Diversity Committee Report
Dee Talley, Chair

The SASFAA Diversity Committee offered some excellent activities and programs for SASFAA members at the recent annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

On Sunday, February 13, 2005, the committee offered a Multicultural Leadership Symposium. The symposium was designed to address developing leadership skills for future SASFAA leaders. Sixty-six participants attended the symposium, and were provided with a wealth of valuable information. The symposium began with a distinguished panel of NASFAA, SASFAA and state leaders sharing their knowledge and experience with the participants. Panelists included: Rod Anderson (University of Florida); Mary Givhan (Mississippi College); Cruzita Lucero (Northeast State Technical Community College) and Sharon Oliver (North Carolina Center University). Joel Harrell (Clark Atlanta University) served as facilitator. Michael Tapscott (George Washington University) talked with participants about skills needed to manage a diverse workforce. During lunch, Dr. George Reid (College Loan Corporation) shared his expertise regarding leadership in higher education. The afternoon speaker, Elliott Lewis (CNN/BET) shared his lessons learned as a bi-racial individual.

Sponsorship for the symposium included: ECMC (program); TG (lunch co-sponsor); Regions (continental breakfast, break and lunch co-sponsor) and Bank of America (co-sponsor of afternoon speaker, Elliott Lewis). The Diversity Committee expresses its appreciation to all sponsors for their contributions and participation.

Also, the committee offered four interest sessions during the conference, an outing to the Martin Luther King Center and a general session on sexual orientation issues in the workplace.

The committee has developed a diversity survey for SASFAA members to complete online. The survey can be found at http://fs19.formsite.com/SASFAA/Diversity/index.html. The survey was developed in an effort to determine what diversity means to the membership, and what type of activities/interest sessions they would like to see offered at future SASFAA conferences in the area of diversity. The results of the survey will serve as a guideline for future Diversity chairs and committee members in developing a diversity program that will be informative and meaningful to SASFAA members. The survey will be available on-line until March 25, 2005. A report will be given at SASFAA’s transitional meeting in June in reference to the survey results.

Lender Liaison Report
Jane McNaughton, Chair

February 11, 2005

Jane reported that the hot topic is President Bush’s $2.57 trillion FY 2006 Budget request that he sent to Congress on

February 7. 2005. A focus of the Budget is to increase Pell Grant funding by enacting student aid reforms such as 1) recalling revolving loan funds used by institutions to fund the Perkins program, thereby effectively terminating the program; 2) reducing the amount that guaranty agencies can collect on defaulted loans; and 3) reducing the percentage of federal loan principal guaranteed against default. Some of the policy recommendations in the Budget Request include making interest rates on consolidation loans variable rather than fixed and allowing reconsolidation by borrowers in repayment by charging them a 1% origination fee.

The Bush Administration is committed to a lender-based guaranteed Federal Family Education Loan Program and will maintain a strong Direct Loan Program to ensure access for all eligible students. The Administration also feels that the Federal Government assumes almost all of the risk for both these loan programs. Federal Subsidies to intermediaries such as lenders and guaranty agencies are set high enough to allow the less efficient ones to generate a profit. This causes unnecessary costs for taxpayers and prevents the program from achieving the efficiencies the market is designed to provide.

The Budget provides for reforms to make these loan programs more efficient, cost-effective post secondary education financing vehicles. Interest subsidy payments will link payments for lenders and guaranty agencies more closely to their costs. In other words, a larger share of loan risk will be placed on lenders. $34 billion in savings over 10 years will be achieved by reducing unnecessary subsidies and payments to lenders, guaranty agencies and loan consolidators. These savings will be used to increase the Pell Grant maximum award, pay off the current $4.3 billion Pell shortfall, increase loan limits for first-year students and extend the current favorable interest rate framework.