Student Loan Blog : two year schools

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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Student Loan Default Rates In Nevada Rank Among Top In Nation

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:55:00 GMT

After ranking number one in the nation for student loan defaults for the last four years, Nevada managed to come in fifth this year with a 7.4-percent default rate based on the Education Department’s data for borrowers who began repaying their loans between October 2005, and September 2006.

To combat the state’s consistently high default rate, state colleges have spent the last six years reaching out to Nevada’s federal student loan borrowers who are late on their payments before they default on their loans, said Sharon Wurm, director of financial aid for Nevada’s public college system (“Nevada’s Rate of Default on College Loans Among Highest In The Nation,” Las Vegas Sun, Nov. 30, 2008).

Because Wurm has found that students feel more comfortable discussing their student loan repayment options with their school than with their lender, her office now contacts borrowers by email, ground mail, and telephone to discuss ways students can avert default, such as economic hardship deferments and forbearances. These options allow students to temporarily stop making payments or make reduced payments on their loans.

“[Nevada’s recent ranking] validates all the hard work that the institutions are doing,” Wurm said.

State Lacks Student Loan Default Demographic Data

While Nevada’s outreach initiative may be helping to improve the state’s default rate, Wurm said the state has limited data on the types of students that typically default and the reasons why so many college students continue to default.

One reason, Wurm suspects, may be the state’s low graduation rate. Currently, just 13 percent of Nevada students graduate from the public college system.

In general, students who attend two-year colleges or for-profit schools that offer certificates tend to have higher default rates because they more frequently drop out of school and typically graduate with lower earning potential than students who graduate from four-year institutions.

At the Las Vegas campus of Kaplan College, a for-profit institute offering one-year programs for medical insurance coding and billing 90 percent of students take out student loans, but about 60 percent of students drop out before graduation and 18.9 percent default on their loans.

The College of Southern Nevada, which only has a 4-percent default rate, has been working to improve its retention rate by contacting students when spotty attendance — one of the most common reasons why students do poorly in their classes — first starts to become a problem. The school’s program directors attempt to contact students by phone, ground mail, or via text message, which has helped absenteeism at the school drop by 13 percent since July 2007.

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College Tuition, Student Borrowing On the Rise In Down Economy

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:50:00 GMT

A new report has found that last year’s increases in college tuition were more on pace with rises in the Consumer Price Index — the measure of the average price of consumer goods and services. But despite the relative steadiness of college affordability, students still received record amounts of financial aid and borrowed more in student loans, according to findings of the College Board’s 2008 Trends in Higher Education Series.

The 2008 Trends in College Pricing report, which covers this academic year’s college costs, found that while the CPI rose nearly 5.6 percent this year, the average in-state tuition and fees at public four-year institutions increased by 6.4 percent to $6,585. Average tuition and fees at two-year public colleges jumped 4.7 percent to $2,402, and increased 5.9 percent at private four-year colleges and universities to $25,143.

“College prices are doing what other prices are doing. They’re not going up more rapidly; they’re just keeping pace,” said Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst for the College Board and a Skidmore College economics professor (“Downturn Expected to Drive Tuition Up,” The New York Times, Oct. 30, 2008).

Lagging Economy Could Spark Increased Demand for Financial Aid

The concern among education experts is that while tuition increases were milder and closer inline with the CPI this year, these numbers may already be out of date. Since the data was gathered before the economy began its downward spiral, students at both public and private institutions may be in for even larger tuition hikes and even more borrowing next year.

The current economic crunch has led many states to slash their higher education budgets. In order to compensate for the loss of state funds, public colleges and universities in more than 12 states have been forced to raise their tuition costs.

But the flagging economy hasn’t just affected state schools; private colleges and universities have had difficulties raising funds from private donors — their largest source of financing — and have had to push any increased costs onto students.

“Private colleges face a real quandary,” Baum said. “Everybody’s going to have more people applying for financial aid, and it could really be that they’re going to lose enrollment if they can’t meet the need.”

According to the 2008 Trends in Student Aid report, part of the College Board’s Trends in Higher Education Series, graduate and undergraduate students received more than $143 billion in federal financial aid last year, and borrowed $19 billion from state and private lending sources — figures that are expected to rise as the cost of college increases.

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