Federal Updates

ED releases final volumes of the 2007-08 FSA Handbook — TG offers complete bookmarked version
With the release of Volume 3, Calculating Awards and Packaging, and Volume 6, Campus-Based Programs, of the new 2007-08 Federal Student Aid Handbook (FSA Handbook), all volumes of the latest edition of the FSA Handbook are now available.

TG Updates

TG now updates NSLDS twice a month
Schools and lenders want the latest and most complete data when they request student loan information from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS). TG helps ensure the completeness and accuracy of data with a timely reporting of its loan data to NSLDS. To provide customers with even better access, TG now reports its updates to NSLDS two times a month.

Spotlight on TG's Public Benefit Grants: "Follow My Lead: From Application to Matriculation"
Children growing up in the colonias of Texas often don’t believe a college degree is attainable. Their goal is simply to survive and feed the family. So they go right to work out of high school, if they go to high school at all. The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College (UTB/TSC) wants to turn this perception around with an outreach program — “Follow My Lead: From Application to Matriculation.”

Read the latest Edufacts™ — August 2007
The August 2007 edition of Edufacts focuses on an effective and economical approach to preventing student loan default — Voluntary Flexible Agreements between the Department of Education (ED) and guaranty agencies.

Fall training watch: Attend TG sessions at these conferences
Say you were just starting in financial aid and needed to take a "Financial Aid 101" class — a course that gave you the basics of surviving in the world of financial aid. Two topics on your list of things to learn might include federal regulatory changes and developing good customer relations with students. Training on "requisite courses" like these is exactly what TG had in mind for some upcoming fall conferences.

Trends and Issues

Question of the week
Where is it written that a school must certify a loan by the last day of the loan period?

This, That, and the Other...

The College Board's Trends in Student Aid publication offers an annual snapshot of the condition of student aid in the U.S., including grants, loans, work-study, and education tax benefits. The 2006 edition has some interesting facts about the amount and type of loans that students are borrowing. Among other things, the report notes that increases in Stafford Loan volume over the past decade are the result of an increase in the number of loans issued, not increases in the constant dollar value of the loans.

The report finds that total loan volume grew more rapidly in the PLUS program than in the Stafford student loan program in every year back to 1996. Also, the unsubsidized Stafford Loan program has grown more rapidly than the subsidized Stafford Loan program.

And perhaps no surprise to anyone is the fact that loans from private lenders continue to increase relative to the federal loans provided through the student aid system. According to the report, private student loans now total $17.3 billion, having grown at an average annual rate of about 27 percent between 2000-01 and 2005-06 — after adjusting for inflation.

You can read the complete report at www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/cost06/trends_aid_06.pdf.