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	<title>Business &#38; MoneyCategory: Educational Financing &#124; Business &#38; Money &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Business &#38; MoneyCategory: Educational Financing &#124; Business &#38; Money &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Car? House? Sorry: Graduates of 2013 Are Each $35,200 in Debt</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/05/17/car-house-sorry-graduates-of-2013-are-each-35200-in-debt/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/05/17/car-house-sorry-graduates-of-2013-are-each-35200-in-debt/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Kadlec</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Careers & Workplace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics & Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Personal Finance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving & Spending]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=80188</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The typical college graduate will leave campus this month owing nearly as much money as they stand to earn in their first year of full-time employment, new research shows. At a personal level, graduates toting up their private and government student loans, credit card balances, and personal debt will find the sum shocking. On average, they owe $35,200 and half say they are surprised by how much debt they have accumulated, according to a Fidelity Investments Cost-Conscious College Graduates Study. At a broader level, this debt has far-reaching implications for the economy as young people with starting pay of $44,455 spend much of it servicing debt—not buying cars and homes or beginning to save for retirement or emergencies. Some 70% of college grads have loans; many won’t pay them off for a decade. (MORE: The Myth of the Four-Year College Degree) The upshot is that young people are getting a late start building wealth. People in their late 20s to late 30s have 21% less inflation-adjusted wealth than those in the same age range 25 years ago, according to the Urban Institute. That’s partly due to the housing bust, which socked young people who had bought near the top. But student debt is a big factor. “Student loans are the second largest source of debt for today’s Americans in their late-20s to late-30s,” writes Caroline Ratcliffe of the Urban Institute in her blog. “By way of comparison, student loans were a relatively small component of debt for their counterparts in the 1980s.” Mortgages remain the largest debt source. Ratcliffe shared this view with the Federal Financial Literacy and Education Commission on May 14 as part of the Commission’s inquiry into student debt issues. She said that educating high school kids about college debt should be a priority, and added: “But teaching financial literacy at younger ages is also critical. The earlier in life a person begins to build wealth, the more time those assets have to compound and become more valuable. So the key is to teach more people to<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=80188&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/rear-view-of-students-wearing-graduation-caps.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Rear view of students wearing graduation caps</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">dankadlec</media:title>
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		<title>Elizabeth Warren: Students Should Get the Same Rate as the Bankers</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/05/10/elizabeth-warren-students-should-get-the-same-rate-as-the-bankers/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/05/10/elizabeth-warren-students-should-get-the-same-rate-as-the-bankers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 09:45:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kayla Webley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elizabeth Warren]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[student loans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=79741</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Consumer protection maven Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced her first piece of legislation this week, a proposal that would allow students to take out government educational loans at the same rate that big banks pay to borrow from the federal government. Under her Bank on Student Loans Fairness Act, for one year, new student borrowers would be able to take out a federally subsidized Stafford loan at 0.75%, compared with the current 3.4% student loan rate. &#8220;Let&#8217;s give [students] the same great deal that the banks get,&#8221; Warren said, introducing her legislation on the Senate floor on Wednesday. (MORE: Face the Red: This New Short Film Will Scare You Into Paying Your Debt) Her legislation is well-timed as Congress gears up to debate student loan rates, which are set to double on July 1. Unless legislators vote to extend the 3.4% rate for another year, some eight million students will be forced to pay back their loans plus 6.8% in annual interest. The average student loan borrower now graduates with a record-high $26,000 in debt. Nationwide, student debt has outpaced credit-card debt, as borrowers struggle to pay back a collective $1 trillion in debt. According to Warren, the federal government makes an average of 36 cents for every dollar it lends to students. As a result, this year, the government will make some $34 billion from students making payments. &#8220;We shouldn&#8217;t be profiting from our students who are drowning in debt, while giving a great deal to the banks,&#8221; she said. &#8220;That&#8217;s just wrong.&#8221; The great deal Warren referred is the Federal Reserve&#8217;s &#8220;discount window&#8221; that banks like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase use to borrow money from the government, generally overnight and generally secured by assets. The rate is so low in part because there&#8217;s very little risk the loans won&#8217;t be repaid. Advocating against charging students nine times what banks pay is likely to win Warren some popular support, but that doesn&#8217;t mean the proposal is likely to make it through Congress. (MORE: Viewpoint: Stop Calling Student Loans a “Bubble”!)<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=79741&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">kaylawebley</media:title>
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		<title>Yes, Really: Private Colleges Offering More Financial Aid Than Ever</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/05/07/yes-really-private-colleges-offering-more-financial-aid-than-ever/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/05/07/yes-really-private-colleges-offering-more-financial-aid-than-ever/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 09:45:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kayla Webley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[financial aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[student loans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=79385</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Call it the couponing of higher education. After years of skyrocketing tuition costs, many private colleges in the United States are ramping up their financial aid packages in an attempt to attract new students and boost sagging enrollments. For freshmen entering school in 2012, the average “tuition discount rate” – the amount of grant and scholarship money given by schools toward tuition – was 45%, an all-time high, according to a survey of 383 private, non-profit four-year colleges released Monday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). Those substantial discounts, offered in the form of merit scholarships and need-based aid, are meant to lure cash-strapped students who might not otherwise think of private schools as a viable financial option. (WATCH: Face the Red: This New Short Film Will Scare You Into Paying Your Debt) &#8220;Institutions are responding to students who won&#8217;t enroll unless they have some kind of incentive,&#8221; says Natalie Pullaro Davis, who wrote the survey report. &#8220;Schools are foregoing more of their revenue in order to fill seats and be sensitive to families who are struggling.