| After Harvard, Yale boosts aid
Yale announced this week that it will change its undergraduate financial aid policy for all students this fall. The changes are meant to make college more affordable for middle and upper-income families and follow in the footsteps of a similar policy enacted by Harvard last December.
"We want all of our students to make the most of Yale academically and beyond without worrying about excessive work hours or debt," Yale president Richard Levin said in a press release. "Our new financial aid package makes this aspiration a reality."
At both Yale and Harvard, parents with annual incomes below $60,000 a year will not have to contribute toward their child's college education, and families with incomes from $60,000 to $120,000 will now pay between 1 and 10 percent of their incomes toward tuition.
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.
Schools unhurt by admissions change
Four prominent universities that ditched their early admissions programs have answered questions about whether the move would hurt their popularity. That answer is no. All are reporting record applications this year. Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia attracted widespread attention with announcements in 2006 that they would stop holding a separate, early round of admissions in the fall. They argued the practice contributes to anxiety and disadvantages students who need financial aid. This year, they began considering all applicants in a single pool with a January deadline. The University of Florida later made a similar announcement and moved to a single deadline of Nov. 1. Most selective schools kept some form of early admissions. Now, the results are in.
Loan Scandal Escalates
When Andrew M. Cuomo started asking questions about the relationships between lenders and colleges, many in higher education scoffed (off the record) that this was a case of an ambitious politician looking for headlines and that there wasn’t much for his inquiry to find. There’s no doubt that Cuomo, New York State’s new attorney general, is an ambitious politician looking for headlines, but he’s finding more and more to investigate. And some experts on aid are increasingly worried that the scandal is going to scare some students and families away from borrowing or from getting advice from financial aid offices. .
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. .
Harmony may be shut down
Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to shut down Harmony Community School, a charter school in Roselawn. Dann's suit claimed that the school has a record of academic failure, financial mismanagement, ethical lapses and consumer fraud. "Harmony has failed to accomplish its primary charitable purpose - educating students - despite receiving $31.9 million in taxpayers' money since 1998," Dann said during a news conference after personally filing the lawsuit in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. .
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