FAP912: National sales tax, student loan consequences, Rich Palmer
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Weekly Financial Aid Roundup
Last Friday, the credit card bill was signed into law by President Obama. Farewell, student credit cards as we know them.
California’s kind of imploding, budgetarily-speaking.
Consequences of CCRAA and anti-FFEL legislation surfacing now.
Figuring out that you can’t spend what you don’t have, Congress looks at a national sales tax to make every part of your life 10% more expensive.
Scholarship Update
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Financial Aid News 134: US National Sales Tax Proposal in Congress
Student Financial Aid News
In an unusual turn of events, Congress is currently debating a US national sales tax of 10% or more; in other nations, this is called a VAT (though the mechanics differ on a sales tax vs. VAT). This will impact everything from beer and pizza to college tuition and financial aid, and amounts to making everything 10% more expensive, or reducing your annual income by 10%.
If you’d prefer to not hand over 10% more of the contents …

Financial Aid News 133: More consequences of ending federal student loans
Student Financial Aid News
From Inside Higher Ed:
Several states are cutting back the payments they make to help residents pay back student loans they took out to enter high-demand fields such as teaching and nursing, The New York Times reported. The loan forgiveness programs are typically sponsored by state lending agencies and nonprofit organizations in the student loan industry whose ability to finance the programs is impaired by the industry’s shrinking revenues, the newspaper reported.
Commentary
The whole article in the Times is …

Financial Aid News 132: California Financial Aid Endangered By Budget Crisis
From NASFAA:
“Seniors at for-profit colleges are more than twice as likely to have accumulated dangerous amounts of education loans as seniors at other kinds of four-year colleges, according to a new report.,” U.S. News & World Report reports. “Almost 30 percent of seniors at for-profit universities in 2008 owed at least $40,000 in college loans, an amount that could be excessive, according to a new analysis of the latest federal data by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Finaid.org and Fastweb.com. For …

Student loan consolidation is just one piece of that giant debt puzzle for students to solve when they graduate from college.
In addition to federal and private student loan debt man also carry credit card debt, department stores balances, have medical bills, legal fees, personal loans, and may already have a loan or two in collections. [...]

FAP911: Student credit cards, Congressional hearings, Jonathan Coulton
Click here to download the MP3 file
Weekly Financial Aid Roundup
Goodbye, student credit cards.
A perspective on student loan programs.
Impending bank failures.
Scholarship Update
Google has a photo contest running. $7,500. Details at our free college scholarship search site.
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Student Financial Aid News
From the Chronicle:
Rushing to meet a Memorial Day deadline set by President Obama, the U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval today to credit-card legislation that would create new protections for borrowers, but could make it harder for students to obtain charge cards. Once enacted, the bill would shield students and other consumers from sudden spikes in interest rates and fees, and would place restrictions on the issuing of credit cards to students under the age of 21. It also would cap the amount students under the …

You know how special you guys are, listeners of the Financial Aid Podcast? The House Committee on Education and Labor knows you by name. I got an email from the Committee last night.
From George Miller and the House Committee on Education and Labor:
On Thursday, May 21, the House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing to examine proposals that will make historic increases in college aid by enacting reforms that will make the nation’s federal student loan programs more reliable, effective and efficient for students, families and taxpayers.
One of …

Student Financial Aid News
All over the web – yesterday, California voters rejected Propositions 1A through 1E, which will likely lead to about a 10% reduction in funding for higher education across the board in California. Expect either a commensurate increase in tuition or decrease in enrollments after the 64-36 voter rejection.
Commentary
Totally unsurprising, and in some ways, deserved. California’s state government didn’t save its surpluses during boom times, and now is losing about $2 billion – $3 billion a month in deficits. As much as I love and support higher education, …

Student Financial Aid News
From the AP:
Young people are carrying a load heavier than they normally bear as they scatter from campuses, judging from an AP-mtvU poll that finds students anxious about their finances, job prospects after graduation and the pressures facing their folks back home. Josh Donahue, 23, an Oregon State University economics graduate, is living on food stamps. First in his family with a university degree, he stays with relatives and scrapes even for a menial job instead of the bank gig he’d dreamed about. “A degree in economics,” …