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At Edfinancial, getting your students to the finish line is what matters most. Whether it’s answering questions about enrollment, explaining financial aid processes or preventing student loan default, we can help your students succeed. Find out how we do it by visiting us at www.edfinancial.com/HES/Casestudies

Do you know a former student who received financial aid and went on to graduate and do something special with his or her life? If so, please submit that story for possible inclusion in the next Student Aid Success Stories publication, which is being compiled as part of NASFAA's 50th Anniversary Celebration. One or two stories will be selected from every state for publication. Up to five individuals will be invited to speak at the 2016 NASFAA Conference to share their stories with conference attendees. Submissions are due by February 1 - share your story today.

The Department of Education (ED) is contacting institutions that have not reported data for academic programs that are classified as gainful employment (GE) programs in ED records.

NASFAA is here to help you stay up to date on the top policy events occurring throughout the week in Washington, D.C. and, when applicable, across the country. Make sure to check back in to Today's News each morning for coverage of some of the events, and email us at [email protected] if you're aware of upcoming policy events that could be of interest to the financial aid community.

Congress:
The House is in session Monday through Wednesday. The Senate is in session Monday through Friday.

Tuesday:

• Negotiated Rulemaking Committee Meeting for Borrower Defense, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm ET
• State of the Union Address, 9:00 pm ET

Wednesday:

• Negotiated Rulemaking Committee Meeting for Borrower Defense, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm ET

Thursday:

• Negotiated Rulemaking Committee Meeting for Borrower Defense, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm ET

In a June 5, 2015 Electronic Announcement, the Department provided Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant Closeout information for the 2014-2015 Award Year. This announcement provides additional information to supplement the previous guidance. 

On August 29, 2015, the Department sent warning letters to institutions that had reported at least one 2014-2015 origination record to the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) system where the record indicated that the award was for the student’s enrollment in a GE program, but the institution did not submit GE data to the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) by the July 31, 2015 GE reporting deadline.

The COD Processing Update provides information related to COD System processing and includes the following sections: COD News and Updates, Current Issues (with a subsection for All Programs, Direct Loans, and Grants), and Reminders.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015 marks the end of the Federal fiscal year for the Department of Education (the Department). Some of the Department’s core financial systems, including G5, will be on a modified processing schedule while the Department finalizes its processing and accounting for Fiscal Year 2015.

The Federal Pell Grant (Pell Grant) Program regulations at 34 CFR 690.83(a) establishes the deadline by which a school must submit student payment data each award year. The data must be submitted to the Department of Education (the Department) by September 30th following the end of the award year in which the Pell Grant or Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant is made.

This Electronic Announcement informs institutions of a webinar that will provide an overview of the Second Chance Pell: Pell for Students Who Are Incarcerated experiment that was included in the August 3, 2015 Federal Register.

"The burgeoning cost of college isn't just a strain for low and middle-income families. Affluent Americans are wrestling with how to pay for higher education, too," Investment News reports. "'Even wealthy people are struggling to save enough money to send kids to college,' said Megan McClean, the managing director of policy and federal relations for [NASFAA]. 'Folks from all different levels of the income spectrum are needing to borrow to pay for college.'"

"The movement to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid is trending. Well, maybe not literally — although Bill Gates himself did take to Twitter last month to spread the message to his 24.4 million followers," according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. "One possible way to assuage colleges’ concerns comes from [NASFAA], which recently proposed a multipronged approach. There would be a very simple application for low-income students and a not-so-simple one for students from families with more resources."

"Jennifer Reyes had reached the breaking point. Earlier in her time at the University of California at Davis, Reyes, now a senior, felt she could no longer cope with the demands of university life," Inside Higher Ed reports. "It wasn’t so much the academics, although Reyes said she had begun to struggle in her courses. Like many first-generation students from low-income backgrounds, Reyes lacked support from people who knew how to navigate college. And she had commitments her wealthier peers lacked."

"There were 29 million Americans with at least one outstanding student loan in 2008.Today, there are more than 40 million — all voting age. That’s likely part of the reason that all three Democratic frontrunners are talking about tuition-free and debt-free higher learning these days," Next City  reports.

"A recent poll conducted by WGU Texas showed students in the state view a post-secondary degree as an essential step toward getting their desired career," KFox14 reports.

"A group of college friends in Idaho is hoping to make attending college more affordable, one pack of cigarettes at a time," USA Today reports. "The group is proposing a 2016 ballot initiative which will raise the state’s cigarette tax by $1.50 — then using the money to lower the cost of higher education at universities and community colleges."

"There's an old joke that if you're being chased by a bear and you want to avoid being eaten, you actually don't have to run faster than the bear. You just have to run faster than the other guy," Jeff Spross writes for The Week. "As it turns out, that joke may be critical to understanding the role college education plays in the modern economy."

"... The hyperbole that the Fafsa is ridiculously hard is just hogwash for a majority of people. There are perhaps people who have difficulty, and they can call upon their guidance counselors or college financial aid offices to assist," a reader writes in a letter to the editor to The New York Times. "Taking out questions gives a school less information to make crucial decisions about offering aid."

"Trying to get a good job is no longer as easy as pointing to a college degree on your resume (not that it was ever exactly easy)," according to The Huffington Post. "New research from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth shows that finding a well-paying job is getting harder even for those with lots of education."

"Imagine this scenario: Instead of a judge sentencing an offender to hundreds of hours of community service while behind bars, they are sentenced to hundreds of hours of educational courses -- and those courses are offered for free," according to The Huffington Post.

"Sometimes you hear something that sounds so much like common sense that you end up missing how it overturns everything you were actually thinking, and points in a far more interesting and disturbing direction. That’s how I’m feeling about the coverage of a recent paper on student loans and college tuition coming out of the New York Federal Reserve, 'Credit Supply and the Rise in College Tuition: Evidence from the Expansion in Federal Student Aid Programs,' by David Lucca, Taylor Nadauld, and Karen Shen," Mike Konczal writes for the Roosevelt Institute's Next New Deal blog.

"Itawamba Community College has been ranked sixth among the nation’s best community colleges by the national polling group, WalletHub. In addition, in the same survey Mississippi’s community college system is the best in the country," according to a press release from the institution.

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