| UT Holds Public Forums On Tuition Hike
As the University of Texas considers raising tuition once again, education leaders from around the state are meeting to talk solutions for higher education. Those meetings are happening at the Frank Erwin Center to help increase college enrollment around the state significantly. The goal is to increase enrollment across the state by 30 percent from 2005 to 2010. While it is an achievable goal, still, university systems across the state feel they have to increase tuition to stay competitive, so while more students want to go to college, making it affordable is another challenge. Financial challenges, like getting students to apply through Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is just one of the many roadblocks to work through.
IT'S A CHORE: But farmers have to fill out forms or possibly face ...
Last year, Tom Dancer farmed approximately 500 acres, all but a few rented, in Freehold, Manalapan and Millstone townships, growing field corn, soybeans, rye straw and wheat.
That quick profile of Dancer, a 49-year-old lifelong farmer who lives in Millstone, is the kind of information the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks in its five-year census of farmers in the 50 states and Puerto Rico.
The census is important in drawing up farming legislation, determining how federal agriculture money is distributed and positioning farming support services, according to state Secretary of Agriculture Charles M. Kuperus and Troy Joshua, director of New Jersey farming statistics for the USDA.
Also, the census will provide financial figures for a state industry that is under-recognized in terms of dollars, said Peter J.
A long-kept Md. secret: interest-free college loans
Undergraduate and graduate students are eligible. There's no age limit. Recipients range from age 17 to 61. To qualify for a loan, you must apply for federal financial aid. You need to have a grade-point average of at least 2.0 on a scale of 4. And you must have a co-signer for the loan so that if you don't repay it, the co-signer would be on the hook. Central Scholarship will begin accepting applications for the 2008-2009 academic year in January. The deadline is May 31. For more details check out the nonprofit's Web site at www.centralsb.org. .
A Shaky Season for Student Loans
Shortly after New Year's Day, Pat Watkins, financial aid director at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., placed a worried call to National Education, a student loan company she has been working with for nearly two decades. She had heard rumors that the company was no longer funding federal Stafford and PLUS (Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students) education loans, but had received no official word from the company. She found out that the phone of National Education's local rep had been disconnected. Later she learned that Chicago-based National Education was not planning to accept applications for new loans for the spring semester after Jan. 15, though they planned to fund disbursements for students who received loans for the fall. Federal Loans Lose Funders That was the first surprise.
Contractor loses La. scholarship account data dating back to 1998
BATON ROUGE, La. -- A Boston-based contractor hired to store and safeguard state scholarship and college savings account data lost most of those records _ including bank account numbers and student and parent Social Security numbers _ during a move, officials say. "We certainly don't want to create any panic. But people should be aware and take the necessary steps," said Melanie Amrhein, executive director of the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance. "This is backup data off of a mainframe that contains sensitive personal information." Special equipment and software and "sophisticated computer skills" would be needed to get the compressed records from the TOPS scholarship program, START Saving Program, and Free Application for Federal Student Aid, according to a notice posted on the Internet.
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