Straighterline now offers Financial Aid

[dfrecore]

100/200-level courses aren't only used for associate's degrees. You need them for a bachelor's degree. Most people will take out financial aid to pay for much more expensive 100/200-level courses whether it be at a 2-year or 4-year school. If it weren't for leftover Pell Grant money, I wouldn't have been able to afford all these alternative sources of credit.

Financial aid "may" have caused an increase in tuition (the truth is that state funding has gone down), but financial aid also made college more accessible. My generation is the first generation in my family to have gone to college. There has been a huge increase in the number of black people, especially black females, attending and completing college. I strongly believe this wouldn't have happened without financial aid. Most of those who get themselves into unmanageable amounts of debt are those who spend financial aid money on non-school-related things.

I've seen people get nostalgic about their state school costing $1,000 per semester in 1980. When you're only making $3 an hour, that's a lot of money.

I think Pell Grants and other things for lower-income students is not what we're talking about much, but rather Student Loans.  They are going to be the next big bubble to burst - with $1.2 TRILLION owed in Student loans, it has the possibility to break our economy.  It's going to be a big financial crisis - the only thing staving it off at this point is that the economy is booming.

[allvia]

Awww man. I thought I was a hero for finding this, lol.

It was a good of you to post this news; it is both important and relevant to this forum's alternative credit culture.

[Murdockb]

Awww man. I thought I was a hero for finding this, lol.

Thank you for posting! I love to keep up to date on this stuff. 

I found the fees posted here. https://brookhaven.straighterline.com/ad...ncial-aid/  I’ve not used Staighterline but this doesn’t seem like a deal to me. $174/ credit? Am I missing something?

[lprstn]

Personally, I wouldn't advise hopping on the student loan train. However, I wouldn't be where I am, doing what I'm doing if it weren't for my student loans that helped me through college. So I am not against them. It's another opportunity. However, SL courses are so reasonable, that you can work a part-time job just to pay for them.

[allvia]

Awww man. I thought I was a hero for finding this, lol.

Thank you for posting! I love to keep up to date on this stuff. 

I found the fees posted here. https://brookhaven.straighterline.com/ad...ncial-aid/  I’ve not used Staighterline but this doesn’t seem like a deal to me. $174/ credit? Am I missing something?

If I'm reading that page correctly they are charging $522 per each SL course - what?!

Cost per credit: $174 per credit hour

• Inclusive of tuition, fees and online access
  
• eTextbooks included for FREE with StraighterLine courses
  

Even if you signed up for SL for 4 months and only took one class it would cost $459. As we all know if you take more courses the costs go down per credit with each course added. So if you took 4 months at SL to complete two courses direct with SL it would cost $518, through this partnership the same two courses would cost you $1044. The discrepancy only gets worse if you take 3 courses...

[cookderosa]

Awww man. I thought I was a hero for finding this, lol.

You are. I LOVE to know this kind of thing, thank you!! Jenny pointed out she found the "real" tuition for students choosing to use SL with financial aid- it's three times as much! Talk about milking the student. Now I will go ahead and use the word "predatory" that I didn't use the first time.

[bjcheung77]

Degreeforum members are familiar with this program.
Quality Matters is the QA entity overseeing this I believe.
I haven't checked the rest. Link: https://tech.ed.gov/equip/

Institution: Thomas Edison State University (Trenton, NJ)
Non-traditional provider: Study.com
Quality assurance entity: Quality Matters

Thomas Edison State University plans to partner with Study.com to offer a bachelor of science in Business Administration and a bachelor of arts in Liberal Studies through online, self-paced video courses. In these programs, at least half of their coursework will be completed by taking Study.com courses. As a correspondence program, students will complete the courses they need at their own pace. Quality Matters (QM), which has served for over a decade as a quality assurance provider, will be the program’s quality assurance entity. It will apply and adapt its Online Learner Success quality assurance framework to address the program’s specific questions and assess the extent to which the program improves student outcomes such as credits earned, completion of the degree, cost compared to national benchmarks, and student satisfaction.

[eriehiker]

Inside Higher Ed has a great review of this situation. Very much worth the read.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018...s-out-gate

[Cheeseburrito]

Great read on that article.

I'd rather go cut 2 lawns for $59 and pay cash. This is... Not a good program.

[sanantone]

100/200-level courses aren't only used for associate's degrees. You need them for a bachelor's degree. Most people will take out financial aid to pay for much more expensive 100/200-level courses whether it be at a 2-year or 4-year school. If it weren't for leftover Pell Grant money, I wouldn't have been able to afford all these alternative sources of credit.

Financial aid "may" have caused an increase in tuition (the truth is that state funding has gone down), but financial aid also made college more accessible. My generation is the first generation in my family to have gone to college. There has been a huge increase in the number of black people, especially black females, attending and completing college. I strongly believe this wouldn't have happened without financial aid. Most of those who get themselves into unmanageable amounts of debt are those who spend financial aid money on non-school-related things.

I've seen people get nostalgic about their state school costing $1,000 per semester in 1980. When you're only making $3 an hour, that's a lot of money.

I think Pell Grants and other things for lower-income students is not what we're talking about much, but rather Student Loans.  They are going to be the next big bubble to burst - with $1.2 TRILLION owed in Student loans, it has the possibility to break our economy.  It's going to be a big financial crisis - the only thing staving it off at this point is that the economy is booming.

I addressed student loans and said that much of the student loan money is spent on things that aren't directly school-related. Instead of depending on income from employment and/or family members, students take out additional funds for living expenses. Student loans aren't like the housing crisis. Federal student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy. A disproportionate amount of the student loan debt is concentrated at a relatively small group of schools that have expensive graduate programs or a lot of out-of state students. Also, if you pay close attention to the list of schools, you'll see that over half are for-profit colleges. I noticed that a lot of people who complain about student loans also support the public funding of for-profit colleges via student loans and grants. Additionally, look at how much loan money for-profit colleges were collecting in 2014 vs. what not-for-profit colleges were collecting in 2000. In order to understand the student loan debt "crisis," you have to understand where the money is going. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...dadfbdd62f

Considering that for-profit colleges only account for about 11% of college students while being the source of 44% of the loan defaults, it pretty clearly appears that students loans aren't really the problem. The problem is that poorly-prepared, economically disadvantaged students are being accepted at open enrollment colleges without being prepared academically. They have a higher chance than middle class students to drop out and not find a high enough paying job to make their student loan payments.

---

Great read on that article.

I'd rather go cut 2 lawns for $59 and pay cash. This is... Not a good program.

It's easy to think this way when you're middle class. There are many poor people who work two jobs or a lot of overtime just to be able to afford their bills. I'm not even going to get into how unrealistic it is for people to make money off of cutting lawns or delivering newspapers on a bike based on the types of neighborhoods they live in.

Anyway, a more ideal situation would be to get aid directly for alternative sources of credit rather than having them laundered through a college at standard tuition rates.