Thursday, August 28, 2008

College affordability featured in Biden's speech

Got Tuition was pleased last night to hear Sen. Joe Biden, now a vice presidential nominee, express his desire to make college education more accessible and more affordable to more Americans.

Biden included the crisis of college affordability in a litany of economic pressures weighing on America's middle class. He imagined the conversations being held at kitchen tables across the country:

Like millions of Americans, they're asking questions as ordinary as they are profound, questions they never, ever thought they'd have to ask themselves.

Should Mom move in with us now that Dad's gone? Fifty, sixty, seventy dollars just to fill up the gas tank? How in God's name, with winter coming, how are we going to heat the home? Another year, no raise. Did you hear they may be cutting our health care at the company? Now we owe more money on our home than our home is worth. How in God's name are we going to send the kids to college? How are we going to retire, Joe?

And, promoting the leader of his ticket for the presidency, Biden pledged that making college more affordable would be a priority in a new administration.

Barack Obama knows that any country that out-teaches us today will out-compete us tomorrow. That's why he'll invest in the next generation of teachers and why he'll make college more affordable. That's the change we need.

Music to the ears of millions of American families.

Joaquin Guerra thanks NEA for Got Tuition

Joaquin Guerra of New Mexico thanked NEA for its sponsorship of Got Tuition and drawing attention to the issue on behalf of college students, prospective students and their families.

Kagro X is looking for answers

Blogger David Waldman is better known as Kagro X at Daily Kos, where he works full-time as one of Kos's contributing editors. His own college debt is long gone, but he's worried about how he and his wife will finance college for their two kids. On their to-do list: Win the lottery. Meanwhile, he's studying the presidential candidates' platforms and asking for answers.

Watch here:

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Kevin Murphy offers a proposal

Kevin Murphy, who blogs at Ghost in the Machine, used his undergraduate degree to become a speechwriter in the 1990s, but returned to graduate school after 2000. While the $15,000 remainder of his undergraduate debt is still in forebearance as he finishes his graduate classes, it continues to accrue interest, he said. He was ready with a proposal when Got Tuition asked how he might urge lawmakers to make a college education more accessible and more affordable to more Americans.

Click to watch Kevin's proposal:

Devilstower shows support for Got Tuition


Devilstower, aka Mark Sumner of St. Louis, spent the day in a cool "Got Tuition" t-shirt in the Big Tent in Denver.

TygrBright describes a friend's debt quandary

Got Tuition caught up this morning with Cecile LaBore, who posts as TygrBright at Democracy Underground. Cecile lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and tells us of a friend who is the father of five children -- three of which have already finished college, one is attending now, and the youngest is still in high school. Now in his early 60s, this friend has just lost his job, leaving him and his two college-age daughters in a new quandary.

Watch TygrBright:

Maine has a bright idea for college grads

Got Tuition talked yesterday with TurnMaineBlue blogger Edward Lachewicz, who described a great and innovative program that helps Maine's college graduates make use of their college debt. It's called Opportunity Maine, and it allows college grads to write off the entire amount of their loan debt as a dollar-for-dollar tax deduction each year. It's one way that states (and maybe the federal government, one day) can encourage our young people to attend college without leaving them in debt and postponing other major life decisions.

The program is only two years old -- it started out as a ballot initiative but the legislature enacted it on its own without waiting for the outcome -- and it appears to be the first of its kind in the nation.

Watch Eddie talk about it:

Students on Denver's 16th St Shuttle



Some enthusiastic college students on the 16th Street shuttle in Denver were excited to join the Got Tuition effort with t-shirts this morning.

College Affordability & the Next Presidency

A post by Got Tuition teammate Cecil Cahoon was featured this morning on the front page of Huffington Post, discussing the significance of college affordability in the agenda of the next administration.

As the first in my low-income family to attend college, I took every form of aid available on campus -- work study, part-time employment -- and held seasonal jobs off-campus. Thankfully, I qualified for federal loans, signing my first promissory note as the sun set on the Reagan era. Their full weight became clear only after I graduated. A teaching salary paid rent, utilities, used-car payments and insurance, but I spent much of the 1990s freelancing, landscaping and doing other odd jobs to keep loan-default notices at arm's length.

