FAP715: International student financial aid, Yale, Blackburn

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Student Financial Aid News
+ Inside Higher Ed: Yale University will capture the headlines on college costs today, but an announcement from a small college in Illinois may point to a strategy that could affect many more institutions — and especially those without überendowments.
+ Blackburn College announced that it will cut it tuition rates for next year by 15 percent, to $13,500. At the same time, however, Blackburn announced it was ending all but a few merit scholarships and completely ending the practice of negotiating with students and parents over aid packages.
+ “We were spending way too much time on the used-car sales approach and not enough time on the programs,” said Miriam Pride, president of the college.
+ “It became clear to us that we were spending an awful lot of time arguing over dollars, and we had competing institutions coming in with ‘here’s my bid’ and then families come back and say ’so and so is giving us another hundred dollars — you give us a hundred dollars,’” said Pride. “We just decided to end the haggling.”
+ Not only does the haggling hurt higher education and its image, Pride said, but it takes attention away from what students need to be thinking about when considering a college.
+ Inside Higher Ed: Ever since Harvard University announced a major expansion of its aid programs, Yale University has been promising that it would soon release its own initiative. On Monday, the university announced its expansion, which is in many ways similar to Harvard’s in that students from families with incomes under $60,000 will effectively pay nothing, while those eligible for aid will pay gradually increasing percentages of their income, up to 10 percent. While the Harvard aid would generally disappear at family income levels of $180,000, Yale went even higher — to $200,000. Yale also announced a modest tuition increase for next year — 2.2 percent — or about the projected inflation rate. While Harvard and Yale’s moves have received widespread praise, the Project on Student Debt is trying to discourage other colleges from helping those with six-figure incomes until they do a better job of helping those with minimal incomes. The project also released an analysis of the recent round of “no loan” pledges made by colleges and universities.
+ Bloomberg: Citigroup Inc. (ticker: C) posted the biggest loss in the U.S. bank’s 196-year history as surging defaults on home loans forced it to write down the value of subprime-mortgage investments by $18 billion.

Scholarship Update
+ Medical Library Association Scholarship for Minority Students
+ A scholarship for up to $5,000 will be granted to a minority student who is entering an ALA-accredited library school or has yet to finish at least one half of the program’s requirements in the year following the granting of the scholarship. African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, or Pacific Islander American individuals who wish to study health sciences librarianship are eligible.
+ Details at our free college scholarship search site
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook

Mail Bag
+ Lu and a dozen or so other people want to know – what kind of financial aid is available to international students? For international student financial aid resources:
+ http://www.InternationalStudent.com
+ http://www.InternationalScholarships.com
+ http://www.IEFA.org
+ http://www.InternationalStudentLoan.com
+ Disclosure: we provide the loans for InternationalStudentLoan.com
+ Bear in mind for the last resource, you’ll need a cosigner who is a citizen of the country in which the loan company resides. If you’re studying in the UK, a UK subject; in the US, a US citizen or permanent resident.
+ The next live show will be Friday, January 25 at 2 PM.

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Reminders
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidNews.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ FAFSA tutorials and free help
+ Stafford loans | Other federal student loans
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ Private student loans
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.