With the cost of higher education continuing to climb amid a challenging economy, today's students need to consider their earning potential when making decisions about borrowing for college. Of course, these decisions affect colleges as well, since students' choice of degree can seriously impact their ability to repay their loans.

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TG regularly posts recordings, handouts, and other electronic resources for trainings offered to customers. Resources for the following training programs were recently posted.

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The temperature is getting hotter, and everyone is looking towards the upcoming summer, which officially begins late in June. And May also brings many TG training opportunities for you to explore.

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Attendees of the TG Annual Training Conference earlier this month were treated to an interesting perspective on the changes that the federal student aid programs have withstood over the last several years. President of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) Justin Draeger, who gave a general session at the conference, shared his take on how the programs have gotten where they are today — with cuts in other areas of Title IV necessitated by growing demand for Pell grant funding by an ever-increasing population of eligible students.

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Parents often find talking to their students about finances and college costs to be a challenge. To help jumpstart the conversation, TG and San Antonio's KLRN-PBS station created "College Costs: When to talk about planning for college." This special program encourages the use of practical financial literacy skills to plan and pay for college.

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If you've visited TG's Adventures In Education (AIE™) recently, you may have noticed some changes. That's because TG has launched a newly designed version of the award-winning website for students, parents, educators, and the community.

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On April 13, 2012, ED issued an Electronic Announcement containing guidance for lenders and servicers related to acceptable documentation of the adjusted gross income (AGI) to determine a borrower's eligibility for the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan.

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On April 16, 2012, ED issued Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) GEN-12-07 which provides school guidance on acceptable documentation for verification of tax information.

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More schools want to help borrowers at every stage of the life of the loan, including delinquency. Often, this means contacting and counseling borrowers by phone after they leave school. A workshop from this year's TG Annual Training Conference titled "Counseling students as they transition from student to borrower" focused on effective phone counseling. TG's default prevention consultants and trainers who led the session said that turning counseling into a conversation was vital to engaging students. They also recommended schools follow the Golden Rule in terms of customer service, that is, treat students in the way that all people expect to be treated.

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Student debt is on the rise across all majors, leaving a growing proportion of students vulnerable to repayment problems. According to data from "The Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study" conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), most students with an undergraduate degree start their careers owing as much as 10 to 18 percent of monthly income for student loans, depending on major. Banks suggest borrowers owe no more than 15 percent of take-home pay for such debt. A session at the TG Annual Training Conference, "Income by major and student loan debt: Implications for counseling students about choice of major," featured this among other facts as a sort of "reality check" on what students can earn versus what they borrow.

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