ALBANY -- At New York's colleges and universities, the arrival of a new school year brings anticipation tinged with anxiety. For many students, the second emotion is prompted by one nagging question: How am I going to pay for this?
Many of them won't be able to find an answer. The Higher Education Services Corp., which services and collects federally backed college loans in New York, has almost $2 billion worth of defaulted debt on its hands.
As of July 1, HESC listed 145,437 accounts with $1,983,922,931 in college loans that had gone into default. That's up from last year, when there were 144,216 borrowers for a total of $1,895,211,727 by the end of July.
In 1991, the defaulted sum was just $230 million.
HESC, a state-operated agency, was in the news last month when Inspector General Joseph Fisch reported that some of its employees, including Assistant Vice President of Collection and Default Management Joseph Catalano, had given preferential treatment to a handful of friends and acquaintances. Additionally, Fisch's office found that in an effort to save state jobs. HESC personnel tried to obstruct the turning over of $1.25 million in accounts to private collectors. Six HESC employees were subsequently suspended.
Despite the IG's findings, some observers say the rising defaults simply reflect tough economic times and rising college costs.
"Students are graduating and they don't have jobs," said state Sen. Toby Stavisky, D-Queens, who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee.
"Are people being encouraged to take on more debt than they can reasonably be expected to repay?" asked Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, D-Manhattan, who chairs the Assembly's Higher Education Committee.
Along with the lack of jobs, college prices have been rising at rates two and three times that of inflation, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
Showing posts with label New York State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York State. Show all posts
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
New York test makers glorify Islam, portray Christians as louts
State testmakers played favorites when quizzing high-schoolers on world religions -- giving Islam and Buddhism the kid-gloves treatment while socking it to Christianity, critics say.
Teachers complain that the reading selections from the Regents exam in global history and geography given last week featured glowing passages pertaining to Muslim society but much more critical essay excerpts on the subject of Christianity.
"There should have been a little balance in there," said one Brooklyn teacher who administered the exam but did not want to be identified.
"To me, this was offensive because it's just so inappropriate and the timing of it was piss-poor," he added, referring to the debate over the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero.
The most troubling passage came from Daniel Roselle's "A World History: A Cultural Approach," observers said.
The passage reads: "Wherever they went, the Moslems [sic] brought with them their love of art, beauty and learning. From about the eighth to the eleventh century, their culture was superior in many ways to that of western Christendom."
Meanwhile, an excerpt listing the common procedures used by Christian friars to introduce the religion in Latin America stated that "idols, temples and other material evidences of paganism [were] destroyed," and "Christian buildings [were] often constructed on sites of destroyed native temples" -- and built with free Indian labor, to boot.
"I can see why some people might see these questions as skewed," said Mark MacWilliams, a religious-studies professor at St. Lawrence University in upstate Canton. "Why does the exam seem to have only documents that portray Islam as a religion of peace, civilization and refinement, while it includes documents about Christianity that show it was anything but peaceful in the Spanish conquest of the Americas?"
At the same time, MacWilliams criticized the presentation of Hernando Cortes' conquest of Mexico -- which he said portrayed him as a "choirboy" rather than a "conquistador."
"It's quite a whitewash," he said.
Teachers complain that the reading selections from the Regents exam in global history and geography given last week featured glowing passages pertaining to Muslim society but much more critical essay excerpts on the subject of Christianity.
"There should have been a little balance in there," said one Brooklyn teacher who administered the exam but did not want to be identified.
"To me, this was offensive because it's just so inappropriate and the timing of it was piss-poor," he added, referring to the debate over the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero.
The most troubling passage came from Daniel Roselle's "A World History: A Cultural Approach," observers said.
The passage reads: "Wherever they went, the Moslems [sic] brought with them their love of art, beauty and learning. From about the eighth to the eleventh century, their culture was superior in many ways to that of western Christendom."
Meanwhile, an excerpt listing the common procedures used by Christian friars to introduce the religion in Latin America stated that "idols, temples and other material evidences of paganism [were] destroyed," and "Christian buildings [were] often constructed on sites of destroyed native temples" -- and built with free Indian labor, to boot.
"I can see why some people might see these questions as skewed," said Mark MacWilliams, a religious-studies professor at St. Lawrence University in upstate Canton. "Why does the exam seem to have only documents that portray Islam as a religion of peace, civilization and refinement, while it includes documents about Christianity that show it was anything but peaceful in the Spanish conquest of the Americas?"
At the same time, MacWilliams criticized the presentation of Hernando Cortes' conquest of Mexico -- which he said portrayed him as a "choirboy" rather than a "conquistador."
"It's quite a whitewash," he said.
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