College and University Blog
Resources, help, and insight for your college experience

Sallie Mae Mistakenly Hurts Credit Scores: Does Your Credit Score Matter?

Announced today, Sallie Mae, one of the larger student loan lenders, has make a tiny computer error which has caused mayhem among borrowers. The problem is that through a simple computer management mistake, Sallie Mae destroyed the credit scores of plenty of their borrowers.

Sallie Mae reports that the credit problem was fixed on Tuesday evening, but some damage could have been done.

Sallie Mae is the largest lender of student loans. What should have been a routine update of credit records turned into a huge mistake when a report erroneously placed delinquency noticed on the credit reports of thousands of its borrowers.

The loans were reported as being partially paid, rather than reporting these graduate and extended repayment plans on time. Equifax, the credit agency that received the problematic reporting, made the delinquency notices on the borrower’s credit reports, as it normally would.

Sallie Mae’s mistake cost many of the borrowers FICO scores to drop si…    » Read entire post

Eating Disorders on Campus: Experts Advise Freshman to Keep an Eye Out for Warning Signs

You might think that the biggest food problem you’ll have to deal with on campus will be finding anything that’s actually edible in the school cafeteria, but several recent studies have warned that many college students face much more serious difficulties. The number of college students with eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating has skyrocketed over the last several decades – and experts say that the unique pressures facing first-year students puts freshmen at particularly high risk for developing these disorders.

According to researchers at Penn State, over 60% of all known cases of eating disorders are diagnosed on college campuses. Another study conducted by scientists at Princeton found that among patients with lifelong eating disorder problems, 53% say that their disorders first emerged during college.

Scholastic Stress and Food Freedom: A Dangerous Combination

So what’s behind the disproportionate rise of eating disorders on college …    » Read entire post

How to Beat the Looming Student Loan Crisis

The “trickle-down” theory of economics may have long since been discredited, but it now seems that the sub-prime mortgage crisis that has rocked the U.S. real estate market in recent years is beginning to ooze down into the student loan sector. To make a long story short, the current turbulence in the credit market is making it a lot harder for some college students to fund their post-secondary schooling.

As the fallout from the nationwide credit crunch has all types of lenders tightening their belts and restricting their offers of credit, college students across the United States have seen their access to this once-dependable source of funding dry up. Dozens of major financial institutions have either eliminated or greatly scaled back their student loan programs, and perhaps even more disturbingly, a number of state-level non-profit lending agencies have closed up shop in recent months.

Although official statistics have not yet been gathered, reports are beginning to eme…    » Read entire post

Is Hemp the Answer To Our Energy Problems?

Industrial hemp has little in common with marijuana. While marijuana produces a high when smoked, hemp doesn’t. This is because the level of THC in hemp is below 1%. No THC, no high. As more people become educated of the benefits of hemp, there is more interest in examining its potential and legalizing it. Unfortunately, Federal anti-drug officials say that allowing such crops would create a slippery slope toward legalizing marijuana. Currently, the U.S. is the only developed nation that has not established hemp as a legal crop. Great Britain lifted its ban in 1993; Germany did so in 1996; and Canada followed two years later. The European Union has subsidized hemp production since the 1990s.

Hemp is good for the earth and the American farmer. The hemp plant anchors soil and protects it from run-off. It preserves topsoil and subsoil structure just like forests do. Hemp plants can be grown in most climates, requires little fertilizer and water, and NO pesticides nor herbicid…    » Read entire post