Daily Aid 76: Financial aid at risk, stimulus, student loan blogs

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Daily Aid 76: Financial aid at risk, stimulus, student loan blogs

4 February 2009 1 views No Comment

Daily Aid 76: Financial aid at risk, stimulus, student loan blogs

Student Financial Aid News

When Middlebury College announced its plans to deal with a budget shortfall last week, however, it announced that financial aid was on the table; that a little more would be asked of students on financial aid and their parents; and that aid for international students would be scaled back a bit. Middlebury remains need-blind and pledged to meeting the full need of admitted applicants, but it may be unique among the competitive private colleges and universities that have faced large losses of endowment income in that it is publicly including financial aid among the areas in which downward adjustments are being made.

Commentary

The only surprise here is how long it took for an institution to publicly say that financial aid is on the table. My guess is a wave of institutions will follow suit, probably small at first as others watch to gauge the reaction to Middlebury’s announcement. If there’s not major pushback or a significant decline in admissions, expect other colleges to rapidly fall in line, especially those schools without herculean endowments.

This is the other shoe dropping. Decreases in aid, increases in need, increases in tuition, and now financial aid on the table. Line up your financial aid as soon as possible.

On the stimulus package, from Inside Higher Ed:

But as Republican lawmakers have criticized the bill as being tilted too much toward social program spending rather than tax cuts, and President Obama has made noises about trying to satisfy those concerns, aid for students has been specifically mentioned as un-stimulative spending. Not quite on the level of the replacement sod for the National Mall, but even some Democrats like Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska have questioned whether student aid belongs in a stimulus bill. “You don’t want to be against Pell Grants,” Nelson told the Associated Press. “But the question is, how many people go to work on Pell Grants? Should it be in this legislation?” In his speech Tuesday at the annual meeting of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, Education Secretary Arne Duncan strongly defended the Pell Grant spending, but urged the audience of private college leaders to get busy urging their elected officials to support it. “It is on the fence,” Duncan said.

Commentary

Senator Nelson is technically correct. Increasing Pell Grant funding does not provide jobs, which is a core element of the stimulus package. That said, increasing Pell funding would free up capital for lower income families to either save or spend, which would have an indirect economic impact. If the goal of the stimulus package is rapid jobs generation, then higher education aid should not be part of it. If the goal of the stimulus package is long term growth, then higher education aid very much belongs in it, as investing in education in the long term tends to pay off well.

For that matter, provisions in the stimulus package for additional assistance to student loan companies also has no place in a short term package, but might make sense in a longer term package. It all depends on what priorities Congress has.

If you believe investing in higher education makes sense, please contact your Senators and Representatives and ask them to support the higher education aid aspects of the package.

Scholarship Update

The AdmissionScholarship.com Scholarship Program is a program that awards (2) $1,500 scholarships per year to students who are planning on attending a previously unattended college or university. This includes new, transfer, and graduate students. Scholarships are awarded through random drawings to give each student an equal chance of winning. Applicants must be at least 13 years of age and use the award within 5 years of winning. Deadlines are June 30 and December 31 of each year.

Details at our free college scholarship search site.

Shameless Plugging

I’ve noticed a lot of people leaving comments on the Student Loan Network’s blogs, which is awesome. One tip – make sure you go back and check in a little later, as we often post the responses to your blog comments on the blog so that everyone can benefit from your question and answers. If you haven’t checked out our blogs, we’ve got a bunch:

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