Progress for small businesses and students

[ProSense]

Via Daily Kos

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More Than 5,000 SBA Jobs Act Loans Approved in First Month

From the WH blog:

Just one month after the President signed the Small Business Jobs Act, SBA has supported nearly $3 billion in loans to more than 5,000 small businesses across the country. That’s more than 5,000 small business owners who’ve felt first-hand, within one month, the impact this new law is having on our economy: from Peabody Engineering, a tank and fiberglass manufacturer in Southern California that is using a Jobs Act loan to hire 10 more workers, to Caudill Web Design here in our nation’s capital, who will use their Jobs Act loan to hire more programmers to meet increased demand.

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New Federal Rules Set on Career Colleges

The Obama administration will unveil a package of regulations Thursday targeting the misleading practices of career colleges and training programs.

Concerned about the rapid growth of student enrollment in for-profit programs such as University of Phoenix and Kaplan, coupled with increased student loan default rates, the administration has spent the last 18 months negotiating with the higher education community on how to fix the system.

The result is regulations, which will go into effect July 1, focused on holding these programs accountable for preparing students for the workforce. Schools would be required to provide prospective students with their graduation and job placement rates, as well as report graduates’ loan repayment history and incomes to the department.

And to prevent abuse — circumventing regulations by creating a large number of new programs that are unable to measure student debt to income ratios — institutions must alert the department when introducing new programs.

College Board Report Shows Decrease in Net Tuition Due to Student Lending Reforms

From the WH blog:

...Today, the College Board released a report that shows that the net price of tuition -- the cost after grant aid and tax benefits -- is lower than it was five years ago, thanks largely to our investments in Pell and the GI Bill. The new American Opportunity Tax Credit -- formerly known as the Hope Credit -- has lowered college costs even further. By cutting out the middle man and shifting towards a direct lending system, we’ve been able to pass on billions of dollars of savings to students. And we have overhauled the student aid application to help more students get the help they need.

However, we know more work needs to be done, and colleges need to do their part by focusing on their mission of providing a quality education at an affordable cost. The same report shows that tuition has increased by 7.9% at state public four-year colleges and 4.5% at private four-year colleges.

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