Student Loan Blog : community college

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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Rejected: San Jose State U Says ‘No’ to 4,400 Qualified Students

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:43:00 GMT

For the first time, San Jose State University has turned away qualified students from its freshmen class — 4,400 students who live outside the county, to be exact — saying that budget cutbacks have forced the university to scale back enrollment, reports the San Jose Mercury News (“San Jose State University Rejects 4,400 Prospective Freshmen,” March 25, 2009).

Transfer students who had just completed their first year at a community college or applicants who were seeking their second bachelor’s degree were among those denied admission.

“The situation is unprecedented,” said Veril Phillips, vice president for student affairs at San Jose State. “We’ve never had a situation where there were so many applicants and we were not able to accommodate them.”

School administrators were told on Nov. 20 by California State University system chancellor Charles Reed to cap enrollment since funding hadn’t kept pace with the growing number of applications. The CSU system received approximately 10 percent less funding than it needed to meet current demand, the Mercury News reported.

As a result, San Jose State was forced to accept only 29,750 students for the upcoming 2009-10 school year — a 9 percent dip from the 32,750 students the school enrolled last school year. Qualified students who applied prior to Nov. 20 were accepted, regardless of where they lived. After that date, however, only qualified Santa Clara County residents were admitted.

“Some students didn’t get in that applied. But most of them made other plans, to Cal State University-Monterey Bay or Cabrillo Community College,” said Julie Edwards Levy, manager of career services at Scotts Valley High School.

“They’re working with what they have to work with,” she added. “They’re not happy but they’re figuring it out.”

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CUNY Wants to Be a Model for Community College Education

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:53:00 GMT

The City University of New York school system hopes to open a “college of the future” that would limit enrollment to under 5,000 students, offer degrees or certificates only in fields with promising job growth, and serve as a model for community colleges nationwide, The New York Times reports (“CUNY Plans New Approach to Community College,” Jan. 26, 2009).

The proposed Manhattan community college is set to open in two years, but planning for the school has only gone as far as a 120-page blueprint. CUNY is currently tapping a number of private donors to help fund the new school, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to help double the number of postsecondary graduates in the United States by 2025.

Students of the proposed college would be required to attend a four-to-six week summer orientation, take classes full time, and keep in close and consistent contact with academic advisors. The school’s curriculum would focus heavily on math and literacy.

Pilot Program Shows Initial Successes

For two years CUNY has been successfully incorporating many of the proposed ideas for the new college into a system-wide pilot program called the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, known as ASAP.

The 1,132 students enrolled in ASAP receive free tuition, books, and commuter passes for the New York metro system. Students also are given priority over other CUNY students for class registration, making it easier for them to manage work and school schedules, and the opportunity to meet with counselors twice a month.

ASAP students have earned higher grade point averages than CUNY students not in the program, a 2.61 GPA compared to a 2.43, and have taken more credit hours than non-ASAP students, 11 credit hours compared to 9.6. And 80 percent of ASAP students have remained enrolled at CUNY after two years, compared to 60 percent of CUNY students not involved in the program.

“What we promised was that within three years, we would graduate half the students who came in,” says CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. “We are on track to do that.”

CUNY School Could Start a Community College Trend

Goldstein says the proposed college, which would be New York’s first new two-year school in 37 years, could help free up resources at CUNY’s six existing schools, which have experienced a 31-percent increase over the past decade, and could help improve the community college system’s 30-percent graduation rate.

In the long run, Goldstein believes that CUNY’s proposed higher education curriculum could serve as a model for the nation’s 1,045 two-year schools, which currently enroll 6.2 million students, about 35 percent of the nation’s college students.

Goldstein says institutions of higher education “need bold and new approaches” to how they engage, support, and educate students.

“Our students will face increasingly competitive pressures in an unforgiving economy, and getting a degree matters,” he told the State Assembly’s Committee on Higher Education during a budget cut hearing. “It is therefore in their interest to attend community colleges where the focus is on high standards and degree completion.”

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Two-Year Colleges Will Be Most Affected by State Budget Deficits

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:12:00 GMT

The financial outlook for community colleges in nearly half of all states is “not good,” with many institutions anticipating midyear cuts in funding, according to a member survey by the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges (“State Budgets Are Likely to Squeeze 2-Year Colleges,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 7, 2008).

