Attack on student, auto driver held

Attack on student, auto driver held - The Hindu var _comscore = _comscore || [];_comscore.push({ c1: "2", c2: "11398210" });(function() {var s = document.createElement("script"), el = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.async = true;s.src = (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b") + ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js";el.parentNode.insertBefore(s, el);})(); Follow Today's Paper Archive Subscriptions RSS Feeds Site Map ePaperMobileApps Social SEARCHHome News Opinion Business Sport S & T Features Books In-depth Jobs Classifieds Shopping Bus tickets Cities Bangalore Chennai Coimbatore Delhi Hyderabad Kochi Kozhikode Madurai Thiruvananthapuram Mangalore Tiruchirapalli Vijayawada Visakhapatnam Cities» ThiruvananthapuramTHIRUVANANTHAPURAM,October 29, 2013 Updated: October 29, 2013 14:08 IST
Attack on student, auto driver held Staff ReporterShare  ·   Comment  ·  print  ·   TweetTOPICS Kerala Thiruvananthapuram
crime kidnapping
The Karamana police have arrested an autorickshaw driver on charge of kidnapping a school student and attempting to snatch money from him.

Sheen Tharayil, Circle Inspector, Thampanoor, said Murugan alias ‘Pambu’ Murugan, 48, of Mudavanmukal near Tirumala, was arrested late on Sunday. The boy, a Plus One student of a school in Pattom, was on his way home after tuition on his bicycle around 4 p.m. on Sunday, when Murugan blocked his path with his autorickshaw and pulled him into the vehicle. He took the boy to an isolated place near the Karamana bridge and was trying to rob him when the boy raised an alarm. Murugan fled on his autorickshaw, the registration number of which the boy memorised. Murugan was produced in court and remanded in judicial custody on Monday.

Keywords: Karamana police, Thiruvananthapuram crime, school student kidnapping

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Examine Budget Proposals' Impact on Student Loans

Proposed House legislation would limit the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,645 for the next 10 years.

Back in April, we took a look at the president's budget proposal and what it might mean for postsecondary education. The House and the Senate have also released vastly different fiscal year 2014 budget resolutions.

Just like the president's proposed budget, congressional budget resolutions are not law. But they do show Congress' priorities and serve as self-imposed taxing and spending guidelines.

The most important benchmarks established by the budget resolutions are the overall appropriations funding levels they set. The total amount of funding will determine in turn how much every committee – including the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the House Education and the Workforce Committee – can spend and therefore if specific programs can be increased or if they will either be cut back or eliminated entirely.

[Learn the perks, pitfalls of student loan repayment proposals.]

This is also one of the biggest differences between the House and Senate proposals. The House's budget resolution sets an appropriations limit of $966.4 billion. That's about $18 billion less than the fiscal year 2013 postsequester funding and $477 billion less than the presequester funding.

In addition – as the New America Foundation points out in its Federal Education Budget Update – the House intends to divert money from nondefense to defense programs. This will further reduce the amount available for education programs.

The Senate, in contrast, sets a nearly $1.1 trillion appropriations limit. This amount of spending would require the budget passed by Congress to amend the Budget Control Act – known also as the sequester – in order to exceed the limits it sets. It's also about $92 billion more than the House wants to spend. That's a large gap to bridge.

It is clear Congress is also deeply divided in the policy realm as well. The House, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., has produced what it calls The Path To Prosperity: A Responsible Balanced Budget that aims to balance the budget in 10 years. According to the resolution, a key problem with education funding is that federal student aid – led by Pell Grants – is driving up tuition costs and results in graduates having to make large student loan repayments.

[Understand efforts to stop the student loan interest rate increase.]

Many of the policy responses outlined in the House bill are devoted to cutting costs, including limiting the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,645 for the next 10 years, rolling back changes made in the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 that broadened the eligibility of needy families for student aid and moving to fair-value accounting for student loans. The resolution also implies it would be good to reinstate the wasteful Federal Family Education Loan program.

The Senate budget resolution produced by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., – which sports the equally anodyne title of Foundation For Growth: Restoring the Promise of American Opportunity – also identifies the increased cost of college as a key problem, and "assumes Congress will enact proposals to reduce college costs while expanding college access and completion."

However, it calls for increasing the nation's investment in education and proposes solutions that are almost diametrically opposed to those in House budget resolution.

[Get tips on student loan repayment for college dropouts.]

Specifically, the resolution implies the Senate would expand Pell Grants and lauds the ending of the FFEL program. It also proposes getting rid of the student loan fee increases that were created by sequestration, retaining subsidized loans that help needy families and ensuring student loan interest rates are affordable.

It's possible the House and Senate will bridge these and other gaps and produce a joint budget resolution – perhaps though the budget reconciliation process – but it seems highly unlikely. Instead, those interested in the education budget have to wait out the larger budget battle that will be waged this summer to see if our nation will invest, or divest, in postsecondary education.

