November 13, 2024
How Trump Might Fulfill His Higher-Education Campaign Promises
Donald Trump has won a decisive election victory and will take office next year as the 47th president of the United States. As of this writing, his party will hold at least 52 seats in the U.S. Senate and will probably control the House of Representatives. The results should afford President-elect Trump plenty of opportunity to enact…
November 1, 2024
Latest Student Loan Cancellation Proposal Could Be Biggest Yet
The Biden administration unveiled its fourth major student loan cancellation scheme last week. While the administration’s past three cancellation plans have suffered defeats in the courts, officials apparently hope that things will be different this time. The new plan offers loan cancellation to borrowers experiencing “hardship.” If you’re wondering what “hardship” means, so am I. It is…
October 23, 2024
The College Enrollment Plunge Is the Biden Administration’s Disaster
The number of first-year students on America’s college campuses dropped five percent this fall, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s new enrollment estimates. The drop—which reverses last year’s four percent increase in freshman enrollment—is directly attributable to the Education Department’s bungled launch of a new financial aid application form, which prevented hundreds of thousands of students…
October 11, 2024
Let’s Open the Black Box of Selective College Admissions
The aftermath of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) has put a spotlight on the capriciousness of admissions practices at selective colleges. In SFFA, the Supreme Court ruled that race-based admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After immense consternation about the impact of the ruling, dire warnings, and earnest discussion about…
October 10, 2024
Do Liberal Arts Colleges Pay Off? What the Data Say
Going to a liberal arts college is usually an expensive way to get a bachelor’s degree. With students more mindful of high tuition, many liberal arts colleges are seeing enrollment drop—and some are closing altogether. The schools’ defenders argue that their small class sizes and well-rounded array of courses provide students with a strong foundation on…
October 9, 2024
Two Cheers for California’s Ban on Legacy Admissions
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a new statewide ban on legacy admissions. It bars all colleges and universities, public or private, from taking into consideration an applicant’s relationship to alumni or donors after the ban takes effect in September 2025. In a signing statement, Newsom said, “In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through…
October 7, 2024
Has Kamala Harris Given Up on “College for All”?
In 2009, then-President Obama made a bold proposal: “By 2020, this nation will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” His administration then pursued a slew of policies to boost college attendance, including fatter tuition tax credits, a larger Pell Grant, and free tuition at community colleges. Echoing Obama, over the next several…
October 3, 2024
Six Ideas to Fix Higher Education in 2025
America will have a new president and a new Congress in 2025, and with that change comes the opportunity to rethink federal policy towards higher education. The federal approach suffers from many problems, but the core one is that federal subsidies indiscriminately fund traditional colleges, regardless of their financial value, and shortchange promising alternatives, such…
October 2, 2024
Higher Education: Making Education Beyond High School Work for All
Executive Summary and Introduction: For generations, society has told high school students that college is a great investment. The case is familiar: college graduates typically earn more money than their peers without degrees, and a college education is necessary for the 21st century labor market. For low-income students especially, college has been sold as a…
September 17, 2024
Back to School: Shedding Light on Risks and Harm in the Private Student Lending and Servicing Market
At present there are more than 1.74 trillion dollars in student loans outstanding in the US economy. This is a massive amount of money that represents serious liabilities for millions of borrowers across the United States who are grappling with the process of repayment. This massive amount of outstanding debt also represents a tremendous liability…