It appears now that the student loan bill could possibly maybe potentially* be paired with some health care legislation in such a way that it could pass the Senate with 51 votes and no risk of a filibuster.
But there’s a small hangup. As part of an agreement to include the student loan package in the [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act'
Finding Savings in the Student Loan Bill
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 [...]
Student Loan Reform is About More Than Cost Savings
With health care reform’s progress making a tortoise look like Usain Bolt (Saturday’s vote notwithstanding), efforts to reform the federal student loan programs have been more or less stuck in a holding pattern for the last seven weeks. Such inaction has provided time for new ideas and proposals to emerge and for those opposed to [...]
Student Loan Jobs
No matter it’s structure, it’s a widely accepted fact at this point that there are ways to reform the federal student loan programs in order to reduce costs. At this point then, the more salient issue becomes exactly what these reforms should look like and what additional goals should be considered during these changes.
In mid-September [...]
A Lone Student Voice Publicly Opposed to SAFRA
Earlier this week, a group of student loan companies and servicers launched Protect Student Choice, a campaign that is lobbying against the bill that would end subsidies for private lenders in the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program and use those savings to increase the Pell Grant for low-income students. Based upon the list of [...]
House Passes Student Loan Bill
The U.S. House of Representatives just voted 253 to 171 to pass H.R. 3221 the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which eliminates subsidies for private student lenders, expands the Pell Grant award, and invests significant amounts of money into improving college completion rates. It appears that the vote was mostly partisan, with six Republicans [...]
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, [...]
Why CBO Says Pell Grants Will Cost More
A few weeks ago, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its mid-session review, a document that updates certain budgetary information from its spring estimates. While review mainly concerns macroeconomic budget matters, it did contain a significant increase in the projected cost of the president’s proposal to fund all Pell Grants as a mandatory [...]
Reforms Will Shrink, But Not Eliminate, Private Student Lending
One of the stranger arguments being floated against reforming the federal student loan program is that ending subsidies for bank-based institutions will cause a collapse in the offering of private student loans that do not carry a government guarantee. But barring a massive reduction in tuition nationwide, private loan borrowing (unfortunately) appears to be alive [...]
A Closer Look at Schools’ Opinions on Perkins Loans
Last week, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) published the results of a “quick scan” member survey about proposed changes to the Perkins Loan Program. Overall, the 680-plus respondents seemed opposed to the reforms, with 80 percent saying they would prefer just expanding the existing Perkins program. Over 50 percent also raised [...]
On What Planet Does the WSJ Editorial Board Spend Most of Its Time?
The Wall Street Journal has a head-scratching editorial today that tries to connect having the government make all federal student loans with the ongoing health care debate. A greatest hits of convoluted and poorly presented conservative talking points, this editorial makes last week’s Forbes piece look subtle, nuanced, and rational.
Here’s a close look at what [...]
UPDATED: Two Easy Ways to Link Private and Perkins Loans
There are few higher education access issues the proposed reforms to the Perkins Loan Program (pages 64 to 88) aren’t trying to target. Tamping down excessive college costs? Schools get rewarded for low tuition. Need to improve graduation rates for low-income students? Institutions receive money for graduating large numbers of Pell Grant students. But the [...]
Don’t Add a Bailout to a Bailout
The College Access and Completion Innovation Fund is being billed as an exciting new reform program that will move the federal government’s traditional higher education role beyond providing grants and loans. But if that’s true, then why does the version of the fund proposed by the House of Representatives include a provision that directs money [...]
Unconstrained by Reality
A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor approved the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA). It would end subsidies (and insurance for 97 percent of default losses) for private lenders to make student loans under terms and conditions set by Congress. Instead, all federal student loans would be [...]
Who Gains From the Perkins Loan Low Tuition Incentive Formula?
Contained within the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (PDF) is a proposal to reform the Perkins loan program by increasing its funding to $6 billion and distributing this money through three separate formulas. According to the legislation, one-quarter of this funding, or $1.5 billion, would be given to schools through a new low tuition [...]
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
03/11/10 | Kevin Carey is quoted on the rising costs of education in The Economist.
03/10/10 | Chad Aldeman Aldeman's False Fronts is quoted on Accuracy in Academia.
03/09/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on loan origination on the Firedog Lake blog.
03/07/10 | Kevin Carey calls for a Race to the Top in higher education in a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
03/08/10 | Andrew Rotherham's Eduwonk post on RTT finalists is quoted on Class Struggle.
03/07/10 | Andrew Rotherham is quoted on the success of MATCH in The Times-Picayune.
03/06/10 | Eduwonk's reaction to Ohio's status as a RTT finalist is cited in a Wall Street Journal editorial.
03/05/10 | Andrew Rotherham's reaction to New York's status as a Race to the Top finalist is cited on National Journal.