Scotland. These masters scholarships are available for full time postgraduate study at any of Scottish universities or higher education institutions. More than just a scholarship award, this programme offers you a uniquely enhanced experience of Scotland. Not only will you gain an internationally recognised qualification at a world class university, but you will enhance your career prospects with the chance to network with Scottish companies.
The scholarships are supported and funded by the Scottish Government’s Fresh Talent initiative which aims to encourage bright, talented and hard working individuals to live, work and study in Scotland. After your studies, you will have the opportunity to stay on and live and work in Scotland for up to two years with Fresh Talent.
This exciting scholarship opportunity is open to permanent residents of India and People’s Republic of China (Mainland China only).
Courses must be 12 month taught masters programmes, and priority will be given to subjects in the creative industries, science and technology, and financial services. The award covers the tuition fees, return economy airfare and living allowance.
For further details, please visit: http://www.scotlandscholarship.com/
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The International Scholarships for Taught Master’s Students, Scottish Universities
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Credit Crisis will Affect Student Loans
Many students enter school with the hopes of bettering themselves and earning more income. A recent announcement by Sallie Mae that they'll no longer make loans to subprime borrowers may throw a wrench in the goals of many students, particularly those with bad credit.
Throw a pebble into a pond, and you'll see gentle ripples expand in concentric circles. The subprime lending crisis has been the equivalent of throwing a cinder block into that pond. It's sent out a tidal wave of trouble, and student loans are the latest financial product to get hit.
Sallie Mae, the nation's number one lender for college students, recently announced it will no longer make private education loans to students who are subprime borrowers. "Subprime" is classified as a person who's a high credit risk, and either made late payments on a credit card or loan, or carries too much debt.
Private loans to feel the most impact
For-profit education institutions, such as culinary schools, design academies, and trade schools, will feel the brunt of Sallie Mae's announcement. These institutions rely heavily on subprime borrowers for their enrollment.
The impact will not be as profound at non-profit colleges and universities. These types of institutions benefit from a higher number of grants and government financial aid. Nevertheless, with private loans making up nearly a quarter of all education loans, the ripple effect will likely occur.
Adapting to a new financial order
Just like the real estate and mortgage lending industry has adapted to new market conditions, educational institutions are likely to do the same. Many have already begun exploring ways to self-fund their own private loans, a prospect that may even add revenue, provided that they don't make the same mistakes as the home lending sector.
How can private educational institutions avoid the same problems that are currently plaguing lenders like Sallie Mae? First and foremost, they should be careful to follow solid lending fundamentals. The lending institutions that have suffered losses are the ones that have extended loans to people with horrendous credit. By tightening lending guidelines, lenders can steer clear of student loan defaults.
Student adaptation
How will subprime students fare in this new financial order? Undoubtedly, it will be a struggle. Students will have to do more research to find a lender that will work with them. But with private educational institutions beginning to provide their own loans, they actually stand a better chance of getting a loan at a reasonable rate, rather than being raked over the coals by unscrupulous lenders.
Ultimately, cleaning up the student loan pool is a task that must be shared by both lenders and students. Tighter guidelines will prevent future defaults. For students, sound money management will help them raise their credit scores. Hopefully, these changes will allow students not only to qualify for better loans, but also give them access to a better life.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Kennedy to Colleges: Have Back-Up Plan for Students
In a letter sent to the American Council on Education on April 15, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, urged colleges to sign up for the Department of Education’s Federal Direct Loan Program as a preventive measure against the potential funding inadequacies within the Federal Family Education Loan Program.
His recommendation to colleges and universities to enroll in the direct-lending program as a backup option for student loan funding is yet another one of Kennedy’s attempts to help protect students against a federal funding nightmare this fall.
Kennedy has also introduced the Strengthening Student Aid Act of 2008 into the Senate that would, in part, allow the federal government to inject liquidity into the student loan market and enable the Department of Education to purchase FFELP loans from failing lenders.
Kennedy’s efforts to help secure the federal student loan sector come at a time when almost 50 FFELP lenders have suspended their federal student loan programs in recent months, including 21 of the top originators of federal student loans and five of the largest holders of student loan portfolios, according to FinAid.org.
Several schools had already made the move to the Direct Loan Program before Kennedy sent his letter to the ACE, including Pennsylvania State University, which, at $276 million, has a substantial federal student loan volume. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has assured schools that the Education Department is equipped to handle double the volume within the Direct Loan Program, if necessary.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Arkansas Offers State Student Loan Agency $80M Line of Credit
The Arkansas state student loan authority has been tentatively approved for an $80 million loan after an announcement that it may not be able to continue issuing student loans without financial assistance.
The state board of finance, the investment arm of the state treasurer’s office, unanimously approved the line of credit to the Arkansas Student Loan Authority, whose ability to offer student loans has been severely compromised by the nation’s ailing economy, according to an Associated Press article (“Arkansas Offers $80M to Help Student Loan Agency,” April 24, 2008).
At a meeting next month, the five-member board will vote on the final terms and conditions of the loan, which will be issued from state treasury funds that would normally be invested in banks.
Mark Conine, the authority's chief financial officer, told the Associated Press the money would solely be used to issue student loans. The authority issued $70 million in new loans last year.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Rockefeller Gives $100 Million to Harvard
Recently, Harvard University alumnus David Rockefeller, announced that he will be giving his alma mater the single largest gift from a former student ever, writes Stephanie Strom of The New York Times, (“Rockefeller Gives Harvard $100 Million,” April 25, 2008).
The $100 million gift will be added to the school’s $35 million endowment, the largest among all universities.
Roughly $70 million of the award will help fund the school’s undergraduate international study programs, which have more than doubled in participants over the last four years, and, according to a university survey, have been financially inaccessible for many more Harvard students.
The remainder of the gift will be earmarked for the expansion of the school’s arts education programs.
In a telephone interview with The Times, Rockefeller commented that Harvard played an important role in his life and that the school’s study abroad program helped inspire his passion for studying art. In the summer of 1936, Rockefeller took his first art courses in Germany, where he chose to study to fulfill his foreign language requirement, Strom writes.
Although Harvard will not receive Rockefeller’s $100 million gift until after his death, he has agreed to give the school $2.5 million annually, resulting in the school receiving more than the promised $100 million.
by Student Loan
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Canada Tweaks its Work-Permit Program to Better Retain International Students
Foreign college students studying in Canada may find it easier to work in the country after they graduate thanks to changes to the Citizenship and Immigration department’s Post-Graduation Work Permit Program, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Canada Makes it Easier for Foreign Students to Work After Graduation,” April 23, 2008).
Under the new changes, eligible foreign graduates from the country's colleges and universities are no longer required to have a job offer to get a work permit and they may work anywhere in Canada for up to three years after receiving their degree, as opposed to two years under the previous program.
The changes come after foreign–study academic advisors and students complained about the restrictions of the 2005 Post-Graduation Work Permit Program. Under the previous program, international students had only 90 days after graduation to land a job, potential employers often lacked proper information about the program, and the program’s official documents often contained contradictory information.
by student loans
Friday, May 2, 2008
Sen. Hillary Clinton Unveils Plan to Tackle the Student Loan Crisis
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton recently announced the details of a sweeping plan to help ensure students have continued access to federal student loans amid a flurry of private lenders leaving the federal student loan program.
“Hundreds of thousands of students who are actively considering how to finance their education could be left in the lurch, without the ability to pay for college,” Clinton wrote in a press release on April 25.
Clinton urged the Bush administration to act quickly to support her plan, which includes:
Creating a way for colleges to quickly make a switch from the Federal Family Education Loan Program to the Department of Education’s Direct Loan Program — a move that currently takes colleges about six weeks.
Allowing parents’ applications for credit-based federal PLUS loans to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Currently, parents will be denied outright for the low-cost federal loans if they have defaulted on a mortgage, or if they are 90 days late on a loan payment.
Authorizing the Education Department to advance money to state or private entities that issue student loans and to purchase federally guaranteed loans from private lenders that are no longer able to service the loans.
President Proposes to Use College Federal Financial Aid Model for Private K–12 Education
At the end of January, in his final State of the Union address, President Bush revealed continuing plans for expanding federal funding of private K–12 schooling with the proposal of a $300 million Pell Grant for Kids program.
This program, named after the long-running college Pell Grants program, would provide federal grants to low-income families with children in underperforming schools to help send those children to private, faith-based, or higher performing out-of-district public schools.
The president’s call for congressional support immediately raised questions among lawmakers as to whether the proposed funding would be enough for participating low-income parents to avoid having to take on debt from supplemental private student loans or other financial aid resembling student loans.
