March 19, 2025
What Can We Learn from Louisiana’s Progress in K–12 Education?
The 2024 National Assessment for Educational Progress results revealed a nation in academic decline, with scores “below pre-pandemic levels . . . in ALL tested grades and subjects,” according to the National Assessment Governing Board. Louisiana, however, is an outlier: It was one of only two states that experienced growth over its pre-pandemic levels in fourth-grade…
March 18, 2025
Rebuilding Higher Education Finance: Reform Through Reconciliation
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 14, 2025
A Historic Opportunity for Higher Education Reform
Once a sleepy policy area on the national scale, higher education is now a central issue making headlines in the overall political discourse. Believe it or not, the education policy divides between mainstream Democrats and Republicans used to be trivial. For example, 10 years ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) proposal to lower student loan interest rates to 3.9…
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…
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 12, 2025
Why Alabama Needs The Success Sequence
“The American Dream is beyond my reach.” This is increasingly the view that many young men and women take regarding the long-held belief that anyone can succeed in the United States. In fact, over half of young adults today believe the American Dream is no longer within their reach. What many of them do not know is that…
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…
February 24, 2025
A Glut of MBAs?
It’s all about the skills, not the credentials. You know the labor market times are changing when Harvard MBAs start showing up in the unemployment stories. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, 23 percent of recent Harvard Business School grads were still looking for work three months after graduation. In 2022, that figure was only 10 percent….
February 7, 2025
Low-Performing Students Fall Farther Behind the Pack
On January 29, the National Assessment of Education Progress, NAEP, released results from its 2024 assessment. This latest installment of the self-styled “Nation’s Report Card” makes depressing reading. Indeed, if it weren’t for bad news, there would be hardly any news at all. The previous 2022 NAEP results were bad—but they could be blamed on…