PathWays PA Policy Blog

Beginning October 1, 2016, students applying for financial aid for higher education will be able to use a new, easier process being proposed today . Traditionally, students preparing for college or graduate school must fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, to qualify for federal grants and loans. The FAFSA application window runs from January 1 to June 30 for the upcoming school year, so if you were going to school in September 2015, you sent in a FAFSA sometime before June 30, 2015. While the application has become easier in recent years, it still takes time and persistence. Even once the FAFSA is filed, students must sometimes wait until their taxes - and their parents taxes - are filed for the paperwork to be processed. By the time students receive their financial aid packages, they have already applied to colleges and may have even made a decision on where to go without knowing how much funding they will have. Under the new proposal being made by Pr...

The Senate is likely to vote this week on the issue of student loan rates. There is a concern that the deal will not reduce the loan rate back to the previous 3.4% it was fixed at and also tie the rates to market fluctuation. Federal student loans will be calculated and fixed to the interest rates on the 10-year Treasury bill. Undergraduates will pay an additional 2.05% with an 8.25% interest rate cap; graduate students will pay an additional 3.6% with a 9.5% interest rate cap; and PLUS loans, which mainly affect parents of college students, will have an additional 4.6% with a 10.5% interest rate cap. Under this program, all undergraduates this fall would borrow at 3.85% interest rates. Graduate students would have access to loans at 5.4%, and parents would be able to borrow at 6.4 %. Students need the ability to borrow for higher education without the concern that the market changes could send their interest rates soaring, possibly making repayment of those loans impossible....

In less than two weeks, unless Congress acts, student loan rates will double on July 1st. This will put college out of reach for thousands of young people. Congress has yet to vote on Sen. Elizabeth Warren's solution ; loan students money at the same rate big banks get from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's fair and a good investment. The Senate is currently gridlocked on the issue, and the House passed a bill linking loans to the market which will make the problem worse. Your help is needed to assist future college students. Ask Congress to vote on Senator Warren's Student Loan Fairness Act!

LET THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR KNOW: WE NEED TO FIND AND ELIMINATE PAY INEQUITY The Department of Labor is currently in the consideration stages of a tool that would help monitor pay fairness. Though laws like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 helped make it easier to file gender-discriminated unfair pay claims, to date there is no federal tool that effectively monitors wage discrimination on the basis of gender, race or national origin by private employers. The National Women’s Law Center is urging people to support the tool, especially as it relates to private employers taking public dollars. For more information, please visit the  NWLC’s site . HELP PRESERVE FUNDING FOR PERKINS LOANS Federal Perkins Loans are an important source of funding for college for many students - providing direct, federally subsidized student loans. Though their allocation recently survived the Senate committee, the funding matter has not gone to the floor for a general vote, and the Hous...

Apologies for not writing about this sooner, but the Policy Department has been in the midst of attending a national conference and preparing for a local hearing on earned sick time.  While we were busy, a budget proposal for the rest of the fiscal year (from March 4 until September 30) was announced, as well as President Obama's proposed budget for 2012. Note: Congressional Staffers are also looking for your thoughts on HR 1.  A new service, POPVOX, is among organizations collecting statements.  To learn more about POPVOX, please visit https://www.popvox.com/home.  Also, The New York Times has put together a graphic representation of the federal budget proposal, showing the various cuts and increases to spending.  You can check it out on their website . Here is a roundup of budget information that we have gathered from our friends and colleagues. Tell us about more in the comments! Adult Education AmeriCorps/Corporation for National and Community S...

In the College Board's latest breakdown of tuition costs for students , researchers have found that while the cost of tuition is on the upswing for students, the combination of grants and loans they receive has actually brought their out-of-pocket costs down .  Total grant aid increased by about 22 percent in 2009-2010, with much of the increase due to Federal Pell grants and Veterans' Benefits . But when it comes to higher education as a whole, even when counting federal stimulus spending, Pennsylvania ranked 6th lowest in state tax appropriations for higher education per $1,000 in personal income.  In other words, only five other states used a smaller percentage of taxes based on income to pay for higher education.  On average in the United States, $6.60 is appropriated per $1,000 of personal income for higher education.  In Pennsylvania, that number is just a little over $4.00. To learn more about the report, you can find it at http://advocacy.collegeboard.o...

PA Budget We are almost one week into the fiscal year and Pennsylvania is still without a budget. It is imperative that we continue to let our legislators know what programs Pennsylvania cannot afford to cut. Industry Partnerships and Child Care Work Subsides are two of those programs. Industry Partnerships provide training for individuals so they can find jobs that pay a self-sufficient wage and Child Care Work Subsidies make it possible for parents or care givers to afford to go to work. Until the budget is complete, keep reminding your representative of the critical programs that cannot be cut! College Cost Reduction Act – Income Based Repayment and Forgiveness of Student Loans For everyone with mounds of student debt, and even those with just a little student debt, today there might be some relief and assistance. Last year Congress passed the College Cost Reduction Act , which put into place the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan with a special provision on loan forgiveness fo...

For everyone with mounds of student debt, and even those with just a little student debt, today there might be some relief and assistance. Last year Congress passed the College Cost Reduction Act , which put into place the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan with a special provision on loan forgiveness for people who work in public service . IBR is a new way to make your federal student loan payments more manageable. It can help borrowers keep their loan payments affordable with payment caps based on their income and family size. For most eligible borrowers, IBR loan payments will be less than 10 percent of their income - and even smaller for borrowers with low earnings. IBR will also forgive remaining debt, if any, after 25 years of qualifying payments. If you're a teacher or work in government or at a nonprofit (501(c)(3)) organization, you might qualify for a new type of public service loan forgiveness after 10 years of eligible payments and employment. Public Service Loan Forg...