Student Loan Blog

A Milwaukee technical college is providing emergency student loans to some of its students after one of the college’s student loan providers announced it would not immediately have funds to issue the loans, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (“MATC Offers Emergency Loans After Edamerica Delays Payments,” Sept. 23, 2008). To assist ...

A third attempt to generate liquidity for the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority may be too little too late for some 40,000 Massachusetts college students, reports The Boston Globe (“Student Loan Authority May Not Get State Aid,” Aug. 14, 2008).In late July, MEFA announced that it wouldn’t have enough money to fund any new private ...

While college enrollment is only expected to grow by 300,000 students this year, some 1.3 million additional college students have already applied for federal financial aid — an increase of 17 percent, according to an article in U.S. News World Report (“Financial Aid Applications Jump 17 Percent,” Aug. 11, 2008). The U.S. Department of ...

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has set up a financial assistance website to help the 40,000 families who were previously served by the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority to find a new student loan provider for the 2008–09 academic year, following MEFA’s announcement on July 28 that it was suspending its private student loan ...

Although the turmoil in the nation’s credit markets has forced student loan providers, including some big banks, to stop offering federal and private student loans, these lenders’ financial troubles may provide the opening community banks need to get back into the student loan business, according to a guest editorial in The Boston ...

A student-loan borrower has filed a class-action lawsuit against student-loan lender Northstar Higher Education for allegedly breaking its contract with borrowers. In the suit, filed Monday with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Northstar is accused of breaking its contract by eliminating its “Total Higher Education Repayment Bonus,” a ...

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., sent a letter Monday to the American Association of Community Colleges, urging its members to enroll in the government’s Direct Loan Program in order to ensure community college students have access to student loans for the 2008–09 academic year.Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, ...

Several two-year schools with large numbers of commuter students have reduced the length of their academic week from five days to four in an effort to reduce their students’ commute and help them save money on gas.Making class sessions longer, these schools have been able to cancel classes one day a week, mostly opting for Fridays. This move has ...

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 ...

To help low-income students attend college, larger Pell Grants should be awarded to the most “financially needy” college students, according to a new report (“Window of Opportunity: Targeting Federal Grant Aid to Students With the Lowest Incomes”).In the report, researchers from the Institute For Higher Education Policy urged lawmakers to increase ...