But this “not good” outlook may not even address the full extent of state budget problems for community colleges, being that respondents began completing their surveys prior to Wall Street’s huge drop in mid-September, the Chronicle reports.

More than half of the 22 surveys that came in after September 18 indicated that a midyear budget cut was likely. But the long-term state budget trends may have the most substantial impact on schools. The survey found that three in five respondents said chronic state budget deficits, due in large part to state spending on Medicaid, will hurt public schools, particularly community colleges, in the future.

“Medicaid, corrections, and K-12 impose incredible structural restraints on state budgets,” said James Palmer, director of the Grapevine Project, which conducts annual surveys on state-tax support for higher education. “We have been aware of these problems for some time, and over the last year, a growing number of folks in higher education have become more aware of how spending in these other areas causes pain for colleges.”

While many governors have petitioned Congress for another federal stimulus package that would, in part, help states overcome their budget shortfalls, Palmer says that the stimulus package would only help colleges rebound if it included a provision to alleviate state’s Medicaid costs.

Survey Findings Indicate States’ Widening Fiscal Crisis:

Eighteen of 28 states weren’t able to get the all the state funds they needed to operate at full capacity in 2007-08 academic year.

In the public education sectors, including secondary and elementary schools, community colleges experienced the biggest drop in state appropriations, 5.2 percent. State appropriations to flagship universities, in comparison, only declined 1.8 percent.

69 percent of survey respondents said that rural community colleges would suffer the most from tight state budgets, compared with 54 percent who said that suburban community colleges would face the most strain and 46 percent who believed that urban community colleges would fare the worst.

In 28 states, college tuition increases since 2000 had far outstripped state-based student aid. And in a full eleven states, need-based aid amounts designated in the most recently passed state budgets had not kept pace with tuition increases.

Only four states had need-based aid programs with enough funds to enable low-income students to complete college without going into debt. The percentage of students who graduate with "significant loan debt" had grown in the last few years in 21 states.

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FBI Investigates California College That Overpaid Financial Aid to Some Students, Underpaid Others

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:32:00 GMT

A California community college is being investigated by the FBI and the Department of Education for overpaying students more than $327,000 in financial aid during the 2005–06 school year, reports the Contra Costa Times (“Berkeley City College Overpaid Financial Aid,” Oct. 8, 2008).

Berkeley City College, under former financial aid director Robert Vergas, was also found to have underpaid Pell Grant recipients by nearly $40,000.

The federal government has ordered Berkeley City College to repay the Department of Education for the funds it overpaid to its students. The school has already repaid $40,000 and will pay about $37,000 per quarter until the balance is paid off.

The school must also pay the affected Pell Grant recipients the remainder of the grant awards that they should have originally received.

An independent audit of Berkeley City College found, in all, more than 400 mistakes in the files of 1,135 financial aid recipients.

Vergas, who retired in April shortly before he was to be fired by the community college district for “negligence and incompetence,” has denied any wrongdoing and said he is being blamed for deficiencies in the school’s financial aid process.

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Gas Prices Put the Squeeze on Community College Students

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

With gasoline prices approaching $5 a gallon, students who attend community colleges in rural America — where a one-way trip to school is often 30 miles or more — are being forced to make some tough decisions about school, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Rising Cost of Gas Pinches Rural Community Colleges,” June 11, 2008).

Many students are dropping out while others are opting for online classes to get some relief from premium prices at the pump.

“Every time you fill the truck up, it costs $10 more a week than it did a year ago,” said Paul Kraft, director of student services at the University of New Mexico-Gallup. “That's $10 that's not being spent somewhere else.”

Though community college officials in these rural areas are concerned that the high gas prices may adversely affect enrollment numbers, many administrators say they may have to wait for this fall’s numbers to get a more accurate picture.

“Out here, people are used to driving long distances. But they aren't used to paying that much per gallon of gas,” said Joe McCann, president of Williston State College in North Dakota. “Whether they will be [willing to] next fall, I don't know.”

