Tag: college

Posted on

NJ Student Loan Program Called “Predatory” and “Loansharking.”

RHS Grad

As New Jersey senators came down on the state’s college loan program, Financial Planners stress the importance of developing a strategy early.

August 23,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, After an article in the New York Times that detailed one family’s nightmare in dealing with their son’s death and his student loans through the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (HESAA), New Jersey State Senators heard testimony on the program, which some have called “predatory” and “loansharking.”

“My own experience was very similar even in 1980 student loans we a scam and students were not provided with proper accurate information to make a rational financial decisions” the Ridgewood blog Founder James Foytlin

Financial Planning Association of New Jersey (FPANJ) Advocacy Chairman John Crosby was also in attendance in Trenton. He has counseled clients in similarly tough situations with HESAA. The program has been characterized with extraordinarily stringent rules that can easily lead to financial hardship. Loan repayments cannot be adjusted based on income, and few breaks are given for unemployment or other hardship.

“While there were no representatives from HESAA present, a letter from Executive Director Gabrielle Charette was submitted for testimony. I’m happy to say that things will be forced to change,” Crosby said. The testimony led to a unanimous vote by the higher education committee to approve S-743, which would require HESAA to forgive the student loan of someone who dies before completely repaying it, as the federal government does.

The experience with HESAA for many families is in stark contrast to Francis Astorino’s. His diligence in planning for college with his family began early, especially as his triplets eyed college with another already enrolled. A CFP® and President of The Astorino Financial Group, he recalled the struggle to put himself through school, and didn’t want the same burden for his children. He said it still took a lot of discipline and sacrifice to fund college for his four children, and it had to be a family decision.

“We put our kids to work early as early teens, helping in the office. And at about 16 years of age we sat them down and showed them the file with their balance sheet,” Astorino said. “However nice it was to say we could send our kids anywhere, we wanted them to know we weren’t going to fund their lifestyle, because we thought it was important that they had some skin in the game.”

Crosby said, “The key takeaway I get from both of these stories is how incredibly important it is – whether or not you’ve planned early – to have a CFP® Professional there. It goes beyond building wealth…it really is about protecting your home, your family and your livelihood.”

ABOUT FPA of New Jersey and FPA:

Financial Planning Association of New Jersey is part of The Financial Planning Association® (FPA®). FPA connects those who need, support and deliver professional financial planning. FPA believes that everyone is entitled to objective advice from a competent, ethical financial planner to make smart financial decisions. FPA members demonstrate and support a professional commitment to education and a client-centered financial planning process. Working in alliance with academic leaders, legislative and regulatory bodies, financial services firms and consumer interest organizations, FPA is the community that fosters the value of financial planning, and advances the practice and profession of financial planning.

Posted on

5 Ways The College Textbook Industry Gets You To Pay More For Textbooks

books1

(And How To Get Around It)

August 1,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, The tuition cost was haunting. The dorm bill was daunting.  The laptop your favorite college freshman just had to have cost more than your first car.

Now all she has left to do is hit the college bookstore with her list of required textbooks. Don’t be surprised if she comes out crying.

A recent study by the United States Government Accountability office showed that the average prices for textbooks have risen 82 percent in just 10 years.

Many expected that internet access would help bring costs down, but the college textbook industry appears to be keeping students from saving money by using such tactics as college specific books, book bundling and eTextbooks, all of which raise prices.

Luckily there is something you can do about it.  You just need to do a little homework before classes start. “There are many ways you can save when buying textbooks that the college textbook industry doesn’t want you to know about,” says Chris Manns of the price comparison websites CheapestTextbooks.com andTextbookRentals.com. Both free services help students locate the cheapest prices for millions of books.

