Ryan’s hair was getting pretty long. I could pull the back into a mini-ponytail and the front was almost to his eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to cut it because.… that’s a big deal! He’s my baby and babies don’t need hair cuts, right?! Haha, ridiculous I know. But it IS a big deal!
Ryan’s hair is thin and fine (like his mama’s!) and it hasn’t fully grown in at the front. So add that with the length and it was starting to look a little funny. For example:
You can see it’s still a little “long” on the sides, over his ears. But the front is trimmed and so is the back – no more little ponytail, haha. He’s such a cutie! And YES, I saved his hair from his first haircut 
State Loan Agencies Ranked By Student Default Rates; Area Institutions Among the Worst at Collections go to site citibank student loan
The Washington Post August 25, 1993 | Mary Jordan Nearly one in six students who borrow money from the government for college fail to repay their loans on time, and agencies in Maryland, Virginia and the District that administer the loans have among the worst collection rates in the country.
This year, unpaid student loans will cost taxpayers $2.5 billion, a figure down significantly from the $3.6 billion loss in 1991.
In a continued tightening of oversight of the loan program, yesterday the Education Department, for the first time, released statistics showing how well state agencies were doing in collecting loans.
The government’s intent is to shed light on these powerful financial institutions and embarrass them into toughening their collection efforts. Two months ago, the department’s inspector general severely criticized some agencies for lax collection efforts.
“They have been kind of in the shadows,” said Nina Winkler, director of the Education Department’s guarantor and lender oversight staff. She said the ranking of state agencies with the worst collection rates will help the federal government focus on which ones need closer scrutiny.
It may “embarrass some” guarantee agencies to do better knowing banks, students and state officials can review their poor performance, said David A. Longanecker, assistant secretary for postsecondary education. Some students get “lost in the system,” he said. “If nobody comes to collect, they don’t volunteer.” Almost every state has a financial institution, called a guarantee agency, that acts as the intermediary between banks and students. Generally, a poor collection rate means higher cost to taxpayers. And if an agency is so poorly managed that it goes broke — as occurred in 1990 in the District — taxpayers are stuck with a multimillion– dollar bailout bill.
In the new ranking, the Louisiana Student Financial Assistance Commission had the worst default rate. Of the 28,000 students whose loans were handled by that institution, one in three failed to repay on time.
Nationally, the average default rate was 17.5 percent, or about one in six students. web site citibank student loan
Virginia Student Assistance Authorities ranked fourth highest, with 28 percent of its students not paying their loans. The Maryland Higher Education Loan Corporation had the ninth worst rate, with 20.9 percent failing to repay on time.
Loans for the District ranked high on the default list but were harder to measure because some D.C. loans are still tied to the Higher Education Assistance Foundation. That agency was criticized for egregious mismanagement and was taken over by the federal government. The Department of Education estimated that the bailout cost taxpayers $30 million.
In addition, many new loans from D.C. students are being handled by a Massachusetts agency, which submitted numbers that were believed inaccurate, Longanecker said.
“I didn’t like seeing that we were fourth,” said Bob Schultze, executive director of the Virginia agency. “My only complaint is how old the data is.” The federal ranking is based on fiscal 1991 numbers, Schultze said. Since then, the state has clamped down on bad loans made to out– of-state vocational schools, Schultze said. Students of vocational schools generally have a high default rate.
Jean Frohlicher, president of the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs, which represents the guarantee agencies, questioned how useful the new default rates are.
If a state has a lot of vocational schools or many low-income students, it would be natural to have higher default rates, Frohlicher pointed out. Also, she said, students sometimes refuse to pay their debts.
But Frohlicher said that the ranking does give “a benchmark for the first time” for states with similar student populations and circumstances to compare themselves.
Guarantee agencies had default rates of less than 6 percent in New Hampshire, Delaware, South Carolina, Vermont and South Dakota. Some of those states dealt with few loans: Delaware, for example, had about 2,000. The California Student Aid Commission, with a default rate of 21.2 percent, administered almost 220,000 loans.
In addition to revealing the collection rates of the administrating agencies, the Education Department also released the rates of individual banks and lenders. Citibank Student Loan Center topped the list in loan volume nationally and has a 16.4 percent default rate. Other rates varied, from 1 percent to 88 percent, which was posted by the Student Loan Finance Corp., of Aberdeen, S.D.
Until this year, the focus usually had been on the individual schools. Nine hundred vocational schools were warned this week that their federal aid may be cut off.
At the urging of the new administration, Congress voted last month to phase in a system where the government will lend money directly to students, in hopes of reducing costs and defaults. But for the next 10 years at least, federal officials said, some loans still will be administered through state agencies and private banks.
Mary Jordan
Great haircut! He is as adorable as ever
PS, I also saved Jackson’s hair from his first cut!
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Nice haircut. He looks so different. Amazing how simple changes can make the biggest differences.
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