Pell Grants for Kids vs. College Pell Grants
Presenting the Pell Grants for Kids proposal as a need-based scholarship initiative modeled after the Federal Pell Grant program for college students, the administration uses as one of its selling points the assertion that “the same choice, flexibility, and support now available to students seeking a quality college education should be offered to low-income families with children in chronically low-performing schools.”
College Pell Grants, unlike federal student loans, do not have to be repaid, and are available to low-income undergraduates to apply toward their cost of attendance at any public or private school that participates in the federal student aid programs.
Pell Grants for Kids, like college Pell Grants, would be “gift” money from the government that wouldn’t need to be repaid. In contrast to the college Pell Grant program, however, Pell Grants for Kids would go beyond an evaluation of a student’s financial need to determine eligibility, also taking into account a student’s educational environment.
Students eligible for a Pell Grant for Kids award would be those currently attending a school that has failed to meet the performance standards of the No Child Left Behind Act for five years, or that has a graduation rate of less than 60 percent.
Grants or Vouchers?
The administration seems to be purposefully attempting to associate Pell Grants for Kids with the college Federal Pell Grant program, perhaps in hopes of garnering the broad bipartisan support that college Pell Grants have received.
Detractors, however, argue that the Pell Grants for Kids initiative, unlike the college version, is actually a school voucher program in the guise of a broad-based federal grant program.
Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Health, Education, and Labor Committee, has been quick to criticize the proposal, suggesting that there will actually be a negative impact on educational opportunities for the country’s most needy children as more funds are diverted from public schools in the form of vouchers for private school tuition.
“The president didn’t commit the resources to expand educational opportunity,” said Sen. Kennedy. “Instead, on top of the $70 billion shortfall in funding for his own education reforms, he again proposed to siphon scarce resources from our public schools to create new voucher programs.”
Sen. Kennedy’s use of the word “voucher” may be a strategic political move, as the word does not poll well — which supporters of the program know, and which may explain the administration’s emphasis on branding Pell Grants for Kids a “scholarship program.”
On the other hand, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who aggressively supports the initiative, doesn’t shy away from the characterization of Pell Grants for Kids as a voucher program. Citing the GI Bill, college Pell Grants, and federal student loans as other federal voucher programs that have been “enormously successful,” Sen. Alexander says there’s “every reason to believe the Pell Grants for Kids would be too.”
Pell Grants for Kids Award Amounts
As part of his commitment to the Pell Grants for Kids initiative, Sen. Alexander has proposed his own budget of $15 billion — a figure 50 times higher than the president’s proposal of $300 million.
But even at that higher budget, the program would only be able to offer each of the country’s 30 million low- and middle-income children enrolled in public K–12 schools a $500 annual voucher. President Bush’s plan would offer each of the 15 million low-income children an annual grant of $20.
To be able to offer students an annual grant amount of $2,500, the Pell Grants for Kids program would have to limit its number of recipients to 6 million students under Sen. Alexander’s plan — 20 percent of the total number of the country’s low- and middle-income children currently enrolled in public schools.
Under the president’s plan, the program would only be able to offer a $2,500 annual award to 120,000 students each year — less than 1 percent of the total number of the country’s low-income children currently enrolled in public schools.
K–12 Private Student Loans
With tuition at the nation’s private K–12 schools averaging $4,689 a year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, it seems clear that even a $2,500 Pell Grant won’t, on average, cover the full cost of private tuition for low-income families.
In this respect, Pell Grants for Kids would also resemble college Pell Grants: Federal Pell Grants for college students were capped at $4,310 for the 2007–08 academic year, while average in-state tuition and fees at four-year public colleges for 2007–08 were $6,185, exceeding the max Pell Grant award amount.
In the same way that college students awarded postsecondary Pell Grants must often supplement their grant award with other financial aid, such as work-study and federal student loans, the low-and middle-income families who would qualify for a Pell Grant for Kids may need to turn to other financial aid options to help meet the full cost of private K–12 tuition.
Parents of elementary and high-school students in private programs can generally apply for credit-based K–12 private student loans similar to the private student loans available to undergraduate and graduate students.
However, whereas undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to seek out low-cost federal college loans and graduate student loans before turning to typically higher cost private student loans, there are currently no such K–12 federal student loan programs available as a low-cost alternative to K–12 private loans for families needing to supplement the money they would receive through the Pell Grants for Kids program.
