| Dorms Help Give 2-Year Colleges a 4-Year Feel Posted: 09 Feb 2015 05:30 AM PST Dorm living is a rite of passage for students at most four-year colleges. Between 2000 and 2010, 43 community colleges added new student housing, the association reports. Jefferson Community College in New York opened its first residence hall last year. Omar McGill, 19, is excited about moving into Northampton's new dorms. |
| U.S. schools turn to new programs to warn teens of drug risks Posted: 09 Feb 2015 04:15 AM PST  By Laila Kearney DOWNINGTOWN, Pa. (Reuters) - The desperate cry of a mother finding her 17-year-old son dead from a painkiller and another prescription drug instantly silences hundreds of Pennsylvania high school students who listen to her 911 call played at an early morning assembly. "All these kids were around our age, said Michael Senn, an 18-year-old senior at the school Downingtown High School East, after the program. "It felt personal." Senn and his classmates had just sat through a presentation by Narcotics Overdose Prevention and Education, or NOPE, one of a handful of prevention programs cropping up around the United States offering high school and middle school students education about prescription opiate painkillers. The new programs, launching in Pennsylvania and Illinois, come as concerns grow that the drugs, accounting for 71 percent of all prescription drug overdose deaths, are drawing younger and more suburban users.
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| The Tax-Smart Way to Draw ‘529’ Funds Posted: 08 Feb 2015 08:01 PM PST  If you have a college-tuition bill coming due this year and plan to pay it all with money from a 529 savings account, you might be missing out on some valuable tax benefits. Americans are pouring billions of dollars into 529 college-savings plans—more than $221 billion was invested in these plans as of mid-2014, up from $52 billion a decade earlier, according to the Investment Company Institute, a mutual-fund trade group. The plans are popular because earnings grow and are distributed tax-free if the money is spent on qualified education expenses. You can't claim them, though, for expenses you cover with money from a 529 plan.
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