&#8221; As a result, these schools bring in only about 55 cents of every tuition dollar they charge. But as Pullaro Davis said, &#8220;It&#8217;s better to collect some money on a seat, than to collect no money.&#8221; And many of these colleges do indeed have to worry about having empty seats come fall. The survey found that total undergraduate enrollments in 2012 were down 45.6% from the year before. &#8220;It&#8217;s a tight rope they walk,&#8221; said Mark Kantrowitz, an expert on college costs and the publisher of edvisors.com. &#8220;If they enroll one student by giving them $10,000 more in aid, that&#8217;s $10,000 less that they can give to another student.&#8221; Even with aid at an all-time high, however, families can try to negotiate for a better deal. &#8220;If you think there is some aspect of your background that the college didn&#8217;t consider, it doesn&#8217;t hurt to appeal for more aid,&#8221; Kantrowitz said. &#8220;You can contact the school and say, &#8216;You&#8217;re<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=79385&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/149977876-copy.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">General Views Of Harvard University</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">kaylawebley</media:title>
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		<title>Face the Red: This New Short Film Will Scare You Into Paying Your Debt</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/05/06/face-the-red-this-new-short-film-will-scare-you-into-paying-your-debt/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/05/06/face-the-red-this-new-short-film-will-scare-you-into-paying-your-debt/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 15:10:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kayla Webley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=79312</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For many student borrowers, when repayments kick in six months after graduation the looming debt can feel as though it&#8217;s following them around like a dark cloud. Face the Red, a short film from the directors of Martha Marcy May Marlene, cinematizes that feeling by having a menacing red cloud follow around the film&#8217;s star.  Student debt totals more than a collective $1 trillion nationwide, and some 15 million debt holders are under the age of 30. The young age of many borrowers is probably why American Student Assistance (ASA), the non-profit organization that made the film, chose to raise awareness by video. The well-made, genuinely scary film was made by SS+K, the advertising agency responsible for the viral Obama campaign video &#8220;Your First Time,&#8221; starring Lena Dunham. The film is designed to raise awareness for SALT, a website run by ASA that features free educational resources for student loan borrowers. SALT urges borrowers to take control of their debt and manage their finances because, as the film says in its closing line, &#8220;You can&#8217;t outrun [debt]—all you can do it face it and fight it.&#8221; (MORE: Viewpoint: Stop Calling Student Loans a “Bubble”!) (MORE: Three Strategies for Saving Money on College That May Not Work as Promised)<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=79312&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70ed4d3924bb7fd88021174e9c19bb4e?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">kaylawebley</media:title>
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		<title>How Much Will It Matter If Student-Loan Interest Rates Double?</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/04/10/how-much-will-it-matter-if-student-loan-interest-rates-double/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/04/10/how-much-will-it-matter-if-student-loan-interest-rates-double/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:45:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Martha C. White</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=77316</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The bell has been rung in the next round of the fight over student-loan interest rates, and borrowers could take it on the chin this time. On July 1, if Congress does nothing, the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford student loans will double from 3.4% to 6.8%.  “It’s not the end of the economy as we know it,” says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of student-lending websites Fastweb and FinAid. He’s right, but that doesn’t mean it won’t really stink, especially for the poorest college students. Advocacy group U.S. PIRG says it could cost students an extra $1,000 over the life of their loan if the interest rate on those loans goes up to 6.8% in July. In reality, it might be more: some students wind up paying off their loans for upwards of 20 years, and that $1,000 is calculated based on the average one-year loan amount borrowers take out, which is $3,357. But the average bachelor’s degree recipient who graduates with debt does so with $11,329 in subsidized Stafford-loan debt. Still, as Kantrowitz points out, that’s only a little more than $20 a month. So, for most borrowers, this probably still wouldn’t make much of a difference. The rub is that these subsidized Stafford loans are widely used by lower-income families. In the 2007–08 academic year, about half of bachelor’s degree recipients who graduated with student-loan debt had a subsidized Stafford loan. Of these, “70% come from families who make less than $50,000; 24% from families with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000; and 6% from six-figure-income families,” Kantrowitz wrote last year in a New York Times op-ed article written jointly with Lynn O’Shaughnessy, author of The College Solution. Poor students and their families are already grappling with cuts to the Pell Grant system that make it necessary for them to take out more loans if they want a higher education. “I would rather the focus be on reducing the debts by increasing the grants,” Kantrowitz says. But that&#8217;s a whole other political battle, and letting rates rise on borrowers isn&#8217;t a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=77316&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/136147864.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Piggy Bank</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/9a5a9e4f28beb5afb59b1202632d219a?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marthacwhite</media:title>
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		<title>Financial Independence? Today&#8217;s Young People Don&#8217;t Expect It Anytime Soon</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/04/04/financial-independence-todays-young-people-dont-expect-it-anytime-soon/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/04/04/financial-independence-todays-young-people-dont-expect-it-anytime-soon/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:00:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Martha C. White</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Banking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Budgeting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Careers & Workplace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Credit Cards]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Job Markets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving & Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[adult children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[financial independence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=76494</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a mere two years, the proportion of teenagers who expect to be financially dependent on their parents until their mid-20s has doubled. That gives us all another reason to feel sympathy for parents who have teenagers right now.  