Federal Updates

ED provides official guidance for making post-120-day late disbursements
Last week, ED released Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) GEN-05-07, announcing its official guidance on requesting post-120-day late disbursements. ED previously provided these procedures for making requests at an Electronic Access Conference earlier in the year (See Shoptalk Online 286).

TG Updates

2005 TG Conference was a breakthrough success
The 2005 TG Conference — Breakthrough! Higher expectations in higher education — motivated attendees with inspirational opening and closing sessions, along with a wealth of informative sessions with the latest on industry trends, professional development topics, and the latest on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

Exit counseling tools
As the semester draws to a close, financial aid professionals are preparing their school's graduates for student loan repayment, and educating them about their repayment responsibilities through exit counseling. TG offers various tools to aid the financial aid office in this process. Two brochures, Managing Repayment and Frequently Asked Questions, are available through TG's online forms ordering page on TG Online.

This, That, and the Other...

A CNN/Money article states that employers are paying 2005 college graduates higher starting salaries than they did the class of 2004. This is according to a spring salary survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Aerospace and aeronautical engineering majors are receiving a 9 percent increase in starting salaries, marketing majors a 6 percent increase, and economics and finance majors are receiving 5.1 percent more than last year. Conversely, some majors — including computer engineering and information science majors are experiencing a 2 percent and 0.8 percent decrease in salaries, respectively. To read the news article, visit money.cnn.com/2005/04/15/
pf/college/starting_salaries/
index.htm?cnn=yes.