Missouri Loan Forgiveness Program to Erase More Than $400,000 in Student Loans

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:08:00 GMT

As part of a statewide effort to support education in math and science, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority has agreed to forgive nearly $444,000 in student loans for almost 300 engineering and pre-engineering college students (“MOHELA Forgives Over $400,000 in Pre-Engineering Loan Program,” MarketWatch, Oct. 17, 2008).

The lender’s Prospective Engineering Student Loan Forgiveness Award Program will forgive up to $3,500 in federal Stafford student loans for any Missouri college freshman who enrolls in and completes two years of engineering classes in certain degree programs.

Students at 11 Missouri schools are eligible for the loan forgiveness program, which complements the state’s Math, Engineering, Technology, and Sciences Alliance (METS), an initiative created by Gov. Matt Blunt to improve student achievement in METS-based industries.

MOHELA’s loan forgiveness program will be funded, in part, by the revenues generated from tax-exempt bonds, says Raymond Bayer, Jr., MOHELA’s executive director and chief executive officer.

The state student loan agency also made a second announcement on Friday that it had recently closed on a $262.5 million bond issuance with Bank of America Securities (“MOHELA Announces $262.5 Million Bond Issuance,” MarketWatch, Oct. 17, 2008). This bond will give MOHELA the capital it needs to continue issuing federal student loans through the Federal Family Education Loan Program.

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India Engineering Institute Bans Foreign Internships to Help Retain Graduates

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:19:00 GMT

Despite producing approximately 240,000 engineering graduates every year, institutes of higher education in India graduate less than 1,000 engineering Ph.D.’s annually, because a vast majority of these students enroll in advanced degree programs in the United States or are absorbed by foreign job markets, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“India's Engineering Schools Losing Grads to U.S. Colleges, Jobs,” May 23, 2008).

This is true even at the seven of the country’s most highly-praised technology institutes where only one percent of students earning bachelor of technology degrees choose to pursue master's degrees, and only two percent of master’s degree recipients choose to pursue doctorate degrees.

At the Institute of Technology in Mumbai, 60 percent of the school’s engineering undergraduates choose foreign work or research internships at schools abroad like the University of Southern California or the Georgia Institute of Technology, with the intention of landing a spot in a U.S. graduate school or a position in a company outside India, according to another article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Elite Engineering School in India Bans Foreign Internships,” June 4, 2008).

In an attempt to reverse that trend and to encourage Indian engineers to pursue graduate studies or technical careers in India, the institute in Mumbai will no longer permit its students to partake in foreign research projects or foreign internships beginning in July.

Instead, undergraduate students will be required to work for an Indian research organization or company to earn academic credit for students’ mandatory internships.

“This move should help the students and the country,” said Ashok Misra, director of the Mumbai institute. “We want our students to see the excitement of engineering companies in India. We want our industry to see our exciting students.”

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Student Loan Blog : engineering majors

Missouri Loan Forgiveness Program to Erase More Than $400,000 in Student Loans

India Engineering Institute Bans Foreign Internships to Help Retain Graduates