A new survey conducted by Junior Achievement, a group that teaches kids about money and jobs, found that 25% of teens think they won’t be able to support themselves until their mid-20s. Two years ago, just 12% of teens surveyed said that they&#8217;d have to reach the 25-to 27-year-old age bracket before being able to pay all of their own bills. Correspondingly, the proportion of teens who expect to achieve financial independence by the ages of 18 to 24 has plummeted, from 75% in 2011 to 59% today. Are these kids just unmotivated? Maybe some of them are, but many more are facing escalating college costs and poor job prospects. An alarming number have a poor understanding of budgeting and basic finance as well. Plus, the old stigmas attached to relying on one&#8217;s parents well into adulthood, and even moving back home after college, seem to have faded. To make ends meet, Generation X crowded in with roommates, ate Ramen and slept on futons. Post-college millennials still have roommates, but they increasingly call them &#8220;mom&#8221; and &#8220;dad.&#8221; The number of young adults living with their parents spiked during the Great Recession era. Today&#8217;s teens apparently don&#8217;t mind the idea of moving back in with the &#8216;rents, or they at least understand the necessity of making such a move given the state of the economy and the likelihood of large student loans down the road. (MORE: Being 30 and Living With Your Parents Isn’t Lame — It’s Awesome) Providing a place to live isn&#8217;t the only way parents are helping out their adult children. In many families, it’s become the norm for parents to step in and pay bills for smartphones, Internet access, music and TV subscription services like iTunes and Hulu. A survey of parents with adult children up to 35<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=76494&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Financial Education</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/financial-education/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/137470615-e1365022434293.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">three teenage girls</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">marthacwhite</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Dunk City &amp; Dollars: Florida Gulf Coast Bandwagon Means Big Bucks</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/03/29/dunk-city-dollars-florida-gulf-coast-bandwagon-means-big-bucks/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/03/29/dunk-city-dollars-florida-gulf-coast-bandwagon-means-big-bucks/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:00:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brad Tuttle</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business of Sports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Companies & Industries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Decision Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Odd Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving & Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[basketball]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FGCU]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Florida]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Florida Gulf Coast]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Florida Gulf Coast University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[March Madness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NCAA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sports apparel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sports fans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=76051</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Bringing new meaning to the term &#8220;fast fashion,&#8221; trendy sports fans are known to immediately need to get their hands on the jerseys of out-of-nowhere sensations like Colin Kaepernick and Jeremy Lin. A nation of fans is currently fascinated with an entire team—Florida Gulf Coast University, the first No. 15 seed ever to make it to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA basketball tournament. And the impact goes well beyond soaring team apparel sales. After FGCU scored an upset victory against No. 2 seed Georgetown in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament, sales at the campus bookstore skyrocketed 1,000%, according to CNN Money. The store&#8217;s online unit then handled 500 apparel orders on Sunday, after FGCU&#8217;s win over San Diego State. On a normal Sunday, when the physical store is closed, its website does maybe 20 to 30 orders. Stores throughout the Fort Myers area have rushed to fill aisles with FGCU merchandise, as consumers clamor for a piece of the team everyone is talking about. &#8220;Everyone jumps on a winner,&#8221; Lewis Hardy, CEO of the Licensing Resource Group, told CNN Money. &#8220;There are people wearing their stuff right now who may not even know where they are located.&#8221; Interest in the team has expanded well beyond Florida. Earlier this week, the sports gear e-retailer Fanatics.com released a statement attesting to FGCU&#8217;s major leap in interest among fans nationwide: Since the tournament began on Thursday, Florida Gulf Coast University has been the top-selling college and most searched school on Fanatics.com, one of the largest online retailers of officially licensed sports merchandise. FGCU gear has been purchased by fans in more than 40 states since Thursday, with the top state being Florida, of course. (MORE: Madness for Sale: Businesses Go for a Piece of NCAA &#8216;March Madness&#8217; Basketball Tournament) Gamblers are drawn to FGCU as well. The team&#8217;s next game, a matchup on Friday night against University of Florida, which is favored by 13 points, is the hottest bet in Las Vegas, according to a Bloomberg News story:<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=76051&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Business of Sports</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/companies-industries/business-of-sports/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/7391cfb4656a46fc97fca2e4789ccee0-0.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/7391cfb4656a46fc97fca2e4789ccee0-0.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/7391cfb4656a46fc97fca2e4789ccee0-0.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Florida Gulf Coast&#039;s Dajuan Graf, from left, Eddie Murray and Brett Comer celebrate after winning a third-round game against San Diego State in the NCAA college basketball tournament, on March 24, 2013, in Philadelphia. Fla.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f8de938518e7b986d552694ed99aa54d?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bradtuttle</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Viewpoint: Stop Calling Student Loans a &#8220;Bubble&#8221;!</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/03/07/viewpoint-stop-calling-student-loans-a-bubble/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/03/07/viewpoint-stop-calling-student-loans-a-bubble/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:45:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Christopher Matthews</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Borrowing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy & Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving & Spending]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=73921</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ever since the financial crisis, Americans have begun to see bubbles everywhere they turn. The damage wrought by the real estate bubble has been so extensive that the nation is rightfully terrified that another asset bubble is inflating beneath our noses, preparing to wreck the American economy at the drop of a hat. Bubble-phobia has now become issue number one for those who reject Ben Bernanke&#8217;s aggressive regiment of monetary stimulus, as they think it may be inflating bubbles in everything from real estate to Treasury bonds. But for frothophobes, the most dangerous bubble going today is in higher education. Don’t believe me? A quick Google search will reveal hundreds of stories foretelling of a crisis when the student loan bubble finally bursts. But let&#8217;s get a grip. When you take a closer look at higher education, you realize that while we do indeed have some problems to address, a bubble situation it is not. Here&#8217;s why: 1. The primary issuer of student loans is the federal government.  