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How do you Engage an Audience of ONE? Cegment’s Student Engagement Solutions are designed to help institutions convey their unique value and understand affordability with each communication tailored to the individual student’s circumstances. Learn more about how to increase engagement with students at every stage of the financial and enrollment process. Learn more.

The surge in jobs during the economic recovery has mainly benefited college-educated workers, as millions of high-paying jobs with benefits have materialized over the last several years, according to a new study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

Education isn’t known to be a make-or-break issue in elections, even at the state level. And when candidates focus on education early on, the fanfare usually fades away after primary elections. But this time around, higher education and college affordability issues have a chance to persist to the general election, many say.

Though ED has yet to issue final guidance, the Perkins Loan Program is scheduled to expire on September 30, 2015 without congressional action. Of the approximately 300 responses to our informal survey on Perkins, 47 percent selected "We will continue to service outstanding loans once the program ends," 34 percent selected "We are not awarding any Perkins loans to new borrowers for the 2015-2016 academic year," 34 percent selected "Other" and six percent selected "We have already begun the process of closing out our Perkins Loan Fund (ceasing our participation in the program) under existing regulation by assigning outstanding loans to the Department of Education."

Compliance with our Code of Conduct is an expectation of NASFAA membership. In addition to the Code of Conduct, in NASFAA's Ethics and Values resource area you will find the ethical principles to which all aid administrators should aspire, the core advocacy principles which guide our legislative and advocacy efforts, the core operating values by which NASFAA staff are evaluated, the Code of Conduct enforcement procedures, complaint submission form, and Q&A. Have an ethical situation you're working through? Email Mr. Ethics at [email protected] with your inquiry. We will make sure your identity remains anonymous if your question is chosen to run in Today's News.

"Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton unveiled a blockbuster plan to make college affordable again earlier this week, becoming the third major politician to do so ahead of the 2016 presidential election," TakePart.com reports. "Yet Megan McClean, a financial aid policy expert [with NASFAA], thinks Clinton’s blue-sky plan—and the clouds of skepticism swirling around it—are both good things for the next generation of college-bound high school students."

"She was in the second semester of her freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley, when Monica Mata started to worry she might never make it to graduation," according to The Hechinger Report. "But Mata managed to overcome academic struggles and personal challenges to reach her junior year, and now she’s confident she’ll graduate, thanks in part to help from a federal Pell grant based on her family’s low income."

"A hack of the Internal Revenue service first reported in May was nearly three times as large as previously stated, the agency said Monday," according to USA Today. "Thieves have accessed as many as 334,000 taxpayer accounts, the IRS said."

"Hillary Clinton announced a new component to her $350 billion higher education plan Friday that targets the 4.8 million students who are also parents and among the most vulnerable to student loan debt," Politico reports.

"In what is seen as a surprising decision, the five-member National Labor Relations Board announced Monday that Northwestern’s football players cannot become the first college team to form a union, as the board unanimously voted not to assert its jurisdiction in the matter," The Washington Post reports.

"The education programs that serve New York’s prison population are streamlining the path to a college degree. Private organizations offer college classes in 19 state facilities. Now several of the groups have formed a consortium to help students make it to graduation day," WRVO reports.

"As presidential candidates met voters and sampled fried food at the Iowa State Fair, just days after Hillary Clinton appeared in Iowa to promote an ambitious set of college-affordability proposals, it’s worth taking stock of a state that is thrust into the national spotlight every election cycle but doesn’t frequently make higher-education headlines otherwise," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

"Graduate students employed by the University of Missouri will have a harder time paying for health insurance after MU told students Friday it is taking away subsidies that help with premium costs," the Columbia Daily Tribune reports. "MU Associate Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies Leona Rubin said the change is the result of a recent IRS interpretation of a section of the Affordable Care Act. The law, which requires adults to have health insurance or face tax penalties, 'prohibits businesses from providing employees subsidies specifically for the purpose of purchasing health insurance from individual market plans,' the university said in a letter sent to students Friday."

"Hillary Clinton’s just announced 'New College Compact' sets forth a broad and ambitious agenda that includes much to consider for those of us in higher education," John Ebersole writes in a Forbes opinion piece.

"Republicans Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, John Kasich and Chris Christie all have plans or will soon. The same goes for Democrats Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley. Hillary Clinton joined the crowd last week with a $350 billion package of ideas," Paula Dwyer writes in an opinion piece for Bloomberg.

"Millennials are used to empty promises from policymakers seeking our support for their proposals. Unfortunately for millions of us facing higher college tuitions and mounting student debt, Hillary Rodham Clinton is now taking that path, too," Patrice Lee, the national spokeswoman for Generation Opportunity, writes in an opinion piece for The New York Post.

"For borrowers who are experiencing financial distress and looking for a way to pay back their federal student loans, income-driven repayment plans can be the key to helping you make ends meet. But for some borrowers seeking to tie their federal loan payment to their income, we know the road can be rocky," according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau blog.

"In 2001, I was released from prison after serving three-and-a-half years in various facilities in New York State. ... While incarcerated, I had tried to continue my education, and was even accepted into a privately funded college program, but I was transferred to a facility without educational opportunities before taking a single class," Vivian Nixon, executive director of College and Community Fellowship, writes in The Hill's Congress Blog.

"The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has been paying close attention to the War on College for quite some time, and it has concluded that the state of higher education is simply awful," according to The Washington Post's Post Everything.

"Here is a question that many readers did not know was in search of an answer: Which students are more likely to go prison after graduating from high school: (a) those enrolled in a charter school or private school as a result of participation in a voucher program or (b) those enrolled in a public school, both groups coming from the same geographic area and having parents of similar income levels," Christopher Brauchli asks in The Huffington Post's The Blog.

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