Student loan defaults are climbing; rate highest at for-profit colleges - 11.6%

Xanthos/News

Student loan default rates are climbing. The most defaults occur at for-profit colleges, where over 11% of student borrowers defaulted within two years of beginning repayment, as of 2008.

The number of college students defaulting on their federal student loans is climbing, and those who attend for-profit schools remain the most likely group to default, according to new government stats released Monday.

For the year ended Sept. 30, 2008, 7% of federal student loan borrowers defaulted within two years of beginning repayment, up from 6.7% the previous year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The default rate for students at for-profit schools rose to 11.6% from 11% over the same period.

Those default rates are used to determine which schools will remain eligible to participate in student aid programs.

The measures now in use "fall far short of capturing the full range of defaults or distressed borrowers," said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access & Success, an advocacy group in Oakland, Calif.

"Right now, there's no information that tells us whether career education programs are delivering quality training for jobs," she said.

Default rates among for-profit college students were almost twice the 6% found at public nonprofit colleges, and almost three times the 4% rate at private nonprofits, officials said.

For-profit colleges, in particular, are fighting proposed Education Department regulations that would cut off federal aid if too many of their students default or don't earn enough after graduation.

"While for-profit schools have profited and prospered thanks to federal dollars, some of their students have not," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. "Far too many for-profit schools are saddling students with debt they cannot afford in exchange for degrees and certificates they cannot use."

The Obama administration is toughening its lending standards with greater scrutiny of defaults, and it's proposing to monitor loan repayment rates and incomes among students who have attended for-profit colleges

Florida Education Association Heads To Court Over Class Size Amendment

A proposal to relax limits on school class sizes should be thrown off the November ballot because voters may not realize the proposed change could change how much money schools will get, a lawyer for the state’s teachers union told a judge on Wednesday.

The union, the Florida Education Association, is asking the circuit court to throw the proposed Amendment 8, a centerpiece of the Republican Legislature’s agenda, off the ballot. The proposal, if it goes before voters and is approved by at least 60 percent of them, would relax the way schools count students in meeting class size caps. Currently, the caps are set at 18 students in kindergarten through third grade, 22 in fourth through eighth grade, and 25 in high school. Under the amendment, schools would only have to meet an average of that number in each grade.

FEA attorney Ron Meyer told Leon County Circuit Court Judge Charles Francis that voters won’t realize that by tweaking the 2002 constitutional provision that instituted the caps, voters may also alter how much money schools receive from the state. That information is not a part of the ballot summary or title, which is the only information printed on the ballot. Meyer said that puts the proposal in violation of a state requirement that the ballot summary and title be clear and unambiguous.

“They’re making a change in the funding formula,” he said. “And again, people can do that. But the Legislature can’t conceal that.”

Jonathan Glogau, an assistant attorney general, charged that the FEA could not produce any numbers that indicate how the funding will change in the next few years.

“There is no requirement that the Legislature appropriate any particular amount of money,” Glogau said.

The class size issue has been a thorn in the Legislature’s side since voters approved the caps in 2002 because of the associated costs, particularly as tax collections have shrunk.

School administrators say they have had to become creative in order to comply with the law and have voiced concerns about situations where they are at capacity and new students enroll in the district.

Lawmakers debated those concerns over flexibility and passed a proposed constitutional amendment during the spring legislative session over the objections of the teachers’ union and many Democrats. The FEA and Miami teacher Lynette Estrada filed suit in July to knock it off the ballot.

“And as a teacher, and I teach special ed, I see the difference when the class is smaller,” Estrada said after the oral arguments. “As a parent, I see a difference when the classes are smaller. My daughter, who is 12, sees a difference when the classes are smaller.”

Francis said he would try to rule by the end of the week, possibly on Thursday. Regardless of his ruling, it is likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately be the final decider as to whether the issue should be a part of the November ballot.

Back to school with Adobe's Education Exchange

When I last reported on Adobe’s Education Exchange site, it was a fledgling social learning destination with several lessons that integrated Adobe professional tools posted for teachers to use or modify with their students. I was impressed when Adobe first formally rolled out the beta of the site at ISTE this year, but taking another look this fall left me pleasantly surprised at the richness and breadth of lessons that teachers were sharing. In fact, it has become my go-to site when I want to learn to do something new or interesting with CS5.

