Federal Updates

Senate approves reauthorization bill; another HEA extension passed
Mention reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) to any of your colleagues, and you'll likely get a sigh of frustration in response. Reauthorization, which has now been delayed by a total of eight extensions over the past 4 years, sometimes seems as elusive and fabled as the Holy Grail. Recent news from Congress, though, has been encouraging to those of us awaiting definitive action from our lawmakers.

TG Updates

Profiles in customer success: University of South Florida's FAO "embraces change" through TG training
Organizational change means different things to different people: To some, it means opportunity, perhaps a chance to explore new skills; to others, change causes anxiety and may even threaten their sense of on-the-job security. Joan Bailey, assistant director of the Office of Financial Aid at the University of South Florida (USF), sees a positive prospect in change and, after participating in some recent TG training, found a way to impart that message to her staff.

Meet Judy Hagood, TG's loan guarantee specialist
At TG, Judy Hagood is known for the careful eye she gives to her work. As a loan guarantee specialist, Judy reviews loan applications that have been rejected in processing because the student may have exceeded the Stafford loan limit in borrowing for his or her education. Not everyone is patient enough to do the rigorous work of an aggregate review, but Judy finds a challenge in the task.

Read the latest Edufacts™ — July 2007
In the July 2007 edition of Edufacts, TG considers Federal PLUS loans and how, despite favorable terms, few parents use PLUS loans to finance their children's education.

Tech Report

TG posts new schedule for CIR and AGD report processing
As TG draws nearer to implementing Versatile Routing (VR) enhancements, we want to let AdvanTG Web users know about some changes you will notice in AdvanTG Web (AW). TG customers should also be aware that extensive work has begun to accommodate Common Record/CommonLine (CRC) transmission processing.

TG announces improved processing of MPN information
TG can now process new record types to help institutions that create @1B and @1S CommonLine response files.

Trends and Issues

Question of the week
A first- or second-year student for whom a school has certified a loan using an increased Stafford loan amount during a loan period that includes July 1, 2007, withdraws prior to July 1. Does the school include the first disbursement of the loan in the return of Title IV funds (R2T4) calculation as "aid that could have been disbursed?" Or does the school exclude the disbursement from the calculation?

Legislative Update

Recently, the House of Representatives passed its budget reconciliation bill, HR 2669 — The College Cost Reduction Act. And on July 20, the Senate passed its budget reconciliation bill, S 1672 — The Higher Education Access Act (HEAA). The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued a veto threat for both of these bills, saying the lender reductions are not steep enough, not enough of the savings are directed to Pell Grants, and the auction proposals are unworkable. Read the full report on TG Online at www.tgslc.org/lege_report/2007/lr_070724.cfm.

This, That, and the Other...

Since education is such an essential element in our information age, you may think that most high school graduates go right to college after getting a diploma. Actually, about a third or more do not. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), immediate college enrollment reached an all-time high in 2005, when 69 percent of high school graduates went directly to college. Before that, the year with the next highest enrollment came in 1997 — 67 percent of high school grads embarked on college that year.

From 1972 to 2005, women fresh out of high school outpaced their male counterparts in terms of immediate enrollment. Much of this growth came between 1981 and 1997 and occurred mainly with four-year institutions. During this same period, the rate at which females enrolled at four-year schools increased faster than it did for either males or females at two-year institutions.

White enrollment grew steadily from the late '70s up to 1998, when it reached 69 percent; it spiked again in 2005 with 73 percent immediate enrollment. The number of black students going right to college fluctuated during this same period and the education gap between whites and blacks grew at a general, steady rate.

To learn more about the variation in college enrollment rates over the last several decades, visit the NCES website at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=51.