Update on LCC and Federal Financial Aid

Mary Spilde, LCC's president, wrote an article for the local paper about the Federal loan problem that I blogged about last month.

This part was the most surprising news, new information to me:

"Federal regulations do not allow colleges to assess credit worthiness; we lack any reasonable latitude to deny or limit a loan. Instead, we are required to disburse financial aid to almost anyone who applies and yet, if a student defaults, colleges are held accountable for something over which we have little to no control. This disconnect needs to be addressed."

She also adds within e-mail to LCC employees:

"Currently we are challenging 37 factors used by the Department of Education to determine our default rate, one of which declared some former students in default after they had passed away. If those accounts alone were excluded from the calculations, our projected default rate for 2011 would lower to 29.8 percent.

"By our calculation we are now at 29.7% which is under the threshold. While I am cautiously optimistic, we will not receive our final rate until September."

So nothing finalized, but a hopeful update.