I’m no graphics or design guru. My wife, the aesthete, will be happy to tell you that. My own website stinks and is badly in need of a facelift and fresh content (not to mention a better host than an old desktop in my basement, where our miserable DSL service often leaves 6geeks.net dead in the water). I’ve been happy letting Joomla and WordPress handle the layout and content for me (I’ve used both and was planning a full migration to WordPress this summer, but just never got around to it), but since I’m a real live consultant now, it’s time for something a little bit less blog-y and a little more website-y. I need the site to be much more focused and give clients quick access to what I do, how I do it, and my philosophies in Ed Tech. I also need to be able to distribute an e-book I’m working on whenever I manage to get it finished.

And here’s where Adobe and the Education Exchange come in. I’ve been wanting to learn Dreamweaver and really pit it against some of the less expensive tools out there to see if my earlier impressions of CS5 and its potential roles in tech education (and educational technology) continued to ring true, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I’ve used Dreamweaver in the past, but a lot has changed since CS3, so the 6geeks.net redesign gave me an excuse to really dive in.

‘Over 70 million Nigerians are illiterates’

Gbagi says inadequate infrastructure and poor funding are the bane of education. Photo: NAN

September 9, 2010 04:08AM

About half of the Nigerian population cannot read, according to the minister of state for education on Tuesday in Abuja. Out of these, about 60 per cent are women.

While briefing the press on yesterday’s celebration of International Literacy Day, Kenneth Gbagi attributed this situation to the education sector’s inadequate infrastructure, weak governance and lack of funding.

“Statistics reveal the peculiar nature of illiteracy in Nigeria, which is about 47 per cent of the entire 150 million population,” he said.

He said that attacking illiteracy and poverty has become not only a national, but an international concern. He also called for the reshaping of the informal and formal educational systems, for national development.

Women more affected

This year’s internal literacy day focused on women’s literacy. Irina Bokova, director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), said that two out of every three of the world’s 796 million illiterate adults were women. Mr Bokova, who was represented by UNESCO country director, Nigeria, Joseph Ngu, said this reflects one of the most persistent injustices of our time.

“There is no justification, be it cultural, economic or social, for denying girls and women an education,” he said. “It is a basic right and an absolute condition for reaching all internationally agreed development goals.” Mr Bokova said illiteracy keeps women marginalized and constitutes one of the leading obstacles to reducing extreme poverty. He also said that investing in women’s literacy carries very high returns, as it improves livelihoods, leads to better child and maternal health, and favours girls’ access to education.

Singapore Exchange and Nanyang Technological University launch new Centre for Financial Education

Singapore Exchange (SGX) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) today said they are jointly launching the NTU-SGX Centre for Financial Education for capital market professionals in Asia. The Centre will feature a state-of-the-art laboratory with tradingenabled terminals and real-time data.

The establishment of the Centre for Financial Education contributes to SGX’s plan to create an environment ideal for sophisticated market participants and investors in Asia. Other SGX efforts toward this include the $250 million Reach initiative announced on 3 June 2010 encompassing the fastest trading engine, a world-class data centre and local connectivity hubs at global financial centres.

The Centre for Financial Education is led by NTU’s Nanyang Business School and SGX Academy, with RTS Realtime Systems (RTS) as the key technology partner. Nanyang Business School was a natural choice, given its strategic location in Asia and its global standing. The top business school in Singapore, Nanyang Business School is the first and only Singapore business school in the top 30 of the Financial Times’ Global MBA 2010 rankings, and is consistently placed among the top 4 in the Asia-Pacific region.

"The NTU-SGX Centre for Financial Education will take the development of Singapore as a leading regional financial training and R&D hub to a new level, positioning this as the key training centre for capital market professionals in Asia. The Centre offers a compelling learning, training, strategy test bedding, and research environment where Asian trading professionals and investors can raise their level of trading capabilities and sophistication. We are proud to partner NTU to promote innovation and excellence in the capital markets through this collaboration," said Mr Magnus Bocker, CEO of SGX.

