Round-up: Making college loan-free
(Sorry for the spring break hiatus; College Ave. is back to work. Send any tips to collegeaveblog@gmail.com.)
Easing the costs: Davidson College, a small liberal arts in South Carolina, made a step towards making college debt-free. Starting next year, any student who qualifies for need-based aid will receive a financial aid package with part-time work studies and grant money ? no student loans. While they aren’t the first (there are about a dozen other schools nationwide), it is encouraging to students and their parents who skip over Davidson and its $40K+ sticker price. (Ithaca College: I’m looking at you.)
Battle royale: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo issued a scathing press release accusing banks and universities in being in “an unholy alliance” over student loans:
The financial arrangements between lenders and these schools are filled with the potential for conflicts of interest. In some cases they may break the law.
The offenses he’s found run the gamut of corruption: kickbacks for loans, slush fund junkets, credit lines for colleges to get the “preferred” stamp of approval, etc. Dallas Martin, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, fired back, claiming that no one in the NASFAA takes bribes or any other shady practices. Martin also chides Cuomo for trying to “inflame rather than to inform? and asked for a formal apology. [Via InsideHigherEd]
Harboring pirates? The RIAA ranked the major universities with the naughty, naughty students downloading the latest Nelly Furtado album, but number 10 on the list, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, decided not to send out the scare tactic settlement letter from RIAA over students on their campus downloading music illegally. They did, however, send out a hey-guys-cut-it-out email to everyone hoping that would be enough to stop the major offenders in addition to the (compulsory) cease-and-desist letters. Anything is better than directing them to the settlement website to cash out; some of those settlements have hit $7,000 smackeroos. Maybe they could get Ruckus and be done with it.
Categories: admissions, piracy, tuition
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[...] Andrew Cuomo is filing a suit against Education Finance Partners, claiming those kickbacks he promised earlier are real. What I found most interesting was Texas Christian University using the old [...]
Davidson College is north of Charlotte, NC — not in SC.