Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency

Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency

The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, or "PHEAA", headquartered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania but with regional offices throughout the Commonwealth, is the quasi-governmental agency in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that administers several post-secondary student financial aid programs. PHEAA administers the Pennsylvania state grant program for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and serves as a coordinatimng body for other grant programs administered by other state agencies. The Agency also serves as one of several student loan guarantors in the United States for the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP), under the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended. It also has a loan servicing operation, for student loans that it owns and for lenders in which they contract to service loans. Once a small student loan guarantor with a volume of approximately 5,000 student loans in 1964, it now manages more than $33 billion in total assets and serves nearly four million students through its state grant, guaranty, servicing, and financial aid processing. The Agency has consistently been listed by the US Department of Education as having one of the lowest default rate among all major guarantors through highly successful default prevention initiatives.The International School of Toulouse is a co-educational school located in Colomiers near Toulouse in south west France. It was founded in 1999 after the Airbus industry in nearby Blagnac expanded, recruiting increasing numbers of international staff, in particular from Bristol and Scotland. The relatively small but developing school is sponsored therefore by Airbus with the aim of facilitating the mobility of their employees from all over the world. Although the teaching is mostly in English, there are significant numbers of students from Spain, France and Korea. The school is noted for its pioneering use of information technology in teaching and learning, with every student from age 9 onwards having the loan of their own laptop computer. The school offers students the International Baccalaureate in the sixth form.