FAP471: Free stuff Friday megadose, scholarship search secrets, loan auctions, weapons of mass seduction with Rayko KRB

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FAP471: Free stuff Friday megadose, scholarship search secrets, loan auctions, weapons of mass seduction with Rayko KRB

16 February 2007 1 views One Comment

FAP471: Free stuff Friday megadose, scholarship search secrets, loan auctions, weapons of mass seduction with Rayko KRB

Student Financial Aid News
+ Fourth-quarter revenue increased five-fold at education finance company MRU Holdings Inc., owner of the MyRichUncle brand.
+ Private student loan growth drove interest income to $1.77 million for the quarter, up from $205,000 a year ago. To date, the company has originated $145 million of private and federal student loans.
+ However, despite the jump in revenue — $1.96 million, up from $212,000 a year ago — the New York-based firm [ticker: UNCL”>MP3 file reported a net loss of $6.9 million for the quarter, down from $8 million a year ago.
+ They power our graduate private student loans at GradLoans.com
+ An old idea is about to resurface in Washington — potentially adding to the woes the student loan industry is facing in the Democratically controlled 110th Congress.
+ Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) is poised to introduce legislation that would require banks and other lenders to compete for the right to make federally guaranteed student loans, with the goal of identifying those who could offer the loans at rates that would cost the government the least, and using the savings for other efforts to make college more affordable for students. The Clinton administration proposed a pilot program to test an “auction based” approach to setting student loan interest rates in 1998.
+ More recently, a former Kennedy aide, Michael Dannenberg, who is now director of education policy at the New America Foundation, laid out the rationale for forcing banks to compete for the right to make government-guaranteed student loans in an op-ed in The Washington Post. The essay, co-written with Philip Longman, a fellow at the foundation, noted that the government already auctions off Treasury debt and other assets, and estimated that abandoning the system by which the government sets a minimum subsidy it will pay lenders on the loans they offer to students could save the U.S. treasury $15 to $20 billion over five years, based on the 4 percent to 7 percent premium that officials in Missouri earned when the state loan agency there sold off a portion of its portfolio.
+ Banks, predictably, sounded alarms as word of the Kennedy proposal spread, reiterating arguments they have made about past proposals for a student loan auction. John Dean, counsel to the Consumer Bankers Association, said such a plan would cause major complications because of some of the unusual traits of student loans. Because students typically take out loans in multiple years, borrowers and colleges alike could find themselves having to change the lenders they do business with every year. And lenders, if forced to offer their loans at the lowest possible price, might have to cut services for students and investments in technology, he said.
+ That’s what student loan consolidation is for
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com or call 877-328-1565