Articles: Financial Services

7/1/2008

Is there a crisis looming in the student loan industry? Are we in the midst of one already? Depending on what you read, the answer is both "yes" and "no."

6/1/2008
 

IT'S AN ELECTION YEAR, SO we're hearing a lot about income and wealth inequality in the United States.

6/1/2008
 

INSTABILITY IN THE FINANCIAL markets that has rocked the national economy in recent months will have no impact on federal student loans if action by Congress and words from the Bush administration this spring are any indication.

5/1/2008
 

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Education has been working overtime to implement a complicated new grant program that provides up to $4,000 a year for aspiring teachers.

5/1/2008

A leading environmentalist who happens to be our former vice president, Al Gore, said, "Holding a 'feel-good' investment may appeal to the heart, but it's of no real use if it doesn't produce a healthy financial return." The investment behavior of university and college endowments appears to confirm Gore's comments.

4/1/2008

Long lines, frustrated students, and tired staff-those are the stuff that campus bursar's offices are made of. Or are they?

"On the first day of classes, it would be like standing in Penn Station in rush hour," says Dan Maguffin, bursar at the Rensselear Polytechnic Institute (N.Y.), of the scene that he used to see outside his office. Four years after his arrival, things have certainly quieted down. "Now when you walk through, you would think it's a Sunday morning."

9/1/2006

Colleges and universities provide a setting for the contemplative life. The word "school" is derived from the Greek schole, meaning leisure. Efficiency is not always prized on campus, and this spirit has translated to fiscal matters. Bowen (1980) captured the spendthrift philosophy of higher education in his "revenue theory of cost": "Each institution raises all the money it can" and "spends all it raises" (p. 20).

8/1/2006

Many of the answers to your endowment building questions may be found in tried-and-true investment strategies, but you may need to look farther-all the way to the other side of the globe.

7/1/2006

Real estate is a modern American obsession. What the neighbors got for their house is a leading suburban backyard barbecue topic.

11/1/2005

Star quarterbacks? Nobel laureates? Once upon a time, these people were the big deals on campuses. Now they have to make room for the new star, the endowment's hedge fund manager.

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