In an effort to make their commutes as painless as possible, many students in the process of registering for classes have taken a different approach: they’re trying to cram more classes into as few days per week as possible.

To accommodate these scheduling preferences and to help cash- strapped students stay in school, some community colleges are now offering block scheduling which allows students to take more classes in a day and spend fewer days commuting.

At the University of New Mexico-Gallup, students have started signing up for block classes and at many rural community colleges including those in Mississippi and Minnesota, students have already been taking advantage of the four- day schedule.

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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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Banks Become More Selective, Leaving Some Colleges Without Student Loans

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:49:00 GMT

Students at community colleges, for-profit universities, and other less competitive institutions may have trouble finding a lender willing to offer them federal student loans as some of the nation’s biggest banks pare down the list of schools they serve, according to an article that appeared today in The New York Times (“Student Loans Start to Bypass 2-Year Colleges,” June 2, 2008).

Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, PNC, and SunTrust are no longer offering student loans to certain colleges — schools that the banks have determined tend toward higher default rates, fewer borrowers, and small loan amounts that make business less profitable.

More than 6.2 million — over 40 percent — of the nation’s undergraduates attend community colleges. These students, according to the College Board, borrow an average of $3,200 a year.

In late May, Citibank, one of the nation’s largest providers of student loans, announced its student lending division, the Student Loan Corporation, would temporarily suspend lending to schools whose borrowers tend to have college loans with “lower balances and shorter periods over which we earn interest.” Citibank also announced it would cease lending to schools it anticipated to have minimal loan volume.

“The logic is so flawed, that for us to have volume with them in the future, we have to have had volume with them in the past,” said Korey Compaan, financial aid director at William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif. To deny federal student loans to students based simply on the college they attend, he said, is “totally and completely unethical.”

Sallie Mae and Nelnet have recently reaffirmed their commitment to offering federal college loans regardless of the institution a student attends. And Wells Fargo has contacted financial aid administrators at schools dropped by Citibank to express a willingness to lend to their students.

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Community Colleges Eliminate Friday Classes to Help Students Cut Gas Costs

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:54:00 GMT

Several two-year schools with large numbers of commuter students have reduced the length of their academic week from five days to four in an effort to reduce their students’ commute and help them save money on gas.

Making class sessions longer, these schools have been able to cancel classes one day a week, mostly opting for Fridays. This move has allowed their students, who are typically low-income and often work part-time jobs or support families while going to school, to eliminate one round-trip drive out of their weekly schedules.

Meridian Community College in Mississippi recently decided to extend its four-day week — already planned for the summer schedule — into the fall semester as well, according to a story in Inside Higher Ed (“Dropping a Day to Save on Gas,” May 19, 2008).

MCC president Scott Elliot told Inside Higher Ed that 90 percent of Meridian’s students drive themselves to class, and over half of those students commute an average of 30 miles round trip. By his initial estimates, based on earlier gas prices, which have continued to rise, these students will save at least $200 a semester on gas under the new class schedule.

The school plans to try the four-day-week schedule for at least one academic year before evaluating its effectiveness with focus groups and surveys.

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$50 Million Given to California Community Colleges to Aid Needy Students

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:30:00 GMT

In what may be the largest gift ever donated to the nation’s community colleges, the San Francisco–based Bernard Osher Foundation recently announced that it has pledged up to $50 million to help needy students attending California’s two-year institutions, writes Matt Krupnick of The Mercury News (“Endowment to Aid Needy Students,” May 5, 2008).

The gift funds will be placed in an endowment that will be managed by the Foundation for California Community Colleges, with $25 million to be paid immediately and the remainder to be paid over the course of the next three years. In order to receive the second $25 million, the FCCC must raise $50 million on its own during that three-year time period.

California’s community colleges serve nearly 25 percent of the nation’s community college students, with 2.6 million students enrolled each year, and comprise the world’s largest public college system.

To Bernard Osher Foundation President, Mary Bitterman, it had become clear that the state’s community colleges needed more financial assistance than the four-year universities to which the Foundation has already given millions.

“The more we have focused on the needs of California, we have really begun to look at the critical role community colleges play,” Bitterman said. “Our trustees decided that we would really like to help community college students.”

