Free Republic

History demonstrates that attempts to “cure” a problem by exceeding the federal government’s constitutional powers generally lead to more and worse problems... “A rage ... for an abolition of debts ... or for any other improper or wicked project ....” — James Madison, Federalist No. 10.. The courts, in the exercise of what is called “equity jurisdiction,” have long excused borrowers from obligations incurred through fraud, duress, and other forms of creditor unfairness.. In addition, federal bankruptcy laws (authorized in the Constitution by Article I, Section 8, Clause 4) offer a path to safety for debtors who get in over...

In the past few years, large public universities have garnered headlines by freezing tuition. Purdue University, the Pennsylvania State System, and every public four-year university in Virginia have all frozen tuition and fees. And three University of North Carolina schools—UNC Pembroke, Western Carolina University, and Elizabeth City State University—have cut tuition to $500 per semester for in-state students. That reduction is a boon to students and parents who must foot the tuition bill. But it is made easier by taxpayer subsidies; state universities aren’t entirely tuition-dependent for their revenues. Small private universities often find it more difficult to keep tuition...

How many US colleges will soon begin to fail as the US rejects ever increasing tuition costs and student debt and worthless degrees?

ABC's Jonathan Karl recently interviewed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Karl asked no question and did not call for a clarification when Ocasio-Cortez, presumably referring to the Mueller report, spoke about "the abundance of evidence, 10 counts of obstruction of justice, four with rock-solid evidence" against President Donald Trump. A "count" means a specific accusation of a crime. The Mueller report made no such accusation. Even worse, Karl, with not one follow-up question, allowed Ocasio-Cortez to rattle off her progressive agenda -- which includes free college tuition, government health care for all and a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation. After...

Last month, Amanda Riley, writing for The Atlantic, asked a good question: why does higher education in the United States cost significantly more than in every other OECD nation except Luxembourg? Related to that: Why have college costs risen sharply over time? Unfortunately, while the questions Riley raises are compellingly important, the answers she provided are, in my opinion, severely wanting. She fails to even fleetingly mention one thing unique to American higher education that has been an enormous factor in driving up costs: the federal student financial assistance programs. The money from those programs has provided universities an opportunity...

Former Sen. Phil Graham once quipped that “if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s free.” He said that when President Clinton was, unsuccessfully, trying to get his wife’s Health Security Act through Congress in 1993. Graham was right. While Clinton didn’t get his plan enacted, health care has become increasingly “free” to consumers, as the share they pay out-of-pocket dropped from 47% in 1960, to 23% by 1980 to less than 11% today. This trend has been driven almost entirely by government policies — either through government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, or because of distortions...

The issue plays into the president’s agenda of protecting students and providing an affordable college education — issues the administration also hopes will drive Democrats to the polls in November. The financial industry is clashing with the Obama administration over forthcoming regulations that are intended to protect college students from excessive bank fees. Still in its early stages, the proposal would extend the Education Department’s regulatory authority to deposit accounts opened under arrangements between universities and financial firms that adopt “campus cards,” critics say. The agency reasons that its jurisdiction includes those accounts, since they often serve as receptacles for...

Any sanguine prognosticators who may have predicted a decline in the average cost of attending college may need to rethink how they arrived at such an off-the mark conclusion. college grad hire me At least 50 American colleges and universities are now charging students more than $60,000 per year. This marks a significant increase from last year when only nine schools exceeded the 60K mark. What’s shocking about this year’s figures is that the data presented in the story from Business Insider does “not reveal the true financial burden of higher education.” Other fees not included in the story include...

For the last 70 years, American higher education was assumed to be the pathway to upper-mobility and a rich shared-learning experience. Young Americans for four years took a common core of classes, learned to look at the world dispassionately, and gained the concrete knowledge to make informed arguments logically. The result was a more skilled workforce and a competent democratic citizenry. That ideal may still be true at our flagship universities, with their enormous endowments and stellar world rankings. Yet most elsewhere, something went terribly wrong with that model. Almost all the old campus protocols are now tragically outdated or...

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[snip] Tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities jumped 8.3 percent nationwide for the 2011-2012 school year, the organization said. The numbers were skewed by California, which raised in-state tuition and fees by a whopping 21 percent this year. But even without California, costs rose seven percent, according to the College Board’s annual “Trends in College Pricing” report released on Wednesday. [snip] Private, non-profit colleges raised prices as well according to the report, but not nearly as much as their budget-strapped public counterparts. Tuition and fees rose 4.5 percent, which is still more than twice the core rate...