In retrospect, I was lucky; my original debt was less than $10,000, compared to the average $19,000 note that the graduating class of 2008 took home with its degrees. And I was able to pay off mine in under a decade -- a time when gas prices rarely topped $1.25 per gallon.

Mine is one illustration of why the nation's largest association of educators is raising the issue of college affordability. The next president's budget priorities will begin restoring America's competitive edge in the global economy, or will serve as a eulogy to days of economic strength gone by. And the signal issue to watch will be college affordability.

The most compelling parts of the post are notes about several Missourians -- college students, recent graduates and parents of students -- and their own struggles with college affordability and their loan debts. For the rest of the Huffington Post feature, click here.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Bloggers from the Carolinas in the Big Tent


Got Tuition made friends with bloggers of each of the Carolinas today, Betsy Muse of North Carolina's BlueNC and Tim Kelly of South Carolina's Crack the Bell. Betsy and Tim are representing their home states as bloggers at the Democratic National Convention in the nearby Pepsi Center but took time to visit their blogger colleagues in the Big Tent. They enthusiastically showed their support for Got Tuition with new t-shirts.

Father anticipates his daughter's debts

A real-life father who blogs (and cartoons) at Avery Voice, Rick Spisak of Florida stopped to talk with Got Tuition this afternoon about the debt that he and his two daughters are accruing to finance their college educations. Both are in graduate school; one will take a graduate degree in architecture, the other in international catastrophe psychology -- or, as he put it, one will help heal our world, the other will help build it. When they're finished, Rick anticipates a combined total of more than $150,000 of debt.

DailyKos, Ned Lamont & Firedoglake


This afternoon, Got Tuition caught up with Markos Moulitsas, the founder and namesake of DailyKos, one of the largest and most-well-read political blogs. Kos, 2006 Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont and Jane Hamsher, editor of the blog Firedoglake, paused to show their support for Got Tuition in the Big Tent's makeshift television "studio." DailyKos, along with ProgressNow, Google, Digg and the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, is a co-sponsor of the Big Tent.

Another Kossack blogging from the Big Tent is Devilstower, whose wife is a sixth-grade science teacher in St. Louis, Missouri. Devilstower is looking forward, as we are, to the vice presidential debate at his alma mater, Washington University, set for October 2. If he's unable to get tickets to watch from inside, he said, he'll look for ways to raise the visibility of college affordability and other issues at that event.

Annette Taddeo supports Got Tuition?


This morning, U.S. Congressional candidate Annette Taddeo of Florida stopped to emphasize her support for Got Tuition and our efforts to raise awareness of college affordability.

Blogger and intern Matt Taylor on tuition

Matt Taylor, a blogger at Progressive Book Club and a New Yorker attending the University of Michigan, described the choices that his classmates make because of the loan debts they're accruing. Some take jobs on- and off-campus, working late hours, which has some impact on the time they can devote to their studies. Though provisions made by Matt's late grandmother will help him to graduate without debt, he likely would be facing the same fate as his classmates without that help. Like most middle-class families, his parents earn too much to qualify for federal financial aid but may not have been enough to fund the out-of-state tuition at the university he chose.

Got Tuition live-blogs from Denver

Got Tuition has found several new friends at the "Big Tent," a confluence of bloggers from across the nation meeting just outside the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, this week. The "tent" -- literally a two-story skeletal structure encased in tarp -- is housing several hundred bloggers and hosting several dozen passers-through, include panelists in breakout session upstairs, and luminaries like Dan Rather, Arianna Huffington, Markos Moulitsas, Van Jones and others.

On Monday night, Got Tuition met Joaquin Guerra of New Mexico, and Shanna Weisfeld of Austin, Texas. Shanna talked to us about the work she does with new teachers in Texas, who come to their first years of teaching with thousands of dollars in college debt. They take second and third jobs, she said, and they postpone other life choices.

