodgers, director of student financial aid at PSU, it matters to students. “They’re watching closely. Everything (that) helps them be able to afford going to school helps.”

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2010 College Enrollment Numbers May Not Be So Bad, Survey Reveals

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:51:00 GMT

Although school administrators across the nation are reporting an increase in applications, they’re worried about just how many college students will actually enroll in their institutions this fall as families continue to tighten their budgets amid this recession, reports Inside Higher Ed (“Parents’ View of the Economy,” March 30, 2009).

However, a new survey of parents of college students indicates that while administrators’ concerns are valid, the economy may not have affected parents’ finances as much as educators originally thought, particularly among parents whose children are entering their freshmen year. Eduventures, an organization that tracks higher education trends, surveyed 7,000 parents with college-age children at a mix of 19 public and private colleges and universities.

Eduventures found that a majority of parents with freshmen — about 66 percent — said the downturn won’t affect how they will finance their children’s education this upcoming fall.

Overall, relatively few parents told Eduventures that they would not enroll their children in college due to lack of funding, although some parents indicated that they might choose to enroll their children in less expensive institutions to cut costs.

Of those parents with students at private schools, less than 12 percent indicated that their children were considering transferring to a less expensive school, and nearly 7 percent said they would encourage their children to take some classes at a community college. Of these same private school parents, less than 3 percent indicated that their students wouldn’t be returning to college in the fall, and less than 0.5 percent said that their children were considering dropping out of college permanently.

The numbers were only slightly different for parents whose children attend public colleges, with almost 9 percent saying that their children may have to consider transferring schools and less than 3 percent who believed that their children would need to look at dropping out of college. Nearly 6 percent of these parents thought that their children would need to live at home instead of on campus this fall.

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Minnesota College Students May Miss Out on Pell Grant Increase

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:48:00 GMT

In spite of an increase to the maximum federal Pell Grant award of more than $800 — mandated by President Obama’s stimulus plan — Minnesota college students may not receive a single percent increase in funds due to the way the state distributes its Pell Grant awards, the Minnesota Daily reports (“Students Aren’t Guaranteed Pell Grant Increase,” March 2, 2009).

In Minnesota, federal Pell Grants — which are awarded to low-income students based on need — are linked to state grants. Historically, when a larger amount of Pell Grant money comes into the state than was expected, the Minnesota legislature reduces state grant awards.

This exact scenario occurred a year after Minnesota received a Pell Grant fund increase of $55 million in 2003. That year, the local legislature reduced state grants by about $18 million, resulting in almost 3,000 fewer students receiving state aid, according to the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.

“If [students] are getting both the state [grant] and the Pell [Grant], they’ll keep getting what they’ve always gotten, but I’m not sure if they will see any significant increase,” said Republican Sen. Claire Robling, the Senate Higher Education Committee’s ranking minority member.

Although MOHE, which distributes state aid, assures students that they should receive at least a portion of the increase from the stimulus funds, the Minnesota Senate’s Higher Education Committee members are concerned that the state’s $5 billion budget shortfall will force the state to redistribute excess student aid funds to programs that show a greater need than higher education.

At the same time that many students are wondering if they’ll ever see a portion of the $800 Pell Grant increase, University of Minnesota president Bob Bruininks says he has earmarked those funds for a different purpose. Faced with a $151 million budget cut, Bruininks is hoping that his institution will be able to use the stimulus money to hold the university’s tuition increase to 10 percent.

Rodrigo Zamith, a journalism senior at the university who receives Pell Grants, is worried about his bottom line. He’s afraid that students may start resenting state legislators if they redistribute the excess Pell Grant funds, intended for college students, to other programs.

“$800 for students matters a lot,” Zamith said. “For me, that’s two months worth of rent.”

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Restructuring of Pennsylvania Student Loan Agency’s Board Wouldn't Affect Tax-Exempt Status as Agency Claims

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:03:00 GMT

The Internal Revenue Service has reportedly disproven the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency’s claim that cutting the number of lawmakers on its board in half — as recommended by Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner — would threaten the state student loan agency’s tax-exempt status, according to an article in The Patriot-News (“PHEAA tax status not issue, IRS says,” Sept. 14, 2008).

