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Inceptia's SAP Advisor is a fully automated online solution that provides students, faculty and the financial aid staff with the tools to effectively manage Satisfactory Academic Progress appeals quickly and seamlessly. SAP Advisor increases efficiency and empowers students to actively engage which improves the opportunity for successful outcomes. Visit Inceptia.org to learn more.

The National Association of College and Admission Counseling (NACAC) has revised its code of conduct to reflect recent changes from the Department of Education (ED) with regard to the information it gives colleges about where potential students are interested in applying or attending.

NASFAA is pleased to announce the members assisting with the Prior-Prior Year (PPY) Implementation task force, with Rachelle Feldman from the University of California – Berkeley chairing the group. We received more than 100 volunteer requests, so selecting the seven-member task force was very difficult. The task force will receive assistance from an additional 27 members serving as a Resource Group to support the goals of the task force. Here are some statistics about the 34 members making up both the task force and resource group:

• 10 are serving on a task force for the first time (29 percent)
• 4 represent Community Colleges (12 percent)
• 1 represents for-profit schools (3 percent)
• 8 represent nonprofit schools (24 percent)
• 20 represent public 4-year institutions (59 percent)

The Department of Education (ED) last week released a resource guide for education officials and community members to support undocumented high school and college students. Take a look at the guide and share your thoughts in the comments section!

As the Department explained in an October 22, 2015 electronic announcement, it will implement the Data Challenges and Appeals Solution (DCAS) later this year to support the gainful employment (GE) challenges and appeals process.

In the Department's ongoing effort to ensure the security of Federal Student Aid's data systems, every organization enrolled for a Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) account is required to review and validate its assigned TG numbers and Electronic Services user accounts by December 11, 2015.

As part of Federal Student Aid's ongoing efforts to ensure the highest level of security for our systems and Web sites, the Department has changed the Web address (or URL) for the myeddebt site.

"Americans give high ratings to the quality of long-disparaged community colleges compared to four-year universities—and consider them a much better value—according to a new national survey," according to The Hechinger Report.

"After three years of declines, more federal workers are getting help from the government in paying back their student loans," The Baltimore Sun reports. "More than 8,000 federal workers received a combined $58.7 million in student loan repayment help in 2014, according to a new report from the federal Office of Personnel Management."

"In 2005 a team of Chronicle reporters and editors undertook a reporting experiment to predict the state of higher education 10 years in the future. We based that series of articles, 'Higher Education 2015: How Will the Future Shake Out?,' on seemingly durable trends, available data, and some educated guessing by dozens of experts. To reflect the range of possibilities, we offered up predictions based on both best-case and worst-case scenarios for such topics as the state of tenure, for-profit colleges, and the pace of internationalization," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

"Lincoln University has grown its enrollment this semester following a four-year slide," The Philadelphia Tribune reports. NASFAA is mentioned in the article.

"Florida’s effort to encourage community colleges to charge tuition of no more than $10,000 for four years of college that leads to a bachelor’s degree is gaining momentum," Community College Daily reports.

"In just two years, we have gone from a handful of CBE programs and almost none offering direct assessment -- the unwieldy name for CBE programs not tied to the credit hour -- to more than 600 institutions working on such offerings," Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, writes for Inside Higher Ed. "... In contrast to the rapid expansion of for-profit online education a decade ago, the primary providers today are nonprofit institutions."

"With a new academic year underway, college campuses across America are filled with new students who have bought the promise of opportunity that comes with a higher education degree," Todd Hutton, president of Utica College, writes in an opinion piece for the Utica Observer-Dispatch. "... Yet, for too many high school students across the country, the dream of a college degree can seem unattainable due to its price tag."

"A year ago last week, I officially started paying back my student loans. Although I finished my undergraduate degree in December 2010, a unique set of circumstances allowed me (or forced me) to put off my payback for a number of years. Upon graduation, I immediately enrolled in grad school, and with the help of a scholarship was able to pay for that tuition out of pocket. Because I was still a student, I did not have to make payments on my undergraduate debt during that two-year endeavor — not that I could have afforded to," Bill Boegeman, a social studies teacher, writes in an opinion piece for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

"Over just a few years, college affordability has gone from a minor political issue to a headlining one. Why? A wider swath of the income distribution is feeling the pinch, and they are feeling it for longer," according to Andrew P. Kelly of the American Enterprise Institute.

"To make college more affordable for low-income students we need to rethink what 'college' means. The system needs much more than tweaks in financing or regulation; it requires an entirely different business model," Stuart Butler writes for the Brookings Institution's Social Mobility Memos blog.

"Filing for bankruptcy has allowed millions of Americans to walk away from credit card debt, car loans, and even unpaid medical bills. But there there are two kinds of debt that are difficult to discharge in bankruptcy court: mortgages and student loans," Stephen Dash writes for Forbes.

"... In retrospect, the unprecedented acquisition of student loans by the federal government was the beginning of the end of the Federal Family Education Loan, or FFEL, Program, which relied on private lenders to raise capital to make student loans. The U.S. Department of Education being forced to buy loans from private lenders laid bare a simple and undeniable fact: Lenders abandoned students when they could no longer profit from them," David Bergeron writes for the Center for American Progress.

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