Education for Less

First and foremost I would just like to clarify that the name of the act formerly known as the “Higher Education Act” is now the “Higher Education Opportunity Act” or HEOA. From now on I will be referring to this piece of legislation by its new name or simply just HEOA. This act has recently been reauthorized by Congress after ten years of being stagnant. The new version of this act contains several measures that will help to make a college education more affordable and accessible for anyone who wishes to pursue higher education.

Over the past two months the Department of Education has conducted six hearings across the country to discuss the implementation and specific wording of the HEOA. Students were sent to the hearings in California, North Carolina, and Washington D.C. by the United State Student Association (USSA). Students were able to share their ideas and perspectives on higher education programs such as the Pell Grant, public service loan forgiveness, and textbook regulations. The representatives sent from USSA were the only people present at the hearing that were representing and speaking on behalf of students. It is imperative that students like us are represented at these hearings so that our perspectives are taken into account when it comes to finalizing this piece of legislation. Students are affected by these programs, issues, and legislation the most so our voice on these matters is extremely important. Please check to see if any of the upcoming hearings are going to be at a school near you and if they are please attend and speak on behalf of all students in this country.

I recently ran across some tips from an expert on education legislation on how students can protect themselves during this worsening economic situation. There are several tips that I thought would be useful for all of you students out there who are worried about paying your tuition costs in these upcoming months.

· Utilize All Federal Aid First- Make sure that you are taking full advantage of all federal loans and grants before you apply for any private loans. With fixed interest rates and special programs where loan forgiveness is possible you want to make sure you use all federal money before borrowing from any other lenders.

· Invest in Bonds- If you have any type of discretionary income you should invest in federal bonds. They mature over time so this is a great way to plan for your future. The money you spend now will be worth even more in the future.

· Educate Yourself on Loan Repayment- Make sure that before you graduate you speak with a financial aid counselor so that you completely understand not only the terms of your loans but also your options for repayment. For instance, if you are going into a public service field then you may qualify for a federal loan forgiveness program.

· Explore Possible Tax Benefits- If your parents or relatives are helping you pay for college sit down and talk to them about potential tax benefits for families paying for college tuition. You want to make sure that you are receiving the maximum tax credit you are eligible for when it comes time to file your taxes this April.

· Be Cautious with Loans- Many students take out loans not only for their tuition costs but also for their living costs. Do not take out the maximum amount just so that you have extra discretionary income. Money in the form of loans can get very expensive when it comes time to pay interest. Only take out enough money to cover your essentials, it will pay off in the long run.

· VOTE ON NOVEMBER 4^TH! – We all have the opportunity to take part in a piece of history this coming Tuesday. Do not forget to go out to your polls and vote. Make sure you research the candidates up for election and make sure you know where they stand on issues pertaining to students and education. It’s important to vote for all of the people up for election, not just the President. These are the people who are essentially making the decisions about your future; make sure your voice is heard. If you want more information regarding the Presidential candidate’s stances on youth issues click on the link below.

Presidential Candidates’ Address Student Issues

The recent downturn in our country’s economy is taking its toll on how students finance their college educations. People are facing more problems than ever in their attempts to secure funding for their education and financial aid officers are expecting it to get worse before it gets better. Borrowing money has gotten more difficult and is forcing students who were borrowing on their own credit to ask parents, relatives, and friends to co-sign on loans. The amount of money available through grants and scholarships is decreasing because the returns on investments are down and people are not as willing to donate to the schools. This is forcing more students than ever to turn to borrowing money in the form of loans. Fidelity Investments conducted a survey of about 3,000 parents and of those surveyed 62% reported that they plan on using student loans to help finance college expenses (this figure was only 53% last year).

College administrators have reported that the problem has not gotten to a serious level as of yet. However, if the lay-offs continue and the unemployment level continues to rise there will be much more of a crisis in the academic realm. There will be a much higher demand for financial aid and there will not be enough to give for everyone. It is not just lay-offs affecting aid, the actual lenders have reported growing problems as well. They have reported reduced profit margins, and difficulties selling loans and many fear the closing of these private lenders because that will put a lot of students in a bad situation financially. Sallie Mae, one of the largest student loan lenders, has recently tightened their credit standards and raised their interest rates in an attempt to lessen the effect of the falling economy on their business; we can expect a lot of companies to begin using the same practices.

