You ever interview for a job....

Do really well in the interview, impress the hell outta everyone only to not get the job? I had one of those....apparently I wasn't 'geeky' enough. That was the down low from someone on the inside. The director sat for four extra days trying to come to a decision and went with the geeky guy.

Six months later I see this:

POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT:

#18 E114 AssocDirFinaid.SS 2'08

Associate Director Financial Aid - Data Systems

 

A posting for the same position at the same school with the same responsibilities. Guess the geeky guy wasn't the right choice.

Posted by Ewok_Poacher @ 5:11 pm EDT | Permalink | 8 Comments

Pay your student loans...or suffer the consequences

Did you know you can get shot for not paying off your student loans? Well, you can if you hav a whacky spouse...most of you have that part of the equation already.

Woman shoots husband over IRS refund; gets 18 years in prison

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_8174382

 

On a happier note, if you have kids,or are going to school youself, now is the time to ge that 2008-2009 FAFSA done. If you are waiting until you file your tax returns...don't. Most schools set priority dates for how they treat their needy students. The folks that get their FASFAs in the earliest have best shot at getting campus based grants. The FAFSA allows you estimate your information, so I'd recommend doing just that. You can always go back and adjust the numbers once you file.

If you have one of those saving plans for your kids (529 or some other state fund) awesome for you. If you gave your kid a ton of cash or they inherited a much of money from a family member or have some sort of trust fund...BAD!!! NO NO NO!! The reason being is that those show as student assets; and since I know no one would ever dream of committing fraud by failing to report money you have to the government...right?...anyway, the equation used to determine eligibility looks at student assets like you look at those morning donuts that show up at the office.

Basically what happens (I'll spare you the complex math) is that the calculation takes 20% of any reported student asset and deams it available for that years educational cost. That's cash, savings, checking, investments or any net worth from a business. So here is what I recommend...either find a way to transfer ownership to the parent. Parents, while still resposible for contributing to their own kids education before us single taxpayers are, are given some protection in the calculation. Or you tell the person who wants to set up the fund to do it so it doesn't show as a student's asset. Those 529 savings plans are good in this respect, those aren't seen as student assets. For your own tax implications, you are on your own to figure that out.

When I used to work at another school, it was common for some kid to walk in and say "Uh, yeah I have a trust fund of $75,000, but I can't touch it until I'm like 20 and stuff." Too bad Timmy, if I have to choose between a kid that is a first generation student and you,who is beign used as a tax shelter,on who gets federal assistance..you are losing.

But since most of use have our descretionary income sunk in to games this probably isn't a problem.

Posted by Ewok_Poacher @ 7:55 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

I don’t want to turn my blog into a gripe about work thing, but c’mon!

So we had our regular Tuesday staff meeting yesterday morning and one of the topics was counselor availability for our students. I work 8 to 6pm. The other counselors work 8 to 5pm. I get every other Friday off, I enjoy it. I get a one hour lunch and on Tuesday’s I travel downtown from 1 to 5pm to work on special projects for the system office. I’m not cocky about it, but I’m the ONLY counselor in the state that is asked to do this. I’m just saying….

Anyway, point of concern was that students in my case load were being told they had to come back to see me if they came in to speak with a counselor during my lunch, when I was out of the office or on one of my Friday’s off. Other counselors weren’t seeing them. Seeing as I see EVERY student that comes in between 5 and 6pm I felt that this was just a little bit of bullshit. So we discuss it and it’s unanimously agreed that if one of the counselors is out then we have two others that are more than capable of speaking to a student should they need to speak to someone. ALLRIGHT! I think, things will get better; no more pissed off students with complaints that they can never ever ever talk to me. Right?

Let’s fast forward passed my 4 hour meeting yesterday and passed my commute to and from the system office downtown:

“Ewok Poacher…Ewok Poacher!!!”, says one of the counselors. Well she didn’t call me Ewok Poacher…’cause she doesn’t call me by my gamer tag, but anyway. “There is a student who owes the school $5,000!”

“So”, I say

“He says he never got a bill…only a collection notice!” she says

“And…”, I say

“He said he did everything for financial aid his last semester here, that is causing his bill but I don’t so ANYTHING!”, She says

“Okay…so he owes the bill.”, I say

“No no no, I have all of is paperwork for this year here so we can verify his file and I have his loan application for this term so we can certify it and pay off his bill…I told him that we could do this today so he can register for Spring!! Oh, but he’s only in 5 credits (you have to be in 6 for a Stafford loan) so I told him to just get into a one credit class so we can do this loan….here he is can you talk to him? Oh, you will need to get the cashiers office to lift his hold so he can register for this one credit class” She says.

Teeth grinding, now. So basically the work I was to do when I got back from my 4 hour meeting has to wait…which means students that were in line to have their financial aid processed, appeals reviewed etc. wait because this counselor foolishly commits me to doing last minute work for a student in the name of what I call ‘fantasy customer service’. So I speak with the student and discuss options, request that his financial hold be lifted with the cashiers office so he can register and proceed with looking over his paper work. It’s approaching 5pm now and our last student worker comes in and says she leaving…she didn’t take her lunch and another counselor said it was okay for her to go home, leaving me the only one in the office. This other counselor left early too. Blood pressure rising.

“Oh, where do you want to copier?” She’s back and is asking me about copier location now.

“I really do not care where the copier is put.” I say

“Well what if we put it right here in front of your door..ha ha?” She says. At this point I’m trying to force laser beams out of my eyes…with no success

“I do not give a fuck where the goddamn copier is placed, can I please get to work so I can go home at six?” I say.

I don’t think she’ll be talking to me for a while.

