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How Higher Education Cuts Undermine the State’s Future Middle Class

While GDP has been steadily increasing, indicating a growing economy, other metrics of progress show a very different picture.

Demos conducted a nationwide survey of low- and middle-income households in early 2012. The findings in this brief summarize the relationship between college costs and credit card debt, and its impact on students and their parents.

If nearly 70 percent of graduates are borrowing, 30 percent (including 35 percent of public college graduates) are not. Who are these students? What type of family or financial resources do they have at their disposal? What are their work habits? In short, what does it take to graduate debt-free these days? This brief answers these questions.

The causes of Detroit's bankruptcy and what the city's emergency manager can do to turn it around.

A Policy and Messaging Guide for States to Make Higher Education Affordable Again

Most states have very far to go in making their selective public institutions representative, and thus truly public.

A 50-State Look at Rising College Prices and the New American Student

Comparing Tuition Then and Now At Our Elected Officials' Alma Maters

How a Shared Definition of College Affordability Exposes a Crisis for Low-Income Students

A comprehensive look at how the reality of debt-financed college impacts the whole pipeline of decision-making related to college.

A Hawaii Partnership Bank will generate new revenue for Hawaii, save local governments money, and make us less dependent on big offshore banks that are dramatically reshaping life for families and businesses in Hawaii.

SUMMARY

Part of a Demos series of reports on deregulation showing that often the most significant impact is on the quality and reliability of work — in this case, on port trucking.

How the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will bring greater security to American consumers, investors and Main Street businesses.

Student loans are treated differently than almost every other form of debt incurred by American households. 

For decades, GDP has enjoyed supreme status as the predominant benchmark of our economic and social progress. In reality, GDP obscures or ignores essential aspects of Americans’ economic and social welfare, as well as important social and environmental dimensions of our national welfare and future well-being.

A picture of the current state of the private retirement system, why this picture bodes ill for the future of retirement in the country, and why that system needs reform.

A look at state disinvestment in public higher education

How Maine can use deposits of state tax revenue to tilt the economic playing field back toward Main Street businesses, our community banks, and long-term job growth.