Today, Sec. Hillary Clinton will announce her plan to return to debt-free public college for future students and relieve the burden for existing borrowers. In anticipation of the release of Sec. Clinton’s plan, Demos prepared two new analyses that underscore the need for bold solutions to our college affordability crisis.
Hillary Clinton just released a bold plan to return the United States to debt-free public college for future students and relieve the burden for existing borrowers.
Executive action on paid sick days for employees of federal contractors would be in keeping with Obama’s steps to raise workplace standards for contract employees.
Treating these issues as mutually exclusive obscures part of why student debt is a major issue for so many, and what debt-free college would hope to achieve.
We’ve allowed the price of college and its attendant debt to rise well beyond the point where it is actually helpful in getting people through college.
(New York, NY)- During the next few weeks thousands of students across the country will graduate from college, an accomplishment that used to symbolize a step toward financial independence and entry into the middle class.
The most important fact about higher education is that only a minority of people go to college. That fact would change if college was affordable for more people.
New Demos Report Shows State Disinvestment in Public Higher Education is Driving Tuition Increases
Decreased State Funding is Responsible for Nearly 80 Percent of the Rise in Public Education Tuition
Recently, there has been much debate about the real cause of tuition increases, which have risen by nearly $3,000 at public four-year universities in the last decade alone. To meet these costs, U.S. students must take on crushing levels of debt just to access education that was readily affordable for previous generations.
Demos and coalition partners have reached an agreement with the City Council and de Blasio administration to send a bill banning the use of employment credit checks to the City Council floor. In response, President Heather McGhee issued the following statement:
“We are pleased to see progress made in the fight for equal opportunity employment in New York City. Employment credit checks are a catch-22, preventing qualified workers from getting a job just when they really need one most. The biggest drivers of credit problems are job loss and medical emergencies.
In the case of for-profits, not only has the government been unable to properly force institutions to account for their behavior, but it has been unable to stop providing the majority of money that keeps these colleges standing in the first place.
Policies like this would incent states to return to an era when college could be funded through a summer job, part-time employment, and maybe modest savings when available, for the largest and most diverse generation of students in our history.
Inequality is growing because the increased wealth of the wealthiest no longer spawns income opportunities for the less well-off households and may actually diminish them.
Today, President Obama announced a proposal to make two years of community college tuition-free. It’s a big deal. But it would be just as powerful a signal if we promised students a debt-free system of public higher education, one that could be financed entirely through part-time or summer work and modest savings.
New York, NY — Last night, provisions were added to the House of Representatives' 2015 omnibus spending bill which would repeal crucial features of the Dodd-Frank Act.
In response, Demos Senior Fellow Wallace Turbeville issued the following statement:
While Corinthian and its campuses may downsize or disappear completely, we should be concerned the students who attended its campuses and are currently in no man’s land.
This past Friday, in a speech to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen, spoke out on the evils of economic inequality in the United States. She noted that the steady growth in inequality over the past several decades represents the most sustained rise since the 19th century.