Isaac Bowers is a senior program manager in the Communications and Outreach unit, responsible for Equal Justice Works's educational debt relief initiatives. An expert on educational debt relief, Bowers conducts monthly webinars for a wide range of audiences; advises employers, law schools, and professional organizations; and works with Congress and the Department of Education on federal legislation and regulations. Prior to joining Equal Justice Works, he was a fellow at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP in San Francisco. He received his J.D. from New York University School of Law.

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How the Government Calculates the Cost of Student Loans

Analysts disagree over the method used to calculate student loan profits and costs.

A couple of weeks ago, the Student Loan Ranger detailed some of the proposals Congress is pondering to provide short- and long-term fixes to the imminent doubling of interest rates on subsidized federal direct loans. Part of that debate is data released last month by the Congressional Budget Office that shows a fiscal year 2013 "profit" of $50.6 billion for the Department of Education.

But it's not as simple as finding a fair way to help students by lowering interest rates. Some analysts argue that the government is using an inaccurate accounting method that vastly overestimates the amount the government will make both in the coming fiscal year and beyond.

[Learn more in our College Loan Center.]

In fact, they argue, the government will lose money in the long run so it should keep interest rates the same or even raise them. As this Congressional Budget Office publication explains, the current estimates that show a government profit are based on principles established by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990.

The publication states first "the cost of a student loan is recorded in the federal budget during the year the loan is disbursed, taking into account the amount of the loan, expected payments to the government over the life of the loan and other cash flows." Items like the probability of default and the recovery rate are accounted for in this part of the equation.

Next, a discount rate is subtracted. A discount rate allows a calculation of gain or loss in today's dollars by taking into account market risk and the idea that money available now is worth more than the same amount of money available in the future.

[Find out the perks, pitfalls of simplifying student loan repayment.]

In the current calculation, the discount rate is simply the interest rate on U.S. Treasury securities. That is, it is the cost to the government of obtaining the funds through Treasury borrowing.

Since Treasury bills are one of the world's safest investments, using them as a discount rate doesn't take risk into account – that's been done in the first step – but does account for the lower value of money obtained later.

It's easy to see why federal student loans are projected to make a lot of money using this calculation: subtracting the low current interest rate for Treasury bills from fixed student loan interest rates of 6.8 to 7.9 percent – assuming the 3.4 percent rate on subsidized loans does double July 1 – results in a net gain for the government. In fact, under this accounting method, the budget office calculates that the government will net about $184 billion from 2013 to 2023.

However, some analysts think that this accounting is flawed because it does not sufficiently reflect risk, including, for example, the risk of default. They argue for a "fair-value" approach that would use a market-based discount rate.

In other words, the discount rate would not be based on the government's cost of borrowing but on the higher interest rate the private sector pays, which reflects a much higher degree of market risk.

Using the higher discount rate in the fair-value approach leads to far different results. The CBO projects the federal direct loan program would cost the federal government $95 billion between 2013 and 2023 instead of earning $184 billion.

That's a whopping difference – and implies far different student loan policies. So which calculation, and which policies, should be chosen?

[See how the Student Loan Fairness Act could benefit borrowers.]

Ultimately, the Student Loan Ranger feels that the current accounting method – which has worked well for decades – is the correct one for a few reasons, many of which are articulated in a report by the Center for American Progress.

Corporations and individuals are, and should be, risk averse because the consequences of unanticipated risks can be devastating to them. They should also, for similar reasons, want to ensure they make a profit. The fair-value approach adds value in that context.

But the federal government should be risk neutral and is not aiming to make a profit. The fair-value approach would drive up the budgetary cost of the student loan program in order to account for eventualities that are unlikely to occur.

This would be of little value because unlike a private entity, the federal government – with its far greater resources and ability to print money – is well-equipped to handle those eventualities. And the downside of increasing the budgetary cost of the student loan program is considerable, because it will mean there is less money available for other valuable programs such as Pell Grants.

Instead, it should focus on budgeting accurately and ensuring its money is spent wisely. A move to fair-value accounting would burden student loan borrowers with unnecessarily high interest rates for the foreseeable future.

Isaac Bowers is a senior program manager in the Communications and Outreach unit, responsible for Equal Justice Works's educational debt relief initiatives. An expert on educational debt relief, Bowers conducts monthly webinars for a wide range of audiences; advises employers, law schools, and professional organizations; and works with Congress and the Department of Education on federal legislation and regulations. Prior to joining Equal Justice Works, he was a fellow at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP in San Francisco. He received his J.D. from New York University School of Law.

