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…
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 20, 2024
End Federal Loans for Graduate School
President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisors have announced plans to create a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a commission tasked with slashing wasteful spending throughout the federal budget. One place they could start is the federal student loan program. The federal government loses tens of billions of dollars per year on lending to graduate students, a…
November 20, 2024
Eliminate Federal Lending to Graduate and Professional Students; Revenue to Fund Block Grants to States
Graduate student lending is out of control. Students are effectively borrowing without limit to pay for graduate and professional schools, many of which offer little or no return on their investment. The status quo is untenable for both students, who bear the risk of taking on unaffordable debts amid uncertainty about the future of forgiveness…
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…