Posted by Ewok_Poacher @ 12:35 pm EDT | Permalink | 7 Comments

I wish they'd clear this stuff through me first...

I know I'm not a school VP or director...but it's pretty clear I can do all these jobs. So today our director informed us that the 'Collaboration Council' decided that the new school's work study policy would be to up everyone's pay and increase the maximum hours of work from 20 to 30.

What was the driving force behind this decision? Was there an analysis done with a relation to graduation rates and workstudy hours? Did our school get an increase in federal funding and we had to spend it? Were we underutilizing our current federal allocation? No, no and no. It turns out the Cashiers office wanted to hang onto some people they hired.  Wow...that was dumb. To my director's credit she doesn't agree with the new policy and neither do I. I'm all for getting more money into student's hands...uh...but these are students we are talking about. Students are supposed to graduate. Student's are not supposed to make up your most imporant positions in your office. In fact that thinking discourages the school from graduating anybody it sees a valuable employee.

What boggles my mind is that highly educated / highly paid people made this decision...with no understanding of how incentives work.

No one is going to get any more money. Here is why: We are given an allocation to spend from the Department of Ed (which hasn't increased). That is awarded by our office to eligible students. We offer $5,000 to each student that is eligible. They work to earn up to that amount in an academic year. Done.

Oh, by the way, $5000 is the most any college in the state offers. So if you increase the wage rate and total number of hours a student can work by 50% that $5,000 is just earned at a faster rate. We can't increase the $5000...because we are getting any more from the feds...and there is no talks to increased work study funds for next year either.

I know, I know...easy for me to just criticize so I have crafted my own solution. Hang on it's going to rock: Currently all refund checks as derived from financial aid and tuition credits are sent as a paper checks to the student which require postage and considerable amounts of processing time by the (you guessed it...) Cashiers office. Per my sources (State Higher Ed Dept.) this costs the school a total of $9 per check. Currently our school has 5,523 financial aid recipients...92% of which receive at least one financial aid refund check from disursements made in excess of their tuition. 5523 x .92 = 5081 students. Oh, and this is per term so x 2 is 10162 for a year. 10,162 x $9 = $91,458. While the $9 figure isn't direct dollars, the cost is carried almost entirely by the Cashiers office. Moving to a direct debit system to reduce costs or outsourcing the process entirely would result in savings to the cashiers office directly. My second recommendation would be to close our campus cafeteria which currently operates at a considerable loss. Convert this space and rent it out to a third parties creating a food court which would offer a variety of food services rather than the multitude of egg salad currently being offered. Use this revenue source to bolster the school budget and hire needed staff and let students study so they can get real jobs. I'm just saying is all.

So I'm left with a desicion...work to get out of this line of work and go work with my dad...or continue working on my masters so I can protect the public from decisions like this....or say screw it and play my COD 4 tonite.

 

Posted by Ewok_Poacher @ 3:56 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

Student Loans and other stuff

Recently some legislation was signed into law that affects student loan borrowers. For the record I hate it when the sign stuff that takes affec immediately as it tends to start a panic rather than solve anything in the short term. I'm talking abou the College Cost Reduction and Access Act (CCRAA for short).

First: Two types of way schools can get you loan money: Direct, government is the lender (maybe 10% of the volume currently) and FFELP, lenders and banks lend you the money. FFELP is the msot affected.

Second: The benefits for banks and lenders to participate in the Stafford Loan Program have been cut as part of the legislation, the savings the government gets from this is going to Pell Grants, it's a short term thing, but that's another topic.

Third: As a result pretty much most banks and lenders are cutting back on the services they offer to borrowers. Basically lenders would offer students benefits to picking them lender as oppose to somebody else. Sometimes they would wave processing fees (between 1.5 and 3%), offer reduction in interest rate during repayment, offer principle reduction after so many on time payments, the list goes on and on. If a student paid attention, or if they had a kickass counselor (like...me) that could explain the time value of money to an incoming freshman, they could save a couple thousand off of the loans they take.

Yeah, that's going away, lenders are getting less from the government when loans default and less on the basis points they used to get on these loans. Now I'm not feeling sorry for the banks...its the borrowers who are seeing borrower benefits change on them over night. These benefits ARE NOT part of the promissory note you sign with your lender so you can lose them. (CRAP, I hit submit and I wasn't even done....).  Some lenders aren't making any changes so if you or your kid is thinking about taking out a student loan now, hammer that counselor with questions about these benefits as the whole situation can change over night. The work from the lenders I know is that this legislation is affecting new loans...that's the word now...but when legislation is passed mid-stream like this that stance could change.

What bugs me is that the students I see taking out their maximum amount in stafford loans are not the ones getting the Pell grant. So even though some politician will take credit for increasing Pell grants, it came (at least partially) at the expense of borrowers, since at this point no additional appropriations to the Pell program have been made in federal budgets that are years away.  The increase is able to be made because they are moving money from the stafford loan program to the Pell program.  Sure the legislation also says they are going drop interest rates...but if you are being charged a 1.5 or 3% processing fee on a 4.5% loan you aren't really getting 4.5% are you?

Oh, and the dry heaving I mentioned the other day...it's happening every morning. I found out it's not the bathroom my office shares a wall with, It is the lady a couple of office down. WTF? I found this out when I came out of my office and asked what the hell was with the dry heaving every damn day...the office staff looked at me in shock and pointed a couple of office down. Oops. I'll get her som Halls or something. She's a smoker, you know, one of those people that take breaks 8 times a day and complains about how busy they are....yeah.

Posted by Ewok_Poacher @ 11:07 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments