How can top colleges be persuaded to admit more talented low- and middle-income students? My column this week laid out a strategy for making colleges more economically diverse and meritocratic, based on policies at Amherst College and the University of California.… Continue reading
Tuition increases at community colleges might lead to more student debt, more federal-aid disbursements, and … more high-school kids smoking and flirting in the 7-Eleven parking lot?
That is the implication of a paper published online this month by the Economics of Education Review.… Continue reading
If you need to borrow to finance your education, federal student loans should be first on your menu. Congress and the U.S. Department of Education regulate federal student loans, setting maximum interest rates, borrowing limits, and other important loan terms. These loans come in loads of different flavors.… Continue reading
Parents who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, are often shocked by how much the federal government thinks they can afford to pay for college when they receive their official “Expected Family Contribution,” or EFC.
Those who have investigated exactly how the government calculates the EFC say there’s a reason: The formula is so unrealistic and so old—it’s loosely based on a family budget from 1967—that it isn’t surprising that many 21st Century families are flabbergasted.… Continue reading
Students hoping to earn a little extra cash on campus this fall will have a tougher time as the number of federally funded work-study college jobs nationwide will drop by 162,000 to 768,000 for the 2010-2011 academic year.That’s distressing news for students when the unemployment rate for young people continues to top 15 percent, and states have been cutting scholarship budgets, says Lindsay McCluskey, vice president of the United States Student Association.… Continue reading
The Obama administration, even as it tried to restrain other domestic spending in its 2011 budget request, has called for expanding the Pell Grants, the main federal college aid program for low-income families. If adopted by Congress, the president’s formula would raise the top grant to $5,710 in 2011, compared with $5,550 this year, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, and make the program available to an additional one million students.… Continue reading
Is it in the harshly critical investigative reports that stitch together one damaging anecdote after another to suggest that the institutions prey on academically underprepared, low-income students, leaving them with huge student loan debts and few job prospects?
Or, as the colleges’ officials themselves assert, is there a different (and more favorable) truth to be found in the huge numbers of underrepresented students who are flocking to the institutions in ever-growing numbers and emerging with credentials that help them enter the job market, to their own satisfaction and that of their employers?… Continue reading
The battle lines on the future of for-profit colleges were being drawn Wednesday, a day before a series of Congressional hearings on the issue were to begin.
Fueled by federal student aid, the for-profit sector has mushroomed in the last decade.… Continue reading
As part of his effort to build a stronger foundation that will allow us to lead in the global economy, the President announced a historic initiative to strengthen our nation’s community colleges, and called for five million additional graduates by 2020.… Continue reading