"I am very excited by the synergy that the new NTU-SGX Centre for Financial Education will bring to the capital markets. The Centre integrates the strengths of an outstanding exchange in the Asia-Pacific with NTU’s world-renowned business school.

This close partnership will put SGX and NTU at the forefront of innovation in the region’s financial industry by providing capital market professionals with the latest critical skills and opening up new frontiers of understanding and mastery in capital, risk and governance," said Dr Su Guaning, President of NTU.

Professor Low Buen Sin from Nanyang Business School will lead the Centre’s team. Drawing on expertise from academia and industry, the Centre will promote excellence in financial services by facilitating industry-relevant training and thought leadership. Equipped with 80 algorithmic trading-enabled terminals supported by RTS and real-time price feed from SGX, the Centre for Financial Education will run courses for professional traders, financial institutions, NTU students, and the public.

Training programmes will cover algorithmic trading and other subjects relevant to the fast-developing markets of the region, as well as topics which meet the Capital Market & Financial Advisory Service licensing examination requirements and the Financial Industry Competency Standards framework.

The Centre for Financial Education will also support the needs of key market participants through corporate governance training for directors of listed companies, and help start-up companies understand how they can grow their business via Singapore’s capital market. The Centre will offer its inaugural course in algorithmic trading this October.

Core syllabus for Commerce on the cards

CHENNAI: A core syllabus for Commerce for classes XI and XII is likely to come up in the country with the Council of Boards of School Education (COBSE) set to meet in Kolkata on September 10 to discuss the issue, CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi said on Wednesday.

"A core curriculum for Science and Maths has been prepared by the COBSE which is a voluntary organisation of various boards of school education including the CBSE and ICSE. Now, a few state boards, like Jammu and Kashmir, for instance, are in the process of adapting the curriculum to their own context. There is no compulsion on anybody to take it up since it was a voluntary activity of the boards to come up with a common syllabus," he added. Now, the COBSE would discuss about replicating the idea for the Commerce subjects too.

Elaborating on the progress of the CBSE's Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), he said, "We are undertaking more teacher-training programmes and telling teachers that CCE just brings evaluation and learning together as the assessment of a student can be done while the child is learning. We are asking teachers to ensure that students do their project work in class, perhaps in a group, instead of taking it home and thereby, giving them excess homework."

Joshi was here to release multimedia-enhanced lesson modules in Physics and Chemistry for classes VI to VIII developed by the Kuruvila Jacob Initiative for Promoting Excellence in School Education and IIT Madras.

The digital lesson modules, prepared with the help of 80 faculty members from 22 city schools, use NCERT publications as primary sources and are intended to provide a supplement for teachers. Along with being available for free download at http://kji.iitm.ac.in, the modules are also available as DVDs which can be used by ICSE, CBSE and state board schools.

Endorsing the advantages of virtual learning, the CBSE chairman said children liked to learn from computers as there was "no fear of getting answers wrong and it gives instant feedback." Joshi said the board could even consider exploring the potential of virtual laboratories as they could prove beneficial to schools which did not have the necessary physical infrastructure.

Commenting on the collaborative venture, he said, "I had an opportunity to see the other material available in the market and found their quality was not good. Teachers can learn [from ventures like this] how to use computers and CDs to give students flexibility of learning. If a student is not in class, this will help them learn from home or the library. The CBSE would be happy to collaborate and take this process forward." S Viji, a representative of the Kuruvila Jacob Initiative, said they hoped to extend it for classes IX and X and develop content for Maths and Biology as well.

Spice Group to enter education sector, set up university

Sep 8 (IANS) The Spice Group is diversifying into educational services with plans to set up a global university at Modipur in Rampur district of Uttar Pradesh by 2012.

Group Chairman B.K. Modi told IANS here Wednesday that the university will help propagate 'holistic education'.

'The total cost of the project is estimated to be Rs.1,000 crore, of which Rs.100 crore will initially be pumped in to kickstart the project. The university, we expect, will be complete by 2012,' he said.

To be built on nearly 100 acres at the site of the now defunct Modi Xerox factory, the university will be a part of S. Foundation.

