August 29, 2024
It’s Time for Radical Reform in Higher Education
There were many years when Republican and Democratic lawmakers weren’t too far apart on higher education policy. Their rhetoric reflected different priorities, but neither party really pushed for a radical departure from the status quo. Debate about reform was largely at the margins. But times have changed. The Overton window on higher education has shifted…
June 27, 2024
New Legal Roadblocks for Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Crusade
Last fall President Biden announced his “Plan B” for student loan cancellation after the Supreme Court ruled his initial efforts unconstitutional. Plan B, named the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, was an attempt to eliminate the burden of student loans by lessening how much borrowers needed to repay. But this wasn’t in the spirit of…
May 29, 2024
Holding out Hope for a Left-Right Consensus on Federal Student Lending
For as long as we can remember, Republicans and Democrats have been talking past one another when it comes to federal student loan policy. Both sides of the aisle want students from all backgrounds to have access to a valuable and high quality education, but where progressives prioritize federal support, conservatives call for reining in…
April 10, 2024
Biden Irresponsibly Encourages Borrowers to Enroll in SAVE Plan
President Biden is hard at work encouraging student borrowers to enroll in his new SAVE Plan, a de facto loan forgiveness program that faces increasing legal scrutiny. 11 states, led by Kansas, filed a lawsuit. Just recently, Missouri and six other states announced that they would also sue the Biden Administration, bringing the total to 18 states. He…
April 9, 2024
Maddow Spreads Misinformation on Student Loan Cancellation
Last night, progressive television pundit Rachel Maddow took jabs at Republicans concerned with President Biden’s latest effort to cancel student debt. But her jabs were actually sucker punches. She took advantage of the public’s being uninformed on the issue of student debt to spread misinformation, aimed at scoring partisan points and defending Biden’s indefensible vote-buying…
April 9, 2024
Biden Knows Student Loan Cancellation Is a Bad Idea
This morning, President Biden announced new details about the latest effort to cancel student debt that he says will reduce balances or completely cancel student debt for over 30 million Americans. First, he plans to cancel up to $20,000 of accumulated unpaid interest, regardless of the borrowers’ income. Second, the administration plans to automatically cancel debt for…
April 3, 2024
Feds Should Take a Big Step Back on Student Loans
The federal student loan program has gone off the rails. What was first designed as a program to alleviate the liquidity problem students face when paying for college is now an out-of-control entitlement program that rewards students for spending as much as possible on higher education, causing tuition costs to skyrocket in turn. Biden’s reforms…
March 28, 2024
Federal Student Lending is Beyond Repair
The integrity of the federal student loan program has been in precipitous decline since early 2020, when then-President Trump responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by putting a pause on student loan repayment. In retrospect, that move was the first domino to fall in a string of policy changes, culminating in the implementation of President Biden’s…
January 30, 2024
Democrats in the House Have a New (Old) Plan for Higher Education
Lately, it’s been Republican lawmakers who have been at the table and offering up comprehensive reform for higher education policy, but this week House Democrats got back in the game. Today, they released new legislation outlining their vision for higher education reform beyond the administration-led student loan cancellation agenda. In some sense, this marks a welcome return to normalcy,…
December 8, 2023
Graduate Student Lending in Desperate Need of Reform
Since 2005, graduate students in the United States have been able to borrow from the federal student loan programs essentially without limit. Before that, loans were available to graduate students from the US Department of Education, but they were constrained to reasonable levels. Since limitless credit became available to graduate students in 2005, graduate student…