Free Money for College
Scholarships aren’t that hard to get, and these days every little bit helps. As the biggest high school graduating class ever gets ready to head to college in the midst of an economic slump, the scramble for breaks on tuition -- not to mention room and board, books and airfare to get home -- is on. Some students will be awarded funds in the form of merit aid from the schools they attend, fat financial-aid packages, or both. Others will industriously scour the planet for scholarship money -- and they’ll likely find some. Private scholarships, the ones you get from outside the school itself, account for 7% of all grants awarded, according to the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Some 7% of undergraduates receive such awards, with an average value of a little less than $2,000. Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of the popular Web site FinAid.org and a project director at FastWeb.com, a scholarship-search site, says your chances are better than those statistics suggest: The typical student applies for five to six awards, he says, with the odds of winning at about one in ten. Those aren’t bad odds. And you don’t have to be an all-star athlete, a musical prodigy or even an A student to collect, either. Many scholarships are awarded to students based on need, lifestyle or special interests. For instance, KFC Colonel’s Scholars awards up to $20,000 to seniors who will be attending a public school in their state and who have financial need, an entrepreneurial spirit and a minimum grade point average of 2.75. The Vegetarian Resource Group offers two $5,000 scholarships each year to students who promote a vegetarian lifestyle in their schools or communities. Full Story

Changes Coming for Student Loans
A new law provides more money for high-need students and better repayment terms for borrowers with a lot of debt. The bill that put the finishing touches on health-care legislation also changed the rules regarding student loans for higher education. As of July, the feds become the sole lender for the federal student loans known as Staffords as well as PLUS loans, the federally sponsored loans for parents and grad students. These loans currently originate from private lenders as well as the federal government. Now your student may have to deal with more than one servicer when the loans come due. Loans made after July 1 will be serviced by four companies or agencies. Older loans that originated under the federal Direct Loan program, or that were bought by the feds during the recent credit crisis, will be transferred to those companies. Full Story

Student Loan Debt: Who Are the 1%?
Judith Scott-Clayton is an assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. A continuing refrain of Occupy Wall Street protesters has been ”student debt is too damn high,” as James Surowiecki wrote in The New Yorker. In some cases -- like for the college graduate profiled in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education who has $100,000 in debt and uncertain job prospects -- this is inarguably true. But such cases make for dramatic reading precisely because they are so rare. The first thing to note is that most of those with that much debt have graduate degrees; it is difficult to accumulate that much debt in an undergraduate program. The chart below shows the percentage of beginning undergraduate students who, six years later, had accumulated more than the indicated levels of debt. Only one-tenth of 1 percent of college entrants, and only three-tenths of 1 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients, accumulate more than $100,000 in undergraduate student debt. If you have more than $75,000 in undergraduate debt, you are the 1 percent - just not the 1 percent you might have been hoping for. Full Story

More college tuition rising to $50,000 a year
An increasing number of colleges are charging more than what the average American earns. The number of colleges and universities with tuition and fees totaling more than $50,000 for a single year rose to 123 for the 2011-2012 year -- up from 100 institutions in the previous year. Meanwhile, the national average wage for American workers stands at a little less than $42,000 a year, according to the Social Security Administration. In the 2009-2010 academic year, only 58 schools charged more than $50,000 a year, according to College Board data analyzed by the Chronicle of Higher Education. And the year before that, only five colleges dared to put such a high price on their institutions. Full Story

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