Here’s his list of the ways the college textbook industry gets you to pay more, and some tips for paying less:

• College Specific Books:   Colleges have started asking students to buy college specific books.  They take a commonly used textbook and have it printed with the college name and course number on the cover.  This gives the book a new ISBN (International Standard Book Number) that is typically only available at the college it was made for.
The workaround: Ask the professor if it’s OK to use the book’s common version. “The common version will be available online and, in almost all cases, be much cheaper and apart from the cover, it’ll be the exact same.  When you rent or buy it online, you’ll be able to rent or buy it used from anybody,” Manns says.
• Book Bundling: Students are sometimes required to buy a “book bundle” with extra class materials that add to the cost. “These bundles often include items the professors aren’t even using,” Manns says.
The workaround: Email the professor or wait until the class starts and ask if the professor will be using the supplemental material. “If the answer is no, then buy just the textbook online,” Manns says.
• New Editions: “This problem has been around a long time,” Manns says. Publishers release new versions of books every few years, even though little changes. Usually, buying an older edition gives you the information you need. Older editions often cost less than $25.
• eTextbooks: eTextbooks are usually more expensive than buying a book used or renting it, and they typically expire after six months or a year.
The workaround: Shop around. Most eTextbooks are available from multiple sellers. If you have the option, go old-school and buy the hard cover or paperback, which will typically be much cheaper. “That way you can keep it if you want, or you can sell it later,” he says.
• Timing: Sometimes students don’t learn what textbooks they need until a couple of weeks before classes start, giving them little time to shop around.

The workaround: Don’t worry too much about getting your books before classes start.  If you don’t mind a little inconvenience, then wait until you’re a couple of days into the school year before buying. “The professor might even tell you that you don’t need the book,” Manns says. If it’s required, you can shop online and still have the book within a couple of days.

About Chris Manns

Chris Manns is the managing director of the price-comparison websites CheapestTextbooks.com and TextbookRentals.com.He’s been in the business of helping students find the cheapest prices for their textbooks since 2001.

Posted on

Report: Anti-Semitism, Violence Against Jews Surge on College Campuses

Star of David

Jewish students targeted ‘for harm’

BY: Adam Kredo
July 26, 2016 2:35 pm

Anti-Semitism surged on college campuses across the United States during the first part of 2016, according to a new study that found Jewish students supportive of Israel are being targeted “for harm.”

Nearly 100 more anti-Semitic incidents were recorded on U.S. college campuses during the first six months of 2016 compared with the same period in 2015, according to the report, published by the AMCHA Initiative, a group that works to combat discrimination against Jews.

In addition, “the number of incidents involving the suppression of Jewish students’ freedom of speech and assembly approximately doubled from 2015 to 2016,” according to the report, which also found that a massive uptick in anti-Israel behavior “was highly correlated with behavior that targeted Jewish students for harm.”

https://freebeacon.com/issues/report-anti-semitism-violence-jews-surges-college-campuses/

Posted on

Big Debt, Little Study: What Taxpayers Should Know About College Students’ Time Use

graduation

By Lindsey Burke, Jamie Bryan Hall and Mary Clare Reim

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Lindsey BurkeWill Skillman Fellow in Education
Domestic Policy Studies

Jamie Bryan HallSenior Policy Analyst

Center for Data Analysis

Mary Clare ReimResearch Associate
Domestic Policy Studies

College students understandably bemoan the costs of higher education. During the 2015–2016 school year, annual costs[1] at four-year public universities reached $19,548 for in-state students and $34,031 for out-of-state students. Annual costs at private institutions reached $43,921.[2] Federal student aid has likely exacerbated the college cost problem, providing short-term relief to students in the form of loans and grants, while enabling universities to increase tuition across the board.[3]

There is an additional consequence to taxpayer-subsidized federal student loans. The average full-time college student spends only 2.76 hours per day on all education-related activities. This helps explain why most full-time students today do not graduate in four years and rack up increasingly high loan debt during their extended enrollment. Taxpayers, who are increasingly on the hook for borrower defaults and loan forgiveness programs, deserve to know what their tax dollars subsidize.

Full-Time College Is Typically a Part-Time Endeavor

Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s American Time Use Survey from 2003–2014, during the academic year, the average full-time college student spent only 2.76 hours per day on all education-related activities, including 1.18 hours in class and 1.53 hours of research and homework, for a total of 19.3 hours per week.[4]

Full-time high school students, in comparison, spent 4.32 hours per day on all education-related activities, including 3.42 hours in class and 0.80 hours of research and homework, for a total of 30.2 hours per week. Thus, full-time college students spend 10.9 fewer hours per week on educational activities than full-time high school students.

