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July 16, 2025
An Analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s Effect on Student Loans
Key Points Introduction At the beginning of July, President Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), a comprehensive package of reforms to taxes and government spending.1 While the package touches on myriad policy areas, it includes a comprehensive set of reforms to the federal student loan program. These represent some of…
June 16, 2025
Accountable for Outcomes: We Need Evidence-Based Funding Models
Key Points Introduction Amid escalating college costs, mounting student debt, and rising college graduate underemployment, students of all backgrounds increasingly question college as a path to economic mobility. This shift has sparked interest in alternatives to college—from high school career and technical education (CTE) programs to short-term adult training courses proposed for Pell Grant funding…
June 12, 2025
Lingering Absence in Public Schools: Tracking Post-Pandemic Chronic Absenteeism into 2024
Key Points Introduction It has been over five years since the US shut down for COVID, and in many ways, the country has moved past the pandemic. For US schools, however, the pandemic’s toll has not passed so quickly. Student academic achievement remains depressed, and chronic absenteeism continues to hover substantially above the pre-pandemic baseline….
May 22, 2025
Course Correction: Rebuilding The Federal Student Loan System After Biden’s Mismanagement
Key Points Introduction Thirty-five million federal student loan borrowers went back into repayment in October 2024 after the government had suspended their student loan payments, in effect, for four and a half years. Already, delinquencies have shot up, and a wave of loan defaults looms. Borrowers will feel the pain—but so will the federal budget…
May 14, 2025
Graduation in the Time of COVID: The Weakened Relationship with Chronic Absenteeism
Key Points Read the full PDF. Read a brief with the research highlights. Executive Summary The COVID-19 pandemic and schools’ responses to it resulted in learning loss that reversed two decades of progress on student achievement and drove chronic absenteeism to unprecedented heights. Yet graduation rates did not fall over the same period— instead, they…
March 13, 2025
Trends in Net College Tuition and Financial Aid, 1990–2020
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…
March 10, 2025
Many Children Left Behind: The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress Results Indicate a Five-Alarm Fire
Key Points Introduction By now, the awful results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)1 have been publicized, chewed over, and digested—and they are already moving into the rearview mirror as states, school districts, and teachers fall back into the comfortable routine of doing the same thing over and over again. But continuing that…
February 24, 2025
A Conservative Vision for Higher Education Reform
Key Points Introduction The year 2019 marked a dramatic turning point in the national discourse on higher education policy. On April 22, 2019, Senator Elizabeth Warren, vying for the Democratic nomination for president, announced that as president she’d cancel up to $50,000 of student debt for 42 million Americans.1 She started a chain reaction, with each…
January 29, 2025
How State Governments Can Fight Degree Inflation
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 24, 2025
Testing Theories of Why: Four Keys to Interpreting US Student Achievement Trends
Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary Although national test scores provide clear evidence on student achievement across time, they do not illuminate what is driving gains or losses. Nonetheless, careful examination of test scores can corroborate some explanations for changes in student achievement and discount others. This report examines recent trends in US student…