Watch Shanna's comments here:

Loan cost increases pinch students

According to the Detroit News, students in Michigan have been hit especially hard by the student lending crisis. At Michigan State University, 98% of federal student loan borrowers participated in a program called Michigan Students First. This state run program refunded all fees when students applied for loans and offered a zero percent interest rate after graduates made three years of on-time loan payments. Unfortunately, with the recent student loan meltdown, this program has been suspended, and thousands of students have been left to try and make ends meet. You can read the complete article here.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Mandy Plucker, NC



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Sunday, August 24, 2008

Are free, online textbooks the answer?

The Los Angeles Times has a nice article about one way professors are helping their students to afford college. R. Preston McAffee (an economics professor at Caltech) has written a free, open-source textbook and made it available online. This book is so highly regarded that it has been adopted by many prestigious universities, including Harvard. Is this a possible answer to the rising costs of textbooks?

Congress recently passed laws that would require textbook publishers to offer "un-bundled" editions of books, so students won't be forced into buying workbooks and DVDs that aren't used in classes. While this is a good first step, people like R. Preston McAffee believe that this doesn't go nearly far enough to help students cope. You can read the complete article here.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Penni Cyr, ID



Want to share your story with got tuition? Please e-mail your stories, pictures, and videos to gottuition08@gmail.com.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Mississippi requests for student aid rise 19% in one year

According to the Hattiesburg American, the number of Mississippi students requesting financial aid has risen by more than 19% over the same time last year. The article goes on to talk about some costs that we normally don't think about when budgeting for university expenses. In Mississippi, state universities are raising meal plan costs by and average of 6.9% while dorm expenses are increasing by 5.7%. You can read the complete article here.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Nicole Hodges-Abbasi, VA



Want to share your story with got tuition? Please e-mail your stories, pictures, and videos to gottuition08@gmail.com.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

gottuition.org is live!

As of 2:00 today, our main webpage is now live. Click on through to gottuition.org for tons of new info. You can check out the store to pick up one of our shirts, see how your congress members have voted on education issues, read fact sheets on college affordability, or even enter our video contest! Click here to visit the all new gottuition.org.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

How much spending money is enough?

The Baltimore Sun has a nice article up about budgeting for living expenses while in college. Many students and parents have trouble coming up with an appropriate amount, and with the current economic cool down, it is even harder than usual to come up with a livable budget. You can read the complete article here.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Lisa Wolf, ND



Want to share your story with got tuition? Please e-mail your stories, pictures, and videos to gottuition08@gmail.com.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Lenders abandoning private student loans

Student loans are getting harder and harder to find this year. With the recent meltdown in the mortgage sector, many companies are slashing student loans programs and throwing the money they save back into the failing housing market. According to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, 124 landers have dropped all or part of their student loan programs while 28 lenders have completely abandoned private loans. You can read the complete article here.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Larry Taylor, ID



Want to share your story with got tuition? Please e-mail your stories, pictures, and videos to gottuition08@gmail.com.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Students turn to credit cards to make ends meet

According to an article at freep.com, students are relying more and more on credit cards to make up for student loans that don't completely cover living expenses or tuition. 24% of college students are now using credit cards to help pay for tuition and the average college student will graduate with $2,400 in credit card debt if they don't have student loans. That number rises to $3,000 for students who are already taking out loans to help pay for tuition. You can read the complete article here.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Cindy Sheffield, ID



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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Student aid requests soar as economy plummets

An article from Monday's San Francisco Chronicle has some interesting statistics about federal student loan requests. 8.9 million students have already filed federal student aid forms this year, a 16.3 percent increase over last year. According to the associate vice provost at Santa Clara University, Richard Toomey, the university has seen a large increase in the number of students requesting aid, more of those students are qualifying, and they are requesting larger sums of money than ever before. Justin Draeger of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has made it clear that since many states are facing budget problems they are contributing less to public universities, which is translating to higher tuition costs for students.
You can read the complete article here.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Chad Roggow, IN



