FAP583: Free stuff Friday, Senate legislation, Amherst, La Terremoto de Alcorcon

Student Financial Aid News
+ Chronicle: Dealing a blow to lenders and a victory to student groups, the U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to reject an amendment that would have reduced the size of a subsidy cut to for-profit student-loan companies.
+ The amendment, which would have scaled back the subsidy cut from 0.5 of a percentage point to 0.35 of a percentage point, was defeated by a vote of 61 to 36. At press time, the Senate was poised to pass the underlying bill, a budget-reconciliation measure that would slash government subsidies to student-loan companies and use the savings to pay down a portion of the federal deficit and dramatically increase student aid.
+ The failure of the amendment came as a disappointment to the student-loan industry, which has warned that proposed cuts could drive smaller companies out of the federal student-loan program and force the remaining providers to do away with such borrower benefits as lender-paid origination fees and rate reductions for on-time repayments.
+ But student advocacy groups saw the situation differently. They said students had been spared a $4-billion cut that would have cost the neediest students $290 in Pell Grant aid a year, or nearly $1,200 over the course of their four-year college careers.
+ “It is encouraging that when the light of day shone on the details of this amendment, Congress voted with students and not with Sallie Mae,” said Luke Swarthout, a higher-education advocate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
+ But the battles over student lending are far from over. Three senators have introduced bills that would take aim at perceived problems in the growing, and largely unregulated, private student-loan industry. Some of them may be offered as amendments to the Higher Education Act when Congress takes up that bill on Monday.
+ Among the most controversial of the bills is a proposal by Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, to establish a federal supplemental loan program to compete with private loans. Mr. Brown has predicted that the government could provide students with nonguaranteed college loans at rates “significantly less than the 12 to 19 percent students face for the same type of loans today in the private sector.”
+ Lenders fear the program could supplant the lucrative private-lending industry, which has grown exponentially as college costs have risen. One lender described the two-page proposal as at once “breathtakingly simple” and “dangerous.”
+ What would that look like? Probably a lot like a graduate PLUS loan
+ Fixed 8.5% interest rate, up to cost of education
+ Effectively, take the parent out of the parent PLUS loan
+ Chronicle: Amherst College announced on Thursday that it would replace all loans with grants in its financial-aid packages to attract more middle-income students. The liberal-arts college is only the third institution to make such a change.
+ Anthony W. Marx, Amherst’s president, said he hoped the policy would increase the number of talented applicants to the college, which admits students regardless of financial need and does not award merit-based scholarships.
+ “Amherst believes it is our responsibility to ensure access to the best colleges for the best students,” Mr. Marx said in an interview. “We are concerned that middle-class families have been scared away by our sticker price and that we may be losing great students we want as a result.”
+ The charges for tuition, room and board, and mandatory fees at Amherst are $45,000 annually. During the last academic year, nearly a third of Amherst’s 1,600 students received financial-aid packages that included loans.

Scholarship Update
+ Hyperic Education Scholarship
+ Each applicant is asked to write a 2,500 word essay on the subject of “Managing the Data Center of the Future”.
+ In order to participate in the contest, you must be a registered student in high school, an accredited college, university or other institution of higher learning for the 2007/2008 year and be enrolled in university-level IT courses or be employed by such organizations and be involved with instruction and/or research related to such IT courses.
+ The scholarship amount of $5,000 will be applied to one lucky student’s tuition or an employee’s departmental budget.
+ Deadline June 15 of every year
+ Details at our free college scholarship search site

Free Stuff Friday
+ FlickrShop – photoshop to Flickr
+ Google Reader more podcast friendly with popouts!
+ NY Times 10 minute summer recipes compendium – some recipes have fairly expensive ingredients, but some do not
+ CNET: Turn your laptop into a wireless hot spot
+ Stalkerrific Google Phone Number Locator!
+ Combine PDFs!
+ GnuCash
+ 62 little known uses for vinegar
+ Vienna
+ Bust a Name domain name tool
+ When to buy things
+ iPhone DevCamp apps

Podsafe Music
+ La Terremoto de Alcorcón, Liberate

Reminders

+ Private student loans
+ Stafford loans | Other federal student loans
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA tutorials and free help
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidNews.com.
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

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