'We feel there is a huge market in India in the education sector. In a country whose 50 percent population is below the age of 25, it makes a good business sense to foray into the education sector. We feel there is more scope in this market segment,' Prakash Nanani, group president at Spice Corp., who is in charge of the project, told IANS.

The Group is also planning to set up a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) unit in Rampur, which will start its operations in the next three months.

Asked about providing reservation to the children of local people in the university, Modi said: 'We already have a school operating here from which brilliant results are showing up. I don't think there's a need to provide reservations to them. However, financial assistance in the form of scholarships will be provided to the deserving candidates.

Education spending here still lowest

Japan again spent the least on education in 2007 among the 28 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of the ratio of such state spending to gross domestic product, according to an OECD report.

The nation's 2007 ratio, 3.3 percent, was the third-lowest, following 2003 and 2005. Japan was also the second-lowest in 2004 and 2006 in the annual OECD studies. For the latest ranking, comparable data were available among the 28 nations out of the OECD's 32 members.

Since the 2007 result was compiled during a Liberal Democratic Party-led government, it does not reflect possible results of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan's measures to beef up public education.

The DPJ, which took power last September, said in its annual policy platform for 2009, was issued separately from election campaign pledges, that it was aiming to raise the spending ratio to 5.0 percent or higher. It waived public high school tuition in April.

The latest OECD report showed that the average ratio of such public-spending-to-GDP among the 28 countries was 4.8 percent, with Iceland ranking highest at 7.0 percent, followed by Denmark's 6.6 percent and Sweden's 6.1 percent.

The second-lowest after Japan was Slovakia's 3.4 percent and the third-lowest was Chile's 3.7 percent.

In a press briefing, an OECD official said there is a possibility that Japan's spending ratio may improve, but that it is unclear how far it could rise in the rankings as other countries have also increased their respective public spending.

At the elementary and junior high school levels, Japan's spending-to-GDP ratio came to 2.5 percent — tied for second-lowest with the Czech Republic, while the ratio at the high school levels was 0.5 percent, also the second-lowest.

In terms of the ratio of private investments toward all education expenditures, however, Japan's came to 33.3 percent, the fourth-largest after South Korea, Chile and the United States.

By educational level, Japan's private spending on college education accounted for 67.5 percent, compared with an average 30.9 percent, while spending on kindergarten was 56.2 percent, compared with 20.3 percent.

The result highlighted that Japanese households had to spend more on education due to low public spending.

The OECD also said the number of students per class at Japanese junior high schools was 33.0, the second-largest number among 23 member nations

Goa education minister loses 'face' on Facebook

Panaji: Interested in 'women' and looking for 'dating', is a succinct introduction to Goa Education Minister Atanasio Monserrate on his Facebook page. Only, the account is fake.

The Panaji police are looking for the imposter who created Monserrate's fake page and used it to hurl a slew of abuses to several persons known to Monserrate, including sitting Curtorim legislator Reginaldo Lourenco, who brought the fake page to Monserrate's notice.

'I am pretty much a computer illiterate. I cannot operate these sites. Somebody must have made an account using my name and has been chatting as well. I was informed about this by Reginaldo, who was abused by the impostor while chatting,' Monserrate told IANS, adding, that all the while Reginaldo thought he was speaking to the education minister.

The imposter, who seems to have a sense of humour besides his abusive streak, has linked Spanish singer Julio Iglesias' YouTube video 'To all the girls I've loved before' on Monserrate's fake page.

When a visitor to his page, Josephine S. Araujo commented on the video, pointing out that it was, in fact, 'Engelbert's (Humperdinck) song', the imposter replied to her in a flirtatious tone: 'But darling, this is Julio Iglesias singing'.

Posing as the education minister, the faker also assured Anthony Viegas, a Muscat-based Goan, that he was trying to re-introduce traditional Goan bull-fighting, 'dhirio', in which two well-bred and trained bulls lock horns and smash their foreheads until one bull emerges victorious and the vanquished scampers away.

'I'm trying my best, I love the dhirio too,' the imposter assures Viegas.

