First quarter fiscal year 2010 customer service results for the four lenders chosen to service federal student loans sold to the U.S. Department of Education can be found here, with the methodology explained here.
Not much to see yet since the real work does not start until students enter repayment, but so far they are all [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Federal Student Loans'
How Did the Servicers Do?
Student Loan Commentary (Cont.)
Over at Brainstorm, Diane Auer Jones responded to my earlier post critiquing her arguments in favor of preserving a bank-based student loan system. I’ll try to provide some clarifications/critiques.
First, Jones writes that my original post confused private and federal loans because I was talking about the interest rate charged on alternative loans. But that wasn’t [...]
More Misleading Student Loan Commentary
Diane Auer Jones seems to have gotten the memo. Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Brainstorm blog, Jones, a former assistant secretary for postsecondary education, continues the trend of poor commentary on student loans from former Republican education officials kicked off by Tennessee Lamar Alexander earlier this week. And the intentionally misleading twisting of [...]
Student Loan Debt Collector Irony
The Sallie Mae agent trying to collect on defaulted loans held by college borrowers doesn’t need a college degree. See here and here. It’s worth keeping in mind when considering the jobs saved by preventing student loan reform versus the ones that could be obtained by the roughly one million additional students receiving an expanded [...]
Can Reform Solve Federal Student Loan Conflicts of Interest?
Media coverage of pending legislation to eliminate subsidies for bank-based federal student loans and redirect savings into the Pell Grant Program has recently focused on the fierce lobbying effort made by Sallie Mae and other lenders to get the U.S. Senate to accept their own reform proposal–an alternative that saves less money while also keeping [...]
Don’t Forget the Students
As Kevin noted earlier, a few major publications are starting to glom onto the fact that health care’s slow progress has basically stalled the pending legislation to revamp the federal student loan programs. The latest entrant is the New York Times, which in a nice piece of symmetry, both ended and began this week with [...]
False Choices in the Value of College
The Washington Monthly’s College Guide brought to my attention this Huffington Post article arguing that college is a bad deal. Analyzing the cost of college versus an up-front investment, the author, James Altucher, argues:
Over the course of a lifetime, according to CollegeBoard, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than his counterpart [...]
Cohort Default Rates: Putting For-Profits In Perspective
A number of posts today have discussed how for-profit institutions fare poorly when viewed through a three-year cohort default rate calculation. But here’s a chart that should hopefully underscore the extent of the problem that default performance of for-profit institutions represents.
What this chart shows is that for-profit institutions enroll about 7 percent of the students, [...]
Higher Ed By the Numbers
There’s been a lot of different higher education things going on lately, so here’s a few figures to consider:
80 Score out of 100 given to the Direct Loan servicing in 2008 on a test of customer satisfaction given by CFI Group. (Scores represent satisfaction, satisfaction relative to expectations, and satisfaction relative to ideal service.)
71 Comparable [...]
UPDATED: SAFRA Amendments
Later this afternoon week, the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on H.R. 3211, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, a piece of legislation that would end subsidies for companies participating in the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program. This vote will also be the last chance for House members to amend [...]
Wall Street Journal Continues Quest to Write Bad Editorials About Student Loans
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board returned over the weekend with another doozey of an article about the proposed plan to end the bank-based Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program and replace it entirely with the government-based Direct Loan Program.
Just like its last foray into federal student loan policy, the Sept. 12 editorial distorts facts, [...]
Do PLUS Denials Help Private Loan Borrowing?
For many families, PLUS loans are an important source of borrowing to pay for expenses not covered by a Stafford loan. With basically no limit—parents can take out an amount equal to the cost of attendance minus any aid received—and a fixed interest rate of 7.9 percent or 8.5 percent depending on the program borrowed [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.