Employment eliminates this gap between college and high school students.

  • Full-time college students work an average of 16.3 hours per week.
  • Full-time high school students work an average of 4.0 hours per week.

Full-time college students, then, spend 35.6 hours per week on education-related and work-related activities, while full-time high school students spend 34.2 hours per week.

However, full-time college students spend significantly less combined time on education and work than do full-time employees. The average full-time employee works 41.7 hours per week. To match that, the typical college student would need 22.4 work hours per week, in addition to the 19.3 educational hours.

Non-employed full-time college students spend more time per week on educational activities than part-time or full-time employed students.

  • Non-employed and full-time student: 24.9 hours;
  • Employed part-time and full-time student: 19.9; and
  • Employed full-time and full-time student: 8.5.

In combined education and work hours, however, there remains a deficit between non-employed and employed students:

  • Non-employed and full-time student: 25.8 hours;
  • Employed part-time and full-time student: 36.8; and
  • Employed full-time and full-time student: 47.7 hours per week.

The combined education and work effort of the average non-employed, full-time college student (25.8 hours per week) most closely matches that of a non-student, part-time employee (22.9 hours per week), but remains substantially less than that of a high school student (34.0 hours per week) or even a part-time employee, part-time college student (33.8 hours per week).

In order to match the combined work and education effort of the average full-time employee, the average non-employed, full-time college student would need to work 16.9 hours per week, in addition to the 24.9 hours spent on educational activities.

Although expectations undoubtedly vary across institutions and fields of study, on average, full-time college demands substantially less time commitment than do high school or regular full-time employment. 60.5 percent of full-time students and 79.9 percent of part-time students work at least part-time while in school, suggesting many students recognize the merits of minimizing the debt incurred to finance their degrees. However, nearly 40 percent of full-time students do not work at all while in college.

Subsidizing Low Education-Work Efforts

The average 17-year-old, who is generally in high school, spends 31.2 hours per week on education and work activities. For 19-year-olds, total hours per week for education and work activities decrease to 26.0, and do not exceed the efforts of a 17-year-old again until age 23, after the end of the traditional college years. Total hours of education and work activities per week peak at 34.8 among 29-year-olds.

On average, Americans will not work as little as they did at age 19 until they reach age 59, when significant numbers cut back on their work hours or enter retirement. With outstanding student loan debt currently at more than $1.2 trillion, these findings raise an important question: Why are taxpayers heavily subsidizing a period in some people’s lives when combined education and work efforts are at their lowest?

Loan Forgiveness Programs Leave Taxpayers on the Hook for Generous Leisure Hours

Among the 39.5 percent of full-time college students who are not employed, the average time spent engaged in education-related activities (both class and studying) is only 24.9 hours per week, or 3.56 hours per day.

In the context of a student loan system in which students borrowed primarily through private lenders and paid back their loans themselves, evaluation of time use would largely only be an issue for the individual student, who would accrue higher levels of debt the longer it took him to complete college.

Today, however, the federal government originates and manages 93 percent of all student loans, and taxpayers underwrite generous loan forgiveness programs along with the cost of defaulted student loans.[5]

In 2016, 43 percent of individuals with federal student loans (or about 9.3 million borrowers) were either in default, were delinquent, or had postponed payments, owing more than $200 billion.[6] A long and more expensive path to the bachelor’s degree may seem relatively harmless to the individual student, but federal subsidies put taxpayers on the hook for this more expensive route if students default on their debt or enter loan forgiveness. Nationwide, fewer than 19 percent of full-time students attending non-flagship public universities earn a bachelor’s degree within four years; meanwhile, just 36 percent of students attending selective public research-based institutions will earn their degrees within four years.[7]

A study by researchers from Northwestern University suggests that, among other reasons such as lost transfer credits and remedial coursework, “most full-time students do not take the credits necessary to graduate on schedule (15 credits per semester or 30 credits per year), opting instead for lighter course loads that put them on five- and six-year plans.”[8]

