The Voice recently reported that the interest rates on federally backed Stafford loans will double July 1 -- from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent -- unless Congress gets its shit together.

Well, it looks like some legislators in the House are trying to prevent this increase -- by cutting funding to health programs, that is.

Seriously.

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Hey, college students!

If you weren't already bummed that 53 percent of you will likely face joblessness or underemployment upon graduation, or that university is a big waste of time and money, we have even more bad news for you.

Unless Congress gets its shit together -- which it probably won't because it's Congress -- interest rates for federally backed Stafford loans will totally swell from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent July 1, according to the Associated Press.

For some 7 million U.S. undergrads, that means that tuition would go up $1,000.

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HuffPo recently posted "College Degree Is Cheaper Than The Cost Of Dropping Out," an item imploring young folk to stay in school.

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Maybe the aggregation turbine is broken?

Looks like HuffPo, the "internet newspaper," might soon become a term paper mill.

Huffington Post College tweeted late last night: "Want to publish your senior thesis on the Huffington Post? Email rharrington [at] huffingtonpost [dot] com for more details."

(H/T @mylestanzer, a former Voice intern who sometimes contributes to RS).

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Yale University

Have you been following the saga of Patrick Witt, the most perfect college student in the United States? Witt, class of '12, is a gentleman athlete and scholar who has been faced with a difficult situation: do a Rhodes Scholarship or play quarterback in the annual Harvard-Yale game?

It's been a torturous period but the decision is made: Witt has decided in favor of the football game.

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Today in news you can use to remind yourself that you're not in college anymore (unless you are, in which case, hooray!), MSNBC reports that the cursed, vile freshman 15 is actually not true, at least, so says a new study, which found that most college students don't actually gain 15 pounds in their first year at school. More accurate would be a freshman 3, but what happened to the old college try?

"The 'freshman 15' is a myth," said Ohio State research scientist Jay Zagorsky, co-author of the study that is believed to be the first nationwide look at the purported phenomenon. "There is no 'freshman 15.'"

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Since 1902, Cooper Union has been free. Students don't pay tuition. The "free as air and water" ethos has been integral to the school's culture, but it could be changing. Faced with mounting debt, the school is considering a shift from free to...being like every other university in the country and charging kids to go there.

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When the investigation into an SAT cheating ring led to the arrests of a bunch of Long Island high schoolers (and one college student, the test taker, Sam Eshaghoff, who was at Emory before all this happened), we were, perhaps wrongfully, somewhat enamored of the idea of an SAT cheating ring. After all, standardized tests only do so much in showing off one's talents, and we thought, organizing a cheating ring is almost akin to an extracurricular activity, requiring leadership and skills, no? Also, it's such a good movie! But alas. The kids in the cheating ring had lowly goals, apparently. The New York Post reports that two of the four Great Neck North High School students caught only wanted to go to Arizona State and the University of Boulder!

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Sam Eshaghoff

Sam Eshaghoff, a 19-year-old student at Emory University, has been busted as the alleged kingpin in an SAT cheating ring after apparently taking the test for at least six students from Great Neck North High School in Mineola, Long Island, making between $1,500 and $2,500 a pop. Which sounds sort of...smart? No, this is awful!

As Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice put it, "Colleges look for the best and brightest students, yet these six defendants tried to cheat the system and may have kept honest and qualified students from getting into their dream school. These arrests should serve as a warning to those taking the SAT this Saturday that if you cheat, you can face serious criminal consequences."

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David Horvitz is $58,412.10 in debt after getting an MFA from Bard College. A Brooklyn-based artist who's currently "not working," he has a grand plan that might also count as a crowd-sourced experimental art project, a project that he has recently released to the Internet: Help repay his student debt by mailing money, 58 cents at a time--two quarters, a nickel, and three pennies--to the Sallie Mae Corporation. He only needs some 100,000 people to participate!

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