The Bernard Osher Foundation followed its initial donation with the announcement of an additional pledge of $20 million to multiple campuses within the University of California and California State University systems, to establish endowed scholarships for students transferring from California community colleges.

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Bond Package Touted as ‘Largest-Ever Capital Infusion’ For Virginia Colleges

Student Loan Girl — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:22:00 GMT

The Virginia General Assembly unanimously approved a $1.5 billion borrowing package that would fund construction projects for colleges and universities in the state’s South Hampton Roads region.

The bond package — expected to be signed into law by Gov. Timothy Kaine — was the product of lengthy negotiations on 77 proposed amendments between the state House and Senate, according to an article in The Virginian-Pilot (“Hampton Roads Colleges to Get $205 Million in Bond Package,” April 24, 2008).

The bond initiative was largely designed to finance building projects at colleges and universities across the state and would be “the largest-ever capital infusion for our academic institutions,” state Speaker of the House William Howell told the newspaper.

Some $205 million of the $1.5 billion bond will be distributed among four South Hampton Roads colleges and universities for various projects:

$59 million, Eastern Virginia Medical School: To build new classrooms that would allow the school to expand its enrollment of 440 students by 30 percent.

$57.5, Tidewater Community College: For construction of a new learning resources building on its Beach campus and a new academic building on its Chesapeake campus.

$45.1, Norfolk State University: For the construction of a new library building.

$43.6, Old Dominion University: To build a counseling center and an arts center and to buy an existing facility.

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Financial Industry Woes Affecting Commercial Education

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:02:00 GMT

The current credit crisis, combined with recent legislation cutting federal subsidy payments to student loan companies that make federally guaranteed student loans, has begun to take a noticeable toll on commercial education companies.

The past few months have seen student loan companies pulling back on now-unprofitable federal student loans and tightening credit restrictions on their private student loans.

With investors fearful that the dwindling availability of student loan financing will lead to lower enrollment numbers, chains like ITT Educational Services, Corinthian Colleges, Inc., and Career Education Corporation have seen their shares fall between 30 and 55 percent since November, according to a New York Times article by Jonathan D. Glater (“As Lending Tightens, Education Could Suffer,” Feb. 19, 2008).

The Push and Pull of Commercial Colleges

These commercial schools, largely offering hands-on instruction in applied areas such as health care, computers, the culinary arts, and automotive repair, would typically expect to see growing enrollment during an economic slump like this one. Layoffs and a flagging job market tend to push individuals back to school, and plunging interest rates make student loans less costly for those needing to finance their education.

In the current economy, however, with lenders in every sector afraid of the kind of credit exposure that led to the subprime meltdown, consumer interest rates on everything from home loans to student loans have stayed steady, despite cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve totaling 1.5 points since December.

Commercial colleges typically charge higher tuition than public two-year institutions. Compounded by the fact that these schools have lower graduation rates and tend to be more likely to attract those who would be regarded as risky borrowing prospects — low-income students with poor or unestablished credit histories — potential students may not be able to get enough of the funds they need to attend one of these commercial college programs.

Since federal student loans carry borrowing limits, the higher tuition means that commercial education students must often look to private student loans to supplement their federal aid.

But with student loan companies tightening borrowing restrictions on their private student loans, and with several no longer offering federal student loans at all, these commercial ed students may find themselves increasingly unable to secure the financial aid they need.

Schools Seeking Ways to Adjust to Market Changes

As student loan companies withdraw from the federal student loan market and enforce stricter credit standards on their private student loans, the commercial college chains have begun exploring alternatives to help their students pay for classes, in order to keep their enrollment numbers from plummeting.

Corinthian, Career Education, and ITT have all announced efforts to find new lenders, make arrangements to preserve student loans, and expand their own lending programs.

These moves, writes Glater, point to “how dependent this sector of education is on student loans and how vulnerable the industry could become if credit woes continue to make it harder for lenders to raise capital.”

Lending Lockdown Could Begin to Affect More Students

Ultimately, the student loan crunch may reverberate beyond just commercial colleges.

