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,” ...

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 ...

In economic downturns, colleges and universities become flooded with students of all ages looking to better prepare themselves for an increasingly competitive job market. But these schools haven’t been immune to the effects of today’s recession. Fortunately, for every recent economic downturn in higher education — tuition hikes, state budget ...

It seems that everyone is getting a piece of the government’s “bailout pie,” including banks, automakers, and perhaps even the nation’s colleges and universities, although exactly how much schools will get and when they will get it has not yet been established, reports Inside Higher Ed (“Manna From Heaven (er, Washington),” Jan. 16, 2009). ...

As the economic downturn continues to impact families’ ability to pay for college, schools are redirecting their fundraising efforts to focus on financial aid, reports The Wall Street Journal (“Colleges Shift Donor Appeals Toward Student Aid,” Nov. 19, 2008). In order to help meet the increased demand for financial aid, some schools are ...

The student loan crunch that began this past spring failed to become the widespread crisis that experts predicted, according to the results of a survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. Still, the NAICU reports, some of the private colleges surveyed have had to scramble to help their ...

Under new federal legislation, many students at for-profit institutions have seen the amount of their Pell and federal student loan awards increase and a larger number these students have been able to cover all their college costs with just these two types of federal financial aid, according to an article in The Chronicle of ...

On Feb. 16, 2007 the “first higher education hearing of the 110th Congress” took place before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, according to a Feb. 19, 2007 article titled “Scattered Thoughts on Student Aid” by Doug Lederman and Sarah Rosser that appeared in Inside Higher Ed.   After reading the article, it made me ...

Doug Lederman reports in the Jan. 3 edition of Inside Higher Ed on an interview he conducted with Sara Martinez Tucker, the newly confirmed U.S. under secretary for education. The article is titled, “The New Top Fed for Higher Ed,” and a full podcast version of the interview can be found on their website at ...