A letter obtained by The Patriot-News confirms that an IRS official told Wagner’s Chief Counsel Robert Teplitz during a telephone conversation that the proposed board restructuring — based on an audit that found the agency to be lavishly overspending under the current lawmaker-dominated board — “would have ‘absolutely no effect’ ” on PHEAA’s tax-exempt status.

In response to the audit, Wagner proposed that PHEAA, the state’s student loan agency, replace half of the 16 lawmakers on its 20-member board with banking and community leaders, college and university officials, and a full-time college student to restore public confidence in the student loan agency.

James Preston, the CEO of PHEAA, had expressed concern that adhering to Wagner’s suggestion to reduce the number of legislators on the board would threaten the agency’s “tax-exempt status, the loss of which could reduce PHEAA’s ability to provide future public service programs.”

State Sen. Sean Logan, the vice chairman of PHEAA, said, however, that if the PHEAA receives written confirmation directly from the IRS, he would support Wagner’s proposal. “Reducing the number of legislators on the board is a reasonable thing to do,” Logan said.

Wagner’s recommendation followed a special audit of PHEAA’s spending practices between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2007, in which Wagner concluded that “The PHEAA was governed and managed within a culture that sometimes allowed self-reward to supersede fiscal prudence.”

The audit revealed that PHEAA board members used public money for facials, pedicures, culinary classes, and falconry lessons and spent $768,000 on trips to lavish resorts between 2000 and 2005. Wagner also found that the PHEAA’s 12 executives were grossly overpaid, prompting Wagner to recommend that the salaries of these executives, whose combined income totaled $121 million during the three-year period of the audit, be trimmed.

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Survey Shows New England Families Can Still Access Federal Student Loans, Despite Loss of Lenders

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:29:00 GMT

According to a regional survey of financial aid officers from 214 New England colleges and universities, students and parents have had few problems accessing federal student loans this year, but financial aid administrators have lingering doubts about how easily students will be able to secure college loans next year (“Student Loan Availability Survey of New England Colleges & Universities,” The New England Council, September 2008).

The survey, conducted by the New England Board of Higher Education and The New England Council, asked financial aid officers to describe how New England families fared following federal legislation that Congress passed in May to help families pay for college.

The legislation was designed to ensure that families still have access to federal student loans as private, third-party lenders — crippled by fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis that dried up traditional sources of funding and hurt by legislation that cut $21 billion in their federal subsidies — continue to drop their federal student loan programs.

To date, 104 of these lenders have stopped participating in the Federal Family Education Loan Program, through which borrowers take out their federal student and parent loans from third-party lenders rather than through the federal government.

Although some families were forced to find a new student loan provider after their former lender suspended its federal student loan programs, New England financial aid officers indicated that borrowers have not been deterred from seeking FFELP loans.

In fact, the survey revealed, more parent borrowers are seeking federal PLUS loans through FFELP lenders this fall and more students are taking out unsubsidized federal Stafford student loans.

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Concerns About Access to Student Loans Persist, Study Finds

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:42:00 GMT

Some financial aid administrators have lingering concerns that students may not be able to get the student loans they need to pay for college this year despite recently passed federal legislation designed to improve students’ access to those loans, according to a recent survey.

The survey, released this week by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, showed that NASFAA members who participated in the survey felt that the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act, HR 5715, may help to alleviate a student loan shortage in the short-term but that a long-term solution is still needed.

More than half of the financial aid administrators who responded to the survey said they had been dropped by at least one lender in the Federal Family Education Loan Program, even though that same lender is still offering student loans to other institutions. Several lenders in the FFEL program announced last spring that they would stop offering student loans to colleges with high default rates, low loan volumes, or both — a practice that 60 percent of the NASFAA members who responded to the survey say is discriminatory and should be prohibited by Congress.

Survey participants were split over the issue of private student loans, which are not backed by the federal government. About half said they thought students would have a more difficult time obtaining private student loans this year but most agreed that the private student loan market has stabilized.

The survey, however, revealed that only a quarter of financial aid administrators have a backup plan in place to handle any problems should the federal and private student loan markets face further disruptions.

