2014 was a banner year for Texas colleges and universities as several institutions throughout the state earned high rankings in nationally recognized polls listing the best higher education options throughout the country and world. As expected, both Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin are among the mostRead More

On Monday, President Obama signed a new executive order intended to ease debt burdens for 5 million students. The centerpiece of the initiative will allow students to cap their monthly payment of Federal direct student loans to 10 percent of their annual income under a program called “Pay As YouRead More

When is the best time to start saving for college? If you have a child, the answer is now, or perhaps yesterday. Due to many factors including increasing capital spending, expanding administration and the withdrawal of state funding from public universities over the last 20 years, tuition is increasing atRead More

Sequestration cuts from the Budget Control Act of 2011 will continue to bite students and parents borrowing to pay for college, according to a report from Clare McCann at Forbes Magazine. The Federal Department for Education announced today that student loan origination fees will slightly increase for all loans takenRead More

Before we explore portions of the need-based financial aid universe, I need to make sure you did your homework. Did you fill out your FAFSA form, like we told you to here? Yep. Now what? Generally speaking, there are three types of need-based student aid: grants work-study loans Grants areRead More

  The traditional vision of the college professor is that of the tenure-track faculty member: the guy with elbow patches and a tweed jacket who does research, lectures and has tenure – job security that allows them freedom to do research and teach controversial subjects. That vision is less trueRead More

During his fifth State-of-the-Union address on Jan. 28, President Obama announced no major new educational initiatives. Instead, he spent the modest amount of time he dedicated to education highlighting and defending his existing record on education, Obama also announced several modest expansions of existing programs and encouraged Congress to takeRead More

When the Houston Independent School District Board of Trustees tentatively voted to ban the use of racially based mascots and nicknames at its schools during its Dec. 15 meeting, its actions joined a several-decade old trend of American schools and sports franchises de-emphasizing or eliminating logos and nicknames associated withRead More

Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and rapidly increasing tuition costs –or at least that’s probably how many college students and their parents feel.  According to long-term data gathered by the College Board Annual Survey of Colleges and the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES), college tuition costsRead More