Student Loan Blog

In another move to restructure the federal financial aid system, President Obama has proposed ending the government’s five-year foray into merit-based student aid and redirecting those financial aid funds to the need-based Pell Grant program, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education (“An Experiment in Merit-Based Student Aid Is Likely to End,” ...

Despite being hampered last year by a lack of investors and a lack of access to credit, federal student loan lenders are surviving the economic crisis — making the student loan market one of the few lending industries still able to thrive this year, The Wall Street Journal reports (“Tuition Ammunition: a Happy Lesson on Lending,” Jan. 6, ...

Rep. Thomas Petri, R-Wis., wrote to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings this week asking whether she plans to involve the Justice Department in the investigation of a federal subsidy loophole that benefited nonprofit student loan providers and may have cost the federal government nearly $1.2 billion (“Republican Lawmaker Presses ...

As cash-strapped lenders continue to drop out of the Federal Family Education Loan Program, the number of student loans originated for the 2008–09 school year through the government’s Direct Loan Program has increased by 43 percent, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education (“As ‘Crisis’ Deters Loan Companies, Direct Lending Sees ...

In an audit of the Department of Education, the department’s own inspector general blames the lack of participation in the government’s Academic Competitiveness and National Smart Grant programs on his department’s failure to effectively promote the programs, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Education Dept. Blamed for ...

Congressional aides hope to finalize a renewal of the Higher Education Act by Memorial Day that merges different versions of the proposed bill passed separately by the House of Representatives and the Senate last year, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Compromise Higher-Education Bill Takes Shape in ...

On May 7, President George Bush signed into law legislation intended to help stabilize the $85-billion student loan industry and to avert a predicted shortage in student loans. The law will allow the U.S. Department of Education to buy bundled student loans that lenders have been unable to sell to investors. Sales of these loans will ...

In an effort to better gauge the availability of federal student loans, the U.S. Department of Education is planning to issue an emergency survey to the 4,500 colleges that participate in the Federal Family Education Loan Program.With almost 50 FFELP lenders having already suspended their federal student loan programs, the survey — which will be ...