The classic definition of a bubble is when the market value of a specific asset becomes unmoored from its true &#8220;fundamental&#8221; value, encouraging further price appreciation until the process becomes unsustainable and precipitates a crash. This is exactly what happened in the real estate market in the 2000s, as both lenders and borrowers were convinced that real estate prices would rise perpetually. (MORE: 10 Tips for Getting the Most Out of College Financial Aid) The thing is, the student loan industry can&#8217;t crash, pop, fizzle, or otherwise suddenly deflate because the Department of Education backs at least 85% of all student loans. Of the remaining loans that are privately issued, 90% have cosigners. On top of that it&#8217;s nearly impossible for student loan debt &#8212; whether owed to the government or to private lenders &#8212; to be discharged during bankruptcy. The upshot is that rising delinquency and default rates on student loans, while troubling in many respects, are simply not a serious danger to bank balance sheets and therefore are not going to cause a banking crisis<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=73921&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1288976471.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1288976471.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1288976471.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">College Graduates</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/8f9a71742e964af96ca58c01a0577a0d?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">christopherrmatthews</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>List Price = Joke Price: 4 Examples of How Original Prices Are Meaningless</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/03/04/list-price-joke-price-4-examples-of-how-original-prices-are-meaningless/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/03/04/list-price-joke-price-4-examples-of-how-original-prices-are-meaningless/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:00:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brad Tuttle</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Autos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Companies & Industries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Healthcare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Odd Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Retail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving & Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Smart Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anchoring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kit Yarrow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[price anchor]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=73539</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When almost no one pays full price, what does &#8220;full price&#8221; even mean? From cars to college to health care, consumers today are surrounded by huge markdowns—which, when you think about it, wouldn&#8217;t exist if goods and services weren&#8217;t marked up so high in the first place. Why is the consumer landscape filled with prices that no one is really expected to pay? You know, the &#8220;original&#8221; or &#8220;compare to&#8221; prices, also known as &#8220;MSRPs,&#8221; which are typically listed right next to the actual purchase price. If almost no one pays a list price, isn&#8217;t it meaningless? Not entirely, says Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist and occasional contributor to Time.com. &#8220;People really aren&#8217;t very good at calculating the worth of a product or service,&#8221; she says. &#8220;It might seem like they should be jaded, but consumers still absolutely, positively rely on list prices to determine value.&#8221; Marketers love to use the concept of an &#8220;original&#8221; or &#8220;suggested&#8221; price as a way to convince shoppers they&#8217;re getting a can&#8217;t-pass-up bargain. As a result, we&#8217;re surrounded by initial prices that buyer and seller alike know are unrealistic and inflated, and yet that somehow serve a purpose—as a point of comparison, or as a starting point for negotiations. Life would probably be a lot less frustrating and confusing if fake &#8220;full&#8221; prices didn&#8217;t exist in many areas, including these: Health Care Anyone who has ever looked closely at a bill from a hospital knows that the health care pricing systems in the U.S. are completely absurd. In Steven Brill&#8217;s recent TIME cover story about overinflated medical bills and why health care in general has become so expensive, many hospital representatives admitted that the initial prices listed on bills—decreed by someone or something called the &#8220;chargemaster&#8221;—are basically meaningless. “Those are not our real rates,” one hospital spokesperson told Brill, flatly, when asked about prices listed on a bill. &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure why you care.&#8221; (MORE: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us) The justification for such as system seems to be that it<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=73539&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Smart Spending</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/saving-spending/smart-spending/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f8de938518e7b986d552694ed99aa54d?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bradtuttle</media:title>
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		<title>Why Can&#8217;t People with Student Loans Refinance at Better Rates?</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/02/20/why-cant-people-with-student-loans-refinance-at-better-rates/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/02/20/why-cant-people-with-student-loans-refinance-at-better-rates/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:00:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Kadlec</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Borrowing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Personal Finance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=72305</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the few silver linings of the Great Recession has been a sharp drop in interest rates that has lowered the cost of borrowing for millions of consumers. The historic decline in rates, however, has done almost nothing for folks with a student loan. Those with college debt have largely missed the refinance boom. Why? Congress—not the free market—sets the interest rate on the vast majority of student debt, and because these loans are not secured by collateral private lenders are loath to undercut the federal government’s terms. Borrowers with decent credit have gotten relief in virtually every other sphere. By one estimate, low rates are saving the typical household $3,100 a year. Americans now spend 5.8% of after-tax income on consumer interest, the smallest share in 34 years and a sharp drop from 9.1% before the recession. Mortgage interest payments alone are down 30%. Corporations and government have benefited from the refi boom as well. Companies with a stellar credit rating sold more than a $1 trillion of bonds last year, a record, and most of the proceeds were used to replace higher cost debt. Meanwhile, the federal government’s debt service has remained about the same since the onset of the recession—but only because debt outstanding has doubled. (MORE: Schools Suing Graduates for Defaulting on Loans) Lower rates have not rescued all borrowers. Many who have poor credit or little or no home equity haven’t been invited to the refi party. And low rates have been anything but a boon to savers, who must settle for paltry rates of return on secure fixed-income investments. But does it make sense to shut student borrowers out of the refi bonanza? Student loan debt is at $1 trillion—of that, the federal government backs $864 billion. Most of this debt is at an interest rate higher than 6%, according to a new report from the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress. That’s almost twice the rate of an average 30-year mortgage &#8212; and, more to the point, it is three times<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=72305&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/75627505-1-e13462814577911.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/75627505-1-e13462814577911.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/75627505-1-e13462814577911.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Mortarboard and College Diploma</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/d69b05e696e822e7e41ae630be72226a?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">dankadlec</media:title>