More people than ever are expected to apply for federal financial aid this year as well. There have already been 13.5 million applications so far this year; this is up 10% from last year when there were 12.3 million applications. This is disconcerting to students because that means that there will be less money to go around for each individual student. The federal government has not officially expressed any concern with the state of federal funding but is preparing for what is to come. The failing economy has not taken a serious toll on the state of funding for higher education, yet. However, as it continues to get worse students will begin to bear the burden more and more. Students need to stay informed on what is going on with government monies so they can ensure that they have enough funding to continue their education. It is going to become increasingly important for students to take an active role in their education during these next few months as the economy worsens.

In 2006 Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings launched the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The reason she did this was because she felt that the current state of the federal financial aid system was not serving the needs of students and families as best as it could be and should be. The complexity of the financial aid system is evident in many different ways. One is with the application (FAFSA) itself; it is far too confusing for the average student to understand. It has even been described as more complicated than the IRS 1040 tax form, the form that most of the information for the FAFSA comes off of. As it stands right now, the FAFSA is six pages long with an additional four pages just for the instructions. Many students forego applying for federal aid because they are intimidated by the application. This is a problem with the system because it is supposed to be serving the needs of all students. However, the application is not the only barrier to financial aid. The Commission has even admitted to the inadequacies of the entire system, they were quoted saying that the aid system is “confusing, complex, inefficient, duplicative, and frequently does not direct aid to students who truly need it.” Clearly it is a well known fact that the system is not performing as well as it could or should be. So, what are we doing to fix it?

Earlier this month Secretary Spellings announced that there would be a few reforms to the system. One of the major changes is in the way that aid numbers will be reported to students who have applied. As it currently operates students are informed of how much they are expected to contribute. It will be changed so that it reports how much aid they can expect to receive rather than how much money they are expected to contribute. The idea behind this is that it will give students more time to investigate other options for securing enough funding for their education. The work that has been done thus far in cleaning up the aid system has mostly been focused on the application. Congress asked the Department of Education to identify ways to simplify the FAFSA. The Department outlined that a “new” FAFSA would contain 30 or fewer questions (compared to the current 127 questions), group questions into easy-to-explain categories, provide real-time notification of aid awards, and could potentially be coupled with other reforms to create an “aid package” that could be transferred and used at any institution of higher learning.

The news that the government is aware of this problem and working to improve it is a big step in the right direction in terms of access to higher education for students. Without the financial aid that is provided to students from the federal government a lot of students who are currently enrolled in college would not be there, myself included. Hopefully, once these changes are made more students will be able to pursue a college education because they will have enough funding. I was extremely pleased to read that they are finally taking action on the ridiculous FAFSA form. I have struggled with filling out that application for the last four years and it looks like the students who come after me may have a much easier time applying for financial aid.

I would like to share with you all a personal story of mine regarding financial aid for college. There are several ways that I have been adversely affected by the policies and stipulations that go along with receiving financial aid from the government. First off, I do not qualify for very much federal or state aid because I am considered a dependent of my parents. The problem with this is that I finance my education entirely on my own. Even if I were to file my taxes as an independent I would still be considered a dependent for financial aid purposes. It does not make sense that the government classifies me one way for taxes and another way for financial aid. The only way to be considered independent when being awarded financial aid is to be 24 years old or older, a military veteran, have dependents of your own, or legally emancipate yourself from your parents. These stipulations make it so that all of my parent’s income is considered when the government decides how “financially needy” I am even though none of that money is actually used to pay for my tuition and costs.

