Student Loan Marketplace

The independent colleges and universities of California recently introduced a new and cost-effective mechanism for students to shop for alternative student loans. AICUP is evaluating whether this is a good option for Pennslyvania and have conducted three interactive sessions during the fall to evaluate interest and support within the AICUP community.

Over 70 staff from 45 member schools attended one of the sessions asking detailed questions and providing feedback to AICUP staff. The Member Services Committee is currently reviewing the feedback in order to decide the next steps. If you have any questions or want additional information, please contact Tim Alexander at tim.alexander@aicup.org.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced an award of $99.6 million from federal stimulus funds to support the development of the Pennsylvania Research and Education Network (PennREN). PennREN is a proposed statewide broadband network expected to provide access and services to over 5 million Pennsylvanians in more than 2 million households and 200,000 businesses.  Initially, it will include 13 primary network facilities and approximately 50 secondary locations. The network will provide the capability to connect colleges and universities, public institutions, regional networks and last mile providers across the Commonwealth.

 AICUP joined 14 statewide organizations and larger public and private universities as founding members of the non-profit organization applying for this substantial federal grant.  Through your AICUP membership, you will have access to this network.  This is meaningful to AICUP members because it provides a physical pathway to improve connectivity for our individual members, while greatly reducing the unit cost of bandwidth -- both commercial Internet and private point-to-point connections.  It is cost-saving and strategic in its use in technology-based research, education and administrative projects in which our institutions collaborate with one another. 

 AICUP and some of its largest member institutions are key participants in this project from its initiation last summer.  It is a collaborative project between the public and private sectors of higher education whose beneficiaries will be all of its respective college students.  The PennREN network should dovetail nicely with our current AICUP project to establish regional, private wide area networks.  Please expect more information as we integrate the PennREN objectives and our ongoing plans to implement regional WAN projects around the state.

 To read the full press release, click here