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		<title>Three Strategies for Saving Money on College That May Not Work as Promised</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/02/14/three-strategies-for-saving-money-on-college-that-may-not-work-as-promised/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/02/14/three-strategies-for-saving-money-on-college-that-may-not-work-as-promised/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:38:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brad Tuttle</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Borrowing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Career Strategies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Careers & Workplace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving & Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Smart Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Work/Life Balance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Appalachian State]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Students]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[community college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[financial aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[grants]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[private college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Student loan debt]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=70710</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yes, you can save money and avoid student loan debt by employing some of the classic strategies suggested by personal finance gurus. But you may not save as much as you think—and you could even wind up spending more. Here&#8217;s a look at three oft-circulated strategies for limiting college costs—and why each of them is a bit simplistic, flawed, and perhaps even misleading: Attend Community College, Then Switch to a Four-Year School Community college costs maybe a few grand per year, a fraction of what the typical four-year public university runs. Private schools are even more expensive, as we all know. So it&#8217;s no wonder that many personal finance experts suggest that students stock up on cheap community college credits for a couple of years. The idea is to then transfer to a four-year college and finish up. Both your degree and your resume will state where you completed your college education, not where you began it. (MORE: How a $54K-Per-Year School Is Deemed a &#8216;Best Value College&#8217;) This appears to be a win-win. You can save money and still graduate from an institution with a reputation that&#8217;s superior to a community college, right? Well, the strategy is not without its downsides. A Money magazine story recommending the community college money-saving strategy noted one such issue: Transferring can be a social challenge, since your child will be a newcomer among classmates who have already made friends. Also, the most elite schools take very few transfers: Princeton accepted none and Dartmouth only 4% of applicants last year, although the University of Pennsylvania did take 20%. That&#8217;s not the strategy&#8217;s only flaw. CBS News recently cited a study, from the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation, that indicates students who start at community college and finish up their degrees at four-year public universities tend to borrow about the same amount as students who attend state colleges for all four years: &#8220;Many students have traditionally been guided to follow the transfer route, with the assumption it will help them save on certain college costs,&#8221;<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=70710&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f8de938518e7b986d552694ed99aa54d?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bradtuttle</media:title>
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		<title>Schools Suing Graduates for Defaulting on Loans</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/02/08/schools-suing-graduates-for-defaulting-on-loans/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/02/08/schools-suing-graduates-for-defaulting-on-loans/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:00:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Victor Luckerson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Borrowing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving & Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FinAid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Washington University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Perkins loans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stafford loans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Student loan debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[student loans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University of Pennsylvania]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UPenn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yale]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=70118</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As more college graduates default on their student loans, some schools are taking drastic measures to ensure repayment. According to a Bloomberg report, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University have taken defaulters to court in recent years to try to force them to pay up. The schools are targeting recipients of Perkins loans, which are subsidized loans usually awarded to lower-income students with exceptional financial need. Unlike the larger federal Stafford-loan program, in which the Department of Education acts as the lender, Perkins loans are administered directly by participating institutions with a mixture of funds from the federal government and the schools themselves. Almost 500,000 of the loan awards are doled out annually. According to court records analyzed by Bloomberg, the University of Pennsylvania filed at least 12 lawsuits to recoup Perkins-loan money last year. Yale is suing a former student for about $6,500 in outstanding loans, while George Washington University is suing a student for $7,000 in Perkins loans and $15,000 in unpaid tuition costs. Though there’s no comprehensive data that show how often schools are taking graduates to court, defaults grew by 20% from 2006 to 2011, up to $964 million. Overall, federal-student-loan defaults have also been on the rise for several years. (MORE: The Myth of the 4-Year College Degree) Such amounts might seem like small potatoes in the grand scheme, hardly worthy of litigation. However, Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, says recent stresses put on the Perkins-loan system may be forcing more schools to take legal action. The loan fund is supposed to be self-replenishing, with debtors paying the money they owe back into the pool of loan money. In the past, the federal government offered cash infusions of about $65 million per year to ensure the program’s solvency, but that funding dried up after the 2008 fiscal year. “The colleges are getting a little bit more aggressive in pursuing these loans,” Kantrowitz says. Typically, an expensive lawsuit is a last resort for schools. Before taking such measures, they’re likely to send letters<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=70118&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/40c4f40351434bf8e04405d4231aaecd?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">vluck2012</media:title>
