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CampusLogic. "Our old [award letter] process was 85% manual," says Neumann University's DFA. "The setup, template creation, mail-merge, Excel spreadsheets, those things were nothing compared to how overwhelming all of the information was for our students." Learn how different things are since Neumann maximized Colleague with AwardLetter by CampusLogic

Most Americans agree that obtaining some type of education beyond high school can help expand opportunities for students and lead to more well-paying jobs, according to a new survey from New America. At the same time, although most Americans surveyed believe the government should fund higher education, they are largely dissatisfied with the nation’s higher education system as it stands today, in large part due to the cost of college.

Meet Mendy Schmerer. Her career in financial aid began nearly 15 years ago. Upon graduating from college, Mendy accepted her first full-time job at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center's OneCard Office taking ID card pictures. "That got boring quickly, so when the loan coordinator position opened in financial aid, I jumped at the chance for the change," Mendy said. "All those years ago, I never would have guessed that I would have a career in financial aid, but now I wouldn’t change a thing."

If your plans have changed since you booked your room or registered for the 2018 NASFAA National Conference, act now. Tomorrow is the last day to cancel your room without penalty and Thursday, May 31 is the last day to cancel your conference registration. If you have had a change of plans, please go online to cancel your room and/or complete the Conference Cancellation & Change of Attendee Form. If you do not cancel your registration by 5:00 p.m. ET on May 31, you will be responsible for the full amount of the registration fees and will be billed.

NASFAA is accepting volunteers for the Assisting Displaced Students Working Group, which will assist students whose college or career school closed while they were enrolled, or shortly after they withdrew. Duties include responding to student submitted tickets on financial aid topics in a timely manner and providing NASFAA staff liaisons with questions for the Office of Federal Student Aid. View the working group charter and volunteer today.

You know the old saying, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Join us at 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, June 6 for the for a NASFAA webinar on the "Top Five Compliance Issues and How to Avoid Them." NASFAA presenters will review the compliance issues most often identified by the U.S. Department of Education and discuss ways to prevent them. We'll also share a few best practice initiatives to allow a comparison of how some of these issues are handled in your office. Register now.

The Fiscal Operations Report for 2017–18 and Application to Participate for 2019–20 (FISAP) in the Campus-Based programs is currently being revised. The Department is providing the attached draft versions of the FISAP, accompanying instructions, and technical reference so that schools can prepare the information needed for submission of the school's FISAP this fall. The final 2019–20 FISAP will be available in August 2018.

"It's a financial nightmare for public school teachers around the country: Federal grants they received to work in low-income schools were converted to thousands of dollars in loans that they now must pay back," NPR reports. "NPR revealed these problems in a series of recent stories. The Department of Education now tells NPR it has launched a new, 'top-to-bottom' internal review of all aspects of the TEACH grant program. Officials say the review is aimed at fixing the issues and that the department is 'absolutely committed to improving' the program."

"With the fate of the Obama-era program — canceled by President Donald Trump in 2017 — still tied up in the courts and Congress seemingly no closer to a fix, renewed debate has cropped up in the states about what to do about the thousands of recipients who want to attend college," NBC News reports.

"For more than a decade, the College Advising Corps has steadily built a network of nearly 650 dedicated college counselors in high schools that serve large numbers of low-income and first-generation students in 14 states. In many of those schools, the ratio of students to college counselors is worse than the national average of 482:1, and the advising corps's troops are designed to ensure that students in the schools not only consider going to college but 'are matched to and ultimately get through a place that get them a credential,' says Nicole Hurd, the group's founder and chief executive officer," Inside Higher Ed reports.

"Most commentaries on federal student loans speak about the difficulty of loan repayments or about the impact such loans have had on tuition fees. ...This commentary, however, speaks to four other possible unintended consequences of the massive increase in federal student financial assistance since about 1970," Richard Vedder writes in a Forbes opinion article. 

"A decade after the last comprehensive overhaul of federal higher education law, Congress is again working on a rewrite of the nation’s higher education policy – with legislation that could come to the House floor this year. As our economy continues to produce outsized job growth for positions requiring a college education, it’s more important than ever that federal policy works to expand college access, foster college affordability, and strengthen workforce competitiveness," Mildred García and Peter McPherson write in an opinion article for The Hill.

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