Federal Updates

Closed school corner
The Department of Education announces three new closures.

TG Updates

Product spotlight: TG's brochure on Consolidating your student loan debt
Formatted as a convenient mini-booklet that fits in a standard business-size envelope, the brochure offers a comprehensive overview of federal Consolidation loans. The brochure covers a variety of issues that affect Consolidation loans including interest rates, timing, and lender choice.

Skill-builders: Turn your staff into self-taught learners through mentoring
The one-on-one interaction of mentoring offers an ideal way to transfer knowledge and to carefully guide someone into independent, self-taught learning on the job. Mentoring in the financial aid office can be very useful. Financial aid staffs often consist of a mix of workers with varying levels of knowledge. Pairing up new workers with more knowledgeable staff is a great way to train staff and to ensure the new person has a more personal connection to the life of the office.

Reporting Back: 1999
Continuing a series of articles on TG's quarter century in financial aid, Shoptalk Online looks back at the year 1999.

Trends and Issues

Question of the week
Can you provide some reasons that a school might be selected for a program review?

Search Shoptalk Online for previous issues, specific topics
If you're doing research on topics in financial aid, you'll find a useful research tool in archived issues of Shoptalk Online. Week by week, Shoptalk Online offers timely information about regulatory changes; it also tracks developments in the student aid industry. You can access articles on these topics from one location or view complete issues of the e-newsletter as you need.

Legislative Update

The November 8 issue of TG's Legislative Report looks at implications of the November 7 elections, which gave Democrats a majority in the House and an effective lead in the Senate. The change may have particular consequences for parts of the Higher Education Act that remain to be reauthorized. The shift in power may also affect changes, which the Higher Education Reconciliation Act made to the federal student loan programs. To find out more, read the full report on TG Online at www.tgslc.org/lege_report/index.cfm.

This, That, and the Other...

The number of students taking coursework online continues to rise, according to the Sloan Consortium, a group of colleges that offer online programs and monitor the trend. A CNN.com article on the report notes that one in six students take classes online and that more than 800,000 students took online courses last fall, a rise of 40 percent over the previous year. The increase is partly fueled by the change in traditional coursework, which often includes an online component of homework, testing, or even chat room. But also the chief academic officers at many institutions now look more favorably at online classes, seeing them as a viable alternative to traditional coursework.

To find out more about the trend, read the complete article at www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/11/09/colleges.online.ap/index.html.