Congress passes legislation to prevent student loan rates from doubling

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Congress passed legislation Friday to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling this year.President Barack Obama will now have the opportunity to sign the legislation that will keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent for another year, through June 30, 2012.Without action this week, interest rates for subsidized Stafford loans issued starting Sunday would have doubled to 6.8 percent.At the University of Minnesota, 13,600 undergraduate students received a total of $53 million in subsidized loans this year.“The vast majority of our students are dependent on the subsidized and the unsubsidized direct student loan – it’s our main program,” said Deb Pusari, associate director of financial aid in the Office of Student Finance.Bundled with the legislation is a highway bill that could save 2.8 million jobs. Without action, federal authority to conduct road, mass transit and other transportation programs would have ended this weekend, along with the government’s ability to collect gasoline and diesel taxes that fund the programs.The legislation comes months before November elections, a time when politicians were hesitant to upset students and their families with higher interest rates.Subsidized Stafford loans are awarded to students based on financial need, and Pusari said low- and middle-income students generally qualify.The deal will limit undergraduate federal subsidies to six years, saving $1.2 million. Subsidies, a period during which the government does not charge interest, can currently last as long as it takes an undergraduate to obtain a diploma.The potential rate increase would have cost the average student an extra $1,000 over the decade it normally takes to repay the loan, affecting an estimated 7.4 million students receiving such loans over the next year.“They’re out on their own and they’re having to make their loan payments in addition to their home payments and starting up their new jobs,” Pusari said. “[The extra cost] can make a difference for students when they’re on a tight budget.”In 2010, 63 percent of graduates from the University of Minnesota had debt, according to the Project on Student Debt.  The average debt for University graduates was $27,578.The Associated Press contributed to this report. Continue Reading

Perp Walker: What letting the Gov. off Scott-free signifies

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Well, you’d think that all the lies and intentional divisiveness, the recording of his conversation with a hoax caller he thought was one of the Koch brothers, the video of him promising a big donor about his plans to divide and conquer Wisconsin by going after public employee unions as a prelude of a lunge at the jugular of a right-to-work campaign, taped just a few months before he testified Continue Reading

Minnesota high court rules in University’s favor in Tatro case

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The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the University of Minnesota didn’t violate the free speech rights of a student it disciplined over Facebook posts.Mortuary science student Amanda Tatro posted the 2009 status updates after her fiancé dumped her unexpectedly, she told the Minnesota Daily in a February interview. She said the posts — which included comments about wanting to “stab a certain someone” with a mortuary science tool — were just a way of venting. But the University saw it differently.It responded by flunking Tatro from the class in which she used the mortuary science embalming tool and requiring her to enroll in an ethics course, formally apologize to faculty and undergo a psychiatric evaluation.“It’s very easy to say that the University should have forgotten about it and done nothing about it, sitting here now in 2012,” Mark Rotenberg, the University’s general counsel, told the Minnesota Daily previously. “An institution of higher education cannot simply say, ‘That’s fine, go ahead and make those kinds of threats with our teaching equipment, and we’ll not do anything about it.’ No.”Justice Helen Meyer wrote in the court opinion that the University didn’t violate Tatro’s rights because the academic program rules she violated — those of the Mortuary Science Program — were narrowly tailored and related to established professional conduct standards.Medical and mortuary science professional organizations supported the University in the case, while civil liberties groups sided with Tatro. In the months leading to the oral arguments, both sides told the Minnesota Daily that the ruling would have consequences that reached further than a single college campus. Continue Reading

Learning from the Netherlands: Bread, bikes and business

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I got back from vacation last night, so I’m still a little jet-lagged and full of good resolutions that may fade away or get ground under the weight of work. Still, a once-in-a-decade excursion could be life-altering, and I did learn a lot, whether I manage to incorporate the lessons in daily life or not.  Continue Reading

Frackin’ raccoons.

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For the past several weeks we have been trying to oust a family of raccoons from our roof. It hasn’t been going very well.

My sister called it immediately when I complained to her about the aggressiveness of this particular trespasser.

“Baby raccoons.” she stated.

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