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At Edfinancial, getting your students to the finish line is what matters most. Whether it’s answering questions about enrollment, explaining financial aid processes or preventing student loan default, we can help your students succeed. Find out how we do it by visiting us at www.edfinancial.com/HES/Casestudies

While the approach to implementing a reverse-transfer policy can vary from state to state, there are several common approaches they can use to create successful policies, according to a recent brief from the Education Commission of the States (ECS).

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:
The House is in session Monday through Wednesday. The Senate is in session Monday through Friday.

Tuesday:

• Negotiated Rulemaking Committee Meeting for Borrower Defense, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm ET
• State of the Union Address, 9:00 pm ET

Wednesday:

• Negotiated Rulemaking Committee Meeting for Borrower Defense, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm ET

Thursday:

• Negotiated Rulemaking Committee Meeting for Borrower Defense, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm ET

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 scars on Christine Banjo’s arms are still there — faint marks from the bed bugs that bit her when her family was living in a motel room during her high-school years. 'Battle wounds,' she calls them: a faded but constant reminder that the college junior has been chronically homeless since she was 7," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. NASFAA's Jennifer Martin is quoted.

A recent report on Innovative Learning Models released by NASFAA "suggests that during the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), policymakers should restructure financial aid programs and policies to focus on student learning outcomes – what students actually know and can do – rather than how much time was spent in a classroom," eCampus News reports.

"Nearly 7 million Americans have gone at least a year without making a payment on their federal student loans, a high level of default that suggests a widening swath of households are unable or unwilling to pay back their school debt," The Wall Street Journal reports.

"Hard as it may be to believe with Donald Trump hogging the headlines, America’s presidential primary campaigns are proposing serious ideas for how to deal with real economic problems. High among them is how to fix the country’s broken system of university finance," according to The Economist.

"Student loans have become an issue in the presidential campaign, especially on the Democratic side. And it's no wonder. There are more than 40 million Americans with some $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loan debt," according to NPR.

"Facing a planned graduate student worker walkout over its decision to drop health insurance subsidies for teaching and research assistants, the University of Missouri at Columbia on Friday announced it will reinstate the subsidies indefinitely," Inside Higher Ed reports. "Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin and other senior administrators said in a statement that the university consulted external experts and peer institutions in trying to 'navigate a complex health insurance regulatory environment,' and ultimately decided to 'defer implementation' of its plan. 'As a result, the university will pay for health insurance for eligible graduate students,' they said."

"Many smart students forgo college in the mistaken belief that they cannot afford it. The financial aid system, which is intended to increase opportunities for low-income students, is largely to blame," Susan Dynarski writes for The New York Times in The Upshot.

"Anyone who is unaware that we face a massive problem involving college student debt, contact Earth at your first convenience. ... Into this dismal picture a glimmer of a better idea has appeared," Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the former governor of Indiana and current president of Purdue University, writes in an opinion piece for The Washington Post.

"Studying in the library, getting help from a tutor, even cheering at a college football game — all of those activities carry a little extra reward for low-income students at Ball State University," according to The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus blog.

"Hillary Clinton recently came out with a plan to address the growing college affordability crisis in this country. She is to be commended for recognizing that student debt is crippling the financial future of younger generations - and some not so young. Her program would be a considerable improvement on the status quo," Heather Gautney, an associate professor of Sociology at Fordham University, writes in The Huffington Post's The Blog.

"Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and Republican presidential hopeful, said that one 'metric of success' would be to make the U.S. Department of Education a 'whole lot smaller,'" according to ThinkProgress.

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