Student Lending Analytics Blog

Harvard Business School Announces Continued Access to Student Loans

What is interesting about this article is that Harvard seems to have found a way to find loans for international students without a co-signer.  Details of this program will be announced in the coming months. 

With the Election Right Around the Corner....

Now that I have cast my absentee ballot, I hereby solemnly swear to not watch any more of the punditry until election night (phew, I feel better already).  It must be all those red/blue maps that I endured on the five hour Jet Blue flight.  No mas...

Here is NY Times article about the candidates and their position on student loans.  I had posted earlier on what the candidates said during the debates about this topic. 

College Board Releases Trends in Student Aid 2008

Here is the report.

Here are some of the highlights:

Good News....Bad News

Let's start with the good news.  The Federal Reserve today cut a key interest rates by 50 basis points.  Commercial banks quickly followed the Fed's lead and cut the Prime Rate by 50bp to 4.0%.  Hooray!

The news in student lending land however was not so positive.  Chase and Citibank followed Sallie Mae's lead and raised the pricing on their private student loans and in Chase's case also increased their underwriting standards.  What the Fed has giveth, the lenders have taketh away.  If there is any consolation regarding this news it's the fact that the peak borrowing season has passed, small consolation for those still scrambling to pay tuition bills. 

Let's go to the videotape:

Who Reads this Blog Anyway?

Being the data junkie that I am, I thought it would be interesting to classify the current SLA Blog subscribers are.  It has been a little over three months since we provided readers with an opportunity to get a daily email sent to their mailbox with the new blog posts.  Sadly, as I went through the list of subscribers, I saw that I have not been able to convince any of my family members (I have five siblings and 14 nieces and nephews) to subscribe at this point. 

SLA Survey Finds 35.7% of FFELP Respondents Considering or Committed to Direct Lending for 2009-10

Here are the complete survey results:  Download FFELvDirectV2.pdf

Here is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education summarizing the results. 

Here is a summary of the survey results:

Consumer Confidence Falls to Lowest Levels on Record

Here is the article.  The level is the lowest reading since 1967, which is when the Conference Board began measuring consumer sentiment.  With consumer spending making up almost 70% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) this does not portend well for the economy in the months ahead. 

Financial Literacy to Become Part of Core Curriculum?

A Singaporean paper thinks so.  It cites such factors as "However, learning how stock markets work, how unit trusts function, and how to diversify your investments at different points of your life are skills that everyone will need sooner or later."  Also, "If we are made to learn about financial literacy, then maybe we won't be caught in the situation of the many retirees who plonked their nest eggs into a single risky structured fund without knowing that they could lose it all."

I suspect that we may hear a growing chorus of the need for such education.  I also think there will be a need to prove the effectiveness of such programs.  Stay tuned. 

Highlights from Recent Sallie Mae ABS Presentation

I quickly scanned the recent Sallie Mae Private Credit ABS Presentation that they provided to investors during a September 2008 roadshow.  Here are some the highlights: 

San Francisco State University Posts Lender Scorecard on Financial Aid Website

In a harbinger of things to come, SFSU has posted the scorecards that they utilized to evaluate the lenders for their Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loan programs (tSFSU is a direct lender for Stafford loans).  While their scorecards on the links provided focus on the most pertinent issues for borrowers, they also included a more detailed rating for each lende.  Here is an example of their specific scorecard for Access Group.  With HEOA regulations requiring schools to disclose the reasons that they selected EACH lender on their lender list, I would anticipate that more schools will utilize their scorecards to fulfill this requirement. 

Please let me know if you know of other schools providing a similar level of disclosure on their websites.