Many colleges charge students based on whether a student is full-time or part-time, and in-state or out-of-state, so a full-time student who does not optimize the amount of credits he is taking would spend substantially more over a five- or six-year period in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree than the student who acquires the degree in four years, particularly if the student is paying room and board. The per-credit cost for a full-time student is typically lower than that of a part-time student. Further, at many universities, tuition for a full-time student is a fixed rate that then allows a student to enroll in a chosen number of credit hours, typically ranging from 12 to 18 per semester. With full-time tuition typically set as a flat rate, students minimize their per-credit cost as a full time student the more hours they take. Not maximizing credit hours can translate into considerable additional spending and debt for students. Estimates show that every extra year a student spends at a public four-year college costs an additional $22,826.[9]

Burden of Student Loan Costs on the Shoulders of Taxpayers

Students are accruing more debt to earn a bachelor’s degree, and the burden of loan repayment is increasingly being shifted to taxpayers. Not only do taxpayers bear the burden of defaults, but thanks to an expansion of federal loan forgiveness programs, they are also responsible for an increasing number of student loans that now qualify for forgiveness.[10] In 2015, the Obama Administration promulgated regulations expanding the income-based repayment program, which caps at 10 percent of discretionary income the amount borrowers can be required to repay per month, to all individuals with federal Direct Loans. All borrowers with undergraduate loans also have any remaining debt forgiven after 20 years. For graduates entering public-sector work upon college completion, loans are eligible for forgiveness after just 10 years. Some parent borrowers qualify for loan forgiveness of their Parent PLUS loan after 10 years if they work in the public sector.[11]

Loan forgiveness and repayment caps increase the likelihood that taxpayers will bear responsibility for a portion of students’ extended time taken to earn a degree. Loan forgiveness is bad policy in general, further enabling colleges to increase tuition and fees and shifting the burden of paying for college from the student who benefits from the education they receive to the taxpayers.

The limited amount of time spent engaged in education-related activities on average suggests that, for some students, the amount of debt accumulated finances a significant amount of non-education hours. When loans are forgiven, then, both education and non-education time is financed by taxpayers. Although numerous exogenous factors play into time to degree, such as when courses are offered and the mitigating circumstances of individual students, time-use data suggest that taxpayers end up generously subsidizing the non-education time of many college students.

Conclusion

An examination of the typical college student’s day reveals that the average full-time college student spends only 2.76 hours per day on all education-related activities. With the federal government today originating and managing 93 percent of all student loans, these data add to questions about the type of time use federal assistance is subsidizing. Taxpayers deserve to know.

Lindsey M. Burke is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education Policy in Domestic Policy Studies, of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. Jamie Bryan Hallis Senior Policy Analyst in the Center for Data Analysis, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. Mary Clare Reim is Research Associate in Education Policy in Domestic Policy Studies.

Posted on

Are We Fostering The Wrong Kind Of College Envy?

grads

May 23,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, When it comes time to apply to colleges, we may not be serving our children well.

That’s according to a growing chorus of voices who work with youth and their academic endeavors. For example, Malcolm Gladwell, one of the most recognizable public intellects, regularly asserts that brand prestige from an Ivy League name doesn’t necessarily suit the needs of individual students.

Jeffrey Leiken, CEO of Evolution Mentoring International, agrees. He provides mentoring for teens and young adults, going beyond the typical work of a therapist by building a relationship so that they come to see Leiken as a trusted confidant who answers their late-night text messages and isn’t quick to label them.

“We continue to be obsessed with being associated with the top 1 percent of anything, whether it’s wealth, looks, social media followers or achieving that Ivy League status,” says Leiken, author of “Adolescence is Not a Disease: Beyond Drinking, Drugs and Dangerous Friends – The Journey to Adulthood” (www.Leiken.com).

“Far more important is not the school’s brand and our cultural obsession with it. Rather, it’s helping to ensure that every student who attends any school gets closer to reaching their potential.”

What criteria should students and parents look for when determining where to apply for college? Leiken offers some crucial guidelines to keep in mind.

