March 25, 2025
Reimagining Federal Education R&D: IES, Workforce Skills, and State Leadership
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has taken a hit from DOGE, losing about 90 percent of its workforce. Regardless of the future of the Education Department, we need to continue to improve education R&D and identify what in IES should be preserved, or indeed expanded, to meet the nation’s needs today and in the…
March 13, 2025
The Return To Student Loan Repayment, In Four Charts
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…
January 23, 2025
Four College Enrollment Trends to Watch
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 6, 2025
Congress Can Block Student Loan Cancellation—Forever
Over the holiday season, the Biden administration withdrew two pending regulations to unilaterally cancel hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of student loans. Officials evidently judged that the administration would not have time to finalize and implement the new regulations before the Trump administration takes over. For the time being, loan cancellation by executive action is dead. But a…
December 18, 2024
Employers Should Drop Hiring Preferences for “Elite 34” Colleges
How do you know if someone went to Harvard? They’ll tell you. If a recent Wall Street Journal story is any indication, though, that classic joke may soon be outdated. According to the Journal, some employers have dropped hiring preferences for graduates of elite universities—and a few even consider an Ivy League degree a black mark. The cases…
December 11, 2024
US Students Best Other Nations—in Achievement Gap Growth
US scores on the 2023 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are another sign not only that American students are losing ground in math and science, but that the achievement gap between high-performers and low-performers has grown dramatically. As I wrote a couple days ago, these trends started well before the pandemic and are…
December 9, 2024
TIMSS Shows the Bottom Is Falling Out for US Test Scores
Last week’s release of 2023 scores from the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)—an international assessment measuring fourth and eighth graders in math and science—offers a fresh look at the academic performance of US and international students. The results are grim. Three things stand out. First (and perhaps not surprisingly), the pandemic harmed student…
December 3, 2024
How States Can Shake Up the Stagnant Higher Education Market
Artificial barriers to entry have been a feature of markets for millennia, from medieval guilds to modern occupational licenses. Though often defended on the basis of consumer protection, barriers which keep new providers of a good or service out of the market also serve to protect incumbent businesses, hamstring innovation, and increase prices. Such barriers…
November 25, 2024
Don’t Write Off Workforce Pell Grants
Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon, a former administrator of the Small Business Administration, is a proponent of expanding Pell Grants to short-term workforce education programs. In a September op-ed, McMahon boosted the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, which would allow students to use Pell Grants for high-quality workforce education programs as short as eight weeks in duration (the…
November 21, 2024
A Consensus on Common-Sense Education Reform
Is common ground possible in an age of extreme polarization? Perhaps! “Toward a Potential Grand Bargain for the Nation” is a new report by a group of experts from think tanks and academia meant to share consensus “policies in each of these areas: economic growth and mobility; education; environment; health; taxes; and the federal budget.”…