Media Coverage Archive

 
Temporary Freeze of the Student Loan Rehabilitation Program: The Chronicle of Higher Education quoted ASA Vice President of Borrower Services Mike Ryan in an article about the temporarily frozen federal Student Loan Rehabilitation Program: “Guarantee agencies, which won't receive their payment until the loans are sold, are not likely to do that. Instead, they are encouraging borrowers to continue making payments until buyers can be found. ‘The last thing we want is for people to pack it in and say, Oh, never mind,’ said Michael T. Ryan, vice president of borrower services for American Student Assistance, Massachusetts' guarantor. Under normal market conditions, the guarantor does $16-million in loan rehabilitations each month, he said. Right now, it's not doing any.” 

Student Loan Reform: ASA President and CEO Paul Combe recently wrote a guest post on the New America Foundation’s Higher Ed Watch blog, outlining the case for education debt management as an entitlement, and offering a new view on the roles and responsibilities for guarantors.  “With the level of debt we are inflicting on students these days, the federal government has a fundamental obligation to make sure that they can manage it.”

College Goal Sunday: Local media in Massachusetts and Washington, DC, where ASA participated in College Goal Sunday, covered the event. WGPC 95.5 FM in Washington, DC aired an interview with ASA's Shelley Saunders and WRC-TV (Channel 4— the NBC affiliate in DC) also covered the event.This is the first year that ASA has organized College Goal Sunday in DC. Approximately 100 students and their families took advantage of the event to get free help filling out the FAFSA, more than doubling participation from last year. 

 In Massachusetts, where ASA staff volunteered at the event, ASA Client Manager Jeff Feroce was quoted in an article in the Standard-Times, the newspaper of Massachusetts’ South Coast. The article covered College Goal Sunday in New Bedford, where Jeff was a volunteer: “The large turnout did not surprise seminar leader Jeff Feroce, client manager at American Student Assistance, who volunteered to guide the attendees through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid process. The FAFSA form represents the first step in applying for aid at most colleges. Rather than revising their goals downward, the perilous state of the economy means that students are applying to more colleges than ever, Mr. Feroce said. ‘Kids are applying to the private schools as they've always done. But now they are also applying to the public schools, not as an education backup but as a financial one,' he said. 'They may get accepted into School 'A,' but when the financial aid work comes out they could be looking at taking out loans of $25,000 to $35,000. Then Option 'B,' going to a state university, may seem like the better one’."

General Student Loan Advice/Student Loan Repayment: ASA Compliance and Privacy Director Betsy Mayotte appeared on the Internet radio show Skills Your Dad Never Taught You with Peter Dunn (aka “Pete the Planner”). The topic of the show was Paying Back Student Loans.

The Cape Cod Times published a Letter to the Editor from ASA Compliance and Privacy Director Betsy Mayotte, in response to an article the Times wrote about families seeking financial aid: “I am writing to clarify a comment made in your Jan. 26 article on Cape Cod Community College's financial aid seminar in which an attendee of the event mentions that 'she probably won't even be eligible for financial aid because her father, Don, is self-employed,' ” writes Mayotte. “Whether a parent or student is self-employed will absolutely not prevent a student from being eligible for federal financial aid. . . . I encourage all families to at least fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.”

 

  • ASA President and CEO Paul Combe recently wrote a guest post on The Higher Ed Watch blog, outlining the case for education debt management as an entitlement, and offering a new view on the roles and responsibilities for guarantors.
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