• Seek a college with programs that may help with lifelong skills. Self-awareness, self-leadership, self-actualization – those qualities are often overlooked when considering higher education. Learning the tangible skills for a future job is important. However, those requirements change over time. Coursework, professors and other programs that speak to a student’s ethical intuition, however, make up the educational gold that is enduring.
• Look beyond the typical menu of schools. There is a common denominator among millions of 17-year-olds: an anxious balance between their “reach” schools and their “safety” schools. It turns out that many college counselors guide these kids to a similar list of “reach” and “safety” schools – about 50 of them. Between public and private institutions, there arethousands of other schools to choose from!
• Ask yourself, “Where will I flourish?” Learn more about the culture of these institutions. There are two distinct stages for young adults in college life: the time where students adjust to a new environment and, later, when students realize they are becoming independent adults. A name-brand school isn’t necessarily the best place for millions of kids to best reach maturity.

“Just as we don’t all wear the same size clothing,” Leiken says, “the intellectual development of young adults doesn’t always fit into the same small box of name-brand schools.”

About Jeffrey Leiken

Jeffery Leiken (www.Leiken.com) is the CEO of Evolution Mentoring International and is co-founder of HeroPath International. Leiken also is author of “Adolescence is Not a Disease: Beyond Drinking, Drugs and Dangerous Friends – The Journey to Adulthood.” He has presented at TED in Athens, Greece; guest lectured at Stanford University; and facilitated programs for teenagers on three continents and in seven countries, among other accomplishments. He has a master’s degree in educational counseling.

Posted on

How To Get Hired Right Out of College With The Right Internship

graduation

April 6,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Improving economic conditions have finally caught up to millennials, providing them with a brighter job market, according to the United States Department of Labor.

But a recent Federal Reserve Bank of New York report says the devil is in the details. Not all new college graduates are doing equally well. The kind of degree they earned is an enormous factor in the job hunt.

“There’s no question that your field of study significantly alters your prospects, but even having chosen the right field is no guarantee,” says Matt Stewart, an entrepreneur and co-founder of College Works Painting (www.collegeworks.com), an internship program that provides practical business experience for college students.

“How you approach your field, such as engagement at an internship, can boost your professional prospects immensely.” 

For example, interns with College Works Painting operate their own house-painting business with hands-on guidance from mentors. They learn valuable leadership skills by functioning as leaders in a business.

“Unemployment for our alumni has remained at less than 4 percent, including when youth unemployment exceeded 16 percent a few years ago,” Stewart says. “This kind of challenging yet fun student experience helps ensure a good career for college graduates right out of the gate.”

He offers tips about what students should look for in an internship so they can gain the professional experience they need to land a job after graduation.

• Know what you will actually be doing.  While simply being in a company’s culture has value, many businesses assign students to their lowest-level work. Grunt work, to some extent, is a fact of life in most professions. But that kind of work won’t propel a student’s career. Consider an internship that gives you real responsibility and provides experiences that will definitely come in handy in your future career.
• Consider a company’s internship recognition. Don’t accept an internship with just any organization. Think about the business awards the company has won, the type of articles that have been written about the company, and how the company contributes to their industry and community. If you can, get information on how other former interns fared.
• For any student, real experience is crucial. Whether you’re an artist, athlete, musician, theater major, English student, a STEM-field student, or a business major or future entrepreneur, getting experience often comes with a heavy price. This includes the loss of personal or family finances. Look for opportunities that provide guidance while allowing you to apply skills to real-life challenges such as budgeting, marketing, and managing employees. These are transferable skills that apply to any industry.

“Regardless of how the economy is doing, you’ll want to put forth your best effort,” Stewart says. “As we’ve seen, the market can take a nosedive at any time.”

About Matt Stewart

Matt Stewart is co-founder of College Works Painting (collegeworks.com), which provides business experience for thousands of college students each year. The award-winning program also offers high-quality house-painting services for homeowners.

Posted on

SAT Test Center Closings

o-STANDARDIZED-TESTS-facebook

Check your test center, and learn about makeup tests.

RegisterNext Tests:1/23 , 3/5

SAT Test Center Closings

Information about SAT test center closings for the January SAT administration date will be posted to this page as it becomes available. If a makeup date or alternate test center information has been confirmed, that information will also be included.

SAT Test Center Supervisors are instructed to notify local media outlets when their centers are unable to open due to inclement weather, natural disaster, power failure, or other problems. Please check your local media for test center closings in your area.

