A new analysis of state spending on higher education finds that states with a diverse economy, low unemployment, and a history of support for higher education are likely to maintain public spending on colleges. Conversely, states that do not have those characteristics have a hard time overcoming fiscal challenges to create a robust system of higher education.
Once upon a time, America invested in its young people so that they could enter the world without debt. College was meant to provide opportunity and strengthen the overall economy by creating a better- educated workforce. Looking at the numbers today, I can only think that our current system has failed this generation.
There's little debate that college costs have risen over the past decade and that the increase has hit the wallets of families hard — especially those in the greatest need.
As the nation’s trillion-dollar student debt continues to rise, a new analysis of public higher education’s funding finds dwindling state support is the key factor driving rising tuition costs and deepening student debt.
President Obama signed an executive order Monday that could extend student debt relief to an additional 5 million people — a move aimed in part at better educating young borrowers of their rights while jumpstarting a moribund debate on the issue in Congress.
This week, President Obama ordered changes to the federal student loan program that could help millions of borrowers make their payments more affordable starting in December 2015.
When people like me write about the middle class, it has nothing to do with envy or class warfare—two shopworn epithets that should be retired from the political lexicon. The condition of the middle class—its size, income and self-confidence—reveals the extent to which economic growth increases opportunity. When the middle class is shrinking, when incomes of middle-class families are stagnating and when the heart of American society is losing hope in a better future, then the U.S. economy is in trouble. And so is the political system. [...]
For decades, free high-school education helped strengthen the middle class and generate prosperity. So isn’t it time to extend the same thinking to college?
Democrats in tight races have found a new villain this election cycle: student debt.
“It totally limits your options of what you can do,” said one student in an ad from Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, who accuses Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of having “turned his back on the students” for blocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s student loan refinancing bill.
How would you fare with President Obama’s State of the Union middle-class economics proposals to “turn the page” if you’re 50 or older? It depends. [...]
Given that low-income households often don’t have the luxury of professional tax preparation, the tax system might be a particularly brutal delivery mechanism for them. Nowhere is this more apparent than how we currently subsidize the cost of college at tax time.
President Obama this week touted new ways to help students pay for college, but he also proposed stripping away a popular benefit: a significant tax advantage of college savings plans used by millions of American families.
Much of the current ballyhoo in higher-education circles has centered on President Obama's announcement earlier this year to make community college free for all Americans "willing to work for it." The move, however, is a part of a larger suite of reforms that the White House hopes will make college more affordable and accessible.
This week a group of former students calling themselves the Corinthian 15 announced that they were committing a new kind of civil disobedience: a debt strike. They are refusing to make any more payments on their federal student loans.
Latonya Suggs is one of 15 former students of Corinthian-owned schools called "the Corinthian 15" who are engaging in what they say is the nation's first student debt strike. They're refusing to pay back both their private and their federal student loans.
Strike Debt is helping provide legal support for the students for the consequences of the strike, which will be harsh if the group isn't relieved of its debts.
Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. And while many Americans believe fervently and faithfully in expanding opportunity, America’s internship-industrial complex does just the opposite.
When environmentalists speak of climate change, they often talk of “future generations.” But generations already here are poised to suffer long-term consequences. Climate change will affect millennials drastically—including in their wallets.
Despite lore from parents and grandparents about the caddying jobs or serving gigs they used to pay for school, today’s young adults know the idea of working your way through college is about as antiquated as milk delivered daily in glass bottles or Mad Men-era martini lunches.