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Monday, August 11, 2008

Fewer options open to pay for college

This is a New York Times article from April focusing on some of the "alternative means" that people are now using to pay for college. The reporter interviewed people who are doing everything from dipping into retirement savings to borrowing against their homes to make college a reality for their children. You can read the complete article here.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Sandy Arseneault, South Dakota



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Saturday, August 9, 2008

Why college costs are rising

I found a nice article on "The Advocates" website with a pretty in-depth look at the rising costs of higher education. They examine some of the reasons for these increases as well as some of the ways that various institutions are dealing with it. You can read the complete article here.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Sharon Harper, TN



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Thursday, August 7, 2008

Daily Kos collects college affordability horror stories

Last week we featured a blog entry from Daily Kos (you can read that entry here) that collected some college debt horror stories. That article was one part of a 14 part series that is now complete. There are some great stories in there detailing the, sometimes extreme, lengths that college students will go to in order to stay afloat. The entire series of articles has now been collected and you can read them all here.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Ryan Westart, IL



Want to share your story with got tuition? Please e-mail your stories, pictures, and videos to gottuition08@gmail.com.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Aaron M talks about college affordability and consumer awareness

I take pride in supporting groups like Got Tuition and the College Affordability Concerns Me campaign because they focus on the real issues of student debt. The companies offering loans to college students are largely at fault for the increasing trend of students in financial ruin and must continue to be vetted. These major financial institutions initially had the freedom to ask for a frighteningly high interest rate on their loans, which the students could not turn down as they relied on the funds to continue attending college. And of course there was the student loan kickback scandal.

These banks and private lenders are not the only folks to be involved with the lack of student financial assistance. We must continue urging the U.S. Congress to renew worthy legislation like the College Cost Reduction and Access Act and ensure that our representatives know the reality of student debt in society today. Such laws can limit interest rates and rate hikes as well as increase amounts of Pell grant funding. The College Opportunity and Affordability Act has now been passed, a bill that will offer cheaper textbooks and adjust the FAFSA form for easier use. Laws like this will only help the obvious need for legitimate financial aid opportunities available to students today.

Another underlying theme in the world of student debt is the general lack of financial knowledge among college students. Maybe one consumer education course in high school is simply not enough to properly inform young adults of the importance of their credit score, the need to be diversified, and the effects of overdrawing a bank account or submitting a late payment on a student loan or automobile lease.

So please continue to be aware of fraudulent financial aid proposals, unfairly high interest rates, congressional action on behalf of college students (and prospective college students) and check out sites that inform consumers about finances, like the NEA’s Financial Services and Investment programs for educators. Groups like Got Tuition must continue to fight for increased access to financial aid for all qualified students despite their ability to pay.

Aaron M.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Robbie Morgan, ND



Want to share your story with got tuition? Please e-mail your stories, pictures, and videos to gottuition08@gmail.com.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Massachusetts Educational Funding Authority no longer providing private loans

Due to the economic downturn we are experiencing, the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority has had to exit the private loan market and cutting back its services. Over 40,000 students used this service to help find low-cost private loans and will now have to look elsewhere to pay for school. You can read about the impact this will have on students here.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

New York Times article on the Higher Education Opportunity Act

The New York Times has a nice article outlining some of the changes that will go into effect due to yesterday's passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HR 4137). Some of the most visible changes are:
  • Pell grants are now available year round, not just during the academic year
  • Colleges must disclose all relationships with student lenders
  • Bans gifts and revenue-sharing schemes between colleges and student lenders
  • Textbook "bundles" must now be available as separate parts as well, no more getting stuck with buying DVDs and workbooks that you don't need for classes
  • The Fafsa will be overhauled and be available in a new, two page, Fafsa-EZ format
You can read the complete article here.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Higher Education Opportunity Act gets final approval

The Committee on Education and Labor released a statement yesterday affirming that the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HR 4137) has received final approval. The statement also, briefly, outlines the effects of the act. You can read their statement here.

Update:
You can read Rep. George Miller's (chairman of the House Education and Labor committee) statement here.

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling's statement can be read here.