Campus Connection

[caption id="attachment_41296" align="alignright" width="240"] Terry Micks[/caption] A UW-La Crosse financial aid loan officer is helping US News & World Report debunk student loan repayment myths. Terry Micks, loan programs coordinator, joined seven other financial aid experts who shared myths they want to see disappear. Micks focused on whether all student loans should be consolidated into one. She made four main points.

• First, if borrowers only have federal direct loans, the servicer will already use a combined billing so that students have one payment to make.
• Second, students can't combine their federal loans with private loans in a federal direct consolidation loan.
• Third, if students have benefits from a Perkins loan or from loans that were taken out under the Federal Family Education Loan program, they stand to lose those benefits in consolidation. Determine whether those benefits outweigh the benefit of combining loans into one payment.
• Fourth, while the servicer will take a weighted average of the interest rates on the loans being consolidated, they will round up so borrowers could actually be paying a higher interest rate than the true average of the rates.

Other myths included not getting help from an alma mater, counting on landing a job to pay the bills and simply never paying off loans. Read the full article. UW-L was contacted to contribute to this article through the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.