Student Loan Blog

Nonprofit Wyoming Student Loan Corp., the state’s largest student loan lender, has announced that, as of April 1, 2010, it will no longer be issuing any new parent or student loans. In a statement from president and CEO Phil Van Horn, the company, also known as WyoLoan, said that it will continue to fund any student loans that are already ...

Apollo Group Inc., the parent company of the University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit college in the country, announced on Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an “informal inquiry” into the company’s revenue accounting practices. This new probe, being conducted by the SEC’s enforcement unit, marks the second ...

While acting last Thursday to approve the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which will expand federal oversight of private student loans, a Congressional panel at the same time voted to reject a proposal that would have included school-sponsored “gap loans” under the authority of the new CFPA. The House Financial Services ...

Voting in support of the creation of a new federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a Congressional panel has laid the groundwork for expanded federal oversight of private student loans. In a vote last Thursday of 39 to 29 that fell largely along party lines, the House Financial Services Committee approved the Consumer Financial ...

After hitting a new high of $443 million in charge-offs on its student loans this past quarter, major student lender Sallie Mae anticipates a slowdown in these student loan defaults, the company announced during its third-quarter earnings call yesterday (SLM Corp. Q3 Earnings Call Transcript, Oct. 21, 2009). Although Sallie Mae’s student loan ...

Even as the recession has depressed consumer prices and the cost of living has fallen over the last year, college tuition rose in 2009, with the largest percentage increases coming at community colleges and public four-year schools — the mounting expense of an education revealed in the College Board’s latest reports on financial aid and the ...

For some students, four years of a college education is simply too much to afford. But by accelerating their college career to reduce the amount of time they spend in the classroom, these student are able to reduce their overall cost of college. How do they do it? For many students, the three-year college plan starts in high school. High ...

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,” ...

A bill to overhaul the student loan industry may reach Congress as early as next week; education-committee chairs are working behind the scenes on a piece of legislation that would eliminate the third-party student loan system called the Federal Family Education Loan Program, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (“Behind the Scenes, a ...

A large proportion of students who only take out non-federal private student loans to finance their education aren’t applying for federal financial aid at all, and it’s the application itself that may be culprit, a new study suggests (“Nightmare Application May Be Driving Students to Costly Loans,” Forbes, June 9, 2009). In his study of 250,000 ...