Deputy Superintendent of Police Deu Benualikar confirmed the complaint filed by the Congressman.

'He (Monserrate) came to us with a printout of the Facebook page and filed a complaint. We will find out who the imposter is as he is using the page to malign the minister,' Benaulikar said.

Sibal says he's in no hurry on education reforms Read more: Sibal says he's in no hurry on education reforms

NEW DELHI: With memories of deferment of the Educational Tribunals Bill still fresh in his mind, HRD minister Kapil Sibal on Wednesday invoked the name of Rajiv Gandhi, in the presence of UPA and National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi, to make the point to his detractors that he was in no hurry to bring in educational reforms.

Speaking at the inauguration of buildings of 31 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, Sibal said, " Rajiv Gandhi had said we need to improve the quality of education and in months. Twenty-five years have elapsed and we are at the same stage. Now people say we are in a hurry. We should be in a hurry."

For Sonia Gandhi herself, 25 years of JNV was a proud moment. Started by Rajiv Gandhi in 1985 with two schools there are now 593 JNVs all over the country. Gandhi paid tributes to her late husband for his "vision" that has made JNVs a success story providing quality education to children from economically and socially weaker sections. "It is a matter of great satisfaction that Navodaya Vidyalayas have lived up to expectations," she said.

At the same time, she expressed concern as to why other government schools were not as good as Navodaya Vidyalayas. She pointed out that one-fourth of the teachers are absent in these schools and while children did take admission here, many of them, especially from the weaker sections, dropped out. She said the government is giving scholarships to school students, the information regarding which must reach all. She added that other government schools must learn from JNVs.

In JNVs, at least 75% children are from rural areas and one-third of them are girls. Of the over two lakh students in JNVs, 77.84% are from rural areas, 36.67% are girls and 41.61% belong to SC/ST categories. In 2009-10 alone, 147 students cleared IITs, 3,286 were successful in All India Engineering Entrance Examination and other engineering entrance tests, 345 cleared the medical entrance and 22 the civil services examination.

The 31 recently constructed buildings of JNVs are in states across the country -- Kerala, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Sibal said that in the coming days special Navodaya Vidyalayas are proposed to be opened to encourage children showing aptitude in sports, culture and in vocational streams.

Street children see hope in Right To Education Act

They were poor. Some of them begged and picked rags on the streets of Bangalore, and some others worked as domestic helps. But their fate changed when the Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA), a Bangalore-based grass-root community development organisation, took notice of their plight and built a school and accommodation facilities for them.

However, not all street children are lucky enough to be rescued from the pavements, and many of them are forced to end their childhood without ever getting a chance to read and write.But the Right to Education (RTE) Act can bring a sea change in the fortunes of these poor and needy children who cannot afford education.

This was the message that a group of six young representatives from the APSA Dream School started by the executive director of the organisation, P Lakshapathy, brought to light at a meet on the RTE Act in the city on Wednesday.

The children stressed that theact should be implemented “so that no child remains out of school”.

Nagesh P, 10, who was once a rag picker, said, “It is high time that all children get the right to study. I hope the RTE Act will bring all the children who are on the streets and are eking out their livelihood as child labourers to schools. I also support the 25% reservation for underprivileged kids in all schools as mandated by the act.”

Echoing Nagesh, Sapurna Begum, another student of the school, said that the act would help poor children like her to get educated. “I was working as a domestic help and was lucky to be rescued. APSA rescued me and now I am learning to read and write like others of my age. If the act is implemented in earnest, all poor children will get a chance to go to school,” she said.

According to the RTE Act, all schools should provide admission to 25% children from the neighbourhood — a euphemism for kids from underprivileged sections of society.The act came into force on April 1.

APSA started the school to provide formal education to underprivileged children. At present, about 240 children, mostly child labourersand beggars, are getting formal education in the school.

The school also provides training in computers, electronics, screen printing and tailoring to children above the age of 15 years.

Sapurna and Nagesh, along with four other students from the school, participated in the two-day consultations and training programme for NGOs, teachers, lawyers and other stakeholders of the RTE Act.

The consultation was organised by the Karnataka Child Rights Observatory (KCRO), a Bangalore-based child rights’ group.