Brought to you by:

The College Board. For more than six decades, the College Board has been a leader and innovator in financial aid. College Board’s fully integrated financial aid solutions are designed to help your institution develop equitable, effective, and efficient financial aid policies and processes. Visit us at collegeboard.org. 

While the address of Pope Francis to a joint meeting of Congress was the main event on Capitol Hill yesterday, the Perkins Loan Program saw plenty of attention from a bipartisan mix of members of Congress from both the House and Senate. If not extended by October 1, the Perkins Loan Program will expire.

Colleges with large gaps in completion rates of Pell Grant recipients and non-Pell students need to do more to ensure the success of Pell recipients and more selective institutions should increase the number of Pell students they admit, according to a new report from The Education Trust.

A new working paper from Caroline Hoxby and George Bulman, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that much of the inefficacy of the federal tax deduction for tuition and fees (DTF) can be attributed to the lack of knowledge some families have about the rules and benefits, its timing, and how and when families actually receive the financial benefit.

Meet Candi Frazier, senior associate director of Financial Aid and Student Employment at West Virginia University, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Frazier's career in financial aid started with a work-study position in the summer of 1987, after she told her financial aid counselor she needed a job that kept her busy. In previous years, Frazier has served on NASFAA's Graduate and Professional Issues Committee, including a stint as committee chair. She has also served as chair of NASFAA's Public Service Loan Forgiveness Task Force.

NASFAA is seeking online focus group participants to provide feedback on a potential new service focused on consumer information. The focus group discussions will take place via conference call in October and November. There may be other assigned tasks that will take place outside of the scheduled calls, but there will be no in-person meetings. If you are interested in participating, please complete the volunteer form by COB today. If selected, you will be notified by October 5. Please direct all questions to Ashley Reich, Standards of Excellence administrator, at [email protected].

With the new Advanced Search features in the updated NASFAA.org, you can easily search for and find the content you need. You can search for and sort items a number of ways, and better customize your search results to quickly find the information you need. Check out this brief video to learn more about advanced search and stay tuned to Today's News for videos about other features.

"... Last week, President Barack Obama announced that, starting next year, students will be able to apply for loans and scholarships through the FAFSA as early as October, instead of the current date of Jan. 1," the Minnesota Daily reports. NASFAA's Stephen Payne is quoted in the article.

"Take a big room in Manhattan with more than 100 people, all of them fired up about education. Add some dramatic lighting and booming PA announcements, and you've got last week's New York Times Schools for Tomorrow conference," NPR reports.

"With an MBA and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Ama Karikari-Yawson had the sort of six-figure graduate school debt that student loan nightmares are made of. ...But by refinancing her federal loans, about half of her total debt, she was able to chop $800 off her monthly payments in exchange for a longer loan term," according to Time's Money.

"Federal programs designed to ease the burden of college loans are causing snarls in the bond market and raising concerns that banks may soon ratchet back lending," The Wall Street Journal reports.

"In December the Department of Education (ED) released plans to re-do the way federal student loans are serviced, including a new system for receiving complaints. In March, President Obama directed ED to build a web-based portal for student loan borrowers to manage payments and lodge complaints against servicers as part of his Student Aid Bill of Rights," according to The Street.

"Millennial parents are far more likely than their predecessors to save for their children's educations and far more of them want to pay the whole tab for college, according to a survey," Liz Weston writes in a column for Reuters.

"Last week, the White House announced an important innovation in higher education data availability.  For the first time, the U.S. Department of Education has made institution level earnings information available to the public," according to The Brookings Institution.

"Young women today are facing a whole host of challenges. Some of these challenges are the same and some are different than those of the generation before them. From crippling student loan debt to glass ceilings, internships to sexual assault on campus, young women in America today have a lot to figure out and fast," Christie Garton, creator of UChic, writes in The Huffington Post's The Blog.

"You may know that the federal student loan program makes an immense profit. But while that may be the case, not every student is profitable," according to Slate's Moneybox.

VIEW NEXT ISSUE

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