“Nelnet Inc. has sold a $660 million student loan-backed deal, according to a person familiar with the matter,” Dow Jones Newswires reports. “The sale of such asset-backed deals after the effective end of a Federal Reserve program to boost this market, is a sign of recovery. The Fed stepped in with offers of low-cost nonrecourse loans for investors to buy newly created consumer loan-backed deals in March last year, after investors grew wary of collateral backing the bonds and refused to purchase any.”

“Last we looked at U.S. Department of Education data on the obligation and disbursement of these funds in September, things were moving a bit slow. Six months later, it appears that while some funds have gone out quickly, others continue to lag,” Ed Money Watch reports. “Almost all of the currently available Pell Grant funds (about half of the total obligation) have been disbursed to the states for use. This is not surprising because Pell Grants are automatically distributed via a formula to students that qualify for the grants.”

“Key Senate Democrats were resisting calls to insert the proposed overhaul of lending programs into the budget reconciliation bill with health care reform, Politico reports. “[But then] the Senate parliamentarian notified Democratic leaders that, in order to meet the reconciliation requirements, both the Senate health and finance committees would need to produce $1 billion in deficit savings each over the next 10 years … With health care alone, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would not be able to show the items within its jurisdiction save at least $1 billion. By inserting the education package, the committee would satisfy the reconciliation instructions.”

The Department of Education reminds schools that registration for the Hawaii, St. Louis and Chicago Regional Direct Loan Training Conferences will close on Wednesday, March 17, and urges you to pre-register online to ensure your spot in this training event.

Preparing to implement the Net Price Calculator requirement mandated by the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008? The 2010 NASFAA conference will provide sessions, including “Will the Real Net Price Calculator Please Stand Up: Data Requirements and Implementation Issues” and a possible pre conference event. There are other great resources too, such as a video demonstration of the Department of Education’s template, and the Association for Institutional Research’s FYI, including a time line and additional resources.

The White House announced yesterday that ten charities will share the $1.4 million award that comes with President Obama’s Nobel peace prize. Six of the organizations he chose support students in higher education and five provide scholarships.

House and Senate Democratic leaders announced yesterday that student loan reform will be included in a House budget reconciliation bill. The healthcare “fixes” and student loan legislation will be combined in the House, and then the reconciliation package will be sent to the Senate. The Democrats plan to hold a House vote on the healthcare reform bill recently passed by the Senate and send that bill to the President to be signed into law. Then both chambers would pass the reconciliation bill containing healthcare reform adjustments as well as student loan reform.

In my experience, a big part of the process of picking a credit card is weighing all the different programs available to choose from. There are cards that give cash back, reward points, air miles, and all sorts of other benefits. Some cards even deposit a percentage of your purchases into a savings account in [...]

“Sallie Mae extended the distance between itself and the rest of the field with a 47% surge in new guarantees which gives them a market share of 29%,” Student Lending Analytics reports. “The consolidation of the FFELP originators continued in FY09 with the top 10 now representing 76.8% of all new guarantees vs. 71.9% in FY08. The top 100 originators now constitute 98.1% of all new guarantees vs. 95.7% in FY08.”

“In response to the question Diane Auer Jones poses below about student loan reforms, my colleague Ben Miller (who has a frighteningly detailed understanding of the intricacies of federal loan policy) offers the following,” writes Kevin Carey, policy director for Education Sector, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. “Students are too young to have collateral and a history of credit, so it is a risk to lend to them. That’s why private market rates are higher than the ones determined by the government.”