We are concerned that given Ms. DeVos’ track record to privatize public education and her lack of a clear position concerning the affordability crisis in higher education, the committee cannot properly assess whether Ms. DeVos is fit to run the U.S. Department of Education.
Our current system of campaign finance reform suppresses the political power of people of color and that lack of political power has had proven, lasting consequences.
President Obama is expected to announce an Executive Order that would extend the protections of Income-Based Repayment (or more specifically, Pay As You Earn) to student borrowers who took out loans before 2007 or stopped borrowing by 2011.
It’s hard to make broad causal inferences about student debt and homeownership among recent graduates, because there are simply too many factors in play.
When the Senate went to college, they paid an average of just over $11,443. If they attended the exact same institutions today, they’d pay an average of $32,279.
Public colleges and universities took in $62 billion in tuition in 2013. These are schools that educate three of four American college students, and eliminating that entirely could be done just by rearranging what we already spend on student financial aid.
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.
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.
Some presidential candidates' critiques promote unhelpful assumptions about who tuition-free and debt-free college would actually serve. (Spoiler: it's not millionaires and billionaires.)
It is time for colleges, states, and the federal government to prove their commitment to Black students with policy action—not just well-meaning statements and gestures.
For four decades, the Supreme Court’s flawed approach to money in politics has gutted common-sense protections against the power of special interests and wealthy individuals. This defies our core democratic values.
The dominance of big money in our politics makes it far harder for people of color to exert political power and effectively advocate for their interests as both wealth and power are consolidated by a small, very white, share of the population.
In August 2011, Congress passed a strange piece of legislation intended to bind itself into the future. In spite of persistently high unemployment and an unremarkable deficit-to-GDP ratio, and in spite of public polling that consistently showed that creating jobs was the American public’s top priority, politicians inside the infamous Washington “Beltway” had spent months locked in a debate over ways to cut deficits and balance the federal budget—policies that would not create jobs and by some estimates would put millions out of work.
