College Channel

New Sales Tax on College Kids to Pay For The Fiscal Irresponsibility of Local Governments!!!

2009-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

Now I have heard it all. The city of Pittsburgh wants to enact a 1% tuition tax on all college students going to college in the city. The rationale is that students going to college use public services and utilities and do not pay directly for them.

I can't wait until the legislature in New York hears about this one. Imagine your son or daughter going to the University of Buffalo and on to the cost of attendance of say $18,000 you now will have to pay a tax on top of that. It sounds like a new sales tax scheme. What if you are a need based student or received a scholarship; does that lower your cost and reduce the tax? How about an athlete on a full ride? Do they pay the sales tax on the total cost?

Here is how you kill the golden goose. There are 17 colleges and universities in the Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga, and Schenectady area. The reason I bring this area up is that our daughter has graduated from Skidmore College and our son is presently at RPI. The 17 schools have a combined annual budget of almost $2 billion. These 17 colleges educate almost 70,000 students annually.

About half of them come from outside the area which means that they are also spending outside dollars there. If each spends an additional $10,000 a year, that's another $350 million and that's not part of the 2 billion. So the combined economic impact to this one area is almost 5 billion dollars. I caution our legislature to go lightly here and do not institute a sales tax on higher education and force parents to go to a state that does not have the sales tax.

College is expensive enough. Adding a sales tax on to the cost of college will only hurt the middle class who are having a tough time paying for college right now.

Help Unemployed College Grads... Hire Them To Tutor A Child

2009-12-03T07:52:00.000-08:00

With so many recent college graduates being unemployed, we have decided to start a movement to get them hired by parents to be individual tutors. Math, Science, History, English, Business majors can tutor SAT subject tests, AP, Regents, the list is endless. The cost of attending a quality 30-hr classroom style SAT test preparation course put on by a private company can cost a parent $1,500 to $3,600.
Most of the fee paid by a parent goes to the company, not the instructor. By hiring a qualifed college grad you could be getting a lot more for your money; someone who can speak the student's language, understands social networking, peer pressure, and what the student is going through. All this can help motivate the student to achieve in school while employing many more college grads.
Another benefit is putting a college grad to work. This makes them feel productive, keeps their brains sharp, gives them responsibility and on and on. The problem has always been, where do you find these qualifed college grads, how well have they been trained, how can you monitor the child's progress, and who supervises the tutor?
One answer is a company we started working with called Revolution Prep. They have the whole individual tutoring model figured out and their tutors are recent college grads. If you need more information give us a call at 631-864-3688.

GOVERNOR PATERSON ANNOUNCES A NEW LOAN FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS ATTENDING STATE SCHOOLS

2009-11-30T07:19:00.000-08:00

Governor Patterson announced a new loan program for students attending New York State public colleges for the spring semester of 2010. The program will be administered by http://www.hesc.com/ The new program is called NYHELPs and requires that students exhaust all State, federal (other than PLUS), and Institutional student aid to which they are entitled in order to apply for a loan.

Maximum loan $10,000 per academic year.

Interest rates and fees: With a cosigner, fixed rate of 7.55%, Fee 4-6% Immediate repayment.

Deferred payment 8.75% fee 7%

It appears that the NYHELP's loans are competing with the Federal PLUS loan. Competition is supposed to be good for the consumer, but when you combine the rate with the fees, the NYHELP's loan program does not appear to be a win win for a student whose parent is willing to take out a PLUS loan. This could be a viable option for a student with a co-signer whose parents do not want to borrow money for college.

Use your HESC username and pin number to enter http://www.hesc.com/. Navigate to the student loan marketplace and run a comparison on the loans being offered.

Is College Worth the Cost?

2009-11-28T08:36:00.000-08:00

When I attended NCC and then CUNY Hunter College for my BA in the early eighties it was basically FREE..

I predict that in a few years the total four year cost to attend SUNY Binghamton will be $100,000. Out of state public colleges will be over $140,000 and private colleges over $200,000. What makes college affordable today are Scholarships, Grants, Financial aid and loans. Without help from the Colleges, the Fed's and the State, a middle class family will have no option but to have a student live at home and commute to a community or public college. Not that there is anything wrong with community or state colleges; remember I am a graduate of both. It's just that having a residential four year undergraduate experience is something that seems to be slipping away from the middle class. It is still attainable but if financial aid were no longer an option due to the current credit crises and income thresholds going up a great number of our children will become part time students with full time jobs to support their living-at-home lifestyles. Having no option but to have a son or daughter live at home and commute to college is not something I look forward to. It is all about options and access. If the middle class accepts that the only option they have is community college, then the educational upper hand goes to the wealthy and those who know how to play the financial aid game.