Published on Friday, September 28, 2007 by The Boston Globe



[5 short articles on colleges—count as 1 for RDPs]Wor-Wic tuition plan gets council approvalLiz Holland, 21, 2016A plan that will pay tuitions at Wor-Wic Community College for Wicomico County residents won County Council approval Tuesday morning.Council members amended guidelines for the plan to cap the maximum income level for eligibility at $75,000 – half the amount proposed by Wor-Wic President Ray Hoy.Councilman Marc Kilmer, who made the motion to reduce the income cap, said the program should be “for people who struggle” rather than families with higher incomes.The $75,000 income is 300 percent above the federal poverty level for a family of four, said Council President John Cannon. It also is high enough to reach 65 percent of the county’s population.Another motion made by Councilman Joe Holloway to limit the scholarships to U.S. citizens raised questions by other council members.“Is that something that’s enforceable?” Kilmer asked.Councilman Matt Holloway said there are full-time residents of the county with green cards who are taxpayers.The motion was later withdrawn along with another to postpone the vote until all seven council members were present.The plan also has been changed to allow gradates of private schools or home school to participate. Previously it was limited to public school graduates.A few months ago, County Executive Bob Culver and Hoy pitched the plan that would offer full scholarships to Wicomico County residents as a way to build a better trained workforce.The financial commitment to the county would be $252,000 in the first year, $540,000 in the second and $665,000 for the third year.The plan would cover tuition and fees, but not books.In order to qualify, students must be residents of Wicomico County for at least the past two years, enroll in a degree or certificate program at Wor-Wic, apply for and accept all other financial aid and register for 12 or more credit hours in the fall immediately after high school graduation.Once they are enrolled, students would be required to maintain a 2.0 average, maintain full-time attendance and earn at least 24 credit hours each academic year.The scholarships would be available to students entering Wor-Wic right out of high school, not to older students. The community college has other scholarship programs available for them Hoy said.Statewide, there are 138,000 unfilled jobs and 1,000 currently unfilled in Wicomico County, and industries can’t find enough sufficiently trained workers to fill them, Hoy said during a January presentation to the council.The proposal is based on a successful program in Garrett County that has been in effect for 10 years, he said.Borrowers Fall Further Behind on $1.3 Trillion in Student Loans Janet Lorin 13, 2015 Borrowers are having more trouble paying their student loans, even as the job market recovers and consumers improve their mortgage payment histories.About 11.5 percent of student debt was delinquent or in default for at least 90 days in the quarter that ended in June, up from 11.1 percent in the previous three months, according to data released today by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Credit-card delinquencies held steady, at 8.4 percent.The fresh information signals that the burden of the nation’s $1.3 trillion in education loans, primarily from the federal government, continues to trouble the economy. Student loans are becoming an issue in the presidential campaign, with candidates offering plans to ease the burden. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the amount borrowed will double by 2025.The challenge may be even worse than reported. That’s because half the loans are in programs, such as deferment, that allow borrowers to put off payments, Federal Reserve economists said in the report. For those loans, the delinquency rate could be twice as high, they said. The Fed analyzes a sample of data, including government and private loans, provided by the Equifax Inc. credit bureau.Delinquency rates have improved for other kinds of debt, such as mortgages, because of tough underwriting standards, according to Joelle Scally, administrator of the New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data. By contrast, the government doesn’t consider students’ credit histories, so they the debt flows to “a more diverse group of borrowers,” Scally said in an e-mail.Cuomo Proposes Free Tuition at New York State Colleges for Eligible StudentsBy JESSE McKINLEY. 3, 2017 ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo seized on a potent issue that energized younger Democrats during the presidential race, pledging on Tuesday to cover tuition costs at state colleges for hundreds of thousands of middle-and low-income New Yorkers.Under the governor’s plan, college students who have been accepted to a state or city university in New York — including two-year community colleges — would be eligible, provided they or their family earn $125,000 or less a year.Mr. Cuomo, a Democratic centrist thought to have presidential ambitions, has tracked left on a series of issues during his second term, championing a higher minimum wage and paid family leave, though he continues to face criticism from some progressive groups over sometimes working closely with Senate Republicans.Some of that criticism could be softened by Mr. Cuomo’s embrace of a plan that was so closely identified with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who spoke forcefully during the presidential primary campaign of surging college costs and collective student debt topping $1 trillion.Indeed, Mr. Cuomo unveiled his proposal at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens, alongside Mr. Sanders, who called the idea “revolutionary.” “That is a message that is going to provide hope and optimism for working-class families all across the state,” the senator said.If Mr. Cuomo’s proposal goes forward, it will place New York at the forefront of such efforts; Tennessee and Oregon have programs to cover the costs of community college. The governor’s plan would include four-year schools, including dozens of campuses that are part of the state university system, as well as the city’s university system — a once-free network whose tuition has risen and reputation has fallen over the last decade.Under the proposal, the state would complete students’ tuition payments by supplementing existing state and federal grant programs — essentially covering the balance, though administration officials said some students could have their entire four-year education covered.In his remarks, the governor — who had endorsed and campaigned for Hillary Clinton, Mr. Sanders’s opponent in the primary — picked up the senator’s mantle, arguing that student debt was crippling the prospects of generations of young Americans.