By Herman Berliner. I was interviewed by our University radio station about the shape of the US economy. Though I answered at length, my conclusion was and is that the economy is strengthening and that the signs of recovery are more and more visible. At the end of the interview, I was asked about students’ loans and how I felt about many students needing to go into debt to finance their higher education. Read more...
Sallie Mae, under scrutiny from consumer advocates and several lawmakers for how it manages payments for federal student loan borrowers, released new data Tuesday touting the performance of those loans. Read more...By Karen Gross. What is an acceptable level of loan default? By Karen Gross. The student loan problem seems clear enough on the surface: students are incurring oversized student debt, and they are defaulting on that debt and threatening their ability to access future credit. The approaches to student loan debt collection are fraught with problems, including improper recovery tactics and informational asymmetry regarding repayment options. Read more...
By . A new report argues that tighter state budgets have triggered higher tuitions.
Biola Jeje, 22, graduated Brooklyn College last May with a degree in political science and a mission: Force lawmakers to address the $1.2 trillion student debt crisis.
“It’s unfair that it’s happening to us, and we’re even being sort of blamed for the amount of debt that we’re being put in,” she said from the offices of New York Students Rising, where she serves as statewide coordinator.
Jeje left college with $9,500 in student loans, less than half the $29,400 national average for four-year college graduates. She and her fellow activists are mobilizing support to march on Albany, New York state’s capital, to deliver a message to legislators. More...
By Jon Marcus. As students (and their parents) increasingly consider value when picking a college, a new push to examine what they can expect to earn.
WHEN SHE WAS applying to college a few years ago, Donna Jo Cassidy heard plenty of friends at private colleges stressing out about their tuition bills. By graduation, some of them would have spent $200,000 or more, piling on part of it in student loans. So when it came time for Cassidy to look at schools, she wanted to know what the return would be on one of the biggest investments of her life. More...
By Michael Stratford. Congressional investigators have found “serious weaknesses” in how the Education Department manages a program meant to help defaulted borrowers get their loans back on track, a Government Accountability Office official said on Wednesday. Read more...
By Dennis Wyatt. America is about to get another harsh lesson in easy money.
And you can credit it once again to Uncle Sam’s meddling with longstanding lending rules.
Remember how political pressure from Congress and the White House to make it easier for more Americans to buy homes triggered the Great Rescission that we are still trying to shake off?
Not only did federal edicts to relax lending standards put marginal buyers into homes that a good number lacked the discipline or the income to manage the monthly mortgage payments but it also encouraged others with healthier income to gobble up more house than their wallet could handle. It also opened the floodgates for people to use mortgages on their homes to leverage all sorts of purchases ranging from new cars to expensive vacations to day-to-day expenses. More...
By Michael Stratford. President Obama’s budget for the 2015 fiscal year will call for extending a tuition tax credit and providing tax relief to student loan borrowers whose debt is forgiven under income-based repayment plans. The White House on Monday night outlined, in broad terms, several of the tax proposals in the president’s budget, which will be released formally today. Read more...
By Michael Stratford. A coalition of progressive groups on Thursday formally began a new campaign aimed at curbing rising student debt and reducing the price of college. The group of think tanks, student organizations, consumer advocates, and unions is targeting the country’s “increasingly dysfunctional system of higher education,” said Anne Johnson, executive director of Generation Progress, the youth division of the Center for American Progress, which is an organizer of the campaign. Read more...
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