SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A new government website provides tools to help calculate how much a student faces owing in loans after graduating from a particular college.
The site, by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is in the testing phase, but already includes information from 7,500 colleges and universities.
Users can plug in details such as grant and scholarship offers to compare what they might owe after attending different schools. The site also offers information on graduation and student-loan default rates.
A “military benefit calculator” function allows the nation’s more than 2 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to determine what they could owe after using their GI Bill benefits.
The site can be found at www.consumerfinance.gov/ payingforcollege/costcomparison.
It is the latest effort by the federal government to make colleges and universities more transparent about costs.
A separate Education Department website, collegecost. ed.gov, also addresses collegecosts, with information such as the rate of tuition increases at colleges.
“Choosing a school is a big responsibility - one that is too often made difficult by an inability to determine the impact of student-loan debt,” Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said at a news conference in Sioux Falls with Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and a gathering of high school students.
The bureau says studentloan debt has reached $1 trillion, surpassing credit card and auto-loan debt. Graduates owe on average about $25,000.
Business, Pages 69 on 04/15/2012