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College presidents by and large feel confident in the financial sustainability of their own institutions, and of the business models of certain sectors. But many are starting to question the outlook for community colleges, non-flagship public universities, non-elite private nonprofit institutions, and proprietary institutions. They're also skeptical of institutions' attempts to address college affordability by implementing tuition resets or freezes, according to Inside Higher Ed's annual survey of college and university presidents.

Hundreds of your peers have already volunteered to serve as mentors for fellow aid administrators and high school guidance counselors, speakers on diversity and inclusion issues, and speakers at high school events, financial aid meetings, or training events. Quickly locate a volunteer in your local area using NASFAA's Speaker and Mentor Professional Directory, which allows you to refine your search by name, state, or region, as well as by keyword and category, to find someone with the desired skill set. To offer your own services, log in to your myNASFAA profile and on the Directories & Settings tab use the checkboxes to indicate you would like to be included in the directory Speaker and Mentor directory and select which services you wish to volunteer. You can update your directory listing at any time.

Fall travel season is underway for NASFAA staff and elected officers! Next week, NASFAA President Justin Draeger and National Chair Lori Vedder will speak at MASFAA's 2018 Conference in Minneapolis, MN and Vice President Megan Coval is headed to New Orleans to speak at LASFAA's 50th Fall Conference. NASFAA staff and elected officers have many more upcoming speaking engagements at state and regional conferences. Head to the Events Calendar to see what's on tap for the rest of October and the coming few months.

Your peers at a variety of institutions of all types and sizes have filled NASFAA's member-generated content library with an array of materials such as interview questions, position descriptions, financial aid calendar templates, and more. Head here to access these helpful resources for your financial aid office.   

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 of Education intends to create Draft Gainful Employment (GE) Completers Lists later this spring and distribute those lists to institutions. To reduce the number of corrections that institutions must submit to the Draft GE Completers List during the 45-day corrections period, the Department strongly encourages institutions to review previously-reported GE Program data and make any necessary changes no later than Friday, March 30, 2018. This is the final opportunity for institutions to ensure the accuracy of the data that will be used to create the Draft GE Completers Lists.

"The Department of Education has begun notifying some former Corinthian Colleges students that it will forgive only one-half or less of their federal student loans, even though the students were defrauded by the now-defunct schools, The Associated Press has learned," according to The Associated Press.

"A bipartisan group of 30 attorneys general signed on to a letter Thursday opposing House legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act over a provision that would bar states from regulating student loan servicers," Inside Higher Ed reports. 

"It was hailed as a 'dream come true' by Udacity’s founder and CEO Sebastian Thrun. 'We now GUARANTEE a job for anyone who completes a Nanodegree Plus -- or else tuition back. Hope other universities follow,' tweeted Thrun in January 2016. Now, it seems, the dream is over," Inside Higher Ed reports. 

"Less than a quarter of Metro Nashville Public Schools' 4,480 graduates in 2011 earned a college degree after they left the city's schools....At Nashville State Community College, for instance, where a quarter of the city's graduates attended, less than 200 of those students completed a degree program, the report shows," the Tennessean reports. 

"A program-level accountability system would run the risk of papering over the outcomes of a large fraction of students because the number of students in many programs is too small to allow for stable measurements of the programs’ performance. Worse still, program-level measurements would also make it very difficult to hold institutions accountable for their performance with subgroups of students of color because an even larger share of programs have too few students of color to fairly judge these groups’ individual outcomes," according to the Center for American Progress. 

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