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Committee Discusses Ways to Reduce College Students’ Credit Card Misuse

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:24:00 GMT

During testimony before the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, Benjamin Lawsky, deputy counselor to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, said predatory credit-card companies are taking advantage of college students (The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Cuomo Hopes to Have Investigation of Colleges’ Credit-Card Deals Finished by Fall,” June 26, 2008).

Credit card companies, Lawsky contends, offer free gifts to students when they apply for credit cards and the companies often withhold important information about the cards’ payment requirements and interest rates.

Kenneth Clayton, managing director of the American Bankers Association Card Policy Council, countered that students need to be more responsible credit card users. “Credit-card companies don’t give students an open check,” Clayton said.

Lawsky’s and Clayton’s comments were made before the consumer-credit subcommittee, which met June 26 to talk about ways to help students avoid credit-card debt and misuse. Options discussed during the hearing included adding a cosigner option, setting uniform standards for underwriting credit, and limiting exclusivity agreements between colleges and the companies that issue credit-cards.

Cuomo’s office expects to complete its investigation this fall into possible conflicts of interest between credit-card companies and the college officials who do business with them.

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Online Ordering Causing Mailroom Mayhem on College Campuses

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:46:00 GMT

The internet has completely changed the way college campuses operate, from class offerings and registration to college admissions and financial aid services. Now the technology is changing the way campuses deliver and receive mail. As more college students gravitate to online shopping, college and university mailrooms are overhauling their mail processing operations to accommodate the influx of packages.

Some pretty bizarre ones at that.

Car tires, barbecues, dishwashers, ant farms and air conditioners are just some of the orders college students are having mailed to their dorm rooms, according to a New York Times article by Jonathan D. Glater (“Majoring in Mailroom Management,” Nov. 21, 2007).

When students make their online purchases they often give little thought to the cost let alone the effect their shipping volume or types of packages they’re ordering will have on the mail processing centers at their schools. But for some schools, the adjustment has not been simple or cheap.

Revolutionizing the Mailroom At a Cost

The University of Southern California, for example, has experienced double the amount of their typical package volume in the last four years, expecting to process more than 67,000 packages by the end of this year. It has spent thousands of dollars adjusting their mail processing systems by building a new highly-complex mailroom almost as large as half a volleyball court for just one of their residence halls, Glater reports.

“Some folks don’t realize the logistical implications,” said Jeff Urdahl, the recently retired director of housing at USC, told the Times. “It’s a different world.”

Although online shopping statistics don’t exist for the college age demographic, according to shop.org, a division of the National Retail Foundation, internet buying increased nearly $220 billion last year and this year it is expected to top $259 billion.

And how are students paying for these purchases? Most interviewed for the Times article said their online shopping splurges are financed by college jobs, savings and parental allowances, but many students are also resorting to their good friends Visa, Master Card and American Express.

But students’ online ordering habits are not only affecting theirs and their parents’ bank accounts, they are also proving costly for the schools themselves. SUNY Binghamton spent $25,000 to implement a new bar code scanning system to track the increase of incoming packages, which rose from 33,000 in 2002 to 57,000 this year. Purchase College, also in New York, spent $37,000 on a similar system.

For Arizona State University, the second largest university in the country, the process became so cumbersome, the school chose to wash its hands clean of the mail distribution process and turned over all mail responsibilities to UPS.

Mindless Internet Shopping Hurts Students and Schools

The effect of students’ online spending is not isolated to schools; students’ bank accounts are taking huge hits as well. Credit and debit card use, necessary for online shopping, makes it much more difficult for students to keep track of their spending and their account balances.

Some students told the Times that they may buy something off the internet three times a week. This has led college students, according to Young Money, a student financial magazine, to have credit balances averaging $2,700, and as the popularity of internet shopping continues to rise, these numbers may only go up.

Students like Sarah Staton, a first year student at USC, don’t mask their online shopping activities; however they don’t quite seem to understand the effects it has on their finances.

“I do buy a lot of things, but it’s O.K. because I buy things that are cheap,” she told the Times. She admits to shopping on the internet more than two hours a day, especially for shoes. “How can I make a fashion statement if I don’t have the right shoes that match what I’m wearing?”

With this type of attitude, it looks like college mail centers and students will have to keep expanding their wallets.

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