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today’s news for Thursday, August 20, 2015

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NEWS FROM NASFAA

The Department of Education (ED) on Wednesday announced it will begin the process to develop regulations to streamline the loan forgiveness process for students who file defense to repayment claims on their federal student loans, similar to the situation thousands of former Corinthian Colleges students are currently facing.

There’s recently been much discussion about the importance of college affordability, and how policymakers should make the issue more of a priority. The problem with moving forward, however, is that college affordability means something different to everyone involved. For colleges, the affordability discussion stems from what they need to meet revenue goals, according to a new report from the Lumina Foundation.

The Dallas Martin Endowment for Public Policy and Student Aid (DME) summer internship was established to cultivate a new generation of young professionals who have a passion for learning about financial aid policy and advocacy. NASFAA recently checked in with the past DME interns to get the scoop on what they've been up to since their internships ended. Read on to see what they had to say and stayed tuned to Today's News in the coming weeks to learn more about how NASFAA members and staff can help fundraise for the DME leading up to and during the 2015 Washington, D.C. Ragnar Relay Race in October.

This October, a team of 12 NASFAA members and staff will participate in the 2015 Washington D.C. Ragnar Relay Race, a 36-hour, 200-plus mile run from Cumberland, MD to Washington, D.C., to fundraise for the Dallas Martin Endowment for Public Policy and Student Aid (DME). We need your help selecting a name for NASFAA's team, so take a moment and cast your vote!

NASFAA UPDATES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Hundreds of your peers have already volunteered to serve as mentors for fellow aid administrators and high school guidance counselors, speakers on diversity and inclusion issues, and speakers at high school events, financial aid meetings, or training events. Quickly locate a volunteer in your local area using NASFAA's Speaker and Mentor Professional Directory, which allows you to refine your search by name, state, or region, as well as by keyword and category, to find someone with the desired skill set. To offer your own services, log in to your myNASFAA profile and on the Directories & Settings tab use the checkboxes to indicate you would like to be included in the directory Speaker and Mentor directory and select which services you wish to volunteer. You can update your directory listing at any time.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

The Department of Education is pleased to announce the posting of the updated 2015-2016 Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) Technical Reference.

x - HEADLINES

National News

"The messy unwinding of Corinthian Colleges was an unprecedented dance among various actors: the U.S. Department of Education, state attorneys general, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and buyers like ECMC’s Zenith Group -- not to mention members of Congress and student and consumer groups," Inside Higher Ed reports. "But another, far less visible, entity also had a strong interest in and influence on the outcome: Bank of America and a handful of other banks."

"The liberal arts education could be in danger if policy makers adopt a popular, bipartisan reform to curb student debt, according to Mark Cuban," MarketWatch reports. "The entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks owner and 'Shark Tank' star argued that requiring colleges to take some responsibility for their graduates’ student loan repayment rates could 'push liberal arts colleges and programs to the point of extinction,' in a several paragraph critique of Hillary Clinton’s student debt plan that he published on his messaging app Cyberdust last week."

"... Out of the 12 million single-parent families in the United States, the vast majority—more than 80 percent—are headed by women. These households are more likely than any other demographic group to fall below the poverty line," The Atlantic reports. "In fact, census data shows that roughly 40 percent of single-mother-headed families are poor. Why? Experts point to weak social-safety nets, inadequate child support, and low levels of education, among other factors."

State News

"A King County Superior Court judge has ordered a student loan processing company that unlawfully charged borrowers to pay back its Washington victims," SeattlePI reports.

Opinions

"The cost of higher education keeps rising yet the resources to pay for it seem to be dwindling. Competing public priorities and budgetary shortfalls have pushed states to gut appropriations for public colleges, while philanthropy is increasingly concentrating within the most elite institutions," Carlo Salerno writes for Forbes. "Students and families have been left to pick up the slack through higher tuition rates—a trend that is clearly unsustainable and unaffordable for most Americans today."

"Who do you think received more cash from Yale’s endowment last year: Yale students, or the private equity fund managers hired to invest the university’s money? It’s not even close," Victor Fleischer writes for The New York Times. "Last year, Yale paid about $480 million to private equity fund managers as compensation — about $137 million in annual management fees, and another $343 million in performance fees, also known as carried interest — to manage about $8 billion, one-third of Yale’s endowment."

Blogs & Think Tanks

"College affordability will be a defining middle class issue in the 2016 presidential election and beyond," according to the American Enterprise Institute. "Presidential candidates will therefore need answers on an issue central to economic opportunity and advancement in 21st-century America."

"... The New College Compact proposes 1) to allow those currently holding student loan debt to refinance their loans at today’s lower interest rates, and 2) to prohibit the federal government from 'profiting' on the interest rate charged to students on future loans," Monica Herk writes for the Committee for Economic Development.  

"For too long, we’ve judged the quality of American higher education according to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous standard for pornography: 'I know it when I see it,'" Andrew P. Kelly writes for the American Enterprise Institute. "Our current system evaluates colleges almost entirely on 'inputs'—the academic pedigree of the students they admit, the credentials of their faculty, the number of volumes in their library, the flashiness of their amenities, and so on. We don’t actually measure quality in any meaningful way; we just approximate it based on how closely a given organization resembles the thing we’ve traditionally called 'college.'"

"Earlier this month, legislators in the House and Senate introduced TELORA, a bipartisan bill to improve the confusing patchwork of federal loan programs for teachers," Kaylan Connally writes for New America's EdCentral blog. "The new proposal implicitly seeks to streamline existing programs and has the explicit purpose 'to encourage highly qualified individuals to enter and continue in the teaching profession, and to ensure qualified effective teachers are encouraged to work in high-need schools.' But is it likely to deliver on these promises?"

x - INDUSTRY NEWS

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