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March 25, 2025
Student loan payments have been due for six months now—yet no one seems to have told the students. The federal government effectively suspended payments on student loans for four and a half years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, leading many borrowers to lose touch with their loan servicers and disengage from the repayment system. False promises of loan cancellation…
March 24, 2025
In March 2020, as America shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed a law suspending federal student loan payments for six months. The payment pause ended up lasting, in effect, for four and a half years. Though well-intentioned, the pause and its repeated extensions may go down as one of the worst mistakes in…
March 21, 2025
Harvard University recently announced it would make tuition free for students from families earning below $200,000—but for middle-class students not lucky enough to receive a Harvard acceptance letter, college tuition is still far too expensive. As a solution, many have proposed significant increases in taxpayer-funded financial aid to reduce or even eliminate tuition for many students. This…
March 18, 2025
Event Summary On March 18, AEI’s Beth Akers and Preston Cooper spoke with Alex Ricci of the Education Finance Council and Lindsey M. Burke of the Heritage Foundation to discuss what it would look like to pass meaningful higher education finance reform through the budget reconciliation process. First, Dr. Akers introduced the speakers and encouraged…
March 13, 2025
In March 2020, the federal government enacted a “temporary” pause on student loan repayment, which the Trump and Biden administrations extended a grand total of eight times. But as of October 2024, loan repayment has officially resumed—meaning borrowers who miss payments will face consequences such as negative credit reports. As of September 2024—the latest month…
March 13, 2025
Key Points Introduction College costs are out of control—or so the narrative goes. In recent years, a counternarrative has emerged that argues, correctly, that the meteoric rise in the sticker price of college is misleading. Net college tuition, or tuition after financial aid is applied, has risen far less quickly than sticker price tuition and…
February 6, 2025
The higher education system suffers from many problems, including excessive costs,low completion rates, uneven financial value for students, and high rates of student loannonpayment. Federal government policies unintentionally exacerbate many of these issues,as taxpayers’ considerable investment in higher education comes with few quality controlsor accountability to ensure that colleges and universities are delivering on their…
January 29, 2025
Key Points Executive Summary State governments have significantly exacerbated the phenomenon of degree inflation, where jobs increasingly require college degrees that were not previously necessary. State hiring practices and stringent occupational licensing laws perpetuate this trend. These policies restrict access to various professions, create labor shortages, and reduce the return to a college education for…
January 23, 2025
The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) published its biannual report on college enrollment trends this morning, providing a comprehensive look at how student numbers totaled up in fall 2024. NSC’s preliminary figures, released in October, initially reported a significant drop in college freshman enrollment. That finding, however, was the result of a data error; this morning’s release of the…
January 21, 2025
Even before he took office, President Donald Trump was already securing major policy wins. Trump’s election induced the Biden administration to withdraw two pending regulations that would have canceled over $250 billion in federal student loans, without congressional approval. Biden officials judged that they did not have enough time to finalize the loan cancellation plans before the new administration takes over….