If your center is listed as closed:

  • A new center may appear in the listing. In this case, access your online account and print a new, updated ticket with the new center information noted on it. You must bring your updated ticket with you on test day to the reassigned center.
  • If no new center appears, please be patient while we work to arrange a makeup date — you will be contacted as soon as a makeup is scheduled.  Remember: don’t try to test elsewhere on test day — supervisors cannot admit standbys or walk-ins.

Please note: If you had a Waitlist Ticket for a closed center, your original Waitlist request was canceled, and you are not eligible for makeup testing. Please register for the next available date as soon as possible.

Posted on

Fewer community college students eventually attain four-year degree

Bergen-Community-College

JANUARY 19, 2016, 6:02 PM    LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 2016, 7:35 PM
BY PATRICIA ALEX
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD

The pipeline from community college to a bachelor’s degree needs some work, according to a national report released Tuesday.

New Jersey is three percentage points above the national average, but only 17 percent of students who start at a community college in the state wind up getting a bachelor’s degree within six years, according to a report from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University.

Among students who started at community college and successfully transferred to a four-year college, only 42 percent completed a bachelor’s degree, compared with the 60 percent degree attainment rate of students who started at public four-year colleges, according to the report.

All but one of the state’s 19 community colleges were surveyed in the report that included data from 43 states, according to the center. The statistics were not broken down by college and only a statewide figure was provided.

Community colleges have been promoted as providers of an affordable first step toward a bachelor’s degree, but graduation rates remain low, particularly among low-income and minority students.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/report-fewer-community-college-students-eventually-attain-four-year-degree-1.1494918

Posted on

Kirsten Powers: ‘Safe-space’ America dangerous to dissenters

Rape-Accusation-Culture

Kirsten Powers3:40 p.m. EDT May 5, 2015

Accusations of hate speech are so mainstream, they scare or force opponents into silence

Christina Hoff Sommers has been speaking on college campuses for two decades challenging students to embrace what she calls “equity feminism” over “gender feminism.” In her view, the former is focused on legal equality between men and women, the latter on disempowering women by portraying them as perpetual victims of the patriarchy.

This heretical view now requires campus security.

Prior to a mid-April lecture at Georgetown University, the American Enterprise Institutescholar was deemed a “rape apologist” by campus feminists for challenging statistics that she says overstate the rate of rape on campus. “The postings were so frantic that Georgetown sent undercover security into the audience,” Sommers told me.

An Oberlin College lecture a few days later met the same fate. The Oberlin Reviewpublished an open letter, “In Response to Christina Sommers’ Talk: A Love Letter to Ourselves” two days before Sommers’ visit. Usually people wait to offer a “response” until after an event has occurred, but not so in our Brave New World. The students wrote that Sommers’ presence on campus was “harmful,” and lamented that “her talk is happening, so let’s pull together in the face of this violence.”

In case you missed that: A differing viewpoint is an act of violence.

A sign outside the lecture read “Rape Culture Hall of Fame” with the names of past and present members of the libertarian and Republican student group that invited Sommers. The Oberlin Review reported that “activists organized a safe space … (that) was attended by approximately 35 students and one dog” as Sommers spoke.”The irony is (the complaining students) postings were so extreme that the administration provided me with security,” Sommers said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/05/05/sommers-women-feminism-lecture-college-column/26923945/

Posted on

Student Loan Facts They Wish They Had Known

debtjpg-8025cd82f36e31a6

A troubling picture of clueless teenagers and frazzled parents

If I knew then what I know now 
By RON LIEBER

The problem with a lot of the advice that teenagers and their families get about higher education debt is that it’s totally, utterly bloodless.The federal Department of Education takes its shot in its role as the de facto provider of advice to people borrowing their first federal student loans and repaying them. That counseling is mandatory for borrowers, but because the topic is dense and the department’s content is devoid of anecdotes, it’s tough to make the lessons stick.

So in my column last week, I asked readers to share their own stories and offer the most important thing they wish they had known before they borrowed money and began to repay it. The comments painted a troubling picture of clueless teenagers, frazzled parents and college administrators who may not always take students by the shoulders and question their debt levels.

