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Volume KCI Number 2	University of Southern California __Tuesday, September 1, 1981
Tuition prepayment offers students financial options
THE SQUEEZE - In an attempt to avoid future financial squeezes, students can now take advantage of three prepayment plans offered by the university.
Law students to assist inmates in prison project
By Darren Leon
Assistant City Editor
The university's tuition prepayment plan has met the expectations of the university’s financial planners.
Twenty-five students and their parents have received contracts which await their signatures to admit them to the prepayment program. Two students have paid the $25,216 prepayment cost.
"We pretty much expected this kind of response. This is just the first year of the program and we have 25 people. Next year we should have 25 more, and the next year 25 more until after four years we have an average of 100 people on the program,” said Rick Silverman, student liaison officer.
Parents have shown a ot of interest in the program, but for some the expense is not affordable, Silverman said.
The prepayment program allows students to pay their tuition fees for the entire eight semesters. The payment is based on the cost of tuition for the semester the student enters the university. The student is then exempt from any tuition increase which may occur during the four-year period.
Twenty-three other students have received contracts but have not yet signed the papers or paid for their tuition.
“If somebody is going to give $25,000 to the university, they are going to hold onto it as long as they can to get all of the interest on it that they can.
Especially if the deadline for the payment is September 1,” Silverman said.
Tuition fees may be paid two ways. Plan A: the homeowner equity loan program allows a family to make a loan agreement with Bank of America, Security Pacific or others, and repay the tuition prepayment
‘People who pay cash get the relief of not having tuition payments on their minds for the next four years ’
over a 15-year period.
Loans through other institutions may be used depending on the parents’ agreement with the facility.
“Some people use the credit union because they can get the loan at only 13% interest,” Silverman said.
Plan B: unsecured loans involving agreements made between the university and the bank. The loan is guaranteed by the university and, therefore, the university enforces the repayment. Prepaid tuition is to be repaid over a maximum seven-year period.
A third option open to parents is to pay the entire $25,000 in cash. Any of the plans require a lot of money, but Silverman believes the program is manageable.
“If you pay through loan (plan A or B) you know what the cost of the tuition pay-
ments will be for the next 15 or 7 years, depending on whether you take the home equity or the unsecured loan plan,” Silverman said.
“People who pay cash get the relief of not having tuition payments on their minds for the next four years. If the university tuition rate goes up they will have saved themselves some money. A 10% to 12% tuition increase a year for four years, if you figure it out, is a substantial amount of money saved,” he said.
Silverman suggests that parents talk to their accountants because of the large tax benefits available with large loans at high interest rates.
Interest rates for people who use the home equity plan are approximately 18% to 18 1/2%. The rates differ from lender to lender. The unsecured loan interest is one percentage point above the prime interest rate.
By Laura Rodriguez
Assistant City Editor
This fall, approximately 22 university law students will wind up in prison.
They won’t be handcuffed, but they will be under supervision as they face the inmates at Terminal Island Correctional Institute.
The students will be entering the institution as part of a prison project, assisting inmates in legal suits ranging from parole hearings to divorce and repossession cases.
Under the direction of Dennis Curtis, a practicing attorney and law school faculty member, upperclassmen are allowed to gain practical experience through program participation.
The introduction of the program to the law school curriculum last semester enticed 13 students who, along with faculty practicing lawyers, visited the institution weekly to consult with clients on an individual basis.
Curtis’ expertise in parole and prison law prompted his instigation of a similar project at Yale University, where he was a faculty member for 10 years. There, also, the students were able to perform their services on a professional level, including sentencing and disciplinary situations, while enhancing their interviewing and negotiating skills.
Curtis had no problem implementing the program at the university and, after the past semester, has received optimistic feedback from students.
He follows the ideal that textbooks hold bound lessons, but that knowledge to be acquired continues outside the pages.
“This kind of work is concurrent with their law school careers, and I like to get them oriented young,” Curtis said. "This way, what they learn in the classroom coincides with the practical experience attained.
“By discovering what it means to deal with bureaucracy through such things as social security settlements, they discover how to solve problems firsthand.”
Since positive reactions have already been received, Curtis hopes to develop the prison project to a more comprehensive level. At Yale, for instance, students were interested in similar projects involving mental hospitals.
“I’m always looking for varieties,” Curtis said, ‘‘and the ability to work with institutions offers the best experience.”
However, he explained the limitations involved with similar programs but in different locations.
‘‘What's possible here is not possible in Connecticut. For example, mental health in Connecticut is different than in California. When someone is locked away there, they are essentially able to care for themselves in some capabilities. In California, patients are more disabled,” he said.
"On the other hand, the prison system is so alike, even archaic. Some of the people (in Connecticut) are even the same as the staff at Terminal Island. But for now, we’re starting from scratch. We don’t have as many supervisors here, and are in the process of building expertise in the program and a background in prison law.
“It’s difficult to develop a body of knowledge, but I enjoy the idea of teaching among experience and offering the experience in the process,” he said.
Monday classes postponed
First meeting not until Sept. 14
Sept.
By Wendell Mobley
Staff Writer
Students with classes meeting only on Mondays start the semester with a vacation. Monday classes will not begin until September 14.
The delay of classes is a product of a new academic calendar implemented this year. Monday of the first week of classes fell on August 31, the day before school began. The second Monday, September 7, is Labor Day.
The President’s Commission on the Academic Calendar, in a resolution presented to the Board of Trustees last year, explained the reason a new school calendar was adopted. "Because it is a more attractive calendar from the students’ point of view, it may enhance the attractiveness of USC to students and therefore increase enrollments.”
Under the new calendar, classes begin September 1; classes began September 15 last year. This year’s classes will end May 1; last year’s classes ended May 23,
Harrison M. Kurtz, vice chairman of the Biological Sciences Department, said the two week delay of Monday classes is insignificant. “In actuality, the classes will not really be two weeks behind,” he remarked, adding that many instructors do not begin to reach the core of the class until the third week of classes.
The biology department scheduled laboratory classes so they would remain unaffected by the Monday breaks. Kurtz said lab classes are especially vulnerable to unscheduled days off because they work with specimens that must be utilized within a relatively short amount of time.
M. Michael Appleman, a biological science professor, said classes he will instruct will not be hurt by the unusual schedule. "I have a little
extra work,” admitted the professor, who will instruct classes meeting primarily Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
“The only problem (with the schedule) is that a calendar indicated that classes began Monday evening, August 31. Then a memo came out saying otherwise,” stated a Civil Engineering Department spokesperson, who preferred to remain anonymous.
"We have an instructor who's going ahead with a Monday night class.” said the spokesperson, explaining that graduate classes would be most affected by the days off. “Many of them meet only once a week. The instructor will have to keep classes longer than scheduled or something. I don’t know what they’ll do.”
Iraj Ershaghi, a professor of petroleum engineering. said he sees the scheduling as an inconvenience. “This is a hardship on the students because I plan to cover the same amount of material.'*
He said he might try to schedule a makeup day so students are not so far behind in their course-work. Ershaghi said he replaced the midterm examination with weekly quizzes because he did not want to lose an extra day of classes.
Ershaghi said no students have come to him yet expressing discontent with the scheduling of Monday classes. “I think it's going to scare the hell out of people," he commented.
A large problem lies with the scheduling of laboratory classes, Ershaghi said. He explained that some of the lecture classes are too large to assemble in one lab room, and that some of the labs will meet on different days.
“Such a division could potentially generate a problem, as the lab classes cannot stay together in terms of coursework,” Ershaghi said.