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For over 20 years, ELM Resources has provided open and lender-neutral choice. Our new web interface, ELMOne, converges your interaction with the complete suite of ELM Products (ELMNet, ELM NDN, and ELMSelect). Built with the latest and most secure technologies, ELMOne will become your go-to resource to manage private student loan services.  www.elmone.com.

Have you ever struggled with pointing students in the direction of legitimate, outside scholarships? NASFAA is looking for financial aid administrators to share their opinions on searching for outside scholarships, the use of scholarship databases, and tips and best practices for helping students secure outside financial support to pay for college. Please send us an email to [email protected] by the end of the week if you're interested in being interviewed for our "Voices From the Financial Aid Office" series.

Learn the answer to this question and learn how to instantly find credible and reliable solutions to your most pressing regulatory and compliance questions with NASFAA's AskRegs Knowledgebase. The Knowledgebase guide and video tutorials highlight the many features of this tool.

NASFAA strives to represent your interests both in the financial aid office and on Capitol Hill. On our NASFAA on the Record page you will find comments in response to Notices of Proposed Rulemaking, draft FAFSAs, executive orders, and initiatives related to higher education; statements of support for, or in opposition to, proposed and enacted legislation; material presented by NASFAA to Congress or congressional staff; and much more. And check the NASFAA Legislative Tracker for a comprehensive list of all student aid-releated legislation introduced in this session of Congress. Want to get involved? Volunteer for NASFAA's Advocacy Pipeline.

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:

• Both chambers of Congress are not in session this week.

This Week:

• There are no higher education policy events currently scheduled in Washington, DC this week.

Brush up or train new staff before your next evaluation period. NASFAA U’s Satisfactory Academic Progress Online Course is offered in a collaborative learning environment. NASFAA U faculty and a practicing financial aid administrator lead this engaging course. Learning topics include the required and optional elements of an institutional policy, calculating pace, student appeals, the impact of transfer credits, and more. Complimentary access to the credential test is provided after successfully completing the course. This popular four-week course begins Oct. 16, 2018, and will fill up fast. Register now.

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.

The Department is announcing the availability of the updated 2016-2017 Federal School Code (FSC) List of Participating Schools on the Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) Web site.

The Department announced the posting of EDExpress for Windows 2016-2017, Release 2.0, on its Federal Student Aid Download (FSAdownload) Web site, located at https://www.fsadownload.ed.gov.

The White House recently announced a number of actions the Administration has been taking and is continuing to pursue to assist federal student loan borrowers in repayment. One of those actions is a new web-based tool that will help borrowers “easily navigate the complexity of student loan repayment options.” The new tool can be accessed from the “Find out your student loan repayment options here” link on the StudentLoans.gov Web site’s home page (the link is part of the graphic in the middle of the page) or can be linked directly at StudentLoans.gov/Repay.

This letter announces the availability of Federal Student Aid's recording of a March 2016 webinar that provided detailed operational updates for software developers.

"U.S. education officials adjusted the student-loan default rates of 21 colleges, helping them to avoid sanctions in the past two years that could have resulted in a loss of federal funding, according to a list released by the Education Department," The Wall Street Journal reports.

"The converging trends of falling state investment, rising tuition and stagnant incomes have finally pushed higher education out of the grasp of low- and middle-income Americans, even at community colleges, a new report contends," according to The Hechinger Report.

"The National School Lunch Program –– the federally assisted and state-administered program that provides free or reduced price meals to millions of children in school and after-school programs –– should be expanded to serve low-income college students as a means of boosting their chances of earning a degree," according to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

"Should parents take out loans to subsidize their kids' education? That's the million dollar question. But it's also a question that parents across the country are now pondering amid the college acceptance letters that their high school seniors have now received," Diverse: Issues in Higher Education reports.

"Gage Marquez's dream is to become the first in his family to go to college, get his degree from the University of California at San Diego, and eventually become a cardiologist. He nearly cried tears of joy when he found out he got in," CNN reports. "But then he and his parents took a look at the financial aid award. He was given a grant for a little less than $3,000. And the school, which determines how much a student can take out in federal loans, will let him borrow just $6,800."

"Individual states are creating free community college programs left and right, recognizing the pay-offs for their economic futures," GoodCall reports. "While the efforts are varied, most focus on erasing the gap between federal aid and actual costs of attendance. Now the Obama administration is doing more than talk about free college with a $100 million investment. And, even Wall Street is getting involved and increasing its support for community colleges."

"A bill introduced Thursday would create an overseer to assist students with college loans in an effort to provide recommendations and help slow the skyrocketing debt many college students face," Delaware State News reports.

"I don't have a clever lead paragraph for an essay about an oversubscribed conference on college-student hunger and homelessness in 2016 in the wealthiest nation on earth," Wick Sloane writes for Inside Higher Ed. "... As I write, I don't know where I am going to sleep tonight. The reservation I know I made wasn't waiting at the hip Aloft Hotel last night. In the rain, I scrambled to the downtown Hilton. With a mega volleyball tournament in town, Aloft and the Hilton and Milwaukee are full tonight. How much of the conference will I miss looking for somewhere to sleep tonight? A conference on homelessness on a cold, rainy day, and I don't have anywhere to sleep tonight? Yes, Lord. Message received."

"Navient Corp., the nation's largest student loan company, violated state laws that ban unfair or abusive practices by paying call center workers based on how quickly they could get struggling borrowers off the phone, a group of more than two dozen state attorneys general alleged," according to The Huffington Post.

"There are all sorts of financial aid, housing and medical forms that most college students can expect to fill out before starting classes, but for the most part only those attending for-profit schools are confronted with a piece of paper that seeks to curb their rights. Enrollment contracts have become a popular way for career schools to protect their financial interest by tucking in clauses that bar students from filing class-action lawsuits or otherwise taking their grievances to the courts," according to The Washington Post's Grade Point.

The Western Association's Sister Dale Brown Summer Institute will be held June 19-24, 2016 at Portland State University in Portland, OR. Summer Institute is a six-day training encompassing the A-Z fundamentals of administering financial aid. This year, Basic and Intermediate tracks are being offered with NASFAA-certified instructors teaching the NASFAA curriculum. Each participant that graduates from the Summer Institute is able to receive a NASFAA credential at no additional cost in the areas where credentialing is available. This week-long training is a tremendous value, an opportunity to learn from experienced faculty, and engage in networking with financial aid professionals from all over the region – you won’t want to miss it.

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