| 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.
Passageways concludes year of innovation, acquisitions
Passageways, a company in Purdue Research Park, is preparing to close the books on a very productive year. The 4-year-old West Lafayette-based firm provides solutions
that enhance internal communications for the financial services industry. This fall it added 66 new clients through the acquisition of the Instant Intranet Builder product from Engineered Business Solutions in Houston. Since then, the company has launched new products and been selected to streamline internal communications and data management for additional financial institutions. Passageways introduced its Knowledge Management and Learning Management applications in
mid-November at the BAI Retail Delivery Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. "The launch of these two customizable products adds further information management capabilities to the Passageways portal," said co-founder and Vice President Christopher Beltran.
minazione e resistenza irakena
11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in instrumental records of global surface temperatures (since 1850)
* Global average sea level has risen since 1961 at an average rate of 1.8mm per year but since 1993 at an average rate of 3.1mm
* Temperature changes will depend on how much CO2 is emitted, but different scenarios see the increase by 2100 ranging from 0.3C to 6.4C
* Up to 30 per cent of the world's species are at increased risk of extinction after a 2C temperature rise
* Between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa could suffer water shortages by 2020; in Asia, heavily-populated "mega-deltas" are at greatly increased risk of flooding; tropical forest in eastern Amazonia will turn to savannah by mid-century
FURTHER REPORTS
The Big Melt: Lessons from the Arctic Summer of 2007
October 2007, carbon equity.
Now's her time to shine
College plans: Study broadcast journalism at Indiana University.
• Other interests: Member of the National Honor Society. Also competes for the track team, where she throws the discus and shot put and -- in a rarity for a thrower -- runs the hurdles.
"I'm telling you, I hated (the hurdles) during my sophomore year,'' Fergason said. "When I tried out for them, I thought it was the worst thing I've ever done, but I love a challenge.'' .
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