New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Friday that several state banks will modify student loan payments and waive bank fees for those affected by Superstorm Sandy.

President David Skorton defended changes to financial aid announced this summer.

Thousands of Cornellians may face higher debt loads if a bill that supports subsidized Stafford loans expires on July 1, which will cause interest rates on the loans to double from 3.4 to 6.8 percent.

Sara Cullen '12 advocates for progams to aid graduates with student loans. 

There’s a debt debacle in this country, and it’s not the one politicians are screaming about.

In an effort to remain competitive, Cornell announced in July a new financial aid policy that will match the parental contribution and loan level offered to incoming students who have been accepted to Cornell and other Ivy League universities.

Cornell Diaries returns! Follow a week in the life of an Adderall-dealing student struggling to use her prescriptions and pot to pay her loans.

President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year, sent to Congress yesterday, contained several contentious reforms that pundits from both political parties agree will change the landscape of higher education in America. Students at Cornell and other wealthy universities will remain unaffected, however, according to Cornell’s Director of Financial Aid, Tom Keane.

The national student-loan default rate increased by 13 percent in 2006, leaving many concerned about the effects the current financial crisis will have on borrowers over the next two years.

The cohort default rate measured the number of borrowers who were due to enter repayment in 2006 but failed to make any payments on their loan, and defaulted after two fiscal years.

The rate, which was 4.6 percent in 2005, increased to 5.2 percent in 2006, according to a report released by the Department of Education in September.

With the meltdown of some of Wall Street’s largest investment banks and the current choked state of the credit market, the future of the student-loan default rate remains unclear.

Last August, Congress signed into law the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which reauthorizes the Higher Education Act of 1965. This act is the first piece of comprehensive higher education reform legislation in 10 years and totals over 1,000 pages in length. The law is broad in scope, focusing on problems such as the complex financial aid process and the rising cost of textbooks as well as illegal file sharing on campus. This is the first in a series of three articles that examine the various aspects of this law.