Not one person suggested that college was a mistake (though a few regret going to law school). Borrowing too little is dangerous if it leads to dropping out or never attending in the first place, and undergraduates who borrow from the federal government without taking on additional private loans are unlikely to get in trouble if they manage the repayment process well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/your-money/things-they-wish-theyd-known-about-student-loans.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=0

Posted on

Critics say survey figures inflate threat of on campus rapes

commuter1

Critics say survey figures inflate threat of on campus rapes

DECEMBER 9, 2014    LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2014, 12:07 AM
BY HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD

The alarming government statistic that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college has been cited by the Obama administration and in frequent news reports as it has become a rallying cry for changes on campus.

But critics claim the assault figure — taken from a survey that includes questions about acts that range from forced kissing and touching to rape — is inflated and unrepresentative, and is leading to panic and hasty decisions by college administrators who need to address a complex problem.

“It’s not a question of whether the university needs to address this,” said Samantha Harris, ­director of policy ­research at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which advocates for students’ rights at colleges and uni­­versities. “It is allowing a moral |panic to prevail and preventing clear heads from crafting a |so­lution that is fair to every-|one involved.”

Experts say that getting accurate findings on rape and sexual assault is challenging and depends on how the crimes are defined and measured.

Despite that, other large studies have found similar rates of rape and assault among women. Advocates for women say that even if the statistic is inflated, the problem is real and that takes away nothing from its significance.

The one-in-five number, gleaned from a 2007 survey by the National Institute of Justice, a division of the Justice Department, was at the forefront of a report issued in January by a White House task force on sexual assault. The statistic was highlighted in news coverage of two reported rapes at Ramapo College and William Paterson University in Wayne in the past three weeks that resulted in the arrests of 10 students.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/critics-say-survey-figures-inflate-theat-of-on-campus-rapes-1.1148836

Posted on

Only 19 Paterson Students Ready For College

Exam

Only 19 Paterson Students Ready For College

Posted: Dec 01, 2014 10:43 AM EST Updated: Dec 01, 2014 10:43 AM EST
By Tamara Laine, @ChasingTamara

Paterson, New Jersey (My9NJ) –

In Paterson, New Jersey only 19 kids who took the SAT’s are considered college ready. This means that they scored at least a 1500 out of 2400 on the standardized test, and this number is truly shocking considering how large the school district is.

Paterson resident Jason Williams is one of the lucky ones. He just graduated high school last year and has been enrolled in college since September, after taking the SAT’s three times determined to score over 1500. He says that the key to his success was not falling victim to the streets.

“Just last summer, my friend and teammate, he was shot and killed that summer and that really affected me,” he said.

https://www.my9nj.com/story/27515692/only-19-paterson-students-ready-for-college

Posted on

7 things the middle class can’t afford anymore

President-Obama-golfing

7 things the middle class can’t afford anymore
Erika Rawes, The Cheat Sheet 8 a.m. EDT October 25, 2014

During debates and speeches, politicians often bring up the financial burden that’s placed on the middle class. We talk about the middle class as though they are this singular entity, who used to thrive until they underwent persecution by the evil 1%. But, realistically speaking, the middle class and the 99% are not really synonymous. So, who are the middle class?

In its discussion of historical middle class societies, The Economist reports, “Their members are neither rich nor poor but somewhere in-between. . . . ‘Middle-class’ describes an income category but also a set of attitudes . . . An essential characteristic is the possession of a reasonable amount of discretionary income. Middle-class people do not live from hand to mouth, job to job, season to season, as the poor do.”

Some argue that the most sensible income amount to attach to the middle class would be the median household income, of around $54,000. Perhaps, anyone who earns between the 25th percentile and 75th percentile is a member of the middle class.

Diana Farrell, once Deputy Director of America’s National Economic Council, told The Economist she thinks a middle class income begins at the point where a person (or family) has one-third of their income left over for discretionary purposes after they’ve provided themselves with food and shelter. In other words, someone who earns $3,000 per month would have $1,000 left after they’ve paid their mortgage or rent, utilities, and grocery bills.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/10/25/cheat-sheet-middle-class-cant-afford/17730223/