UK: Student debt and cashpoint colleges
By Paul Clifton. At the University & Colleges Union (UCU) we have been following recent events in Australia closely. Your government’s plans to increase student fees and to open up the sector to for-profit providers are depressingly familiar to staff and students in English higher education. On a more positive note, it has been fantastic to see the level of protests in Australia at the proposed fee changes and budget cuts. More...
Etats-Unis : Une nouvelle loi pour les prêts étudiants !
Par LRobinDesile. Aux Etats-Unis, il n’est pas rare que les étudiants croulent sous les dettes une fois diplômés. Le gouvernement a décidé de réagir, meltyCampus vous en dit plus.
L’année dernière, le président Barack Obama a attiré l’attention de l’opinion sur l’endettement inquiétant des étudiants à l’issue de leurs études, qui menace l'économie, et a décidé de réagir lundi. Il a ainsi signé un mémorandum afin de limiter le taux de remboursement par mois, qui ne devra pas excéder 10% des revenus de l’étudiant. Pour rappel, ce taux est actuellement de 15%. Suite...
Student loans should be for life, say universities
By Gemma Ware. Students should be given a lifetime loan allocation that they can use for different undergraduate and postgraduate courses, according to new proposals put forward by a group of universities. The University Alliance, a group of 22 British higher education institutions, has added its voice to the debate on how to adjust the current student loan system, with a new report putting forward proposals for a new Higher Education Loan Programme – or HELP – aimed at extending student loans to postgraduate study and part-time undergraduate learners. More...
The Third Student-Loan Mess: Outrage and Crushing Debt
By Eric Best. We call crushing debt the third student-loan mess. Postgraduation debt levels are now such a constant part of public discussions about student loans that it is a little surprising to recognize that it really did not attract much attention until the mid-1990s. Suddenly, people began realizing that some borrowers owed five- and even six-figure student-loan debts. More...
U.S. Government, Not Banks, Should Service Loans, Professors Argue
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Federal Student-Loan Servicing: Contract Problems and Public Solutions”
Authors: Eric M. Fink, an associate professor at Elon University’s School of Law, and Roland Zullo, an associate research scientist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy
Summary: Students are not well served by the student-loan-servicing industry, the researchers argue, as there is an inherent conflict between the profit motive and responsive, quality service. Given the large number of complaints against loan servicers by students, Mr. Fink and Mr. Zullo argue that the current loan-servicing model should be reimagined. More...
Student-Debt Debate Is Stoked by Caveats About Data
By Jonah Newman. A debate is raging about whether rising student-loan debt constitutes an existential crisis in American higher education or the natural outcome of more Americans’ pursuing a college degree. That debate was stoked this week by the release of Andrew Rossi’s new documentary film, Ivory Tower, and a report, by Beth Akers and Matthew M. Chingos of the Brookings Institution, that made waves on the Internet after David Leonhardt wrote about it in The New York Times on Tuesday. More...
The crisis of student loans is real, no matter what pundits tell you
EU students 'fail to repay record £40m in university loans'
Student Loans Give Rise to Hidden Billionaire in Brazil
By Blake Schmidt. A month after Dilma Rousseff took office in January 2011, the Brazilian president vowed to step up subsidized loans for students attending the nation’s for-profit universities. The initiative was a bid to expand access to training for an emerging middle class that grew by 40 million people in a decade. Since then, about 8 million people have received state-sponsored scholarships and another 1 million were approved for student loans. More...