Rocket News » Education

Are Student Loans the Next Debt Bomb?

Editor - Education News — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:20:07 +0000

An increasing number of Americans are buckling under the weight of mounting student loan debt and the fallout could look a lot like the nation’s catastrophic mortgage meltdown, experts say.

Total student loan debt has surged to more than $1 trillion over the past few years and with it the number of people seeking help handling their debt. More than 80 percent of bankruptcy attorneys surveyed by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys reported a “major” jump in student loan borrowers seeking help, according to a study released Tuesday.

“Take it from those of us on the frontline of economic distress in America: This could very well be the next debt bomb for the U.S. economy,” said NACBA president William Brewer. “What we are worried about is that we are looking at the next mortgage-style debt threat to the United States.”

But in most cases, attorneys’

Read More from the Article Source: http://news.yahoo.com/student-loans-next-debt-bomb-143123277.html

I Owe $130,000 in Student Loans

Editor - Education News — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:20:03 +0000

When Jennifer Sammartino needed help paying for college, she, like many students, took out federal and private loans. Now she’s faced with over $130,000 in student loan debt.

After Sammartino graduated from La Salle University with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. she had no luck getting a job. She then made the decision to go back

Read More from the Article Source: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Bank-Fee-Nightmares.html

First Person: Including Student Loans in Bankruptcy Isn't Fair

Editor - Education News — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:19:59 +0000

*Note: This was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Do you have a story that you’d like to share? Sign up with the Yahoo! Contributor Network to start publishing your own finance articles.

COMMENTARY | According to USA Today, the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys wants lawmakers to change bankruptcy laws so student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy the same as other debt.

Evidently a high number of Generation-Y adults with student loan debt are seeking bankruptcy protection.

Although I have no problem with giving people a break on the interest they owe on college loans, it makes little sense to completely forgive a college loan. I may not have a problem with extending payments or reducing interest owed, but I’m not a bank. Banks have every right to be paid back when people borrow money for whatever reason. And, they

Debt toll is rising for TN college students

Editor - Education News — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:19:46 +0000

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MURFREESBORO – Tennessee students are paying a bigger percentage of what it costs to run universities and taking out millions more in student loans to do it.

At Middle Tennessee State University, for instance, just over half of the 28,000 students took out loans to pay tuition, fees and other expenses. Their debt totals $63 million, $5 million more than last year.

The state’s HOPE scholarship for high achievers used to cover about 60 percent of university tuition. It’s 45 percent now, so sophomore James Rucker is working at an MTSU computer lab to help pay his $6,800 tab this school year.

“From last semester to this semester, I’ve had three or four friends who won’t come back because of money,” said Rucker, an MTSU sophomore majoring in communications.

Making college affordable

Local students struggle less with debt

Editor - Education News — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:19:33 +0000

A nationwide survey of bankruptcy attorneys unveiled this week found that more than four out of five saw more clients struggling with student-loan debt over the past four years.

About half saw that number increase “drastically,” the survey says.

Almost 25 percent of the 860 attorneys surveys saw their number of student-loan cases increase by more than 50 percent.

Titled “Student Loan Debt Bomb: America’s Next Mortgage-Style Economic Crisis,” the study was conducted on behalf of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys.

The study found that students — and their parents — are racking up record amounts of student debt. College seniors who graduated in 2010 owed an average of $25,250, up 5 percent from the previous year. The number of parents taking out loans for their children’s college education has jumped 75 percent since the 2005-2006 academic year.

Parents have an average of $34,000 in student loans, the study

Read More from the Article Source: http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20120211/articles/120219935

Florida offers look at problems with education law (AP)

Editor - Education News — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:19:46 +0000

MIAMI – By almost any measure, Norma Butler Bossard Elementary is a top performing school in Miami: It has consistently been rated an `A’ by the state, and students have achieved high scores on Florida’s standardized math and reading exams.

Yet when it comes to the federal No Child Left Behind law, the school hasn’t lived up to expectations. Last year, 79 percent of students had to be at grade level in reading and 80 percent in math. Overall, the students exceeded those goals. But two groups — English language learners and the economically disadvantaged — did not.

“This is a crystallization of the challenge,” said Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

Responding to an outcry from the states and congressional inaction on rewriting the law, President Barack Obama on Thursday told 10 states, including Florida, that they will be freed from the strictest elements of the law, including the requirement that all students

No Child Left Behind Waiver States Need a Success Plan (ContributorNetwork)

Editor - Education News — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:19:44 +0000

COMMENTARY | Ten states were granted waivers from the requirements of No Child Left Behind, according to CNN. The states are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. The waivers were granted in exchange for commitments to bring about improvements in education — but how?

NCLB requirements such as minimum scores on certain standardized tests caused negative changes in education, according to a Los Angeles Times report. Teachers said their classrooms had become factories to produce good test takers instead of places of real education.

The challenge is to find ways to improve performance without defining it in ways that force educators to “teach to the test.” I believe that means we need to improve the quality of school facilities, the quality of teachers and the quality of the academic curriculum taught.

Improving the quality of teachers is

No Child Left Behind waivers: five ways education will change (The Christian Science Monitor)

Editor - Education News — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:19:43 +0000

Nazi Flag in Marine Photo Shows Need for History Education (ContributorNetwork)

Editor - Education News — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:19:42 +0000

COMMENTARY | A spokeswoman has insisted a controversial photo of Marine sniper scouts in Afghanistan with a flag bearing the Nazi Waffen SS emblem is the result of naivete and the Marines will not be punished, reports The Atlantic Wire. Ten Marines are arranged around an American flag and the flag with the Waffen SS’ double “lightning bolt” runes.

Did none of the Marines plus the photographer know or suspect the flag that “looked cool” was associated with the infamous Waffen SS of the Holocaust, countless atrocities on World War II’s European Eastern Front and war crimes against surrendering Americans during the Battle of the Bulge? Did no one stop to say “wait a second, this doesn’t seem right?”

As a teacher of world history and U.S. government, I am well aware of the naivete of teenagers, most of whom wonder why they are forced to learn history. Well, one of

Audit: ND university awarded unearned degrees (AP)

Editor - Education News — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:19:39 +0000

BISMARCK, N.D. – Facing pressure to bring in more students as North Dakota’s booming oil industry made it tougher to coax new high school graduates into college, Dickinson State University began looking overseas to boost its enrollment.

China, which sends more students to U.S. universities than any other nation, became one of the school’s more reliable suppliers of young people.

But as an audit made public Friday revealed, lax recordkeeping and oversight resulted in hundreds of degrees being awarded to students who didn’t finish their course work. Others enrolled who couldn’t speak English or hadn’t achieved the “C” average normally required for admission.

The report depicts Dickinson State as a diploma mill for foreign students, most of whom were Chinese. Of 410 foreign students who have received four-year degrees since 2003 — most of them in the past four years — 400 did not fulfill all the graduation requirements, it said.

The report raises