CAPITAL REGION — Private liberal arts colleges, including Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs and Union College in Schenectady, are seeing a decline in admission applications and increased requests for financial aid. “It’s no surprise, looking at the economic climate,” said Robert Shorb, associate dean and director of student aid and family finance at Skidmore. Some students’ parents have lost their jobs, he said. Some families’ college investments have declined dramatically with the stock market. At the same time, the small liberal arts colleges have also lost money on their endowment investments. Skidmore’s $223 million endowment, for example, is down 23...

I read that the University of Massachusetts is raising its tuition rates by 15 percent, while Dartmouth College is raising theirs by "only" five percent. This is in a year in which the Consumer Price Index rose by only 0.1 percent, the smallest increase in over a half a century. It is more of the same old thing. Raise real tuition fees a lot. If legislatures won't let universities do it, they do it anyhow through the back door --new fees and charges. Slim down staff a tad, give small or no salary increases. But do not try to make...

College students are covering more of what it costs to educate them, even as most colleges are spending less on students, according to a new study. The study, based on data that colleges and universities report to the federal government, also found that the share of higher education budgets that goes to instruction has declined, while the portion spent on administrative costs has increased. It describes a system that is increasingly stratified: the smallest number of students — about 1 million out of a total 18 million students — attend the private research universities that spend the most per student....

On August 6, 2008, the Washington Post reported that tuition and fees at public colleges in Virginia will increase by an average of 7.3 percent this year. The article was four sentences long and ran in the Metro section, below the fold, in space reserved for unremarkable news. The drumbeat of higher education price increases has become so steady in recent years that it barely merits attention. But the cumulative effect is enormous: the average price of attending a public university more than doubled over the last two decades, even after adjusting for inflation. The steepest increases came in the...

Duke to Parents: Please Save by: Bethany Stotts, September 18, 2008 College tuitions have risen dramatically over the last two decades, with the average private four-year college costing parents $14,755 in 1991. Today that same four-year private college would cost $23,712 (2007 dollars), according to statistics released by the College Board. As Accuracy in Academia has documented, some scholars attribute the rising costs to ever-available federal financial aid, and some to an unnecessary emphasis on higher education. But Duke University’s former financial aid director, Jim Belvin, asserts that federal financial aid has “many positives,” including a “streamlining” effect and raising...

Reality Check on College by: Lance Nation, September 15, 2008 Does everyone need a college education? According to Charles Murray, “No, too many people are going to college. A Bachelor of Arts in and of itself tells you nothing. We have exalted a meaningless document.” Murray, a W. H. Brady Scholar at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), does not argue that people should not be educated. “Everyone deserves a liberal education. However, they do not need to attend a four-year college or university to obtain it,” he said recently at AEI. Murray discussed his new book. Real Education: Four Simple Truths...

Tuition Economics Bethany Stotts, September 15, 2008 A recent speech by the Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), which studies trends within its thirty member-countries, brought home the fact that while tuition costs are rising in America, other developed countries face a similar higher-education financial crunch. Angel Gurría said that “the demand for education in OECD countries has been growing at an accelerating pace, and this rising tide is creating budgetary pressures to increase the offer of education without compromising quality, but tertiary education is not managing to meet this growing demand in many countries and...

After retrieving control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, Democrats will set out to redefine the domestic agenda through policies they say would address the economic needs of middle- and working-class Americans. Striving for a few quick legislative victories in January and longer-term goals whose details -- and viability -- are not yet certain, Democratic lawmakers want to shift the dialogue on Capitol Hill to workers' pay, college tuition, health-care costs, retirees' income and other issues that touch ordinary families. Their success is not assured. Democrats will hold a tenuous 51 to 49 majority in the...

Curious where those extra tuition dollars are going? One place to look would be the pockets of college presidents. Five presidents have cracked the $1 million compensation barrier, including John R. Silber, the now-retired president of Boston University, according to an annual survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education to be released Monday, and more are sure to follow. Nine earned more than $900,000 - a figure none broke in last year's report. All were at private universities, and the figures are for fiscal 2004, the most recent information available for private schools. More recent data on public universities, for...