Federal Updates

NCHELP announces industry interim IBR application
NCHELP's IBR Workgroup has produced an interim Income-Based Repayment Plan Application for the new Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan available to borrowers on July 1, 2009.

Loan Purchase Programs reminders and updates
ED recently published Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans (ECASLA) announcement #66, which reminds participants that the 2009-10 Loan Purchase Programs are new programs and not extensions of earlier programs. Thus each FFELP lender or loan holder that wishes to participate in the 2009-10 programs must execute the relevant Adoption Agreement (and other required documentation) regardless of any earlier participation in the ECASLA Loan Purchase Programs.

Reminder of changes effective July 1
Rev up your engines for the 2009-10 award year. June is flying by, and the various changes to the Title IV programs that become effective July 1, 2009, are fast approaching.

TG Updates

TG awards $6.2 million in competitive grants to advance college access and student retention
TG has awarded more than $6.2 million in competitive grants to 55 institutions and nonprofit organizations to advance access to college, student retention, and educational research. This is the fifth consecutive year that TG has awarded competitive grants through its Public Benefit Grant Program, the company's philanthropic initiative.

Register now for TG's upcoming financial literacy symposiums
In the coming months, TG will offer several symposiums that focus on building an effective financial literacy campaign for the college campus. The first 2009 Financial Literacy Symposium will be held in Houston on Monday, June 29.

Legislative Update

On May 20, the House Education and Labor Committee convened its initial public hearings to begin developing legislation that may dramatically reform the federal student loan programs and convert the Pell Grant program into an entitlement program. The House Appropriations Committee convened on June 3 to begin the FY 2010 appropriations process. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified on the Department's request for $46.7 billion in discretionary appropriations to administer the agency's programs. His testimony also focused on the Administration's proposal to end the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) and convert the resulting projected savings into funding for the Pell Grant program. Learn more about the latest legislative developments at www.tgslc.org/lege_report/2009/lr_090615.cfm.

This, That, and the Other...

Colleges are graduating more and more students who grew up using diverse forms of online media, including texting, chatting, tweeting, and instant messaging. In one regard, communicating online spurs writing — students readily spend hours blogging or otherwise sending messages online. Whether this helps or hinders literacy levels is up for debate. Some scholars say that these new forms of writing engage students, and that colleges should encourage students to bring lessons from that writing into the classroom. Others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and offer no help for producing the kind of sustained argument that academic work demands.

A new generation of longitudinal studies, which track large numbers of students over several years, is attempting to settle this argument, considering both the positive and negative effects of new media on writing.

Find out more about these studies by reading the complete Chronicle of Higher Education article online at http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i39/39writing.htm.

Note that the Chronicle's online site may require subscription to view some material.