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Debt Ceiling Fallout for Students 2011/2012 Financial Aid on #CollegeChat August 2

July 29, 2011 By

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Creative Commons License photo credit: Public Notice Media

With the debt ceiling deadline only days away, millions of college students plans for paying for college are in limbo. On August 2, 2011 at 9 p.m. EDT,  Mark Kantrowitz, a nationally recognized bestselling financial aid expert and author, and Sharon McLaughlin, a college planning consultant and former college administrator, will discuss with Twitter attendees the potential impact the debt ceiling crisis will have on financial aid for 2011/2012 during #CollegeChat .

During #CollegeChat, Kantrowitz and McLaughlin will discuss what forms of financial aid are at risk including Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, Perkins Loans and PLUS Loans for Parents. In addition, they will also discuss what impact the debt ceiling crisis may have on colleges themselves including layoffs and shutdowns.

In addition, the panel will  discuss what options are available for students to fund their education in the event their federally based financial aid is impacted.

Kantrowitz is the publisher of FinAid.org and author of the new e-book “Secrets to Winning a Scholarship”. He is also the founder of FastWeb.com, the largest and most popular free scholarship matching service. McLaughlin is a college planning consultant and financial aid expert and founder of McLaughlin Education Consulting (http://www.headforcollege.com). She is also a former college administrator with more than twenty years of experience in student enrollment services. Sharon draws her expertise from her work at private and public colleges in New England, both as a college admissions and financial aid administrator.

About #CollegeChat
#CollegeChat is a live bi-monthly conversation intended for teens, college students, parents, and higher education experts on Twitter. #CollegeChat takes place on the first and third Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m. PDT/ 9 p.m. EDT. Questions for each #CollegeChat edition can be sent to Theresa Smith, the moderator of #CollegeChat via http://Twitter.com/collegechat , by entering questions online on the CollegeChat Facebook page at http://ht.ly/1XIqV , or by email. More detailed information about signing up for Twitter and participating in #Collegechat can be found at http://pathwaypr.com/how-to-participate-in-a-twitter-chat .CollegeChat can also be found on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/collegechat .

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#CollegeChat Transcript: Is Higher Education’s Future Online?

July 19, 2011 By

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#CollegeChat: Is Bill Gates right?

July 18, 2011 By

“Hot Topics” is back on #CollegeChat  July 19, 2011 at 9 pm Eastern and 6 pm Pacific. During “Hot Topics” we will be discussing whether Bill Gates is right.  Is the future of higher education online?

Last August during the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Techcrunch reported that Bill Gates spoke about the not too distant future:

Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said. “It will be better than any single university.”

But college needs to be less “place-based,” according to Gates. Well, except for the parties, he joked.

But his overall point is that it’s just too expensive and too hard to get these upper-level educations. And soon place-based college educations will be five times less important than they are today.

Free Education Online

There are already examples of Gate’s vision of free education online. According to Guidetoonlinsschools.com recent post, “Web-Based Education: Cheaper, More Accessible, Better Quality” :

If you were going to look for present day examples of Gates’ free, non place-based education, two good places to start are the Khan Academy and MIT’s OpenCourseWare. Khan Academy is a non-profit website, which has over 2,000 free videos covering K-12 subjects and topics like SAT prep. The videos reflect Gates’ ideal: at about 10 minutes each, they’re short in length but high in quality.

MIT’s OpenCourseWare project has been an experiment in free, web-based college courses. For each class, students can access lectures, syllabi, and other course materials. These materials were also designed to be stand-alone and easily digestible—lecture notes replace clunky textbook chapters, and the best materials from several traditional MIT classes are combined to create one comprehensive online course. In 2010, OpenCourseWare had almost 100 million page views.

Background Reading

http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/articles/community/transparency/education-online#ixzz1SUKvzzSK

Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web

http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2010/01/value-of-online-degree.html

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring121/columbaro121.html

New to Twitter?

In order to participate in the chat, attendees will need to have a Twitter account.  To sign up for a Twitter account, go to http:// twitter.com. The easiest way to follow the chat is to use TweetChat (http://tweetchat.com). Simply log in to TweetChat with your Twitter information (email or username followed by password) and then enter in CollegeChat without the “#” and you will be placed into the chat room with only those participating in #CollegeChat. More detailed information about signing up for Twitter and using TweetChat can be found at http://pathwaypr.com/how-to-participate-in-a-twitter-chat .

About #CollegeChat

#CollegeChat is a live bi-monthly conversation intended for teens, college students, parents, and higher education experts on Twitter. Questions for each #CollegeChat edition can be sent to Theresa Smith, the moderator of #CollegeChat via http://Twitter.com/collegechat, by entering questions online on the CollegeChat Facebook page at http://ht.ly/1XIqV , or by email. CollegeChat can also be found on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/collegechat.

 

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