“It’s like starting a race with an anchor tied to your leg,” Mr. Cuomo said, adding that many students in New York and elsewhere left college $30,000 or more in debt.“This society should say, ‘We’re going to pay for college because you need college to be successful,’” he added. “And New York State — New York State is going to do something about it.”… [cut rest for space reasons]Student Loan Collector Cheated Millions, Lawsuits SayBy STACY COWLEY and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG. 18, 2017 Navient, the nation’s largest servicer of student loans, has for years misled borrowers and made serious mistakes at nearly every step of the collections process, illegally driving up loan repayment costs for millions of borrowers, according to lawsuits filed on Wednesday by a federal regulator and two state attorneys general.Navient handles $300 billion in private and federal loans for some 12 million people — touching about one in four student loan borrowers. Every customer may have been affected by Navient’s misdeeds, said Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, announcing her own lawsuit with the one filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Navient does not make the loans, but it holds lucrative contracts to collect payments each month on behalf of banks, government and other lenders.The damages sought could reach billions of dollars, said Ms. Madigan, who sued Navient and Sallie Mae — which split into the two companies in 2014. Washington State’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, filed a similar lawsuit against both companies.The lawsuits describe routine mistakes and lapses in oversight that over time added up to systematic failures, eerily similar to the mortgage servicing industry’s bungling of borrower accounts and property foreclosures during the 2008 recession. Financial companies eventually paid more than $100 billion to settle mortgage-related lawsuits. Navient mishandled loan payments, buried critical information in fine print and set obstacles for borrowers trying to release co-signers from their loans, among other failings, according to the consumer bureau’s legal filing.The move was one of a series of late-hour actions by the Obama administration just days before the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. It is also a politically perilous time for the consumer bureau, which has long been the target of criticism by Republican lawmakers. Several have called for the president-elect to fire its director, Richard Cordray — a move that would likely set off a legal challenge over the president’s authority to do so.Republicans have also taken aim at the Dodd-Frank Act, the 2010 law that imposed more regulations on banks and created the consumer bureau. The law also specified that the bureau’s director can be fired only for cause, defined as “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance.”Crushing student debt was a flash point on the campaign trail, as students complained that loans had diminished their career prospects. The issue helped fuel Bernie Sanders’s campaign in the Democratic primaries, and sparked discussions about reining in college costs. Total outstanding student loan debt hovers at more than $1.4 trillion. Student loan debt has surpassed credit card and auto loan debt.“The allegations of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are unfounded, and the timing of this lawsuit — midnight action filed on the eve of a new administration — reflects their political motivations,” Patricia Nash Christel, a company spokeswoman, said in a written statement. “We will vigorously defend against these false allegations.”Regulators and consumer groups have long complained about widespread abuses in the student loan market, but Wednesday’s coordinated state and federal action, which stems from investigations that began about three years ago, is a legal attack that is likely to resonate throughout the industry.Navient is accused of deliberately steering borrowers away from income-based repayment plans that could have lowered their loan costs — in order to maximize its own profits. Enrolling customers in such plans can be time-consuming and complex, and Navient’s compensation system for its customer service representatives encouraged them to push struggling customers toward other options, according to the bureau’s complaint….Student debt protests planned after armed marshals arrest man for old loans Rupert Neate in New York February 2016 Seven US marshals armed with automatic weapons turned up at Paul Aker’s home in Houston, Texas, last week to arrest him over a $1,500 student loan debt dating back to 1987.“It was totally mind-boggling,” Aker said. “I was wondering, why are you here? I am home, I haven’t done anything ... Why are the marshals knocking on my door? It’s amazing.”Aker said he was arrested, shackled and taken to federal court. “I was told: ‘You owe $1,500.’ I just couldn’t believe it,” he told Fox 26. “I was taken before a judge surrounded by seven marshals.”Texas representative Gene Green, a Democrat, said it was unacceptable that US marshals are being used to collect decades old student loans. “There’s bound to be a better way to collect on a student loan debt that is so old,” he told the station.Aker is unlikely to be the only person to be surprised by marshals collecting on student loans. A source at the marshal’s office told Fox 26 that it is planning to serve warrants on 1,200 to 1,500 people over student loan debts. Student debts are at a record high, with 2015 graduates saddled with an average debt of $35,000, according to analysis of government data by Edvisors, a student finance advice site. That level of debt is more than twice the amount US graduates had just two decades earlier, even adjusted for inflation. About 40 million Americans have outstanding student loans.The reports come as students and graduates are preparing for a series of meetings on the Capitol demanding action over escalating student debt. Students from Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit college company that went bankrupt last year, will on Wednesday be joined by students from other for-profit colleges including the Art Institutes, ITT Tech, and the University of Phoenix in a “fight back against educational debt” protest.Last year, 15 former Corinthian students launched the nation’s first student debt strike, refusing to pay back loans incurred to attend for-profit Corinthian Colleges... [Dunn cut some for space reasons]Federal student loans often make up the vast majority of for-profit colleges’ revenue. They have been criticised for spending more of that money on marketing and recruitment than they do on education. [Dunn cut rest] ................
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