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		<title>How a $54K-Per-Year School Is Deemed a &#8216;Best Value College&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/02/07/how-a-54k-per-year-school-is-deemed-a-best-value-college/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/02/07/how-a-54k-per-year-school-is-deemed-a-best-value-college/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:00:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brad Tuttle</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Borrowing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Decision Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving & Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Smart Spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Best Value College]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College of New Jersey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Students]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Duke University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[financial aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[higher education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Carolina]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[princeton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Princeton Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Princeton University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Student debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[student loans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UNC]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=69814</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The private universities listed in a new &#8220;Best Value Colleges&#8221; roundup run $54,200 annually for tuition, fees, books, and room and board. That sounds pretty expensive, and it is. Could it also represent a good value? What if students actually paid less than half the list price? In fact, that&#8217;s what the majority of students do. And that&#8217;s how these schools wind up being highlighted for providing good bang for the buck. Princeton&#8217;s latest edition of its &#8220;Best Value Colleges&#8221; features 150 schools—75 private and 75 public. As you&#8217;d expect, the average cost at the public institutions is a fraction of their private counterparts. USA Today sums up the key data on all of the &#8220;best value&#8221; colleges here, showing not only the &#8220;sticker price,&#8221; but the actual price paid by the average student: Their total annual cost of attendance, including tuition and fees, room and board and books and supplies, averaged $19,500 for freshmen attending public universities in their home state, and $54,200 for those going to private schools. When freshman grants, including state, federal and institutional aid, are factored into the cost, the final tab drops to $10,600 at public universities and $21,700 at private universities. (MORE: 10 Tips for Getting the Most Out of College Financial Aid) Those are some serious Black Friday-type markdowns, especially for the private schools—the equivalent of about 60% off. While the recent failed flat pricing experiment from JCPenney is the latest example demonstrating how consumers just plain love sales—even if they obviously manipulate shoppers—the original and actual college pricing figures can be puzzling. Because almost no one pays full price, students and their families should essentially be disregarding published tuition rates. Which raises the question: Why do these published rates exist to begin with? Well, as mentioned, the inflated &#8220;sticker price&#8221; can make the discounted, post-grant rate seem like quite the deal to students who&#8217;d consider a pricey school off the table. Also, there is a portion of students from well-off families at every college that do indeed pay full price. Even<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=69814&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Smart Spending</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/saving-spending/smart-spending/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f8de938518e7b986d552694ed99aa54d?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bradtuttle</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Student Loan Debt Crisis: How&#8217;d We Get Here and What Happens Next?</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/02/04/student-loan-debt-crisis-howd-we-get-here-and-what-happens-next/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/02/04/student-loan-debt-crisis-howd-we-get-here-and-what-happens-next/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:00:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Martha C. White</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Students]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Generation Y]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[housing recovery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Student loan debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[student loan interest rates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[student loans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[underemployment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=69486</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The amount of student loan debt and the rate of delinquency have been climbing for years now. If it seems like every new statistic is worse than the last, that’s because it is. Two studies released this week are no exception. Credit bureau TransUnion says that in the past five years, the average student loan debt each borrower carries has risen 30% to $23,829. More than half of student loan accounts, which add up to more than 40% of the total dollars owed, are in deferral status. This is just a temporary reprieve; students can defer for only a few years before they have to repay. The trouble is, many of them aren’t doing so. FICO Labs found that delinquencies rose by 22% in five years. For the newest group of loans it studied, delinquency rates are 15.1% — higher than the 11% cited by the Federal Reserve in a November report. Like the Fed’s study, the FICO analysis doesn’t include loans that are in a deferred status — which means the number of people who can’t afford to pay back that money may be almost twice as high as what the official delinquency rates reflect. This situation obviously can’t be sustained over the long term. “I think a few more years and it’s going to be a general crisis,” says Barry Bosworth, an economist at the Brookings Institution. Interest rates are unusually low right now; when they rise, more borrowers who were just keeping their heads above water are liable to become delinquent. A Perfect Storm The aggregate amount of debt has soared because many people decided to go back to school after being laid off, says Ezra Becker, vice president of research and consulting for TransUnion’s financial services unit. In today’s economy, people increasingly need a college degree to be viewed as employable. The New York Times says this “degree inflation” comes at a serious cost to students. “In the late 1970s, the median wage was 40% higher for college graduates than for people with more than a high<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=69486&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/9a5a9e4f28beb5afb59b1202632d219a?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marthacwhite</media:title>
