To fairly evaluate any higher education reform proposal, we must understand the ways that these dual burdens—less wealth and more debt—lead to worse outcomes for Black students than white students.
If the twin threats to public pensions continue, African American retirees may lose much of the retirement security they’ve gained over the past half-century.
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.
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 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.
