Not all colleges keeping students up-to-speed on financial aid

One of the major advantages of filling out lots of applications for scholarships, is that scholarships for college don't need to be paid back to the organizations providing them. But that isn't the case with all financial aid for school, and new findings from NERA Economic Consulting show that not all colleges are providing students with counseling required on how to best pay their loans back.

The National Economic Research Associates (NERA), conducted a survey of almost 30,000 colleges students, and took a particularly close look at a selection of 13,000 students or recent graduates who owed more than $75,000 that would need to be paid back. Of these, 40 percent responded that they had never undergone any counseling, online or in-person. In addition, another 40 percent that had received counseling were unsure that the advice had been given was accurate, or knew for certain that it was inaccurate.

"Clearly colleges are not doing enough to provide meaningful student loan counseling, as required by law," said Rory O'Sullivan, one of the study's co-authors and a policy director at the youth advocacy group Young Invincibles. "Our survey also shows broad student support for the Department of Education’s recent initiative to promote a standardized financial aid letter. Students badly need this information and see their schools as trusted sources."

Difficulties of debt can be avoided through scholarships
College scholarships, which can be awarded to many different kinds of students, offer some advantages over borrowing money for college. Merit based scholarships - which are awarded to students who display outstanding academic excellence - are fairly common.

For example, the Savannah Morning News, a Georgia newspaper, recently published an op-ed by State Senator Buddy Carter. He voiced his approval of the Georgia state senate's decision to renew the HOPE bill, which offers merit scholarships, tuition grants and pre-kindergarten programs in the Peach State. The catch of HOPE scholarships is they're specifically designed to keep promising students from leaving Georgia upon their high school graduation, so they're no help to scholars hoping to study elsewhere. 

According to the senator, the HOPE scholarship - which stands for Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally - has provided more than $6 million for almost 150 million students residing in the home state of former President Jimmy Carter.

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