FAP666: Social Media College Application, Tuition, John Phillips Sousa

Student Financial Aid News
+ Happy Veteran’s Day
+ The OLPC goes on sale today and is available for 12 days only. It’s a very, very inexpensive laptop. For $399, you get one for yourself, and one gets donated to a child in a developing nation
+ I bought one first thing this morning. Since it runs Linux, I’m going to bet that it can run Audacity. That means a mobile podcasting studio!
+ Inside Higher Ed: On Friday, the leaders of the House Education and Labor Committee released a long-awaited bill to extend the Higher Education Act. The massive 747-page legislation is a hodgepodge of proposals touching on a remarkably wide array of issues — student loan ethics, financial aid simplification, accreditation, help for students with disabilities, and the like.
+ But perhaps its most striking features are that it reveals clearly (1) that Congressional Democrats are as frustrated by the price of college as their Republican counterparts, and (2) that Democratic lawmakers are, like their Republican peers and the Bush administration, willing to expand the federal role in higher education, not only in the college cost arena but into such areas as textbook prices and technology policies.
+ The expanded federal role is clearest in the realm of college costs and prices. Like companion legislation already passed by the Senate and previous versions of the Higher Ed Act legislation drafted by Republicans in the previous Congress, the House Democrats’ bill would require greatly increased reporting about how colleges spend their money, and create “Higher Education Price Increase Watch Lists” of institutions that increase their tuitions above the average for their peers.
+ Each institution on the lists — which would essentially serve as a “Hall of Shame” for colleges — would be required to create a “quality efficiency task force” that must analyze the ways in which the institution is operating “more expensively [than its peers] to produce a similar result” and figure out how to cut its costs.

Scholarship Update
+ John Charles Wilson Scholarship
+ To be eligible, applicants must be a member in good standing of the International Association of Arson Investigators or the immediate family of a member; or the applicant must be recommended and sponsored by a member in good standing with the I.A.A.I.
+ Applicants must be enrolled or planning to enroll in the next scheduled semester of a two or four year accredited college or university that offers courses in police or fire sciences including fire investigation and related subjects. These courses must be taken in addition to other required subjects.
+ $1,000 scholarships
+ Deadline February 15 of each year
+ Details at our free college scholarship search site

How To Get Into College
+ A new segment developed in partnership with our admissions site, HowToGetIn.com
+ Blog post going over the step by step details

Podsafe Music
+ John Phillips Sousa, Stars and Stripes Forever (USAF Band)

Reminders
+ Get the Financial Aid Podcast by email!
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

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