Another problem I have run into is the re-adjustment of federal and state financial aid awards that takes place when a student is awarded an outside scholarship or grant. At the end of my sophomore year I knew that it was going to be very difficult for me to pay tuition during my junior year. When I calculated out all of my costs it was looking like I was going to need to come up with about $10,000 out of my own pocket. In anticipation of this predicament I applied for scholarships at the end of my sophomore year. I was lucky enough to win a $10,000 scholarship. I was notified that I received this award in July after I had already received my financial aid award notification from Pitt in May. Once the organization that awarded me my $10,000 scholarship notified Pitt’s Office of Admissions and Financial Aid of my award my financial aid package was adjusted. The government actually rescinded about $3,000 in aid and changed a lot of my subsidized loans into unsubsidized loans. This means that I am now accumulating interest on not only my base loan amounts but also the interest I have already incurred. I was basically penalized by the government for receiving a scholarship.

These policies have really created a financial burden for me as I have gone through my four years at Pitt. It seems ridiculous that even though I financially support myself I have to claim my parent’s income on my financial aid application, preventing me from receiving the maximum amount of aid I should qualify for. I have accumulated about $25,000 in student loan debt that I will be working to pay off for many years after graduation. The sad reality is that this is a small amount of debt compared to other students who are graduating with upwards of $50,000 in debt. This is why we all should be pressuring the government to allocate more money to higher education. Young adults who are only trying to better their lives should not be financially burdened by the tuition costs and fees related to attending college.

Everyone is pretty aware of the “economic crisis” that our country is in the midst of. Earlier this week a $700-billion “bailout” bill was proposed to Congress as a means of intervention in the country’s financial system. This bill failed with a vote of 205 in favor and 228 against in the House of Representatives. If this legislation would have passed it would have marked the largest financial intervention since the Great Depression. This money would have been used to help the American economy get back on its feet by providing more funding to corporations so that the can continue to run their companies. Below is a summary of the PA Representatives votes:

In Favor

Robert Brady- D

Chaka Fattah- D

John Peterson- R

Joe Sestak- D

Patrick Murphy- D

Paul Kanjorski- D

John Murtha- D

Alyson Schwartz- D

Mike Doyle- D

Against

Phil English- R

Jason Altmire- D

Jim Gerlach- R

Bud Shuster- R

Chris Carney- D

Charlie Dent- R

Joe Pitts- R

Tim Holden- D

Tim Murphy- R

Todd Platts- R

If legislation is passed that will give billions of dollars to Wall Street, the burden will affect the younger generation of this country- the college students, in the future. The economic crisis will just be perpetuated forward by a bailout bill because it will make it harder for college students to pay back their loans. These massive amounts of debt are going to prevent today’s youth from investing in the economy in the years to come. If we want to help our country in the long run we should be investing money in our students and the education system so that our economy can flourish when these students graduate, get jobs, and have discretionary funds to invest in the economy. If these students are strapped with large loan repayments they will not be able to contribute to the economy.

As students we should stand together against this bill. If these extremely large sums of money are funneled into Wall Street it will be at the expense of students. At a time when the average college student is graduating with around $20,000 in student loan debt, we as a country cannot afford to be giving Wall Street a $700 billion safety net. If Congress is willing to provide these safety nets to those experiencing the financial crisis the hardest, students should be near the top of that list. With the 2008 election right around the corner it is important for students to stay educated on the issues and vote for those candidates that have our best interests in mind. Students and their parents are taking out more money in loans than ever before and we cannot allow our elected officials to throw our needs away in an attempt to “bailout” Wall Street.

There is an interesting provision to the Higher Education Act (HEA) that was approved by both the House and the Senate a few months ago. It’s a clause in the HEA that forces colleges to provide their students with commercial music downloading services and to develop a formal piracy deterrence plan to be implanted on their campuses. This arose from pressure from negotiators on behalf of the entertainment industry who, as of recently, have been taking a lot of legal action against college students for the amount of illegal downloading they do. The HEA now holds that colleges have to be more responsible for stopping students from sharing copyrighted files with one another over the school’s network.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began working on regulating illegal downloading on college campuses in 2007. Last year, the RIAA released a list ranking schools based on the level of piracy on their campuses and the MPAA made claims that piracy on university campuses accounts for 44% of the movie industry’s total loss due to piracy each year (a claim that was later retracted due to “inflated” figures). In the same year, the RIAA also started a litigation and propaganda campaign to start taking action against those who pirate music.

This provision comes after the House approved similar terms as part of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act (a similar bill was also approved in the Senate). There are some negative sentiments that come with this legislation from educational advocacy groups because of the door it opens for future legislation. These organizations fear that in the future the government will now be able to legally withhold funding from schools that do not agree to police copyrighted materials on their campuses. Other arguments claim that universities, as institutions of higher learning, have better things to worry about and should not be forced to regulate this because it is not directly related to education. This is an entirely new field of legislation in terms of education and it will be interesting to see what kind of turn this takes in the future as the legislation begins to be implemented on campuses across this country.

Over the past couple months the Higher Education Act (HEA) has been moving through Congress and through President Bush’s hands. I am pleased to announce that it was reauthorized and signed into law by President Bush on August 14^th, 2008. This is a very big step in the right direction for the federal government in terms of funding higher education. The terms of the newly reauthorized HEA includes terms for curbing the costs of textbooks, encouraging the Secretary of State to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and a clause referring to the information that is provided to students via school’s official websites and from lenders about the terms of school loans. However, this is only a step, there is much more that still needs to be done.

What is happening now are the regional hearings at college campuses across the country. These hearings allow students to discuss what the exact language should be for the new programs that are outlined in the HEA. It’s important that students go to these hearings and show the Department of Education that they are listening, they care, and they need to be a part of these decision making processes. If you attend any of the colleges where these hearings are being held or live in the immediate area I urge you to attend so that your voice can be heard on this issue. In order for us to get the government to listen we need to tell them what we want. By holding these hearings, they are giving us the perfect opportunity to get our voices heard. Please look below to see the dates and locations of upcoming hearings:

September 19, 2008: Texas Christian University, Fort Worth Texas

September 29, 2008:University of Rhodes Island, Providence Rhode Island

October 2, 2008: Pepperdine University, Malibu, California

October 6, 2008: Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte, North Carolina

October 8, 2008: U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC

October 15, 2008: Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland, Ohio

If you’d like to know more about the process of the re-authorization of the HEA please click here to be forwarded to a news article on msnbc.com

Anyone who is currently enrolled, planning to enroll, or recently graduated from college knows and understands how the cost of attending college is out of control. If you are one of these people then you are probably aware of how the financial aid that the government offers to students is not even close to how much it costs to actually attend. At the University of Pittsburgh, which I attend, after all the fees, room and board, meal plan charges, and tuition are put together it costs a Pennsylvania resident around $18,000 per year and an out-of-state resident around $27,000 per year. To make matters even worse over the past 3 years it has become an annual custom for Pitt to raise its tuition between 5 and 15 percent each year. These skyrocketing costs that are associated with obtaining a college education are preventing around 200,000 students from attending college each year. If we want our country’s economy and work force to grow we need to be investing in our future; we need to be investing in education.

There are two major aspects of governmental funding associated with higher education that need to be addressed in order for this growing problem to end. The Higher Education Act (HEA) is considered the single most comprehensive piece of legislation relating to higher education. Within this act are details pertaining to the TRIO programs which include Upward Bound, Student Support Services, Talent Search, Educational Opportunity Centers, and Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement. These programs all help get students into college and keep them there. This act also outlines the amount of money that is available through federal loans and grants and the details of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). This act was introduced in 1965 with the plans of having it reauthorized every 5-7 years. The problem exists in the fact that the last time it was reauthorized was 1998, 10 years ago.

The second aspect is the annual budget that the President proposes and Congress subsequently approves or denies. Through the annual budget the government allocates funds to all of the programs that support higher education. In the past years, with George Bush as President, several programs have been up for elimination based on his proposed budget. There are several changes to the budget that could be made to help make higher education more accessible including raising the maximum Pell Grant that one can be awarded, increasing the money that programs such as the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships (LEAP) and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant Program (SEOG) receive, and setting interest rates where students can actually afford to pay back their loans. The government needs to be pressured to realize that these changes are necessary for our country to be able to invest in its future through students.