“So far, problems have yet to be felt by most students,” Glater acknowledges. “But some in the lending industry have begun to warn that there may be fewer borrowing options, even for traditional students, in the fall.”

In the meantime, Michael Dannenberg, director for education policy at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., suggests that students who are already having trouble qualifying for the private financing they need for a commercial education consider less costly two-year community colleges that have open enrollment.

Or, as Glater offers, these students may look to enroll in one of the commercial schools that charges lower tuition, which could be covered entirely by federal financial aid.

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A Sign of the Times, Calling Community Colleges Home

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:23:00 GMT

Traditionally, community colleges have been known as commuter campuses where students can come and go—they show up for classes and then head home. But now, as the affordability of community colleges lures more students away from traditional four-year universities, more community colleges are building one-, two-, and three-plus–bedroom apartments to house their students, according to a recent article by Jennifer Epstein in Inside Higher Ed (“Going Residential”, July 13, 2007). “Of the 1,100 colleges represented by the American Association of Community Colleges, 233 public colleges and about 40 private colleges offer some on-campus housing to their students,” Epstein writes.

Norma Kent, spokeswoman for the AACC, is quoted as saying that the full picture hasn’t officially been documented, but “with more traditional-age students enrolling at community colleges for a variety of reasons, colleges and students seem more receptive to on-campus housing. They want that college experience.”

Demand is Growing

Epstein points to results at Jackson Community College in Jackson, Mich., which will open a $6.8 million 24-suite building next month, as confirmation that students of two-year institutions also want the convenience of on-campus living found at most four-year universities. So far, 96 students plan to move into Jackson’s apartment-style suites, which feature four single bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full eat-in kitchen and hardwood floors. The Jackson housing community, the brainchild of college president Daniel J. Phelan and the first of three planned for the campus, met early resistance. “People were saying, ‘This is not what community college is about,’ ” Cindy Allen, Jackson’s director of community relations, is quoted as saying in Epstein’s article. “But we did two surveys ... and found that it was exactly what would bring traditional-age students here.” One survey found 700 students wanted to live on campus, while a more conservative study estimated that number at 400 students.

While Jackson is just getting its on-campus housing off the ground, Monroe Community College has been a player in the student housing game since 2003. Its foray into the world of residential life began with 410 students, and this fall, the Rochester, N.Y., college is set to welcome another 366 students. While the move has proven successful for Monroe (all beds are filled, and there’s now a waiting list), Epstein writes, the school found it needed to expand its student services. Monroe has made improvements to its dining and health services, intramural sports and extracurricular activities. Dorms, Epstein explains, have begun hosting “dodgeball games, pre-Halloween pumpkin carving and move-in day barbeques and ice cream socials.” This may be why Susan M. Salvador, Monroe’s vice president of student services, says students have developed “a different sense of community among themselves and on campus.”

Community Colleges Aren’t Major League Yet

Even though the demand for on-campus living is growing, Epstein points out, most community colleges with dorms are still only equipped to house a small fraction of their students on campus. At the College of the Siskiyous, in Weed, Calif., for example, there are only 136 beds for roughly 3,000 enrolled students. At Casper College in Casper, Wyo., 34 percent of first-year students and just 14 percent of all students are housed on campus. And while St. Cloud Community College in Concordia, Kan., has offered on-campus student housing since the 1970s, these apartments house only about 240 of the roughly 3,000 enrolled students and are “always filled to capacity.” Janet Eubanks, director of residential life at St. Cloud, estimates that 95 percent of the residents live too far away to commute to campus on a daily basis, Epstein writes.

So while some community colleges have played on-campus housing roulette longer than others, early residential construction may have been spurred by necessity and not necessarily business-savvy. But in today’s world of skyrocketing fuel prices and on-demand convenience, more college presidents like Jackson’s Phelan may realize there’s money to be made in offering a lifestyle that could only previously be found at four-year universities or community colleges in remote rural towns.

It is important to keep up to date on the effects of legislation and news on student loans and education. What goes on in government and in your state can have a great impact on your student loans and your college education.

For all the information you need about student loans, go to www.nextstudent.com.

Be sure to tune in next Wednesday for my next blog on student loan legislation in the news.

Student Loan Girl

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