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Argentina Student Creates Video of Study Abroad Experience

Sohee Cha, a University of Pennsylvania student who attended our Argentine Universities Program in Buenos Aires, created a video of her experiences in Argentina. The video is posted on YouTube. Sohee was also one of our IFSA-Butler Ambassadors. Great work, Sohee!

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The Learning Network Blog: Student Opinion | Would You Want a Bike Share Program for Your Community?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

New York City is in the second week of its bike share program, joining other major cities like Boston, London and Mexico City.

Would you want a bike share program for your community?

In the article “Out for a First Spin: City’s Bike Share Program Begins,” Matt Flegenheimer writes about last week’s kickoff for bike sharing in New York.

By midafternoon, the passing flickers of blue were already ubiquitous — negotiating light taxi traffic in the West Village, hurtling through the protected lanes of Midtown, drifting toward the Brooklyn waterfront.

For the first time, under cooperatively clear skies, New Yorkers sat astride the city’s first new wide-scale public transportation in more than 75 years: a fleet of 6,000 bicycles, part of a system known as Citi Bike, scattered across more than 300 stations in Manhattan below 59th Street and parts of Brooklyn.

There were kinks in the system’s early hours. A bike was swiped on Sunday as crews worked at the last minute to fill the stations. A mail delivery snag left as many as 200 members without access to the system. Some tourists dipped credit cards in vain for minutes, unaware that the program was initially open only to annual subscribers.

But Monday’s riders were, by definition, an eager and forgiving cross section: founding members who registered for a yearly pass for $95, allowing them to ride between stations for as long as 45 minutes with no added charge.

Students: Tell us …

Would you want a bike share program for your community? Why?How safe is biking in your neighborhood?Do you think more people would bike to work or the store if bikes were somehow shared?Can you imagine sharing more things with strangers besides bikes, like college textbooks, a prom dress or even a car?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Student Social Climbing, but on an Indoor Bike

“They’ve been one of the greatest social events of my year,” Ms. Rosuck, 19, said of the spin classes, which she calls “a party on a bike.”

Ms. Rosuck, who says that she arrives 15 minutes early to hang out and that most students do the same, added, “It’s nice because it’s a place to go where people are concerned about having a healthy mind and body rather than just drinking all the time.”

Cyc, which promotes itself as the place to have “a social active life,” is hardly the first boutique fitness company to tout its festive atmosphere. But the brand, which opened studios last fall in Austin and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is the first to explicitly target college students, a demographic more traditionally associated with sleeping through a class than sweating through one. Three more studios are scheduled to open in the next nine months, including one near New York University, said Cyc’s chief executive, Stephen Nitkin.

Mr. Nitkin, a founder of Marquis Jet, a private jet access card company (since acquired by Warren Buffett’s NetJets), said students today are more health conscious and sophisticated, and may have parents who spin. The moment that inspired Mr. Nitkin to start Cyc is telling: when an influx of college students on winter break in 2011 locked him and his friends out of their favorite Manhattan spin classes. 

Still, Jared Shrode, 31, who rides his bike in Austin, said he was surprised by the student turnout, especially in the early morning. In January, when Cyc ran a two-week “10,000-calorie challenge” that required participants to attend near-daily classes at 7 a.m. in Austin and 8 a.m. in Madison, the company sold out of slots. Sixty percent of Austin’s challenge riders were students; 100 percent of Madison’s were, according to company figures.

Mr. Shrode, who works in sales for a technology company, said: “Nobody I knew in college got up in the morning and tried to work off a hangover like some of these guys do. Paying for exercise was something I never considered. We’d just go and play basketball.”

Classes for students cost some $17 each, not exactly budget friendly. “That’s almost three six-packs of beer,” said Alexander Kowalsky, 22, who opted for spin classes at Wisconsin’s free campus gyms. But Mr. Kowalsky, who graduated last month (and, for the record, is not a big drinker), said he could understand the company’s appeal to wealthy students who don’t want to wait to use equipment at peak times. All the Cyc student customers interviewed said their parents paid for their cycling habit. Prices will be about $18 for students in Manhattan; similar classes at other studios (most of which don’t offer student discounts in New York City) cost about $30.

In the land of cheap beer and free T-shirts, it seems students will pay (or ask their parents to pay) for a hard-core workout, and instructors perceived as toughest are the most popular, Mr. Nitkin said. There is no exercise equivalent of an easy A; all of Cyc’s classes are intense, he said. Keoni Hudoba, an opera singer turned fitness expert (he shrank himself from 327 pounds to 180), created the 45-minute session that features a wider range of arm moves than is found at most cycling studios. Riders use hand-held beanbag weights for more than half of the roughly 15 songs, compared with the standard one, two or three songs.

“We’re not about burning candles, we’re about burning calories,” Mr. Nitkin said.

Grapefruit-scented candles are a hallmark of the popular SoulCycle chain. A SoulCycle spokeswoman declined to comment.

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