NASFAA on Wednesday hosted a Postsecondary Education Financing Forum in New York City, bringing together a diverse group of higher education economists, researchers, and practitioners to discuss policy issues surrounding financing higher education. The forum, hosted at New York University in partnership with the Eastern Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (EASFAA) and the New York Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NYSFAAA), included remarks from Martha Kanter, executive director of the College Promise Campaign and distinguished visiting professor of higher education and senior fellow at New York University, as well as panel discussions on the student loan market, tuition and federal student aid, student indebtedness, and the institutional role in encouraging responsible borrowing.

The interest rate on new federal student loans will drop from 4.29 percent on undergraduate Direct loans issued for the 2015-16 school year to 3.76 percent for the 2016-17 school year, according to the results of Treasury Department's 10-year note auction held on Wednesday. The interest rates for new graduate Direct loans will drop from 5.84 percent for 2015-16 to 5.31 percent for 2016-17, and the interest rates for new graduate PLUS loans will drop from 6.84 percent to 6.31 percent. Interest rates for new parent PLUS loans will drop from 6.84 percent to 6.31 percent.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Wednesday sent a letter to Federal Student Aid's James Runcie raising concerns about recent increased spending on lobbying by the government-contracted student loan servicer Navient. The servicer's spending on lobbying during the first quarter spiked from $410,000 to $710,000, Warren wrote. This increased spending comes at a time when the student-loan giant has come under heightened scrutiny. "I am mystified by the scope of these expenditures. Navient should be focused on and investing in improving its abysmal student loan servicing operations, not lobbying Congress and the Administration in search of sweetheart deals," Warren wrote. Read the whole letter here.

Please join us in welcoming the newest member of NASFAA’s policy and federal relations staff, Jill Desjean. Jill has many years of experience in aid offices at schools in the EASFAA region (New York and Massachusetts). Her last student aid position was at Tufts University, where she worked as the associate director of financial aid. In her new role, she'll be helping NASFAA's policy and federal relations team as a policy analyst.

NASFAA’s PLUS Eligibility Issues webinar originally aired May 25, 2016, but is now available for on-demand viewing.  As a reminder, if you registered for the live event you have access to the on-demand webinar.  You also have access to the Q&A document in which the presenters compiled unanswered questions from the live Q&A segment into a single resource providing you with all the questions along with their answers. Simply log in using your original webinar link.  If you missed the live event, order the On-Demand Webinar for access to the full webinar broadcast and Q&A document.

To celebrate NASFAA's 50th anniversary, NASFAA offers members the opportunity to purchase NASFAA gear and 50th anniversary memorabilia. The store will close today at 5:00 pm ET, so hurry and purchase items for yourself, your staff, and your colleagues for upcoming birthdays, work anniversaries, and holiday gifts. This is also an opportunity to buy some fun NASFAA swag to rock at the 2016 NASFAA National Conference and 50th Anniversary Celebration in Washington, DC.

This letter clarifies the program and student eligibility requirements for students to receive Title IV aid for enrollment in teacher certification programs.

In March 2015, the Department implemented a Direct Loan Subsidized Usage Inquiry Page on the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) Web site. 

These internship positions are located in the Department of Education, Federal Student Aid (FSA).

"U.S. Representative Tom Reed says he's open to modifying a controversial proposal to channel spending from large college and university endowments into student aid, even as he pitches the idea to presidential candidates and takes flak from the higher education community," Inside Higher Ed reports.

"For seniors graduating from the University of Michigan this month, employers have been lining up since the fall to offer interviews and boast of their companies' benefits," The New York Times reports. "Recruiters would ask when their competitors were coming, said Geni Harclerode, the university's assistant director of employer development, and then they'd say: 'Well, we want to come the week before.'"

"As college students across America prepare to graduate, the debate is intensifying over how both they and their predecessors can afford to pay off their loans. Unfortunately, the current occupant of the White House and the top choices to replace him fail to fully grasp the scope and cause of this looming crisis, and its implications, particularly for the millennial generation," Curtis Kalin writes for Townhall.

"America's universities have become behemoths -- the result of swelling donations, rising tuitions and growing anxiety among parents that their children cannot succeed without college degrees. None are flourishing more than the most elite private schools, eight of which have endowments of $10 billion or more," according to Bloomberg View. "These riches have set some members of Congress, state legislators and local residents thinking: Why are these enormous cash piles left untaxed and unregulated? The short answer is that it would undermine the good work that universities do to educate generations of Americans and energize the economy."

"If Milton Friedman were still alive, how would he approach the current student-loan mess? The legendary free-market economist signaled his views in provocative essays a half-century ago, where he argued that it's a mistake to put everyone on the same repayment schedule, regardless of how well or poorly their destinies play out. Instead, Friedman favored a new system in which repayments would be tied to students' future earnings," George Anders writes for Forbes.

"The federal government leaves it up to colleges to estimate the annual living expenses that students will face attending their institutions. This can be an extremely arbitrary process. This week, our #MoreThanTuition series will look at the ways data can highlight weird patterns in cost of attendance (COA) estimates," according to New America's EdCentral. "Take, for instance, the estimates that colleges provide students about how much it will cost them to live off-campus. You would think that schools in the same community would come up with similar projections. But you'd be wrong." NASFAA is mentioned in this article.

"The Student Loan Ranger is starting to have a hard time keeping up with all of this good news. A few weeks ago we posted about some very positive changes initiated by the Department of Education to make things a little easier for student loan borrowers and their families. Just a few days later, the department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a few more," Betsy Mayotte writes for U.S. News & World Report's Student Loan Ranger.

Financial aid administrators must evolve and be equipped to survive in an ever-changing regulatory world of laws, policies and guidelines. In preparation for a new day, SASFAA has secured a secluded training facility at Jacksonville State University (Jacksonville, AL). Using the NASFAA CORE training materials and selected NASFAA University courses, graduates will return to the office with a great toolbox of knowledge and resources. The week of training will help participants find, renew and ignite their passions as they gain a better understanding of their purposes. Register for the workshop now.

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