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Nearly every student loan out there goes out only after the lender has assurance that his loan will be repaid in the form of a cosign from someone with an actual job. It could be a parent, a relative or a mentor. The student loan companies don't let you forget how this is a good thing. When there is a cosigner, the lender takes on a lesser risk. That translates to a lower interest rate.

Of course, the interest rate takes a dive with a cosigner only when the cosigner has a solid credit score. Which these days isn't all that common a thing to come by.

Each year that you apply for a student loan, the lender takes a an all-new look at the cosigner's credit. If there's any change for the worse there, you may as well kiss your low interest rate goodbye.

One thing that cosigners do need to know is that they're not on the hook forever. If the student makes his payments on time for the first one or two years, the cosigner is off the hook. He can exit the cosign agreement. Sally Mae for instance, will approve a cosigner release if they will look at the students credit history and find that everything is shipshape.

As someone who took out a significant amount of undergraduate student loans out when I was in college, I really wish that there had been some regulations in place that would have prevented me from borrowing as much as I did. I am not sure if things have changed since I was in college, but undergraduate student loans should really be monitored to protect young people from themselves.

I started out not borrowing very much money at all. I actually had the idea that I would just use the money necessary to pay for my education, and would work for whatever extra I needed to buy in the way of books, food and so forth. My undergraduate student loans were manageable, and I was through a year of college, so I felt great about where I was and the fact that I was a fourth of the way there while owing very little.

During my sophomore year, I started to realize how difficult it was to work and go to school. That was when I first learned that I could borrow more than the amount I needed in undergraduate student loans in order to pay for things like books, food and lodging, and believe me when I say that I took full advantage of that option.

Higher education is more expensive now than it ever was before – not least because the government in most states is broke and colleges don't have the kind of endowments or grants that they used to be able to rely on. Well, group buying daily deal websites like Groupon may have something to offer here. In a recent daily deal, Groupon just announced spectacular college savings at the National Youth Louis University in Chicago. You get more than half off the Introduction to Teaching course at the college.

Of course, it's only an introductory course for higher learning. You'll need a bachelor’s degree just to get in; you will earn 3 credits doing the course that you can apply to a graduate degree (should you be accepted) afterwards. They don't guarantee that you'll get into the graduate degree program afterwards – the admissions process will determine that. You’re just guaranteed those three credits (if you pass) on the cheap that you can use elsewhere.