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		<title>10 Tips for Getting the Most Out of College Financial Aid</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/01/25/10-tips-for-getting-the-most-out-of-college-financial-aid/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/01/25/10-tips-for-getting-the-most-out-of-college-financial-aid/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Victor Luckerson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=67073</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Financing a college education is something that parents of both toddlers and high school seniors have to be concerned about. With the sticker price of the nation&#8217;s top private universities now topping $200,000 for four years, financial aid has become a critical component in making higher education a possibility for most families. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, aka FAFSA, the document that colleges around the country use to determine the amount of financial aid to award to students, was released on January 1. Some schools have FAFSA deadlines as early as mid-February, so now is the time for families with college-bound kids to get their financial documents together and prepare to apply. And for families with younger children, learning about the FAFSA and financial aid formulas in advance is smart because there are some things you can do long in advance to improve your financial aid award when the time comes. TIME talked to several financial aid experts who offered some useful tips for ensuring that families get the most lucrative aid package possible. 1. File Early January is an ideal time to go ahead and get the FAFSA out of the way. Some schools and now seven states—Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Washington—award aid money on a first-come, first-served basis until funds are depleted. It’s easiest to file your taxes first and then use that as a reference point for filling out the FAFSA, but you can also estimate fields on the FAFSA form using your last pay stub and last year’s tax return. If you use estimates, you’ll have to update the form with accurate information later, but the IRS Data Retrieval Tool will automatically update your application so you don’t have to worry about manually entering new numbers. Also be aware that some schools require the CSS Profile, which asks for more detailed information than the FAFSA and sometimes has a different deadline from schools. (MORE: The Myth of the Four-Year College Degree) 2. Not Sure You’ll Get Aid? File Anyway It’s<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=67073&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/157506794.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/157506794.jpg?w=240" />
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			<media:title type="html">157506794</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/40c4f40351434bf8e04405d4231aaecd?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">vluck2012</media:title>
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		<title>Selling Their Futures: College Grads Promise a Slice of Their Future Income for Cash Now</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/01/23/selling-their-futures-college-grads-trading-cash-now-for-a-portion-of-their-future-income/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/01/23/selling-their-futures-college-grads-trading-cash-now-for-a-portion-of-their-future-income/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:00:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kayla Webley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=67238</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The start of Nathan Sharp&#8217;s story sounds familiar: In 2012, he found himself graduating from Dartmouth College with an MBA and $100,000 in student debt. But rather than take whatever job would help him make his monthly payments, the entrepreneurial-minded Sharp took $50,000 from backers using a start-up called Upstart &#8212; and agreed that in return he would give his investors a portion of his future income. Think of Upstart as Kickstarter (the online funding platform) meets the government&#8217;s Income Based Repayment program, which caps loan payments at 15% of discretionary income. Founded by Google&#8216;s former head of enterprise, Dave Girouard, Upstart is the latest initiative aimed at getting young people to strike out on their own before the responsibilities that come with a family and a mortgage set in. &#8220;They&#8217;re at a good time in their lives to take risks,&#8221; Girouard said. &#8220;But a lot of times, even when students have something interesting they&#8217;d like to do, they say &#8216;I&#8217;m going to accept this job…&#8217; and its usually for very pragmatic reasons.&#8221; &#8220;Universities are really well set up to help students go down the traditional path—it almost happens by default,&#8221; Girouard continued. &#8220;That struck me as a misallocation of capital in a sense because for what amounts to a relatively low amount of money—$20,000 to 30,000 in debt—kids are making decisions that are probably going to change the entire course of their careers because often when you get onto the treadmill of the corporate job path, you never get off.&#8221; (MORE: The Myth of the 4-Year College Degree) Upstart encourages students to go their own way. This is how it works: Beginning in the spring of their junior year, college students or recent grads—anyone from a poet who wants to start a literary magazine to a business major looking to build a boutique hotel in Brazil—can apply to be an &#8220;upstart&#8221;. The applicant is screened to make sure they are who they say they are and the company predicts how much money they will make over the next decade. That<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=67238&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1288976471.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1288976471.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1288976471.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">College Graduates</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70ed4d3924bb7fd88021174e9c19bb4e?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">kaylawebley</media:title>
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		<title>The Myth of the Four-Year College Degree</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/01/10/the-myth-of-the-4-year-college-degree/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/01/10/the-myth-of-the-4-year-college-degree/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Victor Luckerson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=65929</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Another graduation ceremony has come and gone, and Chauncey Woodard is still a student at the University of Alabama. He came to UA in the spring of 2008 after some time in community college, expecting to spend, at most, four years at the school. After being forced to take a semester off in 2010 to save up more money for his education, he expects to graduate in August 2013 at the earliest. “For me to get my education, I either have to go deep in debt or drag it out like I’m doing now,” Woodard, a construction-engineering major, says. “You get to see a lot of people move on, and you’re still here. That kind of gets to you around graduation.” Woodard’s not alone in extending his university studies beyond a typical senior year. While undergraduate education is typically billed as a four-year experience, many students, particularly at public universities, actually take five, six or even more years to attain a degree. According to the Department of Education, fewer than 40% of students who enter college each year graduate within four years, while almost 60% of students graduate in six years. At public schools, less than a third of students graduate on time. (MORE: Gap Year: The Growing Appeal of Not Going Right to College) “It’s a huge issue for society,” says Matthew Chingos, an author of Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities. “It’s a huge issue for the individual students who are spending more money on tuition than they need to. The longer they wait to graduate and get a job, those are extra years of their careers when they’re in college and not working and not making money.” Chingos points out that delayed graduation at public schools also affects taxpayers who are subsidizing students’ education. Reasons for delaying graduation are numerous. For students who choose to participate in co-ops or internships during the school year, it can be tough to fit in all the necessary courses. Overcrowded classes can make it impossible for students<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=65929&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://business.time.com/2013/01/10/the-myth-of-the-4-year-college-degree/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/360_high_degrees_tout.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/360_high_degrees_tout.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/360_high_degrees_tout.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">College Graduates</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/40c4f40351434bf8e04405d4231aaecd?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">vluck2012</media:title>
