On Monday, NASFAA emailed a brief survey to all member institutions about the part of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R. 3221) relating to Federal Perkins Loans. The bill would replace the current Federal Perkins Loan Program with a new Federal Direct Perkins Loan Program. Because this legislation could have implications for all schools receiving Title IV funding -- even those that do not currently participate in the Perkins program -- we are asking primary contacts at all member institutions to complete and return the survey by Friday, August 7, 2009. The survey should take no more than 5 minutes to finish, and your responses are critical in helping NASFAA formulate our response to the Perkins issues raised in the bill.
To maintain the integrity of the data, NASFAA can only accept a response from the member designated by the school as its primary contact with NASFAA (i.e., the person who received the survey via email from NASFAA) through the link provided in the email. However, we encourage the primary contact to also consult with those staff members who would are most knowledgeable on the survey topic before submitting the survey.
NASFAA detailed a number of the proposals in H.R. 3221 in a July 17, 2009, Today's News article. The survey specifically addresses the proposal to eliminate the Perkins Loan Program and replace it with the Direct Perkins Loan Program. The Direct Perkins Loan program would operate in much the same way as unsubsidized Stafford loans and schools would lose their Administrative Cost Allowance. The loans would be serviced by the Department of Education, would carry no interest subsidy for borrowers, would carry an interest rate of 5 percent, and would generally lack the loan forgiveness provisions currently available to Federal Perkins Loan borrowers. The bill would allocate $6 billion annually towards the program beginning in the 2010-11 award year, which could drastically increase its usage over the current Federal Perkins Loan program. The Obama Administration has also said that this program may help deter students from using costlier private student loans.
Posted 08/04/09 to www.NASFAA.org. Redistribution to non-NASFAA institutions is prohibited. Please submit Web site questions or comments to Web@NASFAA.org.
