The Presidents of 38 North Carolina community colleges have come together to oppose a new State law that required them to offer federal student loans to their student body from 1 July 2011.
As written, would the law college participation in the federal student loan program. The non-participating community colleges say they are afraid of all federal student aid-which grants for students with low incomes-if too many student loans default losses.
Current federal regulations punish colleges and universities whose default rates on federal education loans more than 25 percent by making these schools are not eligible for federal financial aid resources for students. A school standard rate is currently measured by looking at how many of her students default on a federal education loan within two years after the refund on that loan entered into force.
Under new federal higher education reform rules will take effect in 2012, the standard rate threshold for eligibility for federal financial aid will increase to 30 per cent but more than three years, instead of two years will be measured. At national level, the standard rate for federal student loan of 7 percent to almost 14% over three years instead of two measured.
North Carolina works at this time, the nation's third-largest community college system. Community college graduates account for about half of all college degrees earned in North Carolina.
State legislators passed the new legislation in 2010 as a response to the continuing economic downturn and the conclusion that North Carolina is one of only four States where at least 40% of the community college students don't have access to federal education loans. Nearly 200,000 North Carolina community college students would be eligible for federal loans under the new Bill.
Proponents of the legislation say that students have the opportunity to determine how to pay for their college education, while critics charge that students have access to other college scholarships and subsidies that reduce or even eliminate the need for school loans for themselves.
More than 116,000 students enrolled in a degree program at one of the State community college campuses in the school year 2008-09-approximately half of all degree students received financial aid. In the lectures to the federal student loan program shall have about 25,000 students loans from the Federal University. These borrowers accounted for approximately 10 percent of the State student loan recipients.
Community college campus Presidents who opposed the mandate to offer federal school loans say that their students do not need additional access to loans and that such students can access their federal loan dollars spend on non-essential and non-educational costs.
Other Presidents say that their college campuses dozens of scholarships and grants from the foundation that are not awarded because students simply do not apply for the funds. Still others say that their student body is primarily composed of students who are among the first in their families to attend college and don't have the background or resources to manage carefully academic loans.
The view that community college students school loans to help pay for their academic costs need not be supported by the American Association of Community Colleges, which States that community college programs are designed to specifically to minimize the need for substantial financial assistance.
However, while education costs at North Carolina's two-year colleges on average only slightly more than $ 1,800, the annual cost of attendance rises to more than 15,000 dollars when the cost of books, fees, and living is factored.
Not all campus heads of North Carolina's community colleges share the concerns about their students take on debt from loans from the Federal University. Some community colleges Welcome the legislation, saying that the provision of federal education loans is a way to ensure that their students need to be able to choose between staying in the classroom and paying for rent or childcare.
Deborah Lamm, President of Edgecombe Community College, a school in one of the poorest areas of the State, says that the students access to loans from the school to attend college because the need for financial aid increases. They took out a growth of nearly 50% of its school enrollment over the past two years and a jump in the number of students who Edgecombe school loans to 18 percent in 2009 from 8% in 2007.
Officials of the u.s. Department of education saying that none of the North Carolina community colleges participating in federal student loan program currently risk being penalized for high default rates.
0 komentar:
Post a Comment