Brought to you by:

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

The National Center on Education Statistics (NCES) recently issued three reports that compare data from the 1999-2000 academic year and the 2011-12 academic year to provide statistics on Pell Grant recipients and trends in undergraduate nonfederal aid. Among other interesting points, the data show an increase between the two academic years in the number of lower-middle income students receiving Pell Grants and a significant jump between the two academic years in the percentage of undergraduates in the U.S. (excluding Puerto Rico) who received some form of aid.

NASFAA is updating its Staffing and Salary Models via our NASFAA Benchmarking Survey. All Today’s News subscribers should have previously received a direct email from us with a link to a survey. Due to a system error with our survey software, we have extended the deadline to complete this survey to 5:00pm ET, Tuesday, October 25. NASFAA plans to publish a final report with the results of this benchmarking survey in early 2017. Again please refer to your email for the link to the survey.

Is it OK to hold a student's overage check until after the final financial aid disbursement in order to prevent fraud and deter "school jumpers?" Check out Mr. Ethics' answer for a refresher on cash management regulations. Are you working through a common ethical question and want some help? 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. Check out prior Ask Mr. Ethics columns for answers to other tricky questions.

NASFAA is committed to doing all we can to ensure a smooth transition to prior-prior year (PPY) for schools and students. Last week, we asked you to share your thoughts on what processes and procedures throughout the campus will be affected, what consumer information will need to be updated, and how this will affect our financial aid management systems and we've received 26 comments so far. Take a look at what your peers had to say and, if you haven't already, share your own thoughts in the comments section.

From Student Eligibility to Return of Title IV Funds, NASFAA's Self-Study Guides are the answer to your training needs and professional development. Written for the independent learner, each Self-Study Guide includes multiple lessons with a variety of exercises to reinforce each lesson. Completing Self-Study Guides also allows you to qualify to earn professional credentials.

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.

On February 19, 2016, the Department updated this announcement to replace the "Perkins Loan Assignment System User Access Process" attachment. The new attachment includes updated mailing address information for returning PLAS User Access forms.

The Privacy Act requires the Department to publish in the Federal Register this notice of an altered system of records maintained by the Department

"In 2013 President Obama hatched a plan. He wanted to call out the colleges where students waste their money. ... Last week the Department of Education released something called the College Scorecard, an enormous data set with 1,730 variables on over 7,000 schools. One thing was missing: a rating," according to NPR.

"When parents and children talk about applying for colleges, they consider all sorts of factors: the school’s prestige, the location, even the food in the dormitories. But often there’s one thing that never is on the agenda: How are we going to pay for this?" according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Lamar Alexander is welcoming a move by the Obama administration to simplify federal financial aid application," Nashville Public Radio reports.

"As the cost of college in the U.S. soars to record levels, American students in growing numbers are enrolling in schools abroad, where tuition fees are substantially lower—and in some cases nonexistent," The Wall Street Journal reports.

"This year was always going to be tough going financially for certain Missouri college students, specifically the ones who’d grown up in the state but had been born outside of the country," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

"Gov. Jay Nixon is proposing a 6 percent bump in higher education performance funding and an undergraduate tuition freeze next year," the Springfield News-Leader reports.

"For years, students and families have been making one of the most important, and expensive, decisions of their lives with very little information to go on," Amy Laitinen of New America writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education. "They have been deciding where to go to college without the help of data that are reliable, comparable, or that answer critical questions that students and families have about postcollege outcomes."

"... Refinancing and consolidation are different but related animals. Refinancing generally involves replacing one or more loans with a new loan that comes with a lower interest rate," Rob Berger writes for Forbes. "Consolidation involves replacing two or more loans with a single loan that may or may not come with a lower interest rate. The distinction can be confusing, particularly given that a borrower can refinance and consolidate her loans at the same time."

"Like many other college presidents, I’ve seen good financial times and bad. And I’ve experienced the tremendous benefit, in any economy, of having endowment resources that guarantee, first, that our college will have a future, and second, that we can continue to enhance our value and service to our students, faculty, community, and nation," David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College, writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

"We know that over 20 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities this fall. But we don’t know enough about who these students are, how likely they are to succeed at earning their degrees, and whether they will be able to get good enough jobs to pay back their debt. Here, we investigate what is known — and what still we need to know — about today’s students so we can help more of them realize their college dreams," the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation writes for The Washington Post.

"Earlier this month, President Obama renewed his push for free community college for two years. It is the latest installment of his vision — and that of the Democratic Party — to turn the federal government into the provider of first resort to the American people," Neil Siefring writes for The Hill. Obama's mission, and that of his fellow travellers, is to subsume the family, local government and the states with a federal government that knows better than the people what is best for their future. Congressional Republicans should respond with a vision of their own: Defunding and eliminating the Department of Education."

"... Having spent most of my career in state universities, I firmly believe that states need to support public universities as an incontrovertible public good and that the devastating cuts of recent years should be restored. However, if state institutions become free or close to free through federal subsidies, many small private colleges will have to close their doors," David Haney, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty at Emory & Henry College, writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

"Is graduate school 'broken'? I ask this advisedly, for talk about 'broken' institutions has become a tired cliché. But it’s a tricky question in this case, because you can declare something broken only if you know how it’s supposed to work in the first place," according to an excerpt from "The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It," published in Salon.

"A simplified financial-aid calculator — much easier to use than the federally mandated calculators that most colleges create — has begun spreading beyond Wellesley College, where it began two years ago," according to The New York Times' The Upshot.

"In the run-up to the first day of classes each year, students and families are inundated with higher education statistics and often left wondering what information really matters or even which facts and figures to trust," Mike Brost writes in The Huffington Post's The Blog.

"... Western Governors University is one of nearly three dozen colleges and programs—nonprofit and for-profit alike—that are trying a fledgling model of schooling known as competency-based education. Its core idea: Stu­dents fare bet­ter if they earn de­grees based on their demon­strated know­ledge of a sub­ject in­stead of simply on face-time or per­form­ance in a tra­di­tion­al classroom," The Atlantic reports.

VIEW NEXT ISSUE

Contact us to submit questions, content or to purchase advertisements.