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		<title>College Costs: Will Tuition Discounts Get More Students to Major in Sciences?</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/01/03/college-costs-will-tuition-discounts-get-more-students-to-major-in-science/?iid=us-main-lead</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/01/03/college-costs-will-tuition-discounts-get-more-students-to-major-in-science/?iid=us-main-lead#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:29:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kayla Webley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Career Strategies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Careers & Workplace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=65726</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To steer more students into high-paying fields, Florida is considering freezing tuition rates in certain areas. Will it work?<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=65726&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Career Strategies</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/careers-workplace/career-strategies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/rear-view-of-students-wearing-graduation-caps.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/rear-view-of-students-wearing-graduation-caps.jpeg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/rear-view-of-students-wearing-graduation-caps.jpeg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Rear view of students wearing graduation caps</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70ed4d3924bb7fd88021174e9c19bb4e?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">kaylawebley</media:title>
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		<title>Top Three Flawed Arguments of the Anti-College Crowd</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2012/12/05/the-three-biggest-straw-men-in-the-anti-college-piece-in-the-nyt-style-section/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2012/12/05/the-three-biggest-straw-men-in-the-anti-college-piece-in-the-nyt-style-section/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:00:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zac Bissonnette</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=62844</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The anti-college movement has been the subject of increasing media coverage over the past few years. Worry about rising debt loads, soaring default rates, and high unemployment rates among recent college grads &#8212; combined with the high-profile success stories of a few dropouts-turned-billionaires &#8212; has generated a cottage industry of books, t-shirts, websites, Twitter feeds, Ted talks, seminars, camps, and media tours, all pitching the idea that college is no longer worth it for anyone who isn&#8217;t focused on a specific career that absolutely requires an academic credential. The title of Dale Stephens&#8217; upcoming book pretty neatly sums up the high concept: Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will. Now, this merry band of anti-college stumpers has finally generated enough press to merit its own trend piece in the Style section of the Sunday New York Times, which uncritically allows a handful of the movement&#8217;s luminaries to make their case with nary a raised eyebrow in response. To be sure, there are plenty of problems, economic and otherwise, with the American higher education system. There&#8217;s even significant evidence showing that students learn little during college, most notably detailed in the book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. But unfortunately, the Times article mostly manages to perpetuate several of the anti-college crowd&#8217;s most misguided arguments. I&#8217;ll focus on three:  1. These billionaires skipped college, and so can you.  Here&#8217;s how the Times article frames the decision of one would-be entrepreneur to leave college: &#8220;Benjamin Goering does not look like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, talk like him or inspire the same controversy. But he does apparently think like him. . .Two years ago, Mr. Goering was a sophomore at the University of Kansas, studying computer science and philosophy and feeling frustrated in crowded lecture halls where the professors did not even know his name. . . So in the spring of 2010, Mr. Goering took the same leap as Mr. Zuckerberg: he dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco to make his mark.&#8221; The<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=62844&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/417d007b9da4268a2be678bcdb827f22?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">zacbissonnette</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Is the Student-Loan Debt Crisis Worse than We Thought?</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2012/11/29/is-the-student-loan-debt-crisis-worse-than-we-thought/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2012/11/29/is-the-student-loan-debt-crisis-worse-than-we-thought/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Martha C. White</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Educational Financing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=62480</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York delivers generally positive news about the economy with one glaring exception: student-loan debt. The amount of debt and delinquencies are climbing, and some experts say the official numbers don&#8217;t even capture how big the problem really is.  In the third quarter, there were fewer foreclosures, increased credit-card and auto lending (indicators of rising consumer confidence), and an overall drop in our collective debt load, led by decreasing mortgage debt. Student loans are another story. We added $23 billion in new debt, and the 90-day delinquency rate rose to 11%, at a time when most other types of delinquencies are going down. &#8220;Increasing delinquency rates are a very troubling sign,&#8221; says Deanne Loonin, an attorney and director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center. &#8220;The problem is in part due to the poor economy, but on the federal loan side, also underutilization of flexible repayment options such as income-based repayment.&#8221; (MORE: Is Forgiving Student-Loan Debt a Good Idea?) Some struggling alumni don’t know about the programs, she says, while others get stuck in a web of red tape. (The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has borrower information and a repayment-assistance tool on its website where you can find out what kind of loan you have and what repayment options might be available.) Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Fastweb.com and FinAid.org, says the student-loan market has some quirks that could be contributing to the rising delinquency rate. &#8220;Lenders of credit-card debt, auto loans and mortgages have adopted tighter credit-underwriting criteria in the aftermath of the credit crisis. This has denied credit to financially distressed borrowers,&#8221; he says. Most federal student-loan programs, though, will accept borrowers regardless of their credit history. The other big difference is that student loans can&#8217;t be discharged in bankruptcy. In other lending markets, a drop in outstanding debt can reflect lenders writing off the debt rather than borrowers paying it down. Since student loans aren&#8217;t dischargeable in bankruptcy and are very hard to have<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=62480&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Educational Financing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/planning/educational-